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It had been about a week since filming wrapped, yet celebrations amongst the crew seemed to grow in the opposite of dwindling; it was their fifth night out in a row amongst Prague’s drunken nightlife, the hungry size of their post production crew behaving ravenously at bars and clubs and in-betweens, everyone close and comfortable and always joking, some more close than others.
“I really should head back to my hotel.” Assad tries to say loud enough for at least some of the people in their party to hear, they’re standing in line outside of another club and he’s already gone 2 drinks over the limit he’d allowed himself for the night. He’s not drunk, but the streetlights illuminating over him aren’t exactly looking steady, either.
It’s Jacob who’s closest and turns around, interrupting Sam mid sentence, “No! you’re leaving?”
“I don’t know.. I think so, ‘m tired and my flight’s out early.” He’s cute with it, and he’s not entirely lying. His flight is the earliest out of all of them, and he’d already extended his hotel stay by a day on account of him missing the one he was supposed to be on yesterday, all thanks to exactly what they’re doing again tonight.
“Ok!” Jacob says and he’s pulling him in for a peck on the cheek before Assad can react, “just shoot me a text when you get back to your room.” Sam gives him a hug and a pat on the shoulder and before anyone else can break away from conversation and register their so-longs, Assad is halfway down the street, one long tipsy leg shuffling its foot before the next.
He’s two blocks away now from the bustle of voices when he hears someone shouting behind him just as he begins to turn a corner, “Hey!”
His body knows who it is before his brain registers, feet stopping dead in the street like a deer in headlights. He clears his throat and turns around, involuntarily shoves his hands into his coat pockets, dips his chin further down into his scarf, always one to hide from the things he wants. “Hey!” he responds.
“I didn’t realize you meant you were bailing back there, thought you stepped out to buy another one of your vape pens or whatever they’re called.” Eric’s cheeks are slightly red from the little hustle he did to catch up with Assad, his hot breath creating steam in the chilly air with every huff.
“Yeah! no, I’m just..” Assad trails off, flexing his fingers in his pockets, unsure of exactly what to say. A beat passes, and he looks up to lock eyes with Eric.
“If you’re tired, I can walk you back to your hotel, man. Don’t want you stumbling around out here in the dark by yourself.”
It’s not that Assad’s drunk, he keeps telling himself this. And it doesn’t seem like Eric is either. But before either of them know it they’re elbow to elbow walking down the street, giggling like two kids on their way home from school.
“I don’t know, I don’t think they’re doing anything serious.” Eric says, “but I heard a rumor that they share a Netflix account. And apparently their luggage tags got mixed up in Paris one time.” Assad giggles. He’s not favorable of workplace gossip, but the running joke everyone has about Jacob and Sam is too fun not to indulge in.
“What would they say about us?” Assad asks, they’re both passing back and forth a shitty joint Assad bought from a smoke shop a couple blocks ago.
“Hmmm..” Eric exhales the smoke in his lungs out through his nose, “Too old for you. That’s number one.” He passes the canoeing joint back to Assad. “Doesn’t matter though, despite whatever they’ve got cooked up for us in the show.”
“What do you mean?” Assad asks.
“I mean, if you’re joking around here about viewers and whatever getting crazy and imagining up anything between the real us, it won’t come close to whatever hall pass agreement Sam and Jacob have going on.”
Assad takes one more small drag from their sad spliff and flicks it onto the pavement. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”
It’s not that he’s disappointed, maybe jealous of the connection that Sam and Jacob have, but it’s almost that he wishes he had something more personally memorable from the Prague filming than just the show.
Eric laughs, “You’re not disappointed, are you, kid?” and Assad matches his laugh back.
“No, no.. Not at all. Just.. maybe I should’ve got a matching souvenir with someone, y’know. Considering we’re all going home this week.” he shoves his hands back into his pockets, eyes back on the sidewalk in front of his feet.
“Well, hell. There’s gotta be something still open around here, tourist as is it.” Eric checks his phone, “11:48. There must be something before we reach the hotel, yeah?”
They turn another corner, jiggle the doors of a couple gift shops that are clearly closed for the night, joke about buying a pack of gum from the 24hr corner convenience store they pass by next and marking it as their memento.
They’re about seven minutes away now from their hotel when Eric exclaims, “Holy shit!”
