Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Friday, May 1970

Steve

Stygian, oppressive yet liberating darkness presses in on all sides of Steve, caressing every inch of his exposed skin and weighing down over his clothes, too, wishing to be against his body until he’s enrobed only in the lack of light. Distantly overhead, the moon is out, full and bright for the hour, but Steve’s nervous, darting eyes have yet to adjust to it. Throughout his entire twenty-seven years, Steve has lived in the city; he is not used to being in any place where there are no looming streetlights that spill orange honey across beaten, cracked sidewalks, displaying dashed traces of strangers’ journeys through the night. There are no streetlights here. 

Well, actually, Steve has not been looking up, so if there are any here, they stopped working years ago, falling into ruin with the rest of the piers. Left to the cruel alienation of neglect, with New Jersey’s ports becoming the favorite child, and the grandchildren of the commercial airline industry and containerized shipping requiring much more attention. Steve progressed through high school and into college then—listening to his mother take in the news, processing the decline. Steve wonders if that, ten years ago, was the beginning of the end. 

Despite the shipping industry’s decline, the pulse of the city races on, urging progress, progress, progress. 

The American Dream. 

Now, in tandem, Steve’s own heart is racing, his pulse pounding in his ears, carrying rushing, hot blood through his darkness-hid body. Is he really alive if no one can see him? His entire life, he has been surrounded on all sides. Perceived constantly. Always judged. 

Here—wherever here exactly is—his lone heartbeat is louder to him than the occasional car blazing down Christopher Street, just beyond the broken chain-link fences and flimsy barricades he stumbled through like dried, cracking brambles that act as the pre-gates to the gates of Hell. A barrier that takes him from the void to a barren landscape to a crooked kingdom. How much farther will he have to flounder before he finds something more substantial beyond the limits of daily life? 

Impulsively, Steve lurches into action, half-stumbling and half-climbing over something dark, heavy, and metal in front of him. He rattles out a sigh, breath shaking like his hands are shaking. Head to toe, he is trembling. It’s not cold enough, not this late into spring, to see clouds of his breath freezing in the open yet simultaneously crowded inky, black air, but he sort of wishes it was. If it were that cold, he would at least have an excuse to blame for his shaking—he would have an excuse to turn around, too: it’s just too fucking cold for this shit. But… 

It isn’t. 

Not really. 

So, with a fortifying breath and a jerking twitch of his head, brushing his hair from his eyes, Steve not-so-regretfully thinks, too bad. 

It isn’t cold. It’s just shivering for the sake of shivering—shivering because he’s so fucking out of his mind with nerves that he doesn’t know how to move anymore. Shivering. Stumbling. Recklessly tottering and floundering through the wasteland of the piers, his feet are physically and psychologically unsteady beneath him. Anything could happen here. He is separated from the rest of the city, and danger has condensed around him. Crooked, jagged metal scraps curl off the warehouses, which sag under the oppressive weight of night and age. One trip and he’s got tetanus, if not nothing at all—bleeding out from the slashes he’d surely sustain from the rusted metal. Shadows scream at him from the gaping mouths and vast wounds in the structures. The skeletons of the buildings look just as broken and bent as the worst car crashes Steve’s seen on the living, pulsing streets of the rest of the city. Most intriguing, though, are the vague—simmering in and out of dim reality—works of art comprised of spray paint and words. They tease Steve, there for a flicker, only for him to turn his head and be unable to make them out, no matter how long he stares with squinting eyes. 

Minus the streetlights, it isn’t, honestly, all that different from the streets in Greenwich Village. Specifically, the West Village, as consumed within Greenwich. No building can escape street artists and roaming, unsupervised children alike—both just salivating at the idea of leaving their mark on the world at large. Steve used to feel that compulsion. He does sometimes still. Either way, there’s a reason Steve chose to move into an apartment over here, in this part of Manhattan, rather than moving back to Brooklyn after graduating from NYU or taking the hit and living where he ought to be in the financial district, not so far away. It’s cheaper here. 

It’s much cheaper. 

And…

He tells himself that’s the whole, complete reason. Sure, because of that, there’s some trouble, ‘cause there’s a little less oversight—no one cares about the shit parts of New York City (no one, really, cares about the nice parts, either, it feels like, a lot of the time). But that’s alright. He grew up around here, so he knows how to deal with any trouble he gets himself into. That’s no issue. And, no, his lure to this part of the city has nothing to do with the underlying not-so-much rumors and more everyone-knows-no-one-talks-about-it knowledge of this part of the city being the epicenter for homosexuality. He’s heard whispers and hateful shouts about it, but… it’s the pricing. Inagruably. 

Just that. 

Not that there’s a toll to be paid to sneak out of his apartment late at night to find his way in the dark, down through weaved-together city-grid sidewalks, to the piers. Not a real toll. Except maybe that of his life if he steps in the wrong place, perhaps plunging through the wood and metal and concrete constructed, unmaintained floors, abandoned into the depths of water below; maybe crushed by a falling wall that decides to crumble at the exact wrong moment; or perhaps gutted like a fish on abandoned metal and equipment that he has no business interacting with. He never worked like that as a boy or young man—he was always too sick. None of his first jobs was physical labor in that way. All Steve has to lose by coming here is his dignity. Perhaps not even that, though. He’s not so sure he’s got any dignity. Still… 

What is going to happen to him? 

What is going to happen to him? 

Fear grips his throat, choking him as real as someone’s fingers. 

It isn’t just about being discovered for what he is (though that is a fucking healthy serving of it, ‘cause if he is found out, that’s his job, his apartment, and perhaps his whole life surrendered right there). It’s about the fucking week he’s had—the month, the year. ‘Cause the piers and shipping industries aren’t the only ones moving, changing, and ultimately crumbling in New York City, leaving behind ghosts of their presence to rot, unmaintained. The finances of the whole fucking city are going under, right from beneath Steve’s feet. And they have been for a while. On the floor, Steve’s commission rates have been dropping, dropping, and dropping like a bag of bricks thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River—dropping with every trade, it seems, some days. If Pierce hadn’t put so many resources into training him fresh from graduation, he’s sure he would’ve been let go weeks ago from the firm. 

Steve can still hear his boss’s steel-hard, cut-throat voice inside his mind now—it causes anxiety to pervade his body, nipping at the back of his neck like an icy chill. He just happened to walk past his desk on the floor at the perfect worst time today. He fucked up a price earlier, writing the wrong goddamn number on the blackboard, and after admitting to his mistake to them all, the rest of the brokers, hounds alongside their handler boss, made him go and get their coffees. Oh, how they hooted and hollered at him for that. Fuck. Not the first time he’s done it, won’t be the last either. Regardless, when he returned, Pierce had been quietly purring into his beloved, schmoozing phone, trapped between his shoulder and ear like he had to lock it down or it would’ve run from his oil-slick charm. He was talking about letting people go, probably talking shit with one of the higher-ups at the firm, but maybe just complaining to his pitiable wife. 

