Work Text:
The day started like any other, the SDN office a flurry of activity. On Robert’s screen, an apartment burglary had been resolved with little to no injuries, and the perpetrators were in the process of being detained by the police department. For a job that likely needed a few people to guarantee success, it had been pulled off with aplomb by one.
“Good work, Flambae.”
A chorus of wolf-whistles, jeers, inappropriate giggles, burst over the comms channel. Robert groaned, propping his chin up with his hand while his elbow rested on his SDN desk.
“Careful, pretty boy, you’ll give him a praise kink.”
“Have you met Flambae? I think that ship’s already sailed.”
“Oh, I know we ain’t theorising about my Bae’s sex life.”
“Ah! A discussion on our coworker’s sexual proclivities. How novel.”
Robert wanted to say any number of things. The HR-approved spiel, the useless protests. Just because Flambae and I are engaging in a consensual romantic relationship does not mean I give him preferential treatment in the workplace, nor does it interfere with our professional rapport.
His eyes glazed over as he looked at the hefty stapled documents that had been left on his desk by the human resources department. He had skimmed it, their helpful bullet points for putting an end to unwanted speculation, but hadn’t gone through it properly. All the wonder and awe, the festive haze, dancing together and kissing under the stars; it had started to feel heavily corporatised since the new year had been and gone. The hard launch was being drained of its magic, leeched at by company policy and the intolerable teasing by his team.
“I do not have a fucking-” Flambae - Karim, Robert corrected himself - had started to argue.
Robert smirked. It was a lie, of course. He could practically see the flush on Karim’s cheeks in his mind’s eye, almost spitting as he ranted down the microphone.
Discussion of intimate matters is not appropriate while on the clock, and can be seen as disrespectful by your coworkers.
Robert didn’t use any of HR’s helpful anecdotes and tidbits. Instead, he resorted to a command that always fell on deaf ears once the Z-Team latched on to a conversation that they all had to weigh in on. He fell into the words as routine, like a familiar yet ineffective dance.
“Clear the line…” he sighed noncommittally. He leaned back in his chair, hooking his fingers together behind his head and jostling his headphones in the process. “Clear the fucking line, please.”
He stared up at the sterile office ceiling, the humming fluorescent lights, trying to block out the din that had devolved into speculating over other topics that were best discussed behind closed doors by consenting parties.
An employee’s sexual preference is entirely their business, and in accordance with SDN’s diversity policy, any unwanted remarks or prejudice must be reported immediately to your supervisor so that adequate action can be taken.
He leaned forward and idly picked up a rubber band from his desk, spinning it around in his fingers as he adjusted his headphones. Before he realised what he was doing, he was pinging the elastic against his wrist. If Karim could see him now, he would pull that disapproving face where his nose crinkles up. Cute, but made him feel immeasurably guilty. Robert always argued it was a low stakes habit; much better than the more destructive alternative it had replaced.
Forcing himself to fiddle with something else, his gaze landed on a wooden pin in purple, pink and blue. It had been placed there by a well-meaning coworker whose peppy presence was a bolstering brightness among the dispatchers. The bisexual pride pin, handmade with a little uneven edge he could pick at, materialised on his desk between shifts since the Christmas party. He picked it up with a smile, turning it around in his fingers.
“Are you guys going to do some work today or is this going to continue?” he said down the mic. “Because we could skip all the bullshit and I could just write you all up to HR now.”
“Ooh, he’s getting dominant.”
“Weird, I always thought he had subby vibes.”
“I always thought you had roasted alive vibes, Visi,” Karim cut across, audibly seething. “Wanna prove me right?”
Malevola attempted to mediate. “Whoa, whoa, cool it.”
“Was that a threat, Flamboner?”
“It’s turning into a promise, Invisibitch.”
“Robert can you-”
“Everyone,” Robert raised his voice, so much so that a few heads of his fellow dispatchers turned towards him in bewilderment. “Shut the fuck up. Shift’s almost over, and if you stop chatting shit over the comms, I’ll… I’ll give you a gold star.”
He plucked the first enticement that flitted across from his mind. A pause, then:
“A gold star?”
“Like… like in school?”
“Yes, like in school,” Robert replied, sliding his chair back towards the computer and reangling his microphone towards his mouth.
“Do you have a board or something with our names on it, lad?”
“No, Punch Up, but I will get one if it’ll help you all lock the fuck in.”
The leaderboard was one thing, but if Robert could keep his team on task with some personalised incentives and friendly competition in pursuit of the most gold stars per week, he would be willing to try it. Their Christmas presents to him had reduced his emotionally inebriated self to tears, and he held no shortage of respect (and yes, even love) for his team, but that didn’t change the fact that getting them to focus was akin to herding a particularly rambunctious litter of cats. Especially now that he and Karim’s relationship was the hot topic of choice.
The bell pinged in the corner of the screen to let Robert know that the end of the shift was approaching. He concentrated on receiving calls and dispatching the members of his team that best fit the spec; as much as he was anxious to get back into the field as Mecha Man again, being the guy behind the desk had grown on him exponentially. Discussions with Mandy indicated he could try a sort of split-responsibility operation. A couple of days a week out in the field in a heroic capacity, a couple spent behind the desk. Recouping his strength, nursing the inevitable flare-ups that would occur as a result of the physical exertion necessary to pilot the mech suit, and getting to collaborate with his often chaotic team in a multidisciplinary role.
Maybe he would even get dispatched on missions with Karim - call sign Flambae. Now, that would be interesting.
Robert pulled on the plain black lanyard that hung from his pocket and withdrew the attached ID card. He attached the bisexual pin to it. It felt good in a way he’d never experienced, like settling into clothes he’d never comfortably worn but knew would fit him perfectly.
The shift concluded with a roaring success from Visi and Waterboy redirecting and cleansing some clogged pipes in the undercity. Visi had a lot to say about it, not much of it good, but the mission was cleared - even if Courtney insisted Robert would pay for the dry cleaning of her clothes.
“Great work today, guys,” Robert said sincerely, not a trace of irony. “You’re all getting gold stars.”
“Can my gold star come in the form of fancy whiskey next night out?”
“Ooh, mine too.”
“Gold stars and a free round of drinks?” Robert rubbed his jaw, keeping them in suspense with a moment of false pondering. “Fuck it. Sure. Can never get enough positive reinforcement.”
“Oh, let’s fuckin’ go,” Golem rumbled, sediment rutting against sludge. With his birthday passed, he was making the most of legal alcohol consumption.
“And this applies to any alcohol-free substitutes as well, of course.” Robert tacked this on for one person in particular.
The person in question responded, his unique accent stirring with contentment. “Thank you, Robert.”
“You’re welcome, Flambae.”
Sonar made a sound that remarkably resembled someone gargling on an HR violation, which was met with shrieks of laughter as, one-by-one, the Z-Team said their goodnights and clocked out, dropping off the call and turning off their headsets.
Was there a section in the HR handbook about plying better work ethic out of your employees with alcohol? It seemed like an oddly specific scenario. Perhaps his team’s particular brand of inappropriate conduct would be the genesis of an entire new section of positive workplace guidelines; how exciting.
Robert dropped his headset down around his neck and tapped his pen absently at the documents requiring his attention. He could stay late, get it all out of the way, but the fact of the matter was that he had some other reading material to dive into. He and Karim’s text thread from today was filled with very informative links upon Robert’s request.
Glancing over his shoulder, he turned his attention to his phone and unlocked it. His background was a picture of Beef exposing his substantial belly to the world; a position that real-life Beef was currently mirroring perfectly in the bed next to Robert’s desk. He clicked on the thread from earlier, flicking through it.
Karim 🧡
are you sure?
because like
if you’ve never done it before it’s gonna take a bit of preparation
Which is exactly why i’m asking wtf to do
I did some Googling
And there’s just. A lot. Of information
That I can’t sift through rn because I am working
Karim 🧡
bitch wtf do you think i’m doing?
I won’t dispatch you for like… twenty minutes.
Links please.
Karim 🧡
you’re impossible
And you’re gonna get a gold star 💜
for being such a good boy.
Karim 🧡
azizam
on the clock? freak
You have no idea how freaky I can be.
Naturally, they’d explored many avenues of pleasure, Robert bringing up his own kinks with Karim doing the same. To say his sex life up to now had been vanilla would be an understatement. Robert knew there were plenty of acts he hadn't done, things he’d like to try, things that had given him a most unexpected orgasm in the dead of night with his face lit only by the backlight of his phone. Perhaps he himself had no concept as to the extent of his freakiness either. It was always exciting to find out new things about oneself.
Karim 🧡
thanks, those thoughts will torture me for the rest of the shift
So many possibilities…
Links please? 😇
Karim 🧡
ok hold on
[link]
[link]
[link]
Oh shit
He had to get home if he wanted to read through everything properly. He had tried earlier on his break doing his own searching, but sitting in the break room angling his phone away from his fellow dispatchers and heroes hogging the microwave did not make for a very conducive research environment.
His thumb hovered over a link that looked like it held a couple of helpful diagrams, narrowing his eyes.
“Hey, Robert.”
“Jesus!” Instinct slammed his finger down on the lock button before Mandy, who had just approached from behind, could see his phone screen. He pushed it down into his lap and, in his haste, his fist collided with his crotch in a way that reminded him sorely of his humanity. “Fuck.”
She was, however, completely distracted with leaning over and rubbing Beef’s exposed belly, showering him with praise.
“Headed home?” Mandy asked eventually, peering up at him through brunette waves.
“In a minute, yeah,” he replied, his voice strained and tight.
“You get your HR paperwork done yet?”
Robert eyed her furtively. “Have you?”
She looked a little embarrassed. “Well, I’ve sort of-“
“Skimmed it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Mandy sighed, standing upright. “Kinda takes all the excitement out of workplace relationships, doesn’t it?”
“We’re datasets, Mandy.” Robert switched off his computer and rose from his swivel chair with a groan. “Statistics in a filing cabinet.”
“Sexy stuff.”
“Has Flambae done his?”
“He laminated it earlier so that he didn’t accidentally burn it.”
Karim had slapped the still-warm sheets on his desk, beaming with pride and a sense of superiority over how flimsy Robert’s papers were in comparison to his. He had only recently worked out how to use the laminator, so he was using it at any opportunity; like a toddler with a new toy.
“That’s a start. Courtney’s already finished hers.”
Robert blinked. “She has?” Out of all four of them paired off in relationships, Visi was the last one he expected to be ahead of the curve. Perhaps it really was time to pick up the slack.
“She makes up for slacking at work with enthusiasm about being my girlfriend and all that it entails.”
“Well, that’s adorable. I had her swimming in sewage earlier,” Robert said flatly.
“Oh, delightful.”
“Waterboy said he’d get her wet to clean it off. You can imagine how that went.”
Mandy laughed, covering her mouth shyly as if its volume was a point of contention.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Mandy reached out and gave his arm a quick squeeze, turning and heading towards the elevator.
With Mandy’s departure, Robert turned back to his phone, its screen now black - concealing his shame. Although, as Karim kept repeating to him, there was no shame in what he wished to try. It was just a new avenue to walk down, an alternative route to their destination. He slipped his device into his pocket and grabbed an aptly beef-flavoured treat from the drawer.
“I’ll be back soon, ‘kay, bud?” He bridged the gap between him and his sleeping dog with the treat outstretched, which Beef immediately woke up and grabbed with a speed that belied his general portliness.
Satisfied that the dog was happily chewing away, Robert made his way over to the elevator and, seeing streams of employees on their way out at day’s end, he opted for the stairs. He needed to grab his bag from the locker room after this morning’s gym session before he could even think about heading home, and to the plethora of tasks that awaited him.
Black work shoes rhythmically taking the stairs two at a time, Robert pulled his phone out and flicked through the texts again. He chewed his bottom lip, hovering on a landing as he dissected the particulars. Anybody stumbling across him would assume he was analysing a recently published article of current events for how his brow furrowed, his eyes widening in surprise, narrowing in concentration. It seemed he would need to make a few stops before heading home.
“Fuck, alright.”
He resumed his sojourn downstairs with a slower pace, using the quiet descending thoroughfare to his advantage. He pulled open his Notes app and started to make a bullet pointed list. Principally, at the top, denoting its priority, Robert had written ‘be chill and don’t panic. Anxiety attacks aren’t sexy.’
Robert reached the floor holding the gym and showers, and a sign taped to the frosted glass of the door stopped him in his tracks.
CLOSED DUE TO ELECTRICAL FAULT | ENGINEERS SCHEDULED FOR TOMORROW MORNING. DEEPEST APOLOGIES - SDN TORRANCE BRANCH CUSTODIAL TEAM.