Assad picks up his pace right behind him, confused for a second as to where Eric is leading them. “What do you see?”
“A little wild but,” Eric extends his ringed finger to point to the illuminated ‘TATTOO’ sign a couple strides ahead of them, “Souvenir, right?”
At first Assad thinks he’s joking. They’re both high, and albeit still tipsy, and before humiliation can rumble its way up through Assad’s chest he’s giggling into his glove. “You’re not serious.” he says.
“Like a heart attack, baby. C’mon, let’s see if they’re really open.” And just like that he’s leading him before he can say anything else, Eric striding towards the door as if there’s a cocky twenty five year old trapped inside his body.
They walk inside, both happy to be temporarily out of the cold, if nothing else. There’s a slight language barrier, but they understand the woman behind the counter enough when she warns them that they’re practically closed. “We just want something small,” Eric says, “My friend and I. A good tip, if you’re willing.” Assad cringes when Eric pulls out the bills in his wallet, but maybe the social faux pas is lost on the woman or she just doesn’t care, because she turns back on the light in the back of the studio and instructs Eric to sit on a tattoo table in the corner, Assad next to him in a chair.
The woman goes further into the back and yells something in Czech up the studio stairs and a muscular man with tattoos and gauged ears comes down, exchanges a couple words with who Assad assumes is his mother, and suddenly Eric is looking back at him and wiggling his eyebrows and grinning and it’s all too real.
“We’re really doing this?” Assad hushes out, he’s still got his hands buried in his pockets, and all it takes to soothe him into it is Eric giving him a quick wink while the tattoo artist washes up.
——
“I can’t believe I did that….” Assad trails off. It’s 1:08 now and they’re finally back at the hotel, riding up the elevator to the thirteenth floor. Eric’s room is on the eighth but he’s gentleman enough to walk Assad all the way back.
“Hey, I’ve got this shit forever now, too.” Eric replies, rubbing his palm over the tender flesh of his ribs.
“Was this to be a souvenir, or the intentional start of a rumor?” Assad says, cheekily.
It wasn’t much, a tiny little tattoo of a pair of fangs, Eric’s on his ribs and Assad’s on the inside of his left thigh. “If it was supposed to start a rumor, maybe we should have gotten it somewhere more obvious.” Eric smiles, “It’s just for us.”
Maybe it’s the way the alcohol is wearing off or the impending doom of his 7:15 flight, but as soon as the latch closes on his hotel door after the awkward “had fun dude we’ll talk later” farewell he had with Eric, he’s face down in the pillow of his bed with a sudden affliction for the way he processes affection. ‘Was this affection? Was Eric being affectionate in doing this? Is he humiliating me in some grand way?’ He huffs and rolls onto his back, stares at the light fixture on the ceiling for a minute or two before standing back up.
He strips down to his boxers and turns the overhead light on in the bathroom, hoists his left foot up onto the bathroom sink and bends down closer towards the mirror to further examine the raised swollen black ink on the fleshy inside of his thigh. He stays like that for a while, just peering into it, brows furrowed and lips in a concentrated line. He slowly begins to rub a broad circle around the tattoo, careful to avoid actually touching it. His face softens a bit. “Oh, Eric.”
——
It’s two weeks before Eric finally texts him. It’s not that he didn’t almost send the first text himself after their little escapade, he just wasn’t sure which foot he should be leading on when it came to that, and what it all could possibly mean. Best to leave it up to the man who initiated the permanent inking, he thought.
And he’s almost pissed at how anticlimactic it is.
“U up ?” Maybe he should have sent the first text, after all.
“hey, what’s up?”
Eric’s response is a picture. Of the matching tattoo on his ribs, to be exact. Assad grabs his glasses from his nightstand and clicks on the picture, zooms in before Eric sends his follow up message.
He was there with Eric when the artist tattooed on him first, but the way he had Eric laying on the table and Assad stayed shyly seated in the chair waiting for his turn, he didn’t really get that good of a look at it.
It’s not just the tattoo he can see in the picture. Although the selfie is slightly blurry (from what Assad assumes is Eric struggling to take it one handed while he holds his shirt up with the other), he can well enough make out the other features of Eric’s abdomen. Grey, wiry hair on his chest, trailing down to his soft stomach that slightly hangs over the belt he’s wearing with his blue jean Levi’s. He imagines running his hand down past that point, and starts mirroring it on his own body before he fully acknowledges what he’s doing.