If things get even more dire and they really start cutting anyone loose, it’s going to be him. Steve knows it. He just knows. He isn’t bad at his job; he can turn on the sociable charm and sell like the rest of them, but he knows the rest of the boys know there’s… something off… about him. He doesn’t mesh so effortlessly. It’s a good old boys' club, and Steve doesn’t fit in there. He never has, not when he was young and scrawny, and not now, despite how being a very late bloomer ironically turned him into exactly what he thought he needed to be to be liked in junior high.  

Softly, to himself, Steve signs into the black oxygen.  

If he’s chopped, shit, he has no fucking idea what he’ll do. Just the thought hits him like a baseball bat to the chest. What could he do? The economy is fucking horrible and getting even worse daily—his fucking degree is in economics, for Christ’s sake! There’d be no saving him. What a useless piece of paper he shelled out so much for, breaking his back working and burying his nose in textbooks like they were grindstones, coming out skinned and bloody. 

If, when—God help him, hopefully not when—he would have to figure it out and do so unimaginably quickly. He has to support himself, but more importantly, he’s got to help Ma. 

When and if he could manage it, as fragile as his health used to be, he’s been working since he was 14. He would labor if he weren’t too sick in the summers, doing less physical work like the rest of the boys and rather going after the softer odd jobs: painting shop signs, walking pets of the wealthier families who vacationed, organizing medical supplies at his Ma’s job (while keeping as far from the patients as possible so his weakened frame wouldn’t catch anything from them), etc., etc. No longshoring, for sure. Then, he was definitely too sick in the winters, barely making it to school and instead relying on the goodwill of teachers who pitied him enough to bundle up his work and send it to his mother so he might keep up with the rest of the class. Still, with all that effort, he could barely afford college. 

And to no fault of her own, his Ma wasn’t going to be able to help him pay. Steve didn’t expect her to, not really. She had already helped more than enough, keeping him fucking alive all those years, working herself to the bone to pay for all his medications and doctor visits, not to mention worrying herself to the bone, too. Steve has no idea how she didn’t break down. She lived for him. 

She did everything for him. 

So, it’s all he can do now to take care of her in return. 

They only have each other. 

And, God, all those years of caring for the sick—nursing tuberculous patients back to health or keeping them as comfortable as possible until death in New York’s epicenter of the epidemic, totally ignored, while the rest of the country moved on, pretending it wasn’t still an issue, and keeping him alive at home—have finally caught up to her. She’s sicker than a dog these days. It shatters his fucking heart into a million shards of glass. 

He’s doing what he has to. 

He has been. 

He will. 

It doesn’t matter if it turns his stomach at night, when he thinks about it too hard about what he does, selling and selling and selling ad nauseam, talking in the ear of men richer and greedier than Steve could have ever fathomed before he met them. He never even tries to have dreams of being that wealthy in return for the money he gets from them; it’s but pennies on the dollar he gets as commission from sales, especially lately; at best, he’s only hoping he can keep his mother and himself alive on his thinning pay stubs. Working, working, working, kissing ass, and listening to the boys in the office talk shit all day, every day. All Steve does is work. All he thinks about is work. Money, money, money—

In the dark, alone, Steve grits his teeth forcefully, listening to the way they creak and ache in his skull. He swallows, throat dry. 

It’s right. So, it doesn’t matter if it’s exhausting. 

He’s doing the right thing. 

He will take care of his Ma. 

She won’t die. She can’t. 

She’ll live through her diagnosis. And she’ll be there for when he finds a nice woman who can put up with his long hours and constant thoughts about work, and he’ll marry her because it’s right. He’ll figure out how to give that woman enough affection and love, despite himself. Too, he—his Ma will love her because she will be nice and wonderful, and she’ll love the children his wife will give him, and it’ll be okay. He’ll figure it out. He just—

It all incomprehensibly rages inside him. Every by-the-skin-of-his-teeth, tightly-held responsibility and demanded expectation, and even his tangled sense of his own emotions. They spiral out of control, heavy yet empty, hollow, weighing him down from the very center of his chest and almost sending him tumbling over a raised crack in the concrete beneath his feet. Near tears, Steve straightens himself back to his perfect posture from flailing his arms, fighting to not break his nose again, this time falling flat onto his face rather than being decked in the face. He—he can do all that. He will do all that. He has to blow off some steam first. Then, eased just enough, he can untangle his mind and begin making a real plan for what he’s going to do. If he has to, he’ll spend hours undoing the knotted ball of yarn in his mind; he’ll take scissors to it, if he has to. But, before then, just—

He’s here. 

He needs something. 

He wants to try, just once, before he bashes all of it back into the secure vault deep within him.

Here, in the dead of the night, consumed on all sides by dilapidated piers where the police don’t fuckin’ bother going because they know it’s only debauchery and it isn’t worth it. The fuzz can’t arrest everyone who prowls the night here; there ain’t enough room for them in The Tombs. Too many loose ends to tie neatly into a bow. Steve knows a body was fished out of the water just weeks ago, a transsexual prostitute; he read about it in the newspaper someone dropped on the subway on his way to work, the Village Voice. It would have made him sad if it didn’t happen time and time again. It wasn’t the front page story, anyhow. Who knows if she jumped or was shoved? Who knows if something will happen to Steve, just daring to dip his toes into the water once? Deep inside, he knows, oh, he knows, this is idiotic and reckless, does he really want to lose his job, his apartment, his life, by being found out because he couldn’t control himself one time? But… just once. 

Desperately, he’s promised himself, just this once. He needs to try. He can’t stop himself.  

Caught up so intensely in his own internal torsion, his emotions painfully contorting this way and that, bending and balling him up into an unrecognizable shape as he tries to stuff himself into the too-small cookie-cutter shape he was told to fit, it doesn’t register to Steve just how far he’s stumbled into the pier. This upside-down world where the other half lives—he admires and is scared shitless of them. He doesn’t recognize how far he’s come until, with a sharply sucked in breath, he’s startled. Anxiety jumps into his throat, pulling at his stomach, and sends his head spiraling.  

What was that? 

Spooked, he freezes in place, fighting not to spin in crazed circles like he wants to. The reaction is unfamiliar. Of the two options, he’s always chosen fight. Perhaps he’s just so out of his depth here, he’s not himself. Either way, the fine, blonde hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge, so tense that they pull achingly at his skin. Terribly badly, he wants to whip around to understand where that came from, what it actually was, and who, or what, made it. Was it real? Did it just happen in his head? It sounded like—

“Ghuuuhhhh—” 

Again. 

Well, not the same groan, not quite as deep or rough, but close. 

It’s coming ominously from behind him.  

Steve… 

Steve doesn’t know what the fuck to do. 

The sound is distinctly human, he’s pretty sure, at least, but he has no idea why that person is making that sound—fingers crossed that it is a person. 

But, suddenly, there’s more shuffling. Little sounds. Then, another big one. It sounds kind of painful, like the person is exclaiming in pain. 

Should—should he go toward it? What if whoever that is needs help? Should he get the Hell out of here before anything happens to him? He’s been mugged before, and he certainly didn’t bring his wallet with him tonight, but maybe he should have. He doesn’t have anything to give but his life if someone really wants something from him. His keys would be useless, ‘cause he’s never going to give an attacker his address, and that’s the only other thing he’s got. 