“Oh, for fuck’s-” Robert groused, thudding his head against the door in frustration.
They could have made an announcement. They probably did. Amazingly, SDN had not taken into account that a large portion of their staff were dispatchers, perpetually wired to their desk with headphones answering subscriber’s calls for aid and, in Robert’s case, listening to his team banter and deride and otherwise cause microphoned chaos.
And now his stuff was trapped inside until tomorrow morning.
He tried the door just in case, and was unsurprised to find it locked tight. The keypad to the side beeped in anger at him for even trying.
He swore under his breath and then, realising the floor was abandoned and uncaring for the camera pointed at him, ramped up the volume. He normally kept his cool, but the remnants of the long shift and the developing list in his pocket were weighing heavily on him.
“FUUUUCK!” Robert shouted it as loud as he thought he could get away with, a war cry of inconsequential daily gripes.
His phone buzzed in his pocket with an insistence that stopped him from committing mild and negligible property damage.
Karim 🧡
lmao
was that you?
Robert frowned at the message. Impulsively, he glanced around him, craning his neck to peek down the branching corridors around him. All that greeted him was an immutable silence, stronger and starker in the absence of his irritation.
Uh. Yes?
Where are you?
No sooner had he sent the message did he have an incoming call, joining the veritable pantheon of cellular communication between him and Karim. There were the endless text threads, the morning phone calls - the night-time ones, which were often much more explicit than the light of day would permit. There was even the group chat they had with Prism which involved Robert witnessing a stream of reaction images and gifs to the latest show they were co-streaming, and occasionally cutting in for context. Maybe one day Karim would convince Robert to join their Drag Race or Love Island binges, but that day had not yet arrived.
In the otherwise silent gym corridor of the SDN Torrance headquarters, Robert answered the call before the first ring had finished its abrasive chime.
“Hey, outbursts like that might get you an HR write-up. It’s called disturbing the peace.”
Karim’s voice had a faint echo to it, a tinny reverberance no doubt the result of bizarre acoustics. His accent, irresistible as it was to Robert, bounced off the walls like an auditory stream of refracting light. There was another noise too, which Robert couldn’t quite parse; Karim’s phone had decent noise cancelling, it would seem.
“That’s a cop thing. You should know, pretty sure it’s on your rap sheet.”
He could hear the smirk in Flambae’s voice. “Well, HR are basically love cops.”
“Yeah, you know what else gets me and HR talking? Fucking a coworker. Speaking hypothetically, of course.”
“Now, Robert. Is that any way to talk to your boyfriend?”
Robert smiled, leaning against the sterile white wall behind him. The novelty hadn’t worn off for either of them. Any opportunity to say the B-word, they would take it, which offered a contrast to Robert being terrified of letting it slip a month before. All before that night at the party.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Because you swear like a kid scared of putting a dollar in the swear jar.”
“Fuck you.”
“See? There it is again.”
What was that noise in the background? Karim’s voice sounded vaguely strained, like there was some element of exertion that came with speaking.
“So where are you?” Robert’s eyes flicked up to the security camera suspended above him, quirking a brow. “Security room? Can you see this?”
He raised a middle finger to the security camera which, in retrospect, was a bad idea without confirmation.
“No, I didn’t break into the fucking security room.”
Robert grimaced, turning the middle finger into an elaborate charade that involved clearing his hair from his eyes, tucking a strand behind his docked ear - anything to create the illusion that he hadn’t just flipped off SDN security personnel. He turned his back to the camera, face crinkled up in a cringe that he knew he would remember for the next several weeks.
“I’m in the showers. Fucking bitches locked me in while I was still finishing my set.”
A running shower. Was that the mysterious ambience behind Karim’s words? Robert leaned around the corner, back to the tightly sealed door.
He had to laugh, mostly out of bewilderment. “How didn’t they see you? You’re not exactly the most discreet.”
Karim was the type of gymgoer to let everyone know the levels of masculine effort he was putting into his workout. He often blamed it on the fact he listened to exceptionally loud music through his earphones, so he didn’t realise how loud he was being. Lots of grunts and bassy yelps of effort. Sometimes he produced groans which verged on the erotic as he benched a ridiculous weight. Robert had noticed before, obviously, and had angled himself around the punching bag while running through his boxing workout so that the stiffening in his pants flew under the radar.
“Really laying on the praise today, huh, Robert?”
An almost suction-like sound, probably the drain under the shower stream drawing in more water when Karim moved his feet out of the way. That had to be it.
“Gold star for being almost entirely unmissable,” Robert replied, affection lacing his words. He rested his temple against the wall, lightly tapping it as if trying to shake his thoughts free. “I’ll just go grab the custodian to come let you out. My stuff’s in my locker, and I really would like to get home on time for our, uh…” he paused, thinking of a delicate word for it, “plans.”
The custodian’s office was on the upper levels, and to save time, he was better using the elevator to get back up and down. He started to walk down the corridor, away from the gym & showers, away from the camera he flipped off, and back towards the antechamber with the stairs and elevators.
“Robert, w-wait.”
A stutter. The faltering of his usually self-assured speech. The hiss of shower water faded into the silence that followed.
Robert stopped, squinting and angling his phone further towards his ear. “What, why?”
And that other noise again. The sound was sharper, as if Karim had moved the phone ever-so-slightly closer to the source. Repetitive motion, deliberate, slowing and then occasionally speeding up. Schlock-schlock-schlock.
“Talk to me.”
It was a plea, punctuated with a breathy moan that he tried and failed to cover, presumably with his hand clamped over his mouth. Robert’s eyes flicked to his phone, nonplussed. Now, the puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place.
A slow smile developed on Robert’s face. He felt his cheeks flush, a swooping sensation sliding through his lower abdomen. But he couldn’t resist toying with Karim a little - it was something he did often. Watching him dance on his strings, knowing which one to pluck and which to neglect at any given time. It was no secret that Robert loved being in control; which is why tonight’s activities were a source of trepidation for him. But here was an opportunity to flourish in his comfort zone one last time.
“I am talking to you,” said Robert, feigning innocence.
“Fucking- hh… bitch-”
Robert intentionally dropped his voice, still turned entirely away from the camera, adopting a huskier pitch that he knew from experience encouraged Karim even further into the depths of depravity.
“Now who’s the freak?” he drawled, angling his phone so the microphone was closer to his mouth. Karim would hear every click of saliva, every breath, every sibilant sound. “You’re in public. At work. Talk about HR’s persona non grata.”
Adopting this tone drew an unrestrained moan from Karim. Robert heard it ricochet off the shower tiles over the call.
“Told you I’m- alone in here,” Karim hissed back, pausing the ministrations on himself long enough to form words. “Might as well make use of it.”
Robert laughed, throaty, leading. “You just couldn’t wait till tonight, huh?”
He heard a whine, and what followed was the telltale fizzling of cooler water colliding with his naked superheated skin. Sparks were forming, fire was catching; Karim was all kinds of worked up in there. The mental picture was so vivid, his arousal so palpable, Robert could feel himself heating up. Suddenly the cuffs of his shirt were too tight, the collar too restricting.
“Tonight-” Karim sighed rapturously, as if dreaming of it. “Yes… let’s talk about tonight.”
He reminded himself of the camera behind him, embedded in the hallway ceiling. He tilted his head around, looking down its barrel and wondering absently at the person on the other end that he had already made an obscene gesture at.
“There any cameras where you are, baby?”
Calling Karim by pet names didn’t come easy to him, not least because his boyfriend had a labyrinthine vocabulary of endearment originating from the multiple different languages he spoke. But he’d been trying it out; it was becoming more and more natural, and from the sharp intake of breath Robert heard on the other end, it was landing well.
“Showers, remember?”
Of course. The gym was covered by surveillance, but it would be a drastic violation of several different laws for there to be cameras recording the showers themselves. Much like this conversation, and the activities being encouraged.
“Well, there’s one here.” Robert broke his well-practiced seductive voice, throwing a brick through the sensual stained glass effigy of the scene. “Pointed right at me.”
Karim tutted, frustrated. The aural soundscape of his masturbation ceased.
“Well, look for a blind spot. Fuuuck, can tell you’ve never been a villain.”
“That’s me. Normie loser hero. Where, oh, where would I be without you?”
Apparently that did something for Karim, because the background soft slick sound resumed. The thrill of taboo rushed through Robert. Doing anything sexual within the confines of the SDN building - with the exception of the odd suggestive text - had been off the table for the sake of both their jobs. Now, though, it wasn’t just Karim’s laborious breaths, the image of him burning up as he stroked himself in the shower, steam shrouding the Adonis-like form, that was titillating the dispatcher. Risk was riveting. Doing something ill-advised, putting their job security on the line in the pursuit of pleasure, the possibility of being caught - it caused Robert’s pale skin to bloom into impassioned gooseflesh.
“F-figure out the field of view - hide outside it-“
Robert’s husky tone made its return. “Don’t you worry. Working on it. Just keep working on yourself, that’s my good boy.”
The instruction brought a sighed out “yes,” which occupied Karim long enough for Robert to scan his surroundings, locate the cameras, and figure out next steps. It did not come as naturally to him as it would an ex-villain like the man moaning in his ear, but Robert’s arousal-muddled mind was fortunately able to sift through his more animalistic urges to delve into the math problem.
Eventually, after trying his best to casually comb the deserted floor and not be too obvious about inspecting the camera angles, Robert discovered an alcove perfect for his depraved purposes. It looked built into the building’s design for doorless storage. A slight turn off the beaten track led to a box-like recess, a secluded nook occupied only by ancient stacks of printer paper, empty water cooler bottles, a bone-dry mop. Joining the inhabitants - a spider family no doubt startled by the intrusion - was Robert, who was fighting the urge to palm himself through his office slacks.
“Okay,” Robert announced with a sigh of relief, pressing his back to the wall so he would be practically invisible to the security team or anyone who happened to be wandering around the out-of-use gym floor after five o’clock. “How’re you doing in there?”
·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
How Karim was doing could be illustrated by the steam enveloping the room. He burned hotter than the water pounding down on his nude body, some of which evaporated off his flame-licked skin. A fog-like shroud anonymised him, a shadowy form hunched over himself, broad back heaving, one three-fingered hand pressed palm flush to the tiled wall. If he wasn’t careful, it might crack. Maybe he wanted it to.
His cock wept, beading at the tip which he spread over his shaft with the other hand. His phone was propped up against a nearby pipe, his waterproof earbuds sending the call deep into his skull, letting Robert’s voice essentially fuck his brain. Discovering he had a thing for Robert’s voice meant that every shift walked a fine line between casual workplace chatter and a near-constant state of exhilaration. Yes, Robert. Say I did good. Fuck, say I did bad, just say. Speak. Let me hear you.
He heard him now.
“So, tonight,” Robert whispered, sounding almost as breathless as him. The thought of him, squeezed into some dirty little corner, playing along with this delicious game - it was enough to make Karim whine. “You too excited? Is that what this is?”
Impulse had led Karim to touching his dick in the shower as he contemplated his options. Being locked inside the gym all alone certainly left room for thought, and naturally, naked and reeling from performing heroic acts and getting praised accordingly, his thoughts wandered down the alley of depravity. The links he sent Robert, the discussions they’d had ahead of tonight’s plans. The new chapter of their intimacy loomed, and Karim hated waiting.
“Joonam… tell me what you want. What you want to try.”
Against all odds, he managed to speak, massaging his precum into the base of his cock and letting the shower water do the rest as he took his girth into his hand. His attention sent pinpricks of electricity through the heat of his form, lightning lancing through the firestorm.
“Well, you like pulling my hair,” Robert replied, a statement of fact made luscious by the gentle purr, the deep resonance of his voice. “I want my scalp to fucking hurt tomorrow morning. Make me feel it when I wear my headset all day so all I can think of is you, grabbing it by the fistful… tugging on it… hearing me beg for more.”
Karim’s active imagination played along with Robert’s breathy voice sliding over the microphone, but failed him when he tried to picture the begging. “Like what..?”
Robert’s pause was momentary, before he released a moan, hissed through gritted teeth. It flooded into Karim’s ears. It sounded too real for Robert not to be achieving some sort of friction on himself. Maybe even actively pulling on his hair.
“Karim, baby, harder…” Robert put on his best begging voice, and the three fingers on Karim’s right hand ghosted over his pubic brush, imagining it silky, auburn, begging to be grabbed.
He realised quickly that he had to slow down. Smoke was joining the steam dominating the shower room. It was liable to leak into the gym, maybe even set off a fire alarm, which was the last thing either of them needed right now. Plus, Karim knew a delayed orgasm was superior to one rushing towards the finish line.