Assad reminds himself that there’s a reason Eric sent him this and he minimizes back out to read his next message, “This look infected 2 u? ….. Itchy as all hell.”
Assad huffs out a laugh. He pushes his hand down his waistband, runs his fingers through the hair on his pubic bone, feels the fire in him start there and slowly work its way up to his loins.
“not rly… It’s gonna be itchy. This ur first tattoo?” He presses send and works his hand down further, past his hardening length and towards his own healing tattoo.
Eric responds almost immediately with another picture; this time it’s of the blown out heart he has on his hip. Assad’s breath is a little shaky when he exhales. The picture is still slightly blurry, just like the other one. This time Eric’s other hand is more visibly in frame, and it’s obvious that he unbuckled his pants just to take this picture for him.
Assad runs his hand back up to his groin, wraps his fingers around the base of his dick and leaves them tightened there, goes back to the other picture Eric sent.
Eric sends another message and Assad shifts his weight in his bed, adjusts his pillow so his phone is more comfortably in front of his face and his hand more flexible in his pants. “Got this one when i was about yr age…..” it reads.
He removes his hand from the clench he has around his shaft and grabs the bottle of lube he has stored in his bedside drawer. He coats the palm of his hand and shoves it back down into his boxers, slowly stroking the wetness of it from the base of his cock to his head that’s already swollen and weeping with fluid.
“oh? that one for jo?” he sends back. He goes back to closing off the circulation around his dick with his fingers while he waits for another reply.
A couple minutes pass and he wonders if he should just open up twitter and finish beating off to something on there. He almost closes out his messages when:
“No, but this 1 is.” This is the least blurry photo out of all of them and it’s of the inside of Eric’s thigh. Maybe he doesn’t know how to crop images or maybe he did it on purpose, Assad thinks, but aside from the red lipstick tattoo that’s front and center in the photo, Eric’s white boxer briefs and the bulge of his dick are clearly visible in the upper right hand of the picture.
Assad preens, releases the hold he has on himself and goes back to stroking, pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, flips back and forth between the three pictures, thrusting up into his hand and stopping when he feels himself get close.
It’s not his first time beating off to a photo or two of Eric. It wasn’t his fault, really, the way he flirted with him on and off set and always seemed to seamlessly play it off as a joke. He picks his pace back up a bit at that thought, squeezing the swollen head of his cock every time he worked back up, zooming into the photos Eric sent.
He was close. He slowed down his pace, went back to the photo where Eric’s bulge was slightly visible, thrusted up into his hand and—
“Facetime: Eric”
He froze.
He pulled his hand out from his boxers, wiped it on his sheets, blinked, and swiped the sweat on his forehead away with the back of his wrist. He could just ignore, he thinks, as the notification goes away. He’s laying there for a second when it goes off again: “Facetime: Eric”
He takes a quick sip of the water on his nightstand and accepts the call: “Hey.” His voice almost cracks.
“Hey, what the hell, your shit infected or not? I’m trying to decide if I need to run to rite aid and grab a tube of neosporin or not.”
“I’m good. Mine- mine’s good.” Assad manages out, he’s got his face half covered with the throw blanket on his bed.
“Let me see, then. I’m trying to compare. I’ve been slapping this thing and trying not to itch it like a motherfucker.” Eric’s lifted his shirt back up again, like the shaky facetime footage of it is any clearer than what he’s already sent.
“Uh. um... Ok.” Assad throws the blanket over his crotch before turning the camera around, putting the camera closer to the practically healed tattoo on his thigh.
Eric doesn’t say anything at first, just seems to zone in on what Assad is showing him.
“Yeah, guess it’s fine.” He finally says. “Hey, I didn’t interrupt something, did I?”
Assad’s face turns beet red. “What?!” he coughs out.
“You’re shaking and there’s a bottle of something next to you. I’m not trying to embarrass you, just saying sorry if I interrupted you and a friend. You didn’t have to pick up, y’know. Shit, I just realized it’s probably like 2:00 there,” Eric blabbers. “Sorry, ignore me. Ramblings of an old guy. Gets the better of me sometimes.”
Assad doesn’t know what to say. He’s still hard as a rock in his boxers and he’s got Eric on the other line. “No, no...” he says “I wasn’t with anyone.”