The shuffling, groaning, and heavy breathing continue. However, they stick in place, back over his shoulder, so maybe… just ignore it? There’s nothing to do but keep moving, right? 

Right? 

He’s come this far. And now he can’t go back that way. So…  

Okay. 

Effectively disturbed from his internal crisis to his present situation by those unknown-origin sounds, Steve ensures he is less noticeable than whoever is making those noises by lightly treading, carefully watching where he steps to the best of his ability in the night. He skirts along the exterior wall of the structure in front of him. It’s big. It was probably some kind of important, bustling warehouse once upon a time. Now, it’s hollow. 

It takes a minute, settling in as he walks, but heat starts to rise to Steve’s cheeks, almost before he realizes what, exactly, he’s reacting to. Then, mid-step, it finally clicks in his head: those sounds and the paired visual input of shadows barely visible through the gaping hole in the side of the wall he’s feeling to guide himself forward, fingers outstretched at his side. Oh. Staring down a pair of shadows, curled together, against the far wall, noises echoing in his mind, and he understands. 

Oh. 

The shadows… they’re groaning, too. 

Much more muffled, but still making audible, ear-burning noises. Their commotions are much more obviously pleasurable, moving together in the dark, panting and groaning softly, unstoppable male sounds of oh-God-this-feels-so-good.

The lovers, two of a kind, shamefully pull Steve into the dangerous environment, which brings forward and emphasizes the reality of this place. The prickling of goosebumps draaaags across Steve’s skin as real as fingertips caressing him, and the rise and fall of his chest beneath his clothes as he starts to breathe faster, even ruffles him as his nipples draw tight, frictionally grazing the fabric, sending a tiny shiver down his spine. There’s the uncontrollable jerk of his cock to attention, too. He can’t help it. The sounds. The dim visual. The knowledge of what they’re doing. Who, abstractly, they are. Men. Fucking. 

Jesus. 

His cock twitches again, which—that, precisely, has always been the problem. 

It isn’t a problem here, though, he reminds himself. 

It’s the point. 

Yes—

This is why he’s here, to try his lips and teeth and tongue at the appetite he’s possessed his whole life but never indulged. How will it feel to bite? To chew? To swallow? He just has to be daring enough to try.

And Steve has to all but physically tear himself away to keep moving; otherwise, he will surely never taste for himself, he will be caught like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard, just watching those two sensually go at it. Mouth to mouth. Chest against chest. Just their shadow-puppet silhouettes against the wall are divine; after all, two dimensions are more than Steve’s ever had before, and more is almost unfathomable. 

So, moving, creeping past the moaning men, tangled together, clearly having sex against a crumbling wall, free to the anonymity of night and this place beyond rules, Steve’s desiring eyes peer open wider than they’ve ever been in his whole goddamn life. His thunderstruck gaze needs to let in every trace of light to catch as much as he can. He wants to devour it all. To consume this memory-in-the-making. 

Next, he sees a pair and a half of sneakers and socks carelessly kicked to the side, discarded in a sensual hurry. Vaguely, Steve loses his breath, wondering if the men those shoes belong to got so distracted by each other’s strong, toned bodies liberated from beneath their clothes that they didn’t care that one of them still was wearing an odd shoe, a single sock; they just had to have each other. Is the one wearing his footwear still curling his toes somewhere close by, finding one side bare and one covered, and laughing at himself through pleasured moans? Too intoxicated to stop. Then, a stray work of graffiti catches Steve’s buzzing attention for a moment, too; it’s a crude drawing of a massive penis in one color, then another color, perhaps drawn by a different hand, has created a wantonly bent over man, almost daring in his effort to take the massive thing. And another pair of—

Oh. 

No, not a pair of men but a group of them. 

Three. 

If three is considered a group? 

Steve doesn’t know anything about this world—that might be nothing to even make note of. He is so out of his depth, but drowning has never felt so desirable. He isn’t even being bashed against the rocks by waves anymore; he’s underneath the surface, holding his breath until his lungs burn sweetly, blood on fire, aching, with the thick, lush currents of the ocean curling around him, licking wetly at his flesh and surrounding him, seducing him farther and farther into the darkness of the depths. 

Between the two of the men, there’s one man on his hands and knees. The other two are sort of standing, mostly kneeling, over him, jerking him this way and that. Steve knows, burningly, in his gut, that they’re sharing the wicked filth of his mouth and ass. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Defiling him. The wet, lewd sounds echo in the darkness, fap-fap-fap, simultaneously hiding and exemplifying the muffled moans of pleasure that must be coming from the man in the middle, “mmngh, mgnhH! Hnnh!”

Steve’s skin doesn’t just prickle; now it tingles with heat. He is unbearably close to squirming as he feels perspiration seep from his pores, beginning to glaze his whole body. Especially when he exhales heavily, excitedly, through his nose and feels his own heated breath sink into the sweat on his upper lip. There’s a reckless, lurking kind of energy suddenly inside him, thrumming alluringly through his veins, bursting into his chest, and wanting to come out. He could moan himself. He could explode. He doesn’t know what the Hell to do with himself. 

Maybe he won’t moan, perhaps he’ll scream instead.

It’s just such an abrupt onslaught of thoughtless, instinctual arousal pouring through him that he could do anything—his hands curl into shaking fists at his sides. 

Where does he start? 

Wait—

Start? 

Starting implies he’s actually decided he’s going to do this, not just window shop with his nose pressed to the glass, breath fogging up his view, drool helplessly smearing as he hungers through the transparent plane at what he desires but can never afford to have. This night, at most—when he couldn’t hold everything together anymore—was planned for him to, at worst, look around a little, then leave to seal himself inside his own apartment, entombed, alone, stewing and trembling in his own shame, touching himself in complete darkness, pretending it’s someone else. Maybe even fumbling with his non-dominant hand to pretend it’s another man, just as unsure and inexperienced as him. He—

Not knowing what he’s doing, just doing, Steve ducks into the next open warehouse he comes across. Sure, vacant warehouses are a dime a dozen here, but he’s pretty sure this warehouse—with the night breeze flowing through it, riddled with holes and consumed slowly by decay—is actually, totally empty. No nameless, faceless, pleasured men to intimidate or tantalize him. 

Inside the structure, just like how he was on the outside, his whole body quivers harshly while his lungs almost hyperventilate, seizing in his chest. He doesn’t know what to do. Shit. He’s so fucking turned on he could die. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s—he’s not used to being so fucking crazed. He’s fucking salivating. And over nothing! He hasn’t—he, he—

Nothing’s happened! 

Yet, as close as he is to freaking the fuck out, the second his feet stop moving—no longer having to focus on making sure he doesn’t fall flat on his face and make a fool of himself in front of the simultaneous everyone and no one here—his right hand creeps down his trembling frame. Just. Palm down, flat on his taut stomach, traveling down, down, down to his shifting hips. It’s absolutely involuntary, as if he’s compelled. He can’t help it. Down. His hungry fingers curl around the hard, hot length of himself through the material of his slacks. 