“I also want you to bend me over. Fuck me with your tongue, your fingers. Spread me wide, then take me with that perfect cock of yours,” Robert went on, words slickened by desire, caressing Karim’s skull and ramping up the anticipation.
“Ngh- yes. Yes.”
Karim turned his back to the shower, pumping himself with languid, deliberate motions. He braced his head back against the tiled wall, wet hair clinging to his muscle-bound chest, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed heat, smoke, steam, spit, gasps. His eyes closed, his thighs trembled. With his free hand, he reached behind his back and tightened his fist around the shower pipe. Leverage, a stanchion as his whole being tightened and beseeched for sweet, elusive release.
Robert was relentless. His voice wouldn’t be out of place in pornography, a dirty ASMR-induced feeling sensuously rolling over Karim’s skin as if it was physically stroking him.
“I’ll show you how well I can beg for you. How much I need you. How well I can take you.” Robert’s tongue clicked and caressed the words, before adopting a tone markedly more serious. “I want it rough. I like it rough.”
Karim was not even close to surprised by this revelation. Robert could take more punishment than any non-powered person he had ever met, and somehow still be sitting at the dispatch desk hours later. With his own extensive history being dominant, he had experience with partners wanting to straddle the fine line between sex and violence. The two were inextricable cousins of each other, as Karim had realised whenever he and Robert had fought as nemeses and fury took new form in the stiffening inside his jock strap. And that was before he knew Mecha Man as anything other than a shit-talking loser in a mechsuit.
“Fuck, Robert… I wish you were here.”
“What would you do with me if I was?” Robert was quick on the draw. “If there wasn’t a locked door between us.”
“I’d get you down on your knees.”
When Karim opened his eyes, his imagination kicked in again. The afterimage of Robert, monochromatic and wreathed in their shared history, dropped to his illusory knees on the tiles in front of him. They clicked in protest, of course. They always did, when Karim hadn’t used his body heat to ease his joints.
Robert hummed, rumbling with pleasure down the line. “Mm, I love being on my knees for you, gorgeous.”
Another term of endearment that made Karim’s cock twitch in delight under his hand. He could hear the broad smile in Robert’s voice, could practically see the dimples materialising at the edges of his mouth, creasing his cheeks. The mischievous cleft in that grin, inviting him in.
His hips rocked forward rhythmically, until he was fucking his hand in time with each salacious syllable that rolled forth from Robert’s throat. Water sizzled on his flesh like oil on a hot pan. Hot and heady, his breathing quickened. His core was tightening, pulled taut, trembling at the edges of his limits.
“I’d f-fill that pretty mouth of yours with my cock,” Karim whispered, guiding his fingers over his leaking tip as if simulating the passage of it into Robert’s mouth.
Robert made a sort of slurping sound over the phone, his tongue passing over his lips. Was he deep-throating his own fingers? Impressive foley work aside, it only brought Karim’s fantasy into sharper focus.
“Let my tongue do the rest, huh?” Robert prompted, breath hitching down the phone. “You’d pull my hair and,” he made a little gasping sound, and Karim realised he was tugging on his own hair to simulate the scene, “make me gag on every delicious inch of you.”
Robert’s voice was naturally deep, with a sort of timbre to it that was difficult to describe. Gruff when it wasn’t mellow, a rumble verging on hoarse but never quite getting there. On shift, he was stentorian - in private, swathed in his fireproof sheets, he was silken. His voice took on an entirely new tone when he talked like this. Deeper like the moving of bedrock, sultry like it could delve into every hidden corner of him.
Karim swore in Dari, and the Persian dialect took over entirely, mind too muddled to lock on to English. If Robert could understand half of the phrases pouring from his mouth, he would never hear the end of it.
A low, throaty chuckle echoed over the phone, implying the man on the other end had understood every word. It reverberated through Karim's very skeleton in a caress from the hinge of his jaw down to his hips right up until it cut off, interrupted by something that could only be described as a needy whine. Robert was making a mess of his work pants, stroking himself through them in a forgotten nook of the building; the thought alone was enough to make the edge rocket closer to Karim.
“I’m- close, shirinam…”
“Oh yeah?”
“Aré…Yeah,” Karim breathed, eyes fluttering closed as he pumped himself faster. “A-are you?”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Robert admonished gently, as if scolding a child. If it wasn’t for the little moans and halted breaths Karim had caught, his voice was a perfect mask. “This is about you.”
“Ngh… fuck…”
“Don’t cum yet. Not ‘till I tell you.”
Karim stopped stroking his dick, though it ached to do so. His mouth hung open, pathetically panting for breath in the smokey, steam-laden limbo. It burned his throat, his lungs; his chest heaved for dominion over the miasma. He couldn’t muffle the whine that instinct demanded, his body tense and practically hanging on the brink.
“Can you do something for me, baby?”
“Mmm.”
Anything. Anything at all, if it means I can feel like this forever.
“Heat your hand up a little bit. I know you’re a few good strokes away from setting the fucking showers on fire, but humour me, yeah?”
Karim was too lost in the moment, hanging on Robert’s every word, to even be confused by the request. He concentrated, restraining the actual fire but warming his slick palm and fingers to a state even hotter than the rest of his sizzling frame.
“Hotter, now,” Robert urged huskily. “I know my good boy can do better than that.”
Karim obliged. “H-how hot?”
“I want your hand going numb. Can you do that for me?”
His skin didn’t burn, but extreme heat had other effects, even on someone who was preternaturally fireproof. Where Karim’s flesh should have peeled away from sinew and bone, instead it buzzed as it got hotter. Losing feeling in his hand gradually, it felt like how television static looked. Shower water darted and crackled off his hand, leaping away as if fearful of its overpowering heat.
“Alright, it’s- it’s there.”
“Good. Gold star,” Robert praised. Karim’s neglected length twitched. “Now I want you to pump that big thick cock, nice and slow.”
He did as he was told, obedient as ever, all willpower of his own sapped with each spirant. As badly as his body pleaded for sweet friction, to chase his long-awaited release with all fervour, Robert was in charge. Karim, not for the first time, wondered what it would be like when he wasn’t. When he relinquished that control, thrust it into Karim’s hands; would it be unnatural for Karim, to both top and be dominant again after the dynamic he had fostered with Robert? Or would it be like getting behind the wheel of an old car, a machine that still hummed and purred at his whim?
“Close your eyes.”
Karim did.
“Imagine your hand is my mouth. All wet, inviting. Your fingers are my tongue, licking at all you’ll give me.”
The numbness helped buttress the illusion, shrinking the gap between fiction and reality. The dampness of the air, the waterfall pounding down on him, lubricated his hand enough for it to feel like a mouth, Robert’s mouth.
“I’m taking you in, moaning as you go deeper-”
He imagined a flush on his cheeks, bringing out the freckles like a constellation on a clear night. The two little craters, dimples forming on the sides of his mouth when he laughed roguishly, licking at his reddened tip as Karim now thumbed at it.
“And then you start fucking my face.”
Karim automatically thrust forward as he had before this little flight of fancy, his own hand a vessel for the performance. Robert encouraged him through his earphones with gentle words of praise, little moans of his own, veering ever closer to genuine exclamations of pleasure. His core screamed at him, desperate to be undone. Colours flashed behind his eyes, like prismatic fireworks launched over a cityscape.
“Faster.”
“P-Please…”
His hips were a staccato, scrambling for the rhythm he had lost, so dogged in his pursuit of ecstasy. All capacity for language had left him, leaving behind an intensifying chorus of moans. They bounced off the walls of the empty shower, filling the space with the audio imprints of his mounting pleasure. Flames rolled off him in waves, pyrokinetic but still, somehow, under his control. Karim waited with baited, heaving breath for permission, holding himself at the apex of the wave, waiting to crash down upon the ocean.
Robert’s voice, blanketed by erotic sighs of his own, deepened to the crunch of gravel underfoot. His assent came, and with it, the flashfire.
“Cum for me.”
Unbidden, Karim ended, Flambae began, his entire body lit up like a bonfire kindled by intimacy. For a moment, at the summit, he was no longer human. The fire overcame him. It was at once terrifying and liberating, drifting away from the fetters of flesh, becoming entirely elemental. What came forth from his flame-wreathed throat was the purest expression of release; a moan, a shout, an erupting volcano.
Karim collapsed against the wall, every droplet of shower water morphing into a hiss of steam as it collided with his skin. A crack resounded throughout the room, and he lifted his palm; there was that tile. Bisected with a hairline fracture, unable to hold up against the heat. He angled his back away from the pipes behind him, knowing his current body temperature would likely warp and bend the metal like it was passed into a crucible. His legs trembled and eventually, he gave up on standing. He let himself slide slowly down the tile until he collapsed to the ground, huffing and propping his head against the wall.
“That’s my spark, you did so well.”
“Mm… fuck, Robert, I lo-”
Stop. For the sake of all you hold dear, fucking stop. No amount of post-orgasmic bliss was enough excuse for such an earth-shattering proclamation. Not now, as he watched his spend dribble down the drain, as the smoke filling the showers was claimed by the extractor fan before the extreme heat could crack the tiles. Not now, over the fucking phone.
“Get yourself cleaned up, sweetheart. Again. I’m sorry I can’t do it for you.”
Robert’s words were aftercare enough for now, cradling him in the sudden loneliness of the showers. Karim let his eyes drift shut as his body slowly cooled, water running over his sweat-slick body in half-evaporated rivulets.
“Fuck you mean again?” Karim laughed once he had gained enough breath back to do so. “I stayed in the shower the whole time. Technically, I’ve just had a really long shower.”
“I’ll give you ten minutes. Then I’m gonna go get the custodian to come open that door to let you out. And please grab my fucking bag.”
Karim could still hear that desperation colouring the edges of Robert’s voice, the proof that he had found something to rut against. His own hand, the wall, his thighs, anything. His words were heavy and fraught with the remnants of stimulation.
“You need ten minutes to finish yourself off?”
“No idea what you’re getting at. I’m perfectly composed.”
If Karim were anyone else, if he didn’t know Robert the way he did, he perhaps would have agreed with him. The subtle nuances, the hairline cracks in his intricately crafted mask - Karim knew them as intimately as he knew every freckle on Robert’s body.
“Just keep telling yourself that. If it helps you sleep at night.”
“Speaking of night,” Robert said, expertly diverting the topic away from his undeniable caged arousal. “Eight o’clock, yeah?”
It seemed so blisteringly far away that Karim winced.
“Yeah, eight. Come with an empty stomach.”
“Ooh, I’m getting wined and dined first?”
Karim grinned, raking a hand through the wet strands of his hair. “Of course, bitch. I’m a gentleman, you’re no whore.”
“If I can make a request. Nothing too spicy?”
The implications of eating anything liable to upset the gut with the plans they had were too catastrophic to imagine. Karim had been there with other guys before, and would not make the same mistake again.
“Don’t worry, white bread,” Karim teased. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
A pause. He heard the smirk creep into Robert’s voice.
“But it will be mine.”
Karim’s breath seized in his chest, warmth pooling again below his waist.
“See you later, cowboy,” he said, the picture of composure, then cut the connection with a shaking thumb.
·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Robert insisted on doing the dishes after their meal, which was a delicious spaghetti bolognese in a red wine-infused sauce - the phrase wine-and-dine expertly rolled into one, which Karim seemed very pleased with himself about. The man himself was busy rifling through one of the many shelves in the living room after a frenzied text from Prism demanded the lyric sheets she’d left behind at his place last week.
This left Robert time to think.
He leaned over to scrape the remnants of his dinner into the bin - his sacrum popping in the process. He had almost finished the entire plate, which both he and Karim counted as a win over his frankly tumultuous relationship with food. He would normally feed the rest to Beef assuming it was edible for dogs; but by virtue of the wine sloshed into the sauce, this meal was not.
The distinct scent of smoke, to which Robert was very accustomed, wafted from the trash as he opened it. There was an odd chemical-like smell underpinning it that Robert couldn’t quite pinpoint - until he could. Laying amongst onion peel and bell pepper seeds, he spotted a photo just as spaghetti sauce splattered on top of it. The ice-blue eyes were unmistakable even when covered in food waste. The rest of his face, the blond hair and picket-fence perfect teeth, had been singed to a blackened crisp. Karim said he had been clearing out some old stuff recently. Clearly, that intrusive ex was part of the declutter.
Robert smiled, splattering some more excess sauce on Derek’s face and enjoying every moment. He closed the trash can and returned to the dishes.