“Oh, well. Either way, goodn-“
“I was thinking of you.” Assad cuts him off before he can remember that he knows better. “I was looking at the pictures you sent. Of yourself.”
It’s quiet, enough so that Assad can hear Eric’s quickened breathing on the other end.
“You got that worked up, just from those pictures?” Eric finally asks.
“Yeah.”
“Let me see.”
Assad’s got his boxers kicked down to his ankles within a beat, phone camera flipped again, hand back around the base of his swollen cock. “I couldn’t help myself, I just...”
“Fuck, baby.”
Assad shuddered underneath the grasp of his own hand, imagining now that it’s Eric here wringing it out of him. “I’m sorry,” is all he says.
“Sorry? I’ve been trying to get you alone for months now. Thought I was the only one, ha. I’m the one who’s sorry, sorry I’m not there right now. Shit, this whole time, a couple pictures is all it took?”
Assad’s whimpering now, and switches back to being slow with his pace. The camera is on his cock and Eric’s face is on his phone, watching him, and suddenly he doesn’t know what to say. “Just keep going, like that. Keep that pace. C’mon, be good for me.” Assad clenches down at that, further stalling his orgasm.
“I wanna see,” he manages to get out. “Show me the tattoo again. Your ribs.”
Eric holds the phone down and pulls his shirt back up with the other. “What else? I’m all yours. Fuck, I wish I was there with you right now.”
“What would you do, if you were?” Assad asks.
“Stop touching yourself.” Eric orders. He stops. “Prop your phone up and let me watch you finger yourself.”
So Assad does. He adjusts his phone against his headboard and puts his two pillows at the other end of the bed and lays down, legs spread open for Eric to see. “Nah, I think I want you on your knees.” Is all he gets back.
He rolls over and awkwardly sprawls his legs down the bed. “No, baby. You’re killing me. Ass up, in the air. Yes, like that. Now grab that bottle of lube.”
Assad can’t see his phone anymore, thanks to Eric’s instructions on being face down. So he trusts that he can see him and does what he says, lubes his fingers up and slides them in between his ass, rubbing slow circles over his sensitive hole. It’s been a while since he’s fingered himself.
“That feel good? You like that?” Eric coos. “That’s me, hon. I’m right there with you.” Assad groans into his pillow. “Go on, c’mon.”
Assad slowly slips one finger inside, feeling it all. His opportunity to be good for Eric.
“Can you see me?” He hears him say, and he rolls his face around enough to get a glimpse of his phone through the corner of his eye. “Yes.” he breathes.
Eric has his own dick in his hand. It’s more girth than length, which Assad always pictured. He spits into his palm and starts stroking. “Alright. Match my pace, use your fingers as if it were me there.” Eric says.
So he does. Goes back to burying his face in the pillow, adds another finger, both knuckle deep, his neglected cock hanging in between his thighs, leaking precum down onto his sheets.
“C’mon, faster, babe.” Eric instructs.
He’s brushing up against his prostate now, adds a third finger, when he hears Eric moaning on the other end.
“I’m close. Eric, I’m-“
“You’re so beautiful, y’know that? I’m right there, baby. Go on.”
That’s all it takes. He’s collapsing and rutting his orgasm out onto his sheets, wave after wave of pleasure totally encompassing his body. He doesn’t care how he sounds, which is probably entirely erotic, because Eric is right there with him, just like he’s apparently been the entire time.
It’s likely only been a minute but it feels like a year before either of them break the silence. “Oh my god.” Assad says first, still face down in his mattress, his spent hand lodged in between his pubic bone and his sheets.
“So this tattoo of mine, Neosporin or no?”
“You’re an asshole.” Assad giggles and rolls over to grab his phone. “And it is 2:00 AM here, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah. At least I don’t use photos of my coworkers for self-fornication.”
“Yeah, well.. you will after I send you a couple here in the next few days.”
“Ooooh, ignore what I said, then.”
It’s quiet again, but not awkward. “I’m going to sleep.” Assad says.
“Ok.. wish I was there with you.”
“Me too.” and the call ends there.
——-
It’s around 6:00 AM in New York —and two days later— when Assad sends Eric a photo of his own: a mirror photo of himself with his leg craned up on his sink. He’s in black panties with the tattoo on his thigh in full frame. “This look infected to you?”