Christ. 

A deep, scraped-out groan escapes Steve’s suddenly parted lips. And despite himself, just a touch isn’t enough to scare him away—it’s enough to carry him away. 

Fuck. 

Fingers curled around his dick, pressing the heel of his hand against himself to get some goddamn pressure and friction, Steve didn’t realize how fucking hard he had gotten, stumbling and rubbernecking through the pier like a New York tourist in Times Square, taking in every secret, devouring them until he was so full he could no longer swallow. Stuffed with them. The electricity of everything he’s consumed pulses through him. He squeezes his fist and gropes himself, still choking a little on his next inhale with how fucking stiff he is. He’s maybe never been this hard before. Other than, perhaps, that first time he dared to think of men—boys at the time, he was a boy then, when jerking off as a hot-blooded teenager. He couldn’t not any longer, realizing that maybe he could do something about that tight knot of excitement in him that wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t police his thoughts every fucking second of every day, no matter how dangerous it felt to let the tiniest stream of water from behind the dam. Just once. Yeah, right. 

There hadn’t, actually, been anyone to stop him then. Not Satan himself, no demons, nothing. Nothing like he feared, just the guilt of it within himself. And… 

There’s no one to stop him now, either. 

Nervous as Hell, excited as Hell, and stupidly fucking reckless, ready to delve deeper, Steve’s hands twitch at his groin, almost reaching for his belt, aching to tug it impatiently open and take his cock into his hand—to fist it, right here, right now. He’s just hurting, wanting desperately to stroke himself meanly. Tightly. He wants to go so fuckin’ fast up and down the entire length of his cock so he can feel the honey-thick, viscous heat of arousal really flood him and take him under in a riptide. He doesn’t give a shit if he doesn’t have any lotion; he’ll be fine. He can feel himself dripping—his desire is so pent up that it’s coming out, pressure building from deep in his balls to the tip of his dick. 

Yet, at the last second, with his wrist bent, fingers fumbling under the influence of his arousal, scraping past the smooth leather of his belt, he doesn’t follow through. Rather, he jerks violently in place, whipping his head around to track the sudden sound of feet shifting over top of grit. The sound is barely audible, really, but it feels loud. It’s the loudest goddamn thing Steve’s ever heard, hitting him square in the chest and splitting his ears. 

Someone is watching him. 

Searching, swimming through the looming darkness of the space, Steve’s breath becomes harsh for new reasons, inhaling and exhaling with speed and fear. His nerves outweigh his lust, heart pounding in his throat, thinking he’s about to see The Fuzz, the hauntingly familiar face of Parish Priest from the church he grew up attending, or some other shit, someone else, even worse, unfathomable in consequence—evidence that he’s been set up, lured here, only to be executed socially speaking. Perhaps physically speaking, depending on who’s caught him, red metaphorically smeared all over his palms.

It isn’t. 

It’s not the state, church, his mother, or anyone like that.  

It’s just—

“Tsk, tsk,” a disappointed, blue-balled tongue clicks. “You a shy one, darlin’?” A low, mysterious drawl curls out from the darkness, undeniably male and made by the same tongue. 

Rising panic yet to fully subside, Steve barely registers the sound of the stranger’s voice before finally placing his location, squinting into the darkness to catch the barely-there glint of eyes. All his instincts, socially and politely trained and primally seared in (what is he but prey, after all? homosapiens have far from always been an apex predator) scream at him to get the fuck out of here. But… 

Despite his agonizingly raised hackles, he doesn’t move. 

Steve’s petrified into place. His hand lingers over his belt, not exactly going back to palming himself through his clothes, but also not violently snapping away as though he’s been burned. He doesn’t blink. 

He can’t breathe. 

“Don’t stop on my account,” the deep, rough voice sounds like it’s smirking at him, all sharp teeth and wet, pink tongue. Definitely a predator. Playing with his food, pawing and mouthing, not quite ready to deal the final blow. He’s not bored yet. 

And, exactly then, all at once, Steve is no longer still; he’s shivering. Earthquaking. Rocks tumbling within and underneath him. That reckless feeling is back—did it ever leave?—and it has sunk its teeth into him, shaking him back and forth with a vengeance. Who’s the predator? The stranger? Steve’s own grit? 

 “Or what?” His voice exits him before he has time to think. 

“Wouldn’t you like to find out.” Those ghostly, challenging words should be a question. They aren’t.  

It’s as if he knows more than Steve does that Steve wants to find out what happens if he stops putting on his incidental obscene display, giving this stranger something to watch. What then? 

Just then, the owner of the voice—a big, broad man—prowls closer, less in the darkest shadows and more into the faint moonlight. And he is… big. 

(In reality, he likely isn’t that much taller than Steve. He might not be taller than Steve at all; they’re probably about the same height. And he’s probably only a few inches broader with heavier muscle compared to Steve’s lean muscle, but that isn’t how it feels. He feels monumentous. He makes Steve feel minuscule, not emasculated and tiny per se, just… vulnerable.)

Oh, yes, big. 

Only a few paces apart, their eyes collide and meld together like molten glass fusing. It’s fucking intense. No one’s ever looked at Steve like this stranger does. And Steve simply does not know what to say to this man; he is so fucking out of his depth, but evidently, he doesn’t need to say anything—whatever this stranger can read in his eyes and body is enough. After his smoldering, intense gaze strips him, head to toe, he teasingly steps back into the deepest of the swaddling shadows before Steve can even register what the hell he looked like. Just those eyes and that towering silhouette. It’s too dark to know the color of his irises; all he has is the immediately memorable stare pressed into his memory like a cattle brand. Consuming and passionate and—

Like a naïve little lamb, drawn in by the wolf clothed in sheep’s wool, Steve is lured deeper into the decaying wreckage of the piers. He follows helplessly behind the stranger, catching glimpses and teases of him, ducking and cornering until—

There. 

He stands, waiting patiently as if he could be on his feet forever. Yet, he doesn’t give off the aura that he needs Steve. He doesn’t need anything other than to satiate the appetite hinted at in his eyes. Steve is simply the luckiest appetizer on the menu. He’s strange—an enigma, to be sure. And if there’s anything special about here, other than the way the light spills in dimly from a violent slash in the ceiling, Steve doesn’t understand it. It’s the same concrete, steel, rebar, street art, and ruin as everywhere else here. This place is a maze. 

He is grateful for this place, though. The whole fucking upside-down-ness of it, yes, but especially the light. Standing there, waiting for him, the ghostly stranger is much more visible. He’s still staring. 

Steve is seen through.

However, he’s still compelled, drawn into the orbit of this unknown man as surely as gravity pulls his feet to the earth. He wants to feel his body heat. The heat of a man. He wants to stare, upclose, at the detail of his handsome face—he has to be ridiculously good looking, doesn’t he? If even in the shadows, his cheekbones are obvious, darkness cutting them sharply, and there’s a cleft in his chin? He must be handsome. Maybe the most attractive man Steve’s ever laid eyes on. 