Mala accomplished a smooth figure-eight around his legs, her feather duster-like tail stood up and curved at the end like an affectionate question mark. She was probably shedding fur on his jeans; but it was not nearly as bad as how his work slacks looked after this afternoon. Drying one hand, Robert crouched - knees groaning and crackling like rice cereal - and rubbed the cat’s soft head. He had never been much of a cat person, but the queen of the Daivari condo was whittling down his reservations, one purr at a time.
When he straightened up again, his muscles and bones clacked, readjusted, slotted into interstitial spaces.
Pain was a constant in Robert’s life. A persistent passenger, yammering in his ear for attention, poking at his joints and squeezing his soma in a spike-ridden hug. His lack of care for himself only sharpened its edge, corroded his resolve against it. Karim insisted on being his heater. The impetus of their first night together had been a snowstorm of apocalyptic proportions, after all. Ever since, even when winter’s grasp slackened enough to be tolerable, Karim had taken it upon himself to be a balm of soothing heat against his chronic pain’s harshest of punishments.
His eyes wandered to Karim’s niece’s wall of Mecha Man drawings, and he felt a nasty tug at his heart that he couldn’t quite place. Shame, recoloured as guilt, packaged as obligation. He needed to get back in the suit soon.
Sometimes, the physical pain faded enough to let his brain’s production of fresh carousels of agony take over. Lack of care led to passive suicidal tendencies, that became less and less passive if his guard dropped significantly.
And of course, from all of this was birthed a psychosexual desire for pain. Roughness, the beautiful agony that made the pleasure come into brutal, searing focus. He and Karim had many conversations about it, and had been dipping their toes into it gradually. Karim already liked to bite; he just had to do it harder.
Tonight, Robert voluntarily ventured into the unknown; letting go of the control he clung to with iron fists. In that case, he would let his constant ally, pain, be his crutch, grounding him before he floated away into the dark avenues of his own head.
With all that in mind, something at the heart of it didn’t make sense to Karim, who drifted into the kitchen as Robert dried the last of the plates.
“You don’t have a safeword?”
The faintest hint of a smile lifted Robert’s expression. Karim’s presence did that, even in the midst of his most fatalistic musings.
“Nope. Not till now, at least.”
Karim leaned back against the kitchen counter, watching with mild amusement as Beef’s inquisitive nose found Mala and the two chased each other into the living room.
“Thought you said you were a freak.”
“In theory. Not so much in practice,” Robert explained with a shrug. “But I did come up with one.”
Karim folded his arms, giving him a nod to urge him to keep going.
“Coconut.”
“You fucking hate coconut.”
“Exactly. Easy to remember. Why, what’s yours?”
Karim raised his chin to the ceiling as if unable to look at Robert when he said it.
“Backdraft.”
The snorted laughter came out before Robert could cover his mouth.
“You mean… like a fart?”
“No! Not like a f- bitch, are you ten?” Karim scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Backdraft. When a fire’s eaten all the oxygen it can, and some idiot opens a window. Or a door.”
He made an open handed gesture, fingers outstretched, indicative of an explosion. Robert raised his eyebrows.
“So, still kinda like a fart.”
“No, Robert. Much scarier.”
The flickering embers in his eyes dimmed, his face falling, and Robert retracted the line of questioning, feeling himself stepping into territory untrodden.
“Well, it’s not bad. Not as bad as I’ve heard, anyway.”
Karim came back to him, the light kicking up again in his irises. “Why, what have you heard?”
“Courtney told me she once slept with a girl whose safeword was Dildo Baggins.”
“Fucking hell,” Karim shook his head, laughing. “More nerd shit.”
Robert thought of their legs entangled under blankets on the couch, watching Karim’s jaw drop as they watched the Battle of Helm’s Deep unfold on the screen. Robert grinned the whole time, like he was watching the movies again for the first time. Karim’s real-time reactions were its own type of movie.
“You are the nerd shit now, hun. Get used to it.”
Karim pulled a disgusted face as if truly repulsed by the prospect. But Robert had receipts, screeds of text from when he rewatched - yes, rewatched - the trilogy on his own time, without him.
Robert continued to dry the plate in his hands, thinking.
“So you do both?”
“What?”
Robert remembered that Karim wasn’t actually in his head, and couldn’t pick up the chaotic tangled threads of his cognition.
“Like…” He made a series of obscene hand and hip gestures that expressed his point.
Karim laughed, head thrown back, dark ponytail reaching down his spine. “Nice charades,” he commented. “Yes, I do both. More common than you might think. In fact, I usually top. Until, uh, recently, of course.”
He gave him a pointed look. Robert dried the plate again, unnecessarily. It squeaked under the towel, begging him to stop. Karim pretended not to notice.
“Impressive.”
“What can I say, I’m a man of many talents. Multitasking is one of them.”
Robert tapped the edge of the sink with his fingers. “I guess it’s just… always the role I fell into.”
Much like taking on the irrevocable mantle of Mecha Man, being dominant, ‘topping’, was something Robert was placed into without any contribution from himself. If he was being honest with himself, it had always felt like an act, a salacious soliloquy in the neverending performance of someone else’s life. Over time, he had settled into it. Even enjoyed it, the ability to finally dictate how things went. He played the role so well he became it.
“I’ve been with more girls than guys. So y’know, the whole heteronormative thing demanded it,” Robert mused. “By the time I realised I swung any which way, I’d just got into the habit. Of being dominant, the one in control.”
And what was he, without control? Like the array of buttons, dials and levers inside the mechsuit, like the quick decisions made behind the dispatcher screen, Robert thrived on control. Perhaps giving it up, unwinding the neverending tension that came with it, was long overdue. He had made his stops after work, prepared himself as the links Karim sent him dictated. Now he just had to take the plunge.
“With me, you can have as little or as much control as you like. It’s up to you,” Karim said reassuringly. Robert felt some of the tension in his chest give way. Then, he asked, “Forgive my curiosity - how many guys have you been with?”
Robert stopped for a second. The plate was now dry in his hand, but he kept rubbing the towel over it.
“Two, before you,” he said after some deliberation. “And three… no, four girls.”
Karim masked his reaction well. Going by all of the many stories Robert prodded out of him, he knew his number was diminutive by comparison.
“And were you like this with all of them?”
Not what he was expecting him to say. Robert frowned, waiting silently for Karim to elaborate. His boyfriend let out a sigh, a long-held breath released into the air. He lingered on the exhale, shoulders sinking, as if pondering it.
“When you talk,” Karim began, rubbing at his jawline with his docked fingers, “you always talk… passively. Like things just happen to you. You ‘fall into’ things. Then when you have control, you hold onto it. Tight.” He balled his hand into a fist.
Karim was scarily insightful. Robert tended away from therapists - they never really got it - but sometimes it felt like Karim’s therapist was his, too.
“When you put it like that, it sounds depressing.” He laughed hollowly. Karim did not. In fact, he looked kind of sad.
“What I’m concerned with here is what you actually want. What do you want, Robert?”
His stare was so direct that Robert had to look away. He turned with the extremely dry plate in hand and reached up to the cabinet to put it away in its rightful place; domestic details like how his boyfriend liked to store his crockery finding a home in his mind. Something for him to latch onto, to narrow his focus to a pinpoint so his hands wouldn’t shake and he wouldn’t think about things he shouldn’t, things he couldn’t. Robert was stopped short by a loud crack in his shoulder that froze his arm in midair. A branch of lightning lanced from the joint all the way down to his wrist. He clenched his fingers around the plate on instinct, terrified his fingers would seize up next as they had often done before.
Karim was at his side in less time than it took to blink, gently taking the plate out of his tensed fingers and supporting his back with his other hand. A tall and broad presence behind him, Karim pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck. Robert could have dropped the plate right there and then, unrelated to the seizing up of his joints.
“Are you okay, habibi?”
Robert winced when he lowered his arm, nodding gratefully as Karim filed the plate away on his behalf before it could shatter. He groaned softly, Karim’s thumb finding the sticking point of his shoulder and working it out slowly with gentle crescents.
“Are you sure you’re up for this tonight?” Karim pressed, concerned. “You know there’s never any obligation. Say coconut right now, and we’ll just watch some nerd shit on the couch all night. See what Dildo Baggins is up to.”
Robert turned to face him, mouth buttoned closed. He drew his fingers across his mouth and jerked them at the end like a key turned in a lock.
“Say it.” Karim prompted, narrowing his eyes.
He shook his head defiantly. “You wanna know what I want. I want this.”
Karim apparently wasn’t convinced. His free hand rested on his hip. His head was cocked at an angle illustrating disbelief. Robert would just have to prove his enthusiasm now that the knot had been nicely worked out of his shoulder.
“I want you.”
Closing what little distance remained within them, Robert leaned up on his tiptoes, pulling Karim’s hair free of the orange hair tie with one practiced motion. In the same breath, he placed a kiss to the pulse point under his jaw, stubble lightly prickling his lips. He felt Karim shudder, his pulse quickened at the touch.
“So fucking stubborn,” Karim said, the tipping point. “That works for me.”
His large hands slotted around his waist and lifted him up with barely any effort, a fact that always made Robert melt. He could so easily be manoeuvred any which way Karim desired; in this way, it was a wonder that tonight’s itinerary hadn't been attempted before. Karim placed him down on the kitchen counter as if he was food ready to be devoured. For once, he felt taller than him.
Robert’s ass felt the cold marble of the counter bite at him even through the fabric of his jeans, but it was quickly warmed by Karim’s palms slipping between it and the counter below, as if cushioning him. Their lips connected - gentle at first until Robert’s legs hooked around his hips, pulling him in like a magnet and anchoring him flush to his body.
Karim let out a gasp of surprise which Robert swallowed with his tongue, a cheeky smile sliding onto his face as they kissed. Now there were no pesky locked doors between them, no workplace decorum or public indecency holding them back, Robert could once again lose himself in his firestarter. He tightened his skinny thighs around Karim’s hips, as much tension as the muscles could take. He could already feel a progressive hardening in his boxers, mirrored by his partner. The kiss grew sloppy, needy. Karim’s warm hands squeezed desperately at his ass.
“You know I’d-” Robert gasped into his mouth, “-let you fuck me right here on the counter.”
“Let’s build up to that, azizam,” Karim rasped with a low chuckle, temporarily severing the connection between their mouths. “When you’re not snap, crackle and popping your way around my kitchen, huh?”
“Fuck off.”
“Fine.”
Karim called his bluff with the quickness of a bullet. He immediately broke away from him, slipping his hands out from beneath his ass and holding them in the air. He tried to step away, but the web of Robert’s legs, ankles hooked together, bound him to the spot. They stared at each other. Breathless and intimate in the stalemate.
“Nice try,” he said, glib.
Realistically, he knew Karim had the strength to muscle his way free of his grapple. But he was being careful, so as not to dislocate anything or flare up any buried deposits of pain. Robert appreciated it even in the midst of their teasing game.
“Think fast,” was all the warning he gave him before he half-slid, half-hopped off the counter with the utmost trust that Karim would catch him before he plummeted.
And catch him he did. There was only a brief split-second of weightlessness before he was in Karim’s arms again. Ropey forearms locked around his hips and fingers slotted themselves effortlessly into his belt loops. Again, like he weighed less than nothing, a svelte feather landing in his grip.
They were kissing again, Karim giving his all to both balance Robert and propel his tongue down his throat. Robert had every faith he wouldn’t drop him, so he let himself relax, losing himself to the delicious friction of his hardening dick flush to Karim’s abs. Just a few inconsequential layers of fabric between them. His hands framed Karim’s face, cherished angles cupped lovingly. The stubble decorating his jawline prickled his palms while his nails raked at dark velvety strands of hair.
This wasn’t the first time he had been carried up the stairs in Karim’s house. It had happened twice, once when he fell asleep watching Love Actually, and now, where he hung off his body like a tree - the broad, verdant, force of nature that it was. Karim managed to balance his entire frame on one hand, scooped under his ass. The other was adroit in unbuckling Robert’s belt, the gentle chnk of metal loosening around leather ringing in his ears.
Karim pulled away from the kiss, if only so he could open his eyes and guide them upstairs without tripping over. A couple of broken bones and a trip to the ER wasn’t in either of their projections for the night.
Robert watched in awe as Karim not only undid his belt but his jeans as well - all while holding him aloft. He was immovably set in space. Like gravity had stopped working on him the more he was in Karim Daivari’s orbit.
“Fuck, you really can multitask.”
“Told you.”
Karim laughed, angling his head to the side as Robert buried his face in his neck. His hair slid out of the way like a curtain revealing beautiful warm skin just begging for Robert to lavish it with sweet kisses and teasing nips. In his wake, he left a trail of him, marking him as his.