Step by step, Steve closes in. 

And despite his pursuit, he does not feel like the predator. He isn’t stalking, he’s following.  

The stranger is dripping in leather. Steve’s seen glimpses of men on the street like that before, especially late at night in the West Village, when he’s been working on the floor later than usual and comes home dead on his feet; he’s always tried not to stare at them in the same way he’s always done his fucking best to be normal when strolling through a department store and walking by the men’s underwear section. He’s a man, he’s more than allowed to be there, gathering what he needs for his wardrobe, but he’s always afraid everyone can tell. Terrified that if he looks at those men on the street, spilling out of seedy bars and private clubs, they’ll know. Steve doesn’t know what that particular look—this particular look means. He only knows he likes it. 

This man knows. 

He knows what it means. He knows who he is. He knows what he likes. 

He knows what Steve likes. 

He is what Steve came for. 

Wrapped tightly in a midnight black leather jacket that spans the distance of his broad shoulders, just beneath his dark, shoulder-brushing hair, he’s obscene. A tight, what-looks-to-be-white t-shirt clings to his muscular, well-shaped chest. His thick hips are covered by painted-on denim that is mostly obscured by the expanse of leather chaps that somehow look even tighter than his pants. Resisting the figure-hugging fit of leather, the thick, blue denim of his Levi jeans still bulges out around his groin, desiring, no, demanding attention. It doesn’t need to be midday with bright sunlight for Steve to know what’s going on down there. He’s hard. Very hard. Steve can see the tempting outline of his cock through the denim. 

The stranger is big. Tall. Broad. And, yes, he swallows the rush of saliva suddenly pooling in his mouth despite his usual reservations, certainly erect. 

Steve gets a single passing thought to be grateful to God that he came here on this exact night, at this precise time—what are the chances? It flutters through his otherwise completely occupied mind and shames him harshly. How can he thank God for this? God would fuckin’—

No.

Steve has to push it out. He has to. It’s a matter of survival. No. Don’t think like that here. Just…

Do it. 

Do it. 

If he can see the war happening, played out across Steve’s face, the stranger doesn’t react to it. In fact, the stranger says nothing to him at all; he simply stops sauntering forward, no longer traveling deeper into the dark. He stays motionless off to the side of the moonlit, dilapidated room. Steve was almost remorseful when he stopped and turned, hiding the view of his generous ass filling out his jeans, spilling over the back of his leather chaps that end where thigh melts deliciously into ass. His backside alone would be more than enough to pull Steve forward if they hadn’t met eyes first. Every inch of this man is hypnotic and fucking hot. 

Instincts Steve has tried to smother his whole life have irretrievably roared to life, demanding a life of their own. He wants to touch, to bite, to—to—he doesn’t even fucking know. 

He wants. 

They’ve reached the destination he’s set. It doesn’t matter where it is, just that the stranger leans easily, attractively against a sturdy-enough, crumbling wall and beckons him over with his heavily-lidded eyes. He doesn’t move, still. He could easily be mistaken for a Greek statue. 

And his artful invitation is irresistible. 

This close, he is all the more attractive. Steve swears to fuck, it could be completely pitch black outside with no moonlight, in a locked closet that’s been painted black on the interior, and he’d still know this man is a stud—it comes off of him in waves. Achingly handsome from his burning eyes down to his shapely mouth, shadowed by dark stubble that roughens his bone structure, and beyond. Every. inch. 

Two steps away from him, almost chest to chest, Steve trips over fucking nothing. And, suddenly, he’s falling forward, heart thudding beneath his hardened nipples and contracting and expanding ribcage as the uneven ground disappears beneath his feet. He’s lunging, tumbling forward, unsteady, until there’s just an inch, maybe even less, between them. There isn’t a single stray worry in Steve’s head about tripping and hurting himself, not about making a fool of himself either, not when—

The unfamiliar man catches him, his shockingly steady, impossibly strong hands gripping Steve’s forearms tight, preventing him from moving another inch. He’s like a building, reinforced with unrusted rebar and fresh concrete, nothing like the ancient structures rising from the ground all around them. 

The stranger holds him in place like it’s easy. 

Nothing but a lost, broken-winged songbird in his cupped hands, Steve gasps. He might be a songbird in his entirety—feeling a woozily kind of vulnerable and aroused that he hasn’t since he was a scrawny teenager drowning in the depths of his puberty-driven libido—but his heart especially transforms, nothing but a hummingbird vibrating in his chest. 

Those hands. 

Matching the rest of him, they’re large. Plus, he didn’t realize before, but they’re coated in leather, too. Black leather gloves that have become hot with this stranger’s body temperature. Something about how close they are yet not touching, not really, causes Steve’s head to spin. It’s intimate and anonymous. Something about it, too, is distinctly dangerous. He’s never—

He’s never touched another man like this.

The same undertones that lured him in cackle to him now. They have him. He has both feet firmly in the trap, and there’s no way out. How could he turn his back? Resistance isn’t an option. Not when the stranger smirks at him, knowing, his covered but close hands begin to roam, stroking lightly up his arms, over the sleeves of Steve’s button-up shirt, and waltzing around his underarms to his shoulders. He spans Steve’s body. The touch is light, gentle at first, but throughout, it remains intense. And with the strength coiled deep inside his powerful body, the other man pulls them together. 

Their bodies slot together erotically, snapping into place as if they were designed to be this way. Held. Steve, in the midst of this fragile, heart-pounding night, could believe so. This is where he was supposed to be. 

Steve’s face tingles with the heady elixir of his blush, getting caught up in the sensation of their crotches aligning. Cock to cock. 

Oh. 

Hard cock to hard cock. 

The feeling actually fucking punches Steve in the gut, causing him to gasp for air, his salivary glands working overtime in overwhelmment, drooling, muscles communicating to his malfunctioning brain that he needs to curl up, curl around the sensation, soak it in for all it is, assuming, like with pain, that it will pass soon. But, he needs it. It’s hot. It’s—it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before. It’s so obscene. So real. Firm and stiff and Steve wants—

He squirms against the other man. He groans, almost shrieking between clenched teeth, but keeping the more embarrassing noise choked back, thank fuck. Still, he’s helplessly, mortifyingly falling harder into the stranger, melting in his arms. In the mess of it, Steve’s mouth ends up by the stranger’s throat, where the air is deliciously thick and humid, and it’s all Steve can do to pant harshly against his skin. Tasting him. Inhaling him like he’s a cigarette, taking him deep inside his body. His lungs. 

The other man’s scent is a cocktail strong enough to fuck him up with just a sip: all sweat, oil, and leather. It’s heady. All he can do underneath the onslaught, the taste, is to liquify even more. What else is he supposed to do? He’s never felt anything like this. It’s so, so… he doesn’t have words. 

It hurts. 

It feels so good, so real, so all-encompassing that it hurts. It’s like staring directly at the sun. There is no strained—restrained moment of curiosity as there has been with the women he’s enjoyed relationships with, wondering, does this feel good? Rather, instantly, he’s swept off his fucking feet and pulled inarguably down white-water rapids, the river leaving no room for anything but all-consuming current that puppets him. This feels too good, if anything. 

Oh, god. 

Too much. 

Not enough. 

Thoughts pinball uselessly, senselessly around his emptying head. He is overwhelmed, yet he’s never wanted more so badly. He sips mouthfuls of thick atmosphere, panting and groaning, only growing drunker. 

They move together. 

Push and pull. 

Enact and react. 

Together. 

Endless—Steve doesn’t know where the stranger begins and he ends. They’re tangled, starting at the mouth. They can’t get out; no matter how much Steve wiggles and squirms, he doesn’t want to get out. 

Like this. Just like this.

Grinding, harder and a little harder still, their bodies aligned and tingling, Steve’s moaning, the noises simply pouring over his gaped lips. He’s being so loud. Too loud and it’s embarrassing, right? 

Vaguely, he knows that there are other men around, hiding in the shadows, prowling through the dark, and pouncing on each other where they can’t be seen; dimly, he knows they’re hearing him, and he assumes they’re wondering what the fuck is going on with him, but he can’t stop. His entire fucking life is fucked from this experience. Moaning. Gasping. At some point, in vain, he bites his own bottom lip, then he mouths at this stranger’s salty skin, and he tries panting into his leather jacket, painting it with condensation from his hot breath, and he even attempts to use the other man’s underlying t-shirt to muffle himself, too. Just a little. It doesn’t really work. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t, at least. All he’s got as comparable scale to his moans are the drumming thuds of his heartbeat, pounding through his ears. He thinks the racket he’s making is embarrassing; it’s hard to be aware of himself, though, he isn’t sure. He’s—nnngh. 

Arousal and pleasure rise and rise inside him, flooding, and, he could, he just—

Fuh-fuckk. 

Steve’s entire body shudders, rippling like the surface of a pond. 

Nerves sparking and burning, Steve could really, really fucking orgasm just from the friction of their spit-slick lips and their hips, moving and grinding together. Even when muted through underwear and slacks and underwear and jeans and chaps, it feels absurdly good. It’s so much. Steve never wants this to end. He doesn’t want to cum. Stay, stay like this—ohgod. He’s pretty fucking sure he’s never been so attracted to anyone in his whole goddamn life. If this is attraction and pleasure and lust, has he ever even felt any of it before? 

God. 

His fingers quiver and fail to curl, wanting to grab and hold the other man, making sure he stays here, just like this, but he can’t. He can’t. He isn’t strong, he’s melting, puddling. He’s weak. This feels too good. 

“Oh, oh, oh-!” He overflows, starting at the mouth.

Yet, before he can actually tip over the sharp, gnawing edge of pleasure, the stranger’s hands are gripping him with intent again, not that they really stopped, but suddenly traveling all over him. Again. Groping his waist. When did his hands get there? And—

“Oh!” Steve’s voice jumps a few octaves, tumbling free like a bounder tearing down a cliffside. 

—Pinching his ass. 

The stranger chuckles at his reaction to his filthy touch at the same time that his hands circle back up to his shoulders, finding the back of his neck, squeezing, then pressing him down. 

And the sound of his voice bouncing around in his solid chest, vibrating, amused, deep, is so fucking outrageously hot that Steve doesn’t need the hand scruffing the nape of his neck to slide to his knees. In his tightly-belted, once-clean slacks, his dick twitches violently. Who gives a shit if these were work clothes before—now they’re not. They can’t ever be again. They’re creased and dirty and these memories are too charged to bring anywhere near the workplace, fuck, really, Steve could not be thinking less about his clothes if he tried. With what’s left of his brain, he’s thinking about the impatient, jagged way the stranger’s hands are making their way to the buckle of his chaps, undoing the thick leather, then popping the button of his dark wash jeans underneath, sliding the strained zipper down confidently, and reaching into his underwear with one huge hand to—

Jesus Christ. 

If Steve thought he was drooling like a dog before, he was dead fucking wrong. His salivary glands ache with the sudden flood. 

Outside of school locker rooms, where Steve was trying his fucking damnest not to look and give himself away, Steve has never seen another man’s dick this close before—he’s never been so close to another man’s dick. And, somewhere, in the back of his obliterated mind, he figures he should be ashamed of the primal reaction the closeness pulls from him, monstrous and lewd as it boils over. Christ. But, he isn’t. He can’t be. He is caught up more than a runaway train rushing down a goddamn mountainside. Because there is a certain, untamed, masculine violence in the groan that rips itself from his lungs as he sways forward, swooning into the length and girth of it. He’s so fucking pulled, so fast, that Steve nearly misses the glint of silver at the thick, blunt tip of it.

What?

His eyes must bulge out of his skull at the sight of it. Already hypnotized by the fact that he’s this close to a real, actual dick that isn’t his own, and now compounded by this hardware he’s not seen. His hungry eyes may actually escape their sockets! The few glossies he’s dared to purchase have never displayed anything like that. 

He’s-!

He’s pierced. 

There’s this—there’s a silver, curved-looking barbell coming out of the slit of his dick, and as the stranger’s hand proudly, greedily fists his cock, stroking it—moving it around as if he wants Steve to drool over it more, showing it off like Steve isn’t already a waterpark’s worth of saliva—Steve realizes that it comes out on the underside of the tip, too. Oh. Blindsided by the lust rushing through him, filling every vein and pumping into his burning muscles, Steve has no real time for curiosity. He has no time for shame, either. Without brakes, he cannot stop to think about how badly getting that piercing must have hurt (meaning he can’t stop to consider the dirty thrill the idea of pain itself gives him either). He can’t think of anything. Inside him, there’s a clock smashing through hours, minutes, seconds; it tells him that he has to do this now, he will never get another chance, and he has to have it done before he’s discovered. Now. Dangerous and electric, every part of him demands NOW. 

And so he lets this stranger with his impressive, pierced cock shove his cock down his throat. 

"Gllk! Glk!"

Steve gags on it because the stranger is not gentle about it. 

But Steve doesn’t care. If anything, he relishes it. The primal, bodily sensation of gagging and choking forces him into the moment, demanding that he not worry about the clock, the fear, the shame inside him. It excuses him to just have this. The pleasure. The pain. The immediate present of now. Yes. Thick and big, it’s so hot. It’s fever-hot and silky in his mouth, heavily weighing down his tongue and sliding so erotically, harshly into his throat. His body at once is alarmed and so unspeakably turned on by the penetration. He’s never been used like this before. His throat doesn’t know what to do. It wants to close, to choke, to sputter, and—god, it wants to moan. It wants to cry out in pleasure, spinning drunkenly around the sensation of cock. Solid and hard, but hardest at the tip, hardest and smoothest with that bit of metal against the inside of him, rubbing, smoothing, driving him crazy. How did he never know the inside of his throat was so sensitive? 

"Guh! Glllk! Uhh! ‘Lllck!"

If he knew the inside of his throat—that smooth, wet flesh—was so thin and erogenous, Steve would have been sticking his fingers down his throat to rub against it every time he masturbated for years now, imagining through the thin, head-spinning oxygen it was someone else. Not just him. Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t know this earlier. ‘Cause, fuck, he’d never do anything else.