This house had been Karim’s for a long time. Seeing Derek’s photo in his trash can, thinking of how many other men he had led up these stairs and into his bed; Robert was the jealous type. Though the monster had been caged for some time - not since the SDN Christmas party had it been let out - Robert felt it stirring, starting to tap its teeth at its cage.
He bit deeper, suckling at Karim’s skin with renewed fervour.
Karim moaned, the sound bouncing off the walls of the hallway. “Bitch, do you want me to drop you?”
Robert moved his lips to ghost against his earlobe, his voice the same throaty whisper from their phone call.
“You’ll just have to get me back harder.”
Karim narrowed the crackling bonfire of his eyes. “Deal.”
They reached the bedroom. Crossing over the threshold signalled a subtle shift in atmosphere, the slithering into each other’s roles. The lights were already set to dim, that gorgeous reddish-amber glow seemingly designed for sin. Their silhouettes danced as one cast on the ceiling. The angled mirror Robert had quietly tweaked to face the bed earlier remained at its desired slant. Good.
“Can I throw you on the bed?” Karim asked, brow furrowed in concern for the snap, crackle and pop of it all.
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
The support of Karim’s arms was gone in an instant. Like a ragdoll, Robert launched onto the bed. Suddenly, gravity applied to him again. No fear rose up to greet him. What would have been a painful impact was cushioned by memory foam, black silk sheets, red pillows. Robert quickly, feverishly, peeled off his jeans, ignoring the groan of protest from his musculoskeletal system. His hard cock could no longer abide its denim cell. His boxers, though looser in fit, were on thin ice.
Karim crossed the room to the bag Robert had brought with him, the bag that was rescued from the locked gym. The bag still faintly smelled of smoke.
“It’s in here?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Okay, face the wall for me.”
It was almost embarrassing how quickly he followed the command. Robert turned his back to the room, knelt on the bed and facing the drape-covered window above it. He pulled the oversized hoodie - several sizes too big, better fitting its original owner - off over his head. When it was off and only a faded Mecha Man merch shirt remained (he got them for free), he heard Karim step slowly over to the bed.
“You’re sure you’re good with all the degradation stuff…?” The cautious hesitation made Robert pause and think it over. They’d made a list together of everything that was and wasn’t okay on that front a while back, but things change, so he understood why he was checking in. Even if his default mental state was convinced that this degree of diligence was wasted on him.
“Yeah… yeah, I am.” He had been acclimatised to Flambae calling him a little bitch - among other creative jabs from his impressive lexicon - from their first meeting. This would be them… reclaiming it. It would cease to be an insult that attempted to wound him and become another tool for Karim to hurt in an agreed upon and mutually accepted way. As long as it was mutual. “And you?”
“Hm?”
Robert attempted to peer back at him over his shoulder. His neck clicked, and he gave up halfway; Karim was a hazy effigy on the fringes of his vision.
“Are you good with it? This goes both ways, right? If there’s anything you aren’t okay with, you know you can skip it.”
Karim scoffed dismissively to keep it light, but the soft fondness in his voice was a warming reassurance. “Yeah, I’m good.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking. “Remember, you might forget ‘coconut’ when things get… heavy. So, traffic light system as backup, yeah?”
Robert knew this one, vaguely. He rolled Karim’s hoodie around in his hand and nodded, bringing the fabric up to his nose to smell it, bask in his scent. Behind him, Karim paced the floor, causing strange shadows to gyrate on the ceiling. The floor lighting Robert had once called tacky - “what the fuck is this, an airport waiting room?” - only added to the atmosphere.
“So, what’s green?”
“And not heavy? Light green.”
Karim stopped his pacing. “What the fuck?”
Robert rubbed his forehead. He didn’t even know why he said that. The delirium was setting in early.
“Joke I read in a Christmas cracker,” he said with a shrug, before raising his finger to point behind him. “And don’t say anything about me being a cracker.”
A scoff from behind him. “I wasn’t gonna.”
Robert had heard the sharp intake of breath; he knew when he had set himself up for a jab.
“Yes you fucking were.”
Karim sighed, trying to get things back on track. “Green. On a traffic light, Robert.”
“Go. Keep going. Keep fucking going. All good here.” He raised a thumb in a thumbs-up.
“Gold star.” Karim clapped his hands together in applause that only came across as partially sarcastic. Robert allowed himself a chuckle at that. “And amber?”
He was starting to feel like he was taking a test he didn’t study for.
“Fucking, uh… hurry up, because the light’s about to change and if you stop now the guy behind you is going to plow into your trunk.”
A pause. He could feel the exasperation emanating from Karim without seeing his face.
“Am I the guy behind you, in this scenario?”
Robert cracked a dreamy smile, repeating his sentiment from earlier. “I’d be disappointed if you weren’t.”
Karim started pacing again. “Amber is not an end. It’s a pause. If something’s not right, we check in. You say amber, we make some changes. Got it?”
“So like a half-safeword. A coconut split in half.”
“If you want to think of it like that, sure.”
Misplaced pride burst in his chest. “Lemme guess, red is stop.”
“Ooh, bet you were a real hit at driver’s ed,” Karim said, sardonic but fond. “Yes. Red is done. Enough, finished. No questions asked, then I’m looking after you. Deal?”
“Deal. Wanna shake on it?”
A hand appeared in front of him, sporting two fingers that looked half-finished.
“Sexy handshake, love it,” Karim said as his hand enveloped his. Once he was satisfied, he drifted away, going back to the bag in the corner of the room.
Robert heard the hushed rustle and squeak of leather, the jingle of metal. Like a belt, but better.
Robert’s breath hitched. A buzzing sensation like a badly wired circuit rocketed to his groin. He propped himself up on his knees on the bed, raising his chin eagerly as Karim’s shadow dwarfed him.
An arm draped over his chest from behind, three full-length fingers and two shortened ones gently caressing his freckles, the sparse smatterings of chest hair, the thin fabric of his tank top. He sighed, a shuddering sound like his lungs struggled to contend with the burgeoning heat coalescing within him.
His hand stopped in the left-centre of his chest. His fingers curled, his nails dug in slightly. Just enough to draw a near-silent whine from Robert’s parted lips. Karim leaned down and whispered in his ear, tongue intentionally grazing the docked helix.
“I can feel your heartbeat, ya qamar.”
Robert smiled, leaning into the crook of Karim’s arm, which tightened its grip around his chest. His heart was racing, he could feel its rhythmic thunderclap between his aching ribs.
“What’s it telling you?”
“It’s telling me you know what I just said.”
The last thing Robert heard at night when they held each other, before he fell asleep in Karim’s arms, as moonlight sliced through the gaps in the drapes, as the stars mounted the sky and claimed it for their own. Ya qamar. My moon. Ironic, seeing as he was eclipsing a man who embodied the blazing beauty of the sun.
“I looked it up,” Robert admitted guiltily.
“Don’t look up anything else,” Karim said, tone edged with a harshness that made Robert even more breathless.
A smirk toyed with the corners of his mouth. He licked his lips. “Is that an order?”
“Damn right it is.”
Supple leather made contact with his neck. He gasped when he felt it tighten. Karim secured the collar at his nape with a flick of his wrist and a few swift movements of those surprisingly dexterous fingers. The ring at the front landed cold on his suprasternal notch. The cold was immediately offset by Karim’s pointer finger, hooked through it and gently warming it with his heat. He gave it a not-so-gentle tug. The embarrassing wet patch on Robert’s boxers spread. Karim was good at this.
“This is a good look for you. Collared like a bitch,” Karim observed, verging on a hungry growl. He tugged again, probingly. “This tight enough?”
“Y-Yes. Yes, it’s perfect.”
The pressure on his neck sharpened his awareness of his breathing, the way it crested and relaxed his chest, the way air filled his lungs and stopped just short of satisfying.
Great way to kill someone.
He swallowed, felt his Adam’s apple bob against the leather.
Karim toyed with the strap of his tank. “Wearing far too many clothes for my tastes, though.”
Still behind him, Karim took off Robert’s shirt first, revealing his scarred and battered torso, the vaguest suggestion of abs, the more prominent proclamation of his ribcage. He was agonising about taking off his boxers. His fingers toyed at the waistband, fingertips slipping under before retracting, as if not quite sure about the idea.
“Fuck, come on…” Robert whined.
“Payback,” Karim hissed in his ear, impossibly hot breath fanning across his jaw. Robert found himself regretting the decision to edge him so severely in the showers - and every time he had done it before.
As the second component of his payback, the retribution more recent, Karim sunk his teeth into his bare shoulder. Pain and pleasure shot through him, like it had been injected straight into his veins.
“A-Ah!”
Karim hesitated at his cry. Robert felt his muscles tense in preparation to move away. Firmly, he hooked an arm around, hand finding the back of Karim’s head and pushing it back down towards his shoulder.
“I didn’t say the word,” Robert muttered through gritted teeth. Coconuts were the furthest thing from his mind. “But I am saying green. So keep. Fucking. Going.”
Teeth bared, the firestarter left his searing marks on Robert’s skin, over and over, each one more gorgeously excruciating than the last. He bit with such zeal that Robert wondered if he would draw blood. Secretly hoped for it - or at the very least a vivid bruise. The trademark gap where his tooth was absent translated, as ever, to his flesh.
Finally, Robert’s neglected cock got the attention it craved. Karim sunk a hand inside his boxers and latched his fingers around the base of his length. The other hand gently shimmied the boxers down, over the slight curve of his ass, down to the mid-point of his scar-addled thighs. Once there, the hold the fabric had on his cock was released. His tip was flushed a pink that matched his freckled cheeks, glistening with precum in the low light.
“Someone’s eager,” Karim purred as he pressed a kiss to his bitemark-embellished neck. He was only able to feel a little of it, with the collar claiming most of Karim’s lips. His tongue lingered there, lapping at salt-seasoned sweat. He began to pump his cock, large hand nearly enveloping it with one stroke.
“Oh f-fuck! Fuck…”
Robert mewled, both arms scrambling behind him for purchase on Karim’s body at the merciless lances of pleasure with which the ministrations blessed him. Karim let go, only to finish the job of undressing Robert. Once his boxers were off, pulled past his knees and down his calves with a little help from Robert himself, Karim’s free hand rested on his pubis to steady him, support him.
Robert leaned into the touch, rested himself back into him. He moaned quietly, head braced against the curve of the larger man’s neck. He was in wonderstruck awe of the feeling, of how Karim knew how to touch him just right. He felt the outline of Karim’s impressive member prodding at his tailbone, the position unfavourable but a hair’s breadth from where he really wanted it.
One of the links on his phone had told Robert that as his body relaxed, so too would his entrance. It would respond to his arousal. It was doing it now - the tightness between his buttocks was starting to give.
The agenda between work and now had involved testing all the methods outlined in an article titled The Beginner’s Guide to Bottoming. Using a dildo (though not of the Baggins variety), a plug he’d already used a few times before, Robert had managed to stretch himself out more than he expected. Toys were one thing. Karim’s manhood, he knew, was in a league of its own. He had warned him that he was really taking two for the price of one; bottoming and being submissive for the first time in one night, as one didn't necessarily mean the other. But Robert was nothing if not a man of extremes.
Anxiety attacks aren’t sexy, he reminded himself. But now, panic was the furthest thing from his mind, head spinning from pleasure as his crotch was warmed by the hand rubbing his cock, his neck warmed by breath like the prelude to dragonfire.
“Look at me,” Karim whispered, an echo of a cold night almost two months ago. “I want to see your face.”
A finger went to the ring on his collar, guiding him with a crooked curve as he shuffled around to face him. Karim’s struck-flint eyes were blown out with lust, his luscious hair mussed up and in disarray. They gazed at each other for another long-held moment, chests heaving. They drunk each other in, a long-awaited quench at the end of an arid desert trek. Sparks danced between them as they always had, their own personal current. The push and pull of the sun and the moon.
Karim used the collar as leverage, tugging on it to pull him in for another kiss, all the while stroking his cock.
Robert’s moans were lost to Karim’s mouth. He lapped at them like ambrosia, tasting them hot and sizzling on his tongue. It wasn’t long before Robert was fumbling with the buttons on Karim’s shirt, desperate to set him free from it. He yearned to roam his hands over the corded muscle; he wanted to feel at the mercy of his powerful body, his own lean yet waifish in comparison.
The hand worshipping his cock moved past it, cupping his balls and going even further to ghost at his perineum. Robert exhaled a shaky breath, pressing his forehead to Karim’s, bracing his hands against his now-bare shoulders. His dick, erect and in stasis, leaked between their flush bodies.
“You prepped yourself and everything?”
Robert closed his eyes, sweat beading and rolling down his temple. “Yeah. Yeah. S’why I wanted the links.”