Oh. 

Oh, god. 

Steve’s own dick, trapped in his slacks, is trying to make a break for it, twitching and throbbing. It aches like a cracked tooth sitting in his jaw, waiting to be pulled. It hurts so much—it’s torturous to not touch himself while this stranger shoves in and pulls viciously out of his throat, hard metal and flesh draaagging against his throat, that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t know what to focus on: the desperate desire he has to swallow and choke and groan wantonly around his cock, or the need to reach down and jerk himself off before he bursts at the seams from the pressure knotting and tangling and building deep inside him. 

He doesn’t know. 

He can’t think. 

He needs a stronger word than desperate. He’s more than desperate. Urgent and thirsty, he’s going to die if he doesn’t—he, he, he doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know what he wants, what he needs, just that shamelessly he needs. Everything. All at once. Yes. Give it. He needs. 

Cock in his throat. Testicles heavy against his chin. Low, flat, furred planes of the stranger’s abdomen against his nose and forehead. And sweat. So much sweat. 

Yes! 

With his mouth full, cock heavy on his tongue, metal deep in his throat, leaving him sputtering and drooling and choking and messy, Steve is obsessed. He can’t be very good at this; he has no skill, to prior experience, all he’s weaponized with is a desperate want for more, but it’s apparently enough. ‘Cause the stranger whose cock is inside him doesn’t seem to give a shit, even when briefly his piercing drags against the inside of his teeth. Metal on teeth, the sound rings in his ears, feeling it through his jaws. It doesn’t hurt in a bad way, but it does make him cringe for a moment. It’s overwhelming. All of it is overwhelming. Because of it, though, Steve learns quickly not to move and just to take it. 

The other man just wants a mouth to fuck. 

A wet, tight hole.

Steve can do that. He can take it. He’ll be a hole. A desperate, horny hole that needs to reach down and touch itself, but can’t seem to move. He’s a hole. He goes where the man with the cock that’s filling him moves him. He takes it. With tears streaking down his cheeks and saliva drooling out of his mouth and dripping down his chin toward the bulging exterior of his full throat, he takes it. And he can take it because the stranger has an intoxicatingly sharp grip on his hair, using the strands tangled in his gloved hand like a handle to hammer deeper. Rough and filthy. Leather and sweat. Heavy balls hitting against his chin. Hot. Overwhelming. Gagging and drooling. Deep. 

Deep. 

Steve is fucking unfathomably deep—cock deep in his throat, deep in this experience, so deep in the arousal he feels that he’s drowning, entirely overstimulated without a finger being laid between his legs. 

But-!

Soon—fucking finally—Steve scrapes together enough thought to try and squirm, getting one hand down there, hot and heavy, between his legs, to cradle his pulsing dick in one trembling hand.

He is that sexually frustrated. 

Barely, uncoordinately, as he’s choking, unbreathing, Steve starts to grind against his own hand rather than lifting his hips chaotically against nothing but unsatisfying, charged air. Still, he’s on the knife’s edge of orgasm, desire carving into his flesh, but just as soon as he has the internal spark to do it, ready to actually combust, not just smoldering in a stupidified haze of need that only wants cock down his throat, he’s carnally snuffed out.

No!

Gargling pathetically around him, Steve raggedly exhales all his devastation into a torn-apart whine. 

Noooo!

Because, all too easily, the stranger deftly uses his toes, heavy and authoritative in his leather boots, to flick and outright kick his hand away from himself. He doesn’t need to speak to let Steve know exactly what he means—don’t you fucking dare. 

And suddenly, there’s another kind of heart-pounding thundering in his chest, on his hazy conscience, he’s—he doesn’t know much about this, but, somewhere, in the back of his mind—he, he knows that, yeah, doesn’t want this to end army style. He aches and hurts, and he likes it, but he doesn’t want a broken nose. He doesn’t want visible marks to show where he’s been. The dangerous fear isn’t enough to talk him out of it, though. Not when he’s this far. Not when that little bit of sting from the gentler kind of kick—tough love, perhaps—and the hammering of pierced cock in his mouth aches just enough. 

Maybe he does want it that way? 

He doesn’t know what he wants. 

He just whines so hard his throat twinges, not directly thinking of getting beaten, losing this fight, but more thinking of what he’s doing, how filthy this is. Dangerous and anonymous and, he just-!

He wants to cum. 

So, all but outright sobbing around the weight of cock and need, he tries again. Against his own judgement, reaching for his sofuckinghard cock.  

This time, for his stubborn trouble, the stranger not only bats his hand away with his foot, but he steps on his hand just hard enough to pin it to the ground, twisting just a tiny bit like it’s a habit from snuffing out cigarettes, and he just can’t help it. Something in Steve breaks at the idea of being a tiny, little cigarette at his feet—once useful, inhaled and made to get him relaxed, but now useless. Used up. 

Oh, god. 

By this point, Steve should not be surprised at the hungry groan that exits him, but he is. Somehow, he fucking is. That goddamn groan rattles his ribcage. Fuck. His hand isn’t in grave danger; he isn’t putting all of his delicious weight into it, but that hurts. Why does he want it, then? If it hurts? Is he really not just queer, but a fairy who likes it army style? Jesus Christ. 

He just, ohfuck, he doesn’t want to stop, he—

He squirms, just to have the stranger dig the tread of his boot in more. 

Guh. 

Yes. Yes!

Tears rush from beneath his squeezed shut eyelids, sizzling against his blushing cheeks. He’s too hot to function. And totally unable to resist his thoughtless body as he jerks forward hard. 

And, Christ, if Steve gets any more turned on, he’s going to die. This isn’t fair! This man is thrusting so hard and deep into his throat, getting his fucking rocks off, dragging his pierced cock against the wet velvet of his mouth and throat, just getting harsher and meaner the closer he gets. Steve should be getting touched, too! He shouldn’t be touchlessly, pleasurelessly winding tighter and tighter. He’s going to break! It just isn’t fair how the stranger laughs at his peril through a growling, low moan. 

Steve swears he could cum, untouched, listening to that. 

The other man sounds amused, like they’re old friends and he doesn’t have to worry about a little bit of cruelty with all their history, and he sounds, just, unbelievably erotic. It’s too masculine and too everything Steve has so shamefully fantasized about for years. Now here he is, in real life, taking it. The hottest man Steve’s ever seen, and he’s taking it from him. 

This is a throat-fuck turned into a mindfuck. 

Jesus Christ. 

Just then—with this sinfully hot experience dragging on for so long that Steve is sure he’s died and gone undeservingly to Heaven—the stranger presses in deeper, if possible. It doesn’t feel possible, even with the proof of the rucked-up fabric of his clinging shirt and low, flat planes of his abdominal muscles smushing Steve’s nose flatter. The other man is so close. It’s so humid and thick that Steve can’t breathe at all. If his eyes were open, he knows that his vision would be swimming and blotted with black dots, about to pass out, but they aren’t; his eyes can’t be open; they’ve long been rolled back and shut tight. So, instead, his head is spinning so fast his skull is about to twist off his shoulders. He doesn’t need oxygen; all he needs is the scent of sweat and leather and arousal, shoved forcibly into his nose from skin and cloth. 