Karim’s flexibility reached its zenith and he retracted his hand, teasing the underside of Robert’s shaft with the stub of his pinky as he went. Robert hissed out an exhale through his teeth, the touch a spark to his flame.
“How was it?”
Robert paused before he answered, tilting his head a little bit to the side.
“Hmm. Humbling.”
This was the most diplomatic of responses he could muster when recalling his first foray into douching. Here he was thinking at thirty he knew everything about his body, and there was little that could surprise him. He had been wrong.
Karim let out a small laugh, not with mockery but with endearment.
“I'm very proud of you, joonam.”
“Well, if you want to go inspect the results-” Robert now tilted his head down hopefully.
Karim didn’t need telling twice. Robert had a challenging arch to his brow, and it seemed to spur him into action. First, though, he gave the base of Robert’s cock a little squeeze, provoking an unfettered moan that surprised even him in how erotic it sounded. Where his tip grazed Karim’s abs, he saw a glimmering trail of his precum embellished across the muscle.
Amusement slid onto Karim’s handsome face. His eyes seemed to radiate their own light in the dimness of the bedroom, as did the tiny sparks of flame appearing and dissipating across his skin in a familiar, alluring sight. He hooked a thumb under Robert’s chin, and with a forceful jerk, forced him to meet his eyes. The dominant persona faded somewhat as their gaze connected. Robert’s arousal crackled incessantly, yet took a second’s recess for this, unexpected poignancy settling in.
“You'll be the death of me, Robert Robertson,” Karim uttered, the back of his hand caressing his freckle-dappled cheek.
Moonlight streamed in from the window behind him, reflected off their bodies, mirrored in their eyes. Karim’s words were so intimate, so soft, like the beginning melodic strain of a ballad, like a stream trickling through rock. Robert felt a tear threaten to leave the confines of his half-lidded eyes. Karim held him there like time hadn't passed, an interval of passion, before his hand drifted down his neck. The trail of his hand barely touching Robert's pulse point made him shudder.
The hand grasped at the collar, using the ring to tug on it with just enough of a domineering air. Heralding the end of Karim’s abrupt drop of the veil of dominance, he pressed both palms to Robert’s chest and pushed him down. He fell back onto the bed, spine cradled by cushions and caressed by silk. But he didn't linger there for long, as Karim scooped him and flipped him over so he was on his front. Again, little to no effort required; like he was a pancake flipped in a pan.
Robert cried out, startled, but it metamorphosed into a moan as he felt Karim’s nails claw a beautifully painful trail down his lower back. Automatically, Robert lifted his ass to meet his hand. It had a mind of its own; it vied incessantly for attention. The twinge of pain from his sacrum, the shooting objection from his sciatic nerve; they only added to how inebriated he was, positively drowning in pain as pleasure and pleasure as pain.
“What a little slut you are,” Karim drawled his approval, heavily emphasising the degrading phrase that had Robert shoving his face into the blanket to muffle his giddy whine.
“Your… s-slut. Only for you, baby,” Robert slurred into the mattress.
This shift in their dynamic, the reversal of roles, was even more enjoyable than he had fantasised. He was losing himself in sweet submission, the lucid loss of control, and he didn't think he wanted to be found for a long time.
The bed creaked behind him as Karim lowered himself to a more optimal position. Adept fingers clamped down on his ass, spreading him wide. Robert bit his lip, suddenly worried that what he had spent the evening doing wasn't sufficient.
“Beautiful. Fucking beautiful,” came Karim’s conclusion, followed by an almost primal growl. Then, wet, rhythmic heat, as his tongue prodded at his entrance.
“A-ah. Mm, yes,” keened Robert, spreading his complaining knees a little further to allow Karim better access.
His tongue lapped and teased at his hole, moans of appreciation breathed onto it only intensifying the stimulation. Then, his hot tongue was inside him. The first breach of Karim into his body and Robert felt like he could climax already. The uncapping of lube, the liberal spread of it - Robert was familiar with the sound. A finger joined as the tongue redoubled it's efforts, ever so gradually fucking him open in preparation for the main event.
Robert became aware that he was drooling, leaving wet splotches on the silken sheets where his mouth was pressed into them. He also realised very quickly that he didn't care. There was nothing else in the world but Karim, now with two fingers guiding him open. Meanwhile, his tongue was occupied with caressing his walls, adding an extra layer to the blissful stretch. Karim’s other hand massaged reassuring circles into his hip, warming and easing the passage of him inside. No toy could ever hope to accomplish this kind of treatment.
He whimpered, rocking his hips backwards in desperation. Robert pushed past the sharp pain that erupted at his tailbone when a third thick finger joined the others within him, seeking and finding the rapture wrapped in the discomfort.
“Please… inside…” he groaned needily, incorrigibly weak for him.
Karim drew himself up to his full height; as tall as he could get while kneeling on the bed behind him. His fingers never ceased their gentle stroking inside of him when his tongue left the fray. “Thought you said you wanted to ri-”
Robert groaned, tilting his head to one side in order to be more readily heard. He heard his neck crack unpleasantly, but the soft creak of the collar around his neck alleviated the discomfort, made way for something else.
“Later. Now I just… I need-”
He needed to experience what he’d always been on the other side for, he needed to take what he had always given. He longed to be on his front, just for a bit; and not just because he needed to give his body a rest before the rodeo. He needed to know what it felt like to receive, to skate on fulfilled bliss, to submit entirely. Robert only spoke one language to Karim’s several, but he was losing capacity for even that, his head spinning with lust. Karim retracted all three of his fingers abruptly and Robert could have screamed, despondent at how empty he felt in their absence.
“Little bitch wants to be fucked from behind first, huh?” His tone was clipped with dominance, steeped in desire. Robert felt himself clench around nothing. The colder air hitting his ass and the slick trails of lubricant dripping from him was all the more jarring with the loss of heated fingers. The sound that followed was that of a zipper undoing, the rustle of fabric dropped to the floor. Robert’s fists tightened around the blankets, mentally fortifying himself.
There was that sound again. He had heard it down the phone earlier. How could he ever have mistaken it for anything else? Robert angled his head back just enough to see Karim, a fiery glow radiating from his boiler-plate body, a light source in and of himself in the dim lamplight. He pumped his impressive cock, slickening it with a new helping of lube. Robert found himself, as ever, in awe at its size. He looked over at the perfectly angled mirror to get another perspective on this sparking herculean wonder of a man, and the erection he sported. His throat could just about manage it, if he beat his gag reflex into quietude enough. His ass, though, could very well be a different story.
Yet he found himself ravenous for it all the same.
“I know this little bitch ass is going to take me so fucking well.”
In stark contrast to his harsh words, his dominant veil, Karim’s hands when they returned to his hips were gentle. Robert could almost have cursed him for not digging more crevices into his flesh had it not been for the tender strokes of his fingers. Along his hips, the little dimples in his lower back that mirrored those on his face. Robert sighed, borderline euphoric.
He needed more, though. That ‘more’ came when he felt the crown of Karim’s phallus sliding over his buttocks, one hand leaving his hip to correctly line himself up to his waiting entrance.
“Remember, safewording is fine. Anytime. Don’t forget the colours,” Karim reminded in a barely-there murmur. Robert wondered if he was assuring himself as well. He nodded, emphatic, and pushed his hips back in an effort to reassert the dynamic.
“Just fuck me. Please.”
He didn’t even recall giving the words permission to tumble out. It was a primal, carnal need, taken syllabic form when his brain vacated the premises. Robert realised he had wanted to be filled with Karim for far longer than he allowed himself to admit, back when they were Flambae and Mecha Man, back when there was little other context for each other except burning hatred and a tension one could cut with a plasma blade.
Karim roamed his hand further up Robert’s back to give the collar another chaste tug. Robert’s inhale was cut short, but he whined in appreciation for the brief deprivation of air. Something unpleasant, unwanted, flickered at the corner of his psyche; but it was a movement in the darkness at the side of the road, far outside the reach of his headlights focused on one singular goal.
A slicked head nudged at his entrance and Robert let out an involuntary keening gasp. It was hot, far hotter than he expected. Not enough to burn, but like a heat therapy pad entirely localised on his ass. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. Now that he had been stretched out, it was an easier task for Karim to slowly push himself inside. Finally, finally. A groan ripped free from his collared throat.
“Thank you.” He was surprised by the sound of his voice. His gratitude came out in near-nonsensical babbles. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“There you go, ya qamar,” was the only thing Robert could make out from the string of sighed words sliding out from Karim’s mouth. All the while, he was still mouthing pathetic thank yous into the mattress, pleasure coiling like a snake and dragging its forked tongue over his core.
He pushed further in, slowly, allowing him to adjust. Robert bit back a cry, an abrupt physiological response to the pain which was only partially soothed by the heat of Karim’s cock. God, did it feel good to be filled so totally by him. The slow, agonising entry continued until he felt the flared corona nudge at his prostate.
“I- fuck…”
The tender palm was back at the curve of his hip, fingers reaching down to his thigh.
“Keep going?” Karim checked in, breathless.
“Green. Keep fucking going,” Robert repeated himself, vocals strained from the effort of making himself Karim’s worthy vessel.
Karim bottomed out and Robert’s teeth poked out from his mouth, clutching for purchase on something and finding it as he bit down on the fabric of the sheets, face pressed entirely into it. He knew Karim was hung like a horse, but having every inch inside of him felt like wrangling a bull.
Experimentally, Karim moved his hips back and then bucked them forward in a slow thrust. When the motion gained a languid whine from Robert, he pushed in again, building up an agonisingly gradual rhythm.
“Harder.”
“Greedy bitch.”
“Harder.”
“What’s the magic word?”
Robert grinned. Ya qamar wasn’t the only thing he looked up. He had listened to the attached audio files to the translation, rolled it around his mouth; perfected it, he thought. For all the people on the street knew as he stared at his screen while mouthing the word, he was just getting in his Duolingo lesson for the day.
“Lotfan.”
The sweltering, muscle-bound form behind him noticeably tensed. Robert worried that he had mispronounced it even after all his practice, or perhaps he had used the wrong word entirely. But then Karim resumed his thrusts, setting an entirely more punishing pace, and all doubt melted away into consummated bliss. He was happy to be lying down as he felt all feeling leave his legs, unruly knees trembling just to hold his backside up far enough to be fucked. Robert tried not to let the self-deprecation leak in, as it so often did on the rare occasions he let himself feel something else. You don't deserve to feel like this, it taunted in his ear. Fortunately, Karim’s voice overrode it before it could really launch into its regular diatribe.
“Look at you, doing research,” Karim panted, some syllables rolling into others in his grunts of euphoria. “Just to impress me, huh? So good to me. So f-fucking perfect.”
Keeping one hand grasping at his hip, kneading the scarred flesh there like dough, Karim’s right hand roamed up his back. The docked fingers ghosted at vellus hairs on the back of his neck, fleetingly hooking themselves under the collar for a little added pressure. A teasing glimmer of suffocation.
There was that little flicker in his periphery once more, creeping into the perfect moment. Not a resurgence of self-hatred, not totally. Something else. Robert ignored it. He would physically turn his face away from it if he could.
He was drawn back into the fold with Karim’s thick fingers disappearing into the auburn mess of his hair. He grabbed a fistful of coppery strands on the top of his head and tugged, hard - I want my scalp to fucking hurt tomorrow morning. Robert’s back was forced into an arch as a result. A firework display of pops and crackles erupted along the expanse of his back and Karim stopped mid-thrust. If anything, it was a relief, a sharp bang as tension was forcibly released. Better than a massage, but damn embarrassing.
“…Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” Karim replied hesitantly, hand still buried in his hair. “How’s the traffic?”
“Green. Green as hell. Greener than it’s ever been, baby.”
Karim managed a shuddering laugh as he pushed his dick further in, his walls bowing obediently to invite him in. He reached an arm around, rooting them together with a forearm pushing lightly down on his abdomen. Robert muffled his voluminous moan in the nearest pillow.
“Glad we cleared that up.”
“I do want to-”
Karim slipped out of him almost entirely before his tip led the charge to drive back inside him. “Hm?”
“Want to-” Robert struggled to grasp at his train of thought as it trundled past him, the sensation of a fullness almost divine distracting him. He lifted his head off the bed as far as his limited flexibility would allow to look back at Karim. Candle-like flickers licked off his statuesque form, smoke mingling with the prominent aroma of sweat and sex. A smirk developed on his handsome, firelit face.
“Saddle up?” Karim offered with an almost boyish cock of his head.
Robert was relieved he didn’t need to elaborate further. His body thrummed with pleasure, overriding everything else.
“Yeehaw,” he said softly.
No part of him was remotely Southern, but he could be one hell of a cowboy for Karim. Following the brief mourning period which came with Karim slipping out of him with an obscene schlick sound, Robert sat on his heels with a helping hand from Karim and watched as his boyfriend slipped onto the bed. The intermittent fire coming off of him didn’t catch on the blankets, reaffirming their fireproof nature. Robert hoped he didn’t notice the wet patches his mouth and leaking cock had left behind on his bed, but he knew it was only a matter of time before more joined them.
Karim tugged the O-ring on his collar to pull him in and steal a voracious kiss. Robert sighed into his mouth, feeling the flush on his cheeks rising to the tips of his ears. Karim broke the kiss only to recline onto his back and arrange the pillows on either side of his hips. That had been Robert’s caveat; those problematic knees of his needed support if he was going to mount up.
Lube bottle uncapped, Robert covered his scarred hand with the substance, watching its viscousness slide over his fingers with a strange sense of fascination. Being submissive, entirely under Karim’s command, brought even the most mundane occurrences to a higher degree of wonder. The earthly truths of the world suddenly enraptured him. Each breath, each blink, was miraculous.
Each purposeful stroke of the shaft with slickened fingers sent fresh shudders through Karim’s body, to the point he slammed his forearm against his mouth to muffle himself.
A surge of nerves and excitement rushed through him, coupled with an all-encompassing exigency to please. Karim had been with so many guys before him; when asked he couldn't even readily come up with the number. Counting on his fingers didn’t even help. Robert, with zero experience with riding anything other than a toy. Robert, with some links to handy yet often heteronormative guides in his pocket and professional porn that got him off but may as well have been slapped with a ‘do not try this at home’ disclaimer. Robert was supposed to measure up to Karim’s past lovers - another crushing weight to add to the rack.
Yet something about being collared by Karim, succumbing to him, struck a match of burning ardour inside of him. A determination. To make this memorable for both of them, after all the build-up and negotiations. He had prepared for this., metaphorically and physically. It was all about finding a rhythm. For a guy who struggles to dance passably even in the arms of a more experienced partner, this was much easier said than done.
Straddling Karim filled him with a crackling rush of passion, renewed vigour despite the soul-shattering shriek in his muscles and his cavilling bones. His knees sunk into the pillows gratefully.
In all the times Robert got to behold his perfect form when they were together, on any level of intimacy, he always found something new at which to marvel. Karim was incandescent, eyes aflame, body like flint forming embers out of smoky air. This time, Robert noticed the way his gorgeous hair was splayed out on the sheets beneath his head. It had fallen in such a way that, with the accompanying firelight produced by the elemental ferocity simmering inside of him, it looked like a halo. An angel, in the form of a heaving mass of blazing muscle with a crooked smile, a missing tooth and a preternatural allure to which Robert had always been achingly susceptible.
He angled his arm down. He gathered pre-ejaculate from Karim’s slit by giving his darkened crown a little squeeze of encouragement. Karim’s thighs quivered, his throat letting loose a whine. His submissive persona broached the scene with a rogue buck of his hips, chasing Robert’s touch.
Taking a deep breath, Robert started to guide Karim’s erection inside of him. The man underneath him maintained his prepotent mask, but Robert was adept at tracking his microexpressions. The little furrow of his dark brows, concern taking form, ears almost twitching to listen out for a crack that sounded like a dislocated joint or worse. His fingertips rubbed at his thighs, keeping him balanced and granting him some much-appreciated pressure verging on pain.
As Karim’s lubricated head slid into his entrance, much easier than before - there was barely any pain - a moan was drawn from both of them in perfect unison. Karim’s was a deep groan, originating from the spitting bonfire roaring within him. His own was a cry, at a higher pitch than he thought possible given his usual range.
Robert looked down at his partner, controlling his descent on shaking legs. He wanted to say ten thousand things. They slid around, waltzing on his tongue, dipping and sliding and yearning to be the first to spill out. But he had never been much of a dancer, So instead, he just said, simply, stupidly, as if stumbling across him for the first time today:
“Hey.”
Dominance fell to the wayside when Karim’s face broke into an amused smile.
“Good evening,” he replied evenly, fighting against lust’s proclivity to slacken his jaw. “Nice of you to come.”
“Not yet.”
Robert exhaled as the reddened tip of his cock disappeared inside of him. It felt hotter even than before, warming his walls with its own unique calefaction. Arousal prickled over his skin, whooshing like a wildfire spreading through the forest of him.
“A-Ah,” Karim panted, eyes half-lidded and watching him with ravenous regard. “I’m sure we’ll get there.”
Understated muscle undulated on Robert’s slender abdomen as he rolled his hips down on Karim’s dick. Experimentally, feeling it out. A couple of well-lubricated inches were inside now. It started to get a bit more difficult at this point, even with Karim’s fingers slowly stroking his own erection by way of encouragement. His face was twisted in concentration, with carefully dammed bliss occasionally peeking through the blinds. He couldn’t relax, couldn’t settle into it. Not quite yet.
“Mm, fuuuck,” he breathed, tilting his head back to expose his bite-bruised neck to the amber light of the room.
“You’re doing so well, eshgham.” Karim’s voice was a whisper, with enough gravitas behind it to revitalise him.
When Robert gazed at him, he saw his golden eyes aflame, a sunrise breaking the horizon. Karim looked up at him with pleasure-hazed wonder. Like he was a miracle, a long-dead god walking on the earth. Robert could almost believe he was worth the veneration. Almost.
Warmth surged at Robert’s waist as Karim’s large hands rested on his hip bone to help him take the final few inches. With his fingers extended, slotting over Robert’s thinly defined abs, his fingertips could almost touch each other. Karim gasped, noticing this at the same time as Robert did. His waist was small enough that the much larger man could almost entirely clasp it in his hands.
Karim massaged his stomach with his thumbs, ghosting at the trail of hair snaking down from his belly button. He hummed in appreciation.
“Fuck, that’s hot.” A rumble. Carnal, almost bestial. Hungry like you wouldn’t believe.
Robert felt heat stealing over his cheeks as he blushed, momentarily distracted by the compliment. Regularly, he bewailed his lack of musculature owing mostly to the scarcity of protein in his diet. Seeing the difference in size between them did something for both of them, however; so not a net negative.
He grinded his hips again and drew an appreciative moan from Karim. He lowered himself down another gradual inch, leaning into the hands on his waist for support.
“That’s it,” Karim encouraged. “I’ve got you. Nice and slow.”
Robert closed his eyes, luxuriating in the pleasure sinking as deep as marrow. “Mmm… shit, you’re so fuckin’ big.”
“Gold star for girth?”
Robert stopped his descent, eyes snapping open. The allure of dominant and submissive, the sweet pantomime of lust, crumbled before their eyes. Both their mouths crumpled into barely-contained giggles.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Fine. But I’m giving you a gold star for taking it like a champ.”
“Jesus, don’t call me champ. You sound like a- hhh,” Robert hissed through his teeth, cocking his pelvis at an angle to suck Karim in. Just a little more. “like a fucking sports coach.”
Karim raised an eyebrow. If it weren’t for his panted breaths, his rapturous expression, he would have looked devious.
“Solid roleplay potential there, though.”
“I’m ignoring you now.” Robert rolled his eyes, trying to re-centre his focus on the goal.
“I don’t know, pretty sure I just felt you clench when I said that-”
Robert knew exactly how to shut him up. He braced himself, then pushed his pelvis down. He sunk himself down entirely to the heated hilt.
“Fuck!” Karim moaned, almost a shout. Robert made a similar sound, each breath coming out as a whine of effort.
“You were- ngh… also saying a bunch of bullshit,” Robert replied with as much dripping sarcasm as he could muster while literally dripping precum. “Thought I’d put an end to both.”
“And you said you weren’t going to be bratty.”
Robert’s guilty expression belied the building thrill inside. He was so tantalisingly full, every substantial inch of Karim buried in him. And now he had stumbled into unintentional brattiness. Their inverted dynamic resumed, its flames stoked.
“Think that deserves a punishment?” Robert prompted.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, bitch,” Karim spat back, eyes narrowed.
His smirk only grew. What was that saying about being in for a penny?
“Make me.”
Fuel to the fire. Like lighting a cigarette next to a canister of gasoline and deliberately flicking it into its waking mouth.
Robert swore Karim’s eyes smouldered like magma frothing at the lip of a fissure. A full-palmed slap to his thigh followed, loud enough to echo around the room, to send ripples through the smoke-scented air. Robert cried out, but Karim didn’t let up. Another spank to the other and he was light-headed. In a trance, he worked his hips, rolling Karim’s cock around in his passage. Karim thrust his hips upward with a grunt that was almost frantic. The force was powerful enough that Robert felt his knees lift a few inches above their supportive pillows.
“Fuck- Karim…”
His boyfriend’s pelvis propelling upwards was enough to urge Robert to match his pace. Shutters in his head clicked on and off, visions of porn and praise and practice, and he sought to emulate what he’d seen when Karim rode him. The rhythmic bouncing of his hips, the dizzy vignette creeping in at the edges of his vision every time he tried to focus on anything but the ecstasy of riding like the wind.
Streams of phrases across the spectrum of Karim’s linguistic ability rolled forth as they found their rhythm, a pace that was fervent but manageable. The meaning was lost on Robert’s uninitiated ears, but the passionate flames coiling around his forearms told their own story. Occasionally, Robert heard his name laced in the throes of his partner’s natal tongue, cradled and caressed by unknown sentiment.
Karim was seized by a new vigour as Robert’s pulses became more frantic. The ring embellishing the front of the collar jiggled, clinked, bounced along with him. Tempered flame melted away his inhibitions, and together they were resolute in pursuit of paradise.
“T-take me so well-” Karim stammered between groans. His thighs were tensing under Robert’s, the muscles firming up and intermittently easing. “Y’make a damn- fuck… damn good cowboy.”
Entranced, Robert was swept up, taken somewhere higher than here. He was soaring above the Torrance skyline in Karim’s arms again, the confines of the bedroom peeling away. Everything else was unimportant, including the force that affixed them to the ground.
Instead, he anchored himself to Karim. His vantage provided a picturesque view of the ridges and concaves of his sculpted physique. The sight was sublime, made all the more glorious by virtue of its exclusivity. Mine, Robert thought. All mine.
He smoothed his palms over the curls of his chest hair, warming his palms on his pecs. Robert couldn’t resist teasing at the piercings penetrating his nipples, now startlingly hot to the touch and glinting in the encroaching embers surrounding them.
The onslaught of stimulation, the increase in speed until they both brooked no mercy in their lovemaking, feeling himself clench around Karim’s twitching cock at a quickening tempo - it was almost too much for him.
Then Karim reached a hand up to cup his face. Robert automatically dipped his head to meet it, a droplet of sweat from his forehead evaporating on his hot knuckles when it landed. A thumb probed at his lips and he parted them, captivated. It was impulse that had him erotically bite down on the digit as it pushed past his teeth. Karim groaned at the sight of him, prompting Robert to suckle on the thumb as it eventually slid out from his mouth.
Karim’s hand moved down his jaw, along the muscles of his neck, probing at the slightly frayed edges of the collar wrapped tight to it. Robert anticipated another tug, a jerk in one direction or the other. Another jolt forward towards the top of the waterfall, a breath before the plunge.
Then there was no breath. Karim hooked his thumb and index finger on either side of his neck, as requested, and squeezed. It was a light pressure, the mere suggestion of suffocation. But it was enough.
The shadow encroached. Broke through the periphery, obfuscating it all. Choked by smoke, choked by asphyxiate. The phantom crashed onto the scene as an uninvited player.
Robert gasped for air.
·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
It was raining the night that Shroud died.
Petrichor’s prelude dampened the air, the faintly sweet smell overpowering the burning miasma of the Red Ring’s onslaught on Los Angeles county. Something metallic, acrid, undeniably human bubbled beneath the surface.
It was raining the night that the Red Ring fell.
Rage he never thought he was capable of had him surging forward towards the epicentre of his ruin, the black hole that swallowed up the last shred of normalcy in his life. Old instincts of a trained boxer snaked down his arms, clenched his fists, an animalistic scream tearing at his throat. He was on him faster than he could blink, faster than Elliot Connors could hope to predict.
It was raining the night that Courtney took a bullet for him.
His face was like a punching bag. This, too, was all about rhythm. Snarls and grunts leaked from his mouth. He didn’t stop, even when he felt his knuckles bow and crack and split. He didn’t stop, even when Shroud’s face was more blood than skin. He didn’t stop, even when capillaries burst and flesh swelled. He didn’t stop when Shroud’s last ghost of resistance tried to shove at his jaw, push him off.