Chloroformed. 

Drool rushes out of the burning, stretched-wide corners of his mouth, excess from the depth of penetration and lack of air. His body doesn’t know what to do with itself. It’s rushing, shoving, urging him to do anything. It wants to fight, to thrash, to breathe. Steve doesn’t want to breathe. He wants—

He wants to please this man. Gut-deep, that’s what he desires. Pleasure him. Be good. Be used. Be pleasured from being of use. 

And, somehow, through the haze of frantic arousal, he knows what’s coming. He’s never done this before, but through the ringing in his ears, he can hear it, he can taste it on his lax, feeling-too-thick-for-his-mouth tongue, he can feel it through every tingling nerve in his body, pressed against this stranger so tightly, intimately, he can smell it, he can see it with blinded eyes. He knows. 

It’s coming—

He’s going to cum. 

There’s no real warning, just the fanned flames of instinct that know the pleasure he’s giving this stranger is getting to him, cracking and breaking him. Those stress fractures don’t matter, though, because he’s contained, staying so far down his throat and grinding against his plush lips tightly. Just rocking, working himself over what sounds like a violent edge. It fuckin’ feels like it too. Shit. The way he’s cumming and pumping and flooding down his throat. Steve moans, hit with another bolt of arousal as he feels the violence—the other man’s cock twitching and jerking in his mouth. With it stuffed so thickly, so deeply into him, he can’t taste it. 

Something about that tiny fucking detail in the midst of such wreckage undoes Steve in the worst possible way.

He doesn’t even get to taste it! 

Something within him is mournful of that. If this was his one godforesaken shot, then he wanted to do everything—to know every detail so that for the rest of his life he could pick each attribute of the experience apart. So he can lie on his back in the dark, one hand feverishly between his legs, fisting himself in a blur, while his other hand creeps from gripping the sheets until his knuckles burn white to shoving two fingers into his own mouth, imagining what it could be if he weren’t alone. Cock. Compulsively, obsessively fetishizing every moment of the single free pass he gave himself, once upon a time. He wanted to know it all now, just for that later. Everything: the weight on his tongue, the stretch of his lips until it burns, the heat of another man’s body, balls heavy against his chin, pelvis to his face, muscular thighs crowding him in, body hair scratching his blushing skin, choking, sputtering, the taste of arousal and ejaculate, the—

“Hnnnnnnn!”

Steve is viciously ripped from his lonely mid-sex fantasy by a sound that comes out of himself; it sounds pathetic, the way he whines like an abandoned puppy the exact moment the stranger takes his softening cock from his mouth. He doesn’t actually know what happens first. It’s a catch twenty-two of cause and effect. 

The sensation of cock being pulled out of him, especially over his stretched, tingling lips, is novel and deeply unsatisfying. He wasn’t done! But, also, fuck, his throat hurts. Still, deeper, his lungs moan at the rush of heady oxygen that makes its way into his system. After such deprivation, it feels like pure pleasure to breathe again. He forgot he was suffocating in the first place amidst everything else, and all of a sudden, he’s heaving in and out, taking on oxygen. 

Yet, even with full lungs and should-be clearer rational thought, whatever’s taken over him tonight is not done. 

He’s possessed.

And he does not care when his whine grows into a full-chested sob. 

He’s so feverish and crazed with lust that the tears leaking from having his face fucked practically sizzle on his red-hot cheeks. 

He’s been cooked from the inside out. 

And immediately, he knows, just within himself, staring at the wet, limp cock that was just jammed inside him, he would do anything to cum. 

Through his salty-tears-and-sweat-clumped eyelashes and blurry vision, Steve doesn’t need to have any smarts left in his head to know that the expression on his stranger’s face understands that; the handsome stranger is somehow both outrageously cocky and quietly comprehending. He would do anything to cum. He’s here, isn’t he? Of course, he would do anything to get off. He already has. And tonight—as starved, hungry animals—they share that erotic intimacy. 

Then, smoothly, exhaling like he’s taken an easy drag from a cigarette, the other man tips his booted foot up enough for Steve to snatch his tread-stamped hand back, fingertips buzzing enticingly. Oh. Another thing he forgot about. He was pinned. Steve doesn’t care. He can’t actually move fast enough to lewly cup his erect cock through his slacks, though. Besides, fast or not, he isn’t coordinated enough for that now. Everything tingles—his fingers and face and lips certainly included. God, his lips ache, swollen and useless for anything but making more desperate, needy sounds. He has no language other than primal desire. 

And while he deals with all of that, the stranger, evidently interested in playing with him like a cat toying with a freshly caught songbird, unceremoniously shoves his boot between Steve’s legs. 

OH! 

Forget everything tingling, everything throbs. His racing pulse pounds through every inch of his body like a thousand fists hellbent on tenderizing his flesh. The stranger’s bony shin against his erection is like pushing unforgivingly on a bruise. 

“GuH-FUH! Fuuuck.” Steve whimpers, mouth gaping, and jerks like a fish on a hook. It’s violent. He’s caught. He can’t get away. Boot pressing against his balls, leg against his cock. He can’t help himself. Impulsively, completely uncontrollably, he’s curling toward the other man. Not really trying, consciously, to get at his cock where it hangs mouth-wateringly out of his peeled open jeans and leather chaps, but just—reacting. Dick, mouth, and body. 

Pleasure assaults him. 

Christ. He—

His hips filthily roll. 

There are no words. 

Nothing. 

Just pleasure. 

Humping, lapping tsunamis of pleasure that crash over him. 

Steve’s never felt so goddamn good in his entire life, and it hurts, oh, it hurts, his cock dragging against the soaked-wet cotton of his underwear and slacks and the hard press of leather over bone. He is slick with a truly humiliating amount of sweat and pre-cum. He’s just so tender. He, he—

White-hot heat bursts behind Steve’s eyelids, rapidly spreading to swallow him whole. He swallowed the other man’s cock and cum earlier, so it’s only hair, he supposes. He is consumed as the stranger’s fingers are suddenly in his mouth, pushing in, filling his aching emptiness, using Steve’s need to wither and curl around the leg he’s grinding himself silly on to his advantage. He is close enough to violate. Fingers in the mouth. And Steve doesn’t need thoughts to suck. He’s been trained so obediently over this single, electric interaction. He sucks. 

Everything is burned down. Raw. Flesh and pleasure and pain. 

Steve sucks and sucks and humps and cums. 

He cums and cums. 

It’s been but a fucking minute before he’s tumbling catastrophically over the edge. He’s so mortified, generally, though, by every act he’s committed tonight, that he does not give a single fuck. He can’t. He’s fucked-out, sweat-slick forehead sliding vaguely down against the leathered thigh of his stranger, huffing out chest-heaving breaths of relief. He, he—he doesn’t think he’s ever cum that much, that hard ever. 

What the fuck is he supposed to do with himself now?