He didn’t stop.
Great way to kill someone. There was something so deeply personal about choking the life out of a man. The right amount of pressure, applied to the throat. Crushing the windpipe like an empty packet of Twinkies.
Robert’s eyes were intense, flared in wild fury. He saw his reflection in the puddle behind Shroud’s head, the puddle that hadn’t been totally tainted with blood. He saw a crazed man teetering on the edge of total oblivion.
He tightened his grip, both hands now.
Shroud’s bloodshot eyes bored into him. He heard a crack. His eyes went dark.
It was raining the night that Robert first took a life.
Something died in him then, too.
·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
He gasped for air, but the air didn’t come. The flavour of coconuts - nutty, creamy - fizzled on his tongue. He didn’t want to feel them in his mouth. He wanted to feel something else, something so intense that the memories didn’t stick in his throat and taste of ash.
Karim’s hand dropped back down to the mattress.
“Amber.”
He didn’t know who said it, at first. When his mind returned to the room, he was frozen atop Karim. He stared up at him, concern creasing his features. That was when Robert realised they had both said it.
“Robert…?” Karim’s words susurrated, like leaves jostled by wind.
“Karim,” Robert said, biting back the nausea; voice rougher than a coconut husk. “I…”
“What’s wrong?”
He hesitantly touched at his neck, fingertips testing the bitten skin and the edges of the collar. It was too tight now, he realised starkly. He breathed in, out. Then again. Reasserting control over his lungs, Robert blinked, slowly coming back to himself. He was here. He was safe.
“Could you,” he swallowed the lump in his throat, “could you take this off, p-please?”
Karim nodded, raising himself up from the mattress. His warm gaze never left Robert’s face, watching for every micro-expression, trying desperately to read what he hid so well. He reached carefully around his neck, finding the buckle at the back and unclasping it with a quick motion. Holding his waist steady with one hand, Karim discarded the collar to the side and gazed at him. Their faces were so close that Robert couldn’t look away, no matter how much he felt he needed to.
“Are we in red territory here, azizam? The coconuts falling from the tree?”
“No,” Robert said vehemently. He couldn’t let it end here, he wanted to feel good. He needed to feel good. He placed his hands on Karim’s shoulders, rooting himself there. How stupid it was, to ask for something like breathplay and not once consider how it might affect him. How stupid he felt. “No. I want to keep going. I just… I-I know I asked for it, but can you… uh, not do that, actually? The…”
He hovered a few trembling fingers over his neck to illustrate the large hand that had clamped around it.
Karim’s gaze flicked downwards with a slow nod. Then, eyes of gleaming gold connected with his, pinning him to the spot.
“Of course. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”
“It’s okay?”
Karim cleared the sweat-dampened hair from Robert’s forehead and cradled his face, thumbs stroking across his cheekbones. The slight hardness to his eyes told him that this was not the end of the conversation. His reaction had been so severe that it would be the subject of gentle discussion later, whenever Robert felt up for talking about it.
“Aren’t you the one who goes on at me about consent?” A light admonishment, nothing more. Karim was handling him with the utmost care now. “Yes, of course it’s okay, azizam. This is why we check in. Speaking of…”
He felt the essence fo control lightly pressed back into his calloused palms. Robert wasn’t mad about holding it, being trusted enough to take the reins of his own experience. Karim tilted his chin, waiting for his confirmation.
Robert whispered, “Green. You?”
“Green.”
Karim nodded, breaking their eye contact and dipping his head. Robert was immobilised with the first, agonisingly devoted kiss to his bite-covered collarbone. His vocalisations were little more than shaky whimpers. When Karim looked up at him again, it was with a reverence reserved for miracles of the natural world - a striking sunset, a soaring preybird. He liberally pressed his lips along each freckle decorating Robert’s chest. He noticed the more he stayed close to Karim, the more freckles bloomed into existence on his skin. The same way the sun enticed them to appear in the midst of summer.
A treasure trail of Karim’s own making was carved out with his lips. His mouth tracked the surface of his chest and left slick promenades in its wake. He kissed each scar, divot and abrasion, like he could heal the trauma from which it was derived. He raised Robert’s arm to his lips, kissing at the scars on his inner forearm that originated from long lonely nights and sobs that died in an empty apartment.
Sighing warmly, Robert opened his mouth to speak but found himself unable to verbalise a single coherent thought. He was overflowing with devotion, extinguishing the part of him that hissed of his current state of bliss being unearned, undeserved.
He carded scarred fingers through Karim’s sleek hair until such time as he felt comfortable and craved more delectable movement.
When that moment came, he cocked his hips upward as far as his current range of motion would allow. Robert rolled his lower body in a sensuous circle on Karim’s erection, prompting a gasp from his partner as his hands shot down to his hip. Long fingers embedded themselves there, while Karim pressed his face over Robert’s heart. Robert arched his back to allow him the space. Karim immediately supported the back of his shoulder blades with a balancing hand, breathing ragged heat onto the freshly worshipped flesh of his chest.
·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Worship, that’s what it was.
Worship, and protection. When Robert became paralysed astride him, warm eyes glazing over with his transport to somewhere else, Karim was seized with a sense of duty; an oath he instantly bound himself to. He would protect him from the gluttonous claws of his trauma, trying to drag him backwards.
To this end, now that Karim was sitting up, he curled his arms around his waist and gently helped Robert through the motions of riding him once more. It was an altogether more sensual, tender embrace. Robert’s chest heaved in a breathy moan. He leaned in and claimed Karim’s lips with a heartfelt kiss, one hand pressed to his chest.
After a while, the amber-tinted interlude drifted away, carried on the smoke spreading from Karim’s superheated body. He focused on harnessing his flames, directing them away from Robert’s flammable flesh, gleaming with lustrous sweat. If he was protecting him, if he was swearing this oath, that protection extended to guarding him from himself.
Their mutual pace quickened along with their breathing. Karim bucked his hips up vigorously. Robert’s mouth was formed into a silent scream of ecstasy, accelerated breaths heaving his chest. Their movements were cadent, perfectly synchronic. Karim gasped and keened, enraptured by all Robert was and ever could be. The crane of his neck as he rocked his head back in euphoric bliss was like a work of art, paint streaked on canvas. Robert’s voice, deep and sonorous, cried his name like a lyric in an epic chorus.
“Karim… a-ah… close…”
Karim was too, feeling hot coils winding around themselves within him, set to sunder. The heat coursing through his body was crescendoing to a fever pitch.
“M-me too, nafasam.”
Their joined chorus of vocalised passion peaked. Dreamlike ecstasy overtook them both, galvanised. Rapture gave way to the rhapsodic climax. First, Robert, with Karim following soon after in a surge of flame that he channelled firmly away from any area it might hurt. He pulled out as he reached his peak, taking care not to release inside of him for fear of scorching him in places that wouldn’t heal. Trails of his spend lightly pinkened the skin of Robert’s thighs, but that would fade.
Words that he couldn’t take back slammed at his vocal cords but, like in the shower, he lashed them back in. He would feel them now, in all their sweet inevitability. He would say them another time.
Aftershocks forged in fire rocked him back to lay down on the mattress, with Robert following, wrapped in his arms and flush to his body. He cast the afterglow into the hearth blazing within him, making it home. The curve of Robert’s back, which cracked and complained, heaved with shuddering breaths. Karim caressed the ridges of his spine carefully with his fingertips.
Robert’s shaky exhalations turned into a sob, and Karim’s fingers stroked through his hair. Subspace had given way to the spiral, the harsh decline after the peak. That, or it was something else entirely, related to breaths lost and fingers around throats.
“Robert- azize delam. Are you okay…?”
“Mhm. Yeah,” he snivelled. A lie.
“I got you. It’s okay. You’re safe,” Karim cooed into his hair.
Holding him through the sobs that wracked him, Karim rocked him back and forward while he lay atop him. Comforting, repetitive movement, which eventually had Robert calming down enough. He would protect him against anything. Silence flooded the room, pierced only by quiet, regulated breaths and the vestiges of sobs.
The light had died in Robert’s eyes. The way it had one night in October last year, when it rained water and fire and blood.
Karim made it his mission to rekindle it.
It still hadn’t come back when Karim lifted him into the shower, held him up on decidedly uncracked tiles, and cleaned him up gently under the stream. It started to slowly peek back in when he leaned over the bath and turned on the taps, leaving Robert to sit on the edge, wrapped in a towel warmed first by Karim’s hands. The lunar radiance on Robert’s face, the dimples like craters on the moon’s surface made an appearance when Mala and Beef came and investigated, both propped up on fluffy paws and watched the tub fill like they’d never seen water before. A spectre of a smile appeared as he leaned over to lavish affection on their pets.
Karim glugged a generous helping of bath soak into the water, watching bubbles burst to life on the hot surface. Robert brought it from home - ironic, considering he didn’t have a bath. It was specialised to soothe aching muscles, ever so slightly augmented for use by those suffering with chronic pain.
“You made me crack a tile,” Karim said abruptly.
Robert snapped back to reality, tethered back by his voice from whatever trauma-trodden realm he walked.
“Huh?”
“In the showers at work,” Karim expounded, fastening the cap back on the bottle of bath soak. “Next time you’re in there, you’ll see it. Fourth shower along from the left.”
There was that light. The clouds parted, the moon cascaded in. The dry humour came with it.
“Aw, how sweet,” Robert remarked, running a hand through hair dampened by shower water. “Permanent evidence of our mutual HR violation. And a potential public indecency charge.”
“Every time you see it, you’ll think of us.”
Robert laughed then, and Karim wanted to hold the sound close to his chest so he never forgot it.
“Most couples just carve their initials on a park bench. Or a tree, y’know.”
Karim grinned. A superheated tile unable to withstand his orgasmic fire as a public monument to their relationship was so uniquely them it ached a little inside.
“Good thing we’re not most couples.”
“Yeah,” Robert considered, patting Beef’s portly body. “That’d be pretty boring, I think. The tile thing suits our track record, I guess.”
“Classiest bitches in Torrance.” Karim proclaimed, spreading his hands like their names were framed in neon lights.
Robert reached up with practiced care and slapped one of the hands with a high five. Karim curled his fingers around the hand and brought it to his mouth, closing his eyes to press his lips to the knuckles that still bore a few scars from the night of rain. He held his gaze. It was one of knowing, of wordless affirmation. They would talk. Not now, but they would. Harsh edges had no place here, in soft afterglow cocooned in deep affection. The tears had dried. For now, let them stay that way.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Robert’s smile was infectious, doting. Full of radiance revitalised.
Karim squeezed his hand before holding out his arms to him. “Come on, uppies.”
Robert shot him a withering look, clearly unhappy with the choice of words, but immediately obliged. His eyes were still a little red, legs still unsteady, but Karim would be his crutch. As he hauled him off the edge of the bath, he both heard and felt pops reverberate from Robert’s spine, his knees, even his wrists that locked around his neck as he carried him.
“Fuck, no more gym for you for a few days, I think.”
Robert looked like he was about to object, but thought better of it. “You’re right. Got plenty of exercise tonight anyway.”
“You sure you didn’t have cowboy ancestors?” Karim raised an eyebrow slyly. “You rode like it was in your blood.”
Robert’s nude body broke the surface of the bath as Karim lowered him in gently. He sighed appreciatively as the warm water slid over his extremities
“I dunno. Maybe. Like in Back to the Future 3.”
“Ah, the next nerd shit you’re gonna make me watch?”
“A.k.a., the next nerd shit you’re gonna fucking love. Trust me.”
If it was anything like the fantasy franchise that Karim had been rooted to the couch for the duration of their extended editions, he was sure that Robert’s tastes would break through his carefully curated social mask. He kissed Robert’s head as he settled back into the bath, then made to leave the room.
“Wait.” Robert blinked plaintively. God, it was heartbreaking. “Aren’t you coming in?”
He may as well have begged him not to leave.
“Yes, azizam, don’t worry,” reassured Karim, raising his voice to be heard over the still-running faucets. “Just gotta grab something first, one sec.”
He found what he was looking for on top of his dresser, hidden under the hoodie that had become Robert’s over time. Satisfied, Karim strode back to the bathroom, waving the documents in his hand.
Robert’s face fell, before breaking into laughter. The kind that he impulsively covered his mouth for, another habit Karim found both sad and endearing.
“That’s why you laminated them?”
“Fun aftercare activity,” Karim stated, bringing the HR paperwork over to the large bath where his naked coworker languished. “Bureaucracy.”
Robert stared at him for a long moment. Then, he shifted around in the water to make room for him.
“Fine. Get in here. And grab a fucking Sharpie.”