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It’s been a while since Sylvain brought someone home. He made it through the bulk of the holidays but couldn’t quite skate through to the new year without a return to form, one last doubling back after years of—well, not chastity, exactly, but serious and healthful discretion. The exact phrase he confronts himself with is reformed slut Sylvain Jose Gautier rides again which has a sardonic ring to it that makes him aware of just how nervous he is.
He watches as Felix, no last name, takes in his apartment in indiscreet glances. He lives alone; he reads; he‘s tidy, maybe unnaturally tidy: the implications are swept aside when Felix’s gaze comes to rest on him.
He feels pinned by it. Undressed. He’s made aware of his trappings. Just shy of middle age, unless his life expectancy is foreshortened—which he’s always secretly expected it to be—and heavy, in his stomach, arms, chest and thighs. He’s settled into himself, his friend Mercedes puts it, and she says it like it’s a good thing. His well-kept beard, the glasses he has stopped denying he needs, the sweater he wore to the bar, not expecting to revive old habits—it all signifies something, though he’s lost track of what.
The looking goes both ways. Felix is devastating. Probably not much younger than Sylvain, but he wears it so much better. Compact and sleek and serious. Even the early silver shot through his long dark hair makes Sylvain feel crazy. He’s like a model, sharp-faced and unattainably attractive. And he came up to Sylvain—how could Sylvain have turned that down? The quiet intensity of Felix’s attention? His scowl, and those cheekbones? Sylvain went to therapy, not a convent.
Muscle memory and bravado allowed Sylvain to lead this man back to his apartment. Now that he’s here, the gulf of his wanting seems huge, almost uncrossable. The frisson that’s been simmering in his spine since Felix took a seat beside him at the bar spreads through his whole bloodstream.
“How do you want it?” Felix asks from the doorway of Sylvain’s bedroom. He let Sylvain wander out in front of him, where Sylvain’s only turned one lamp on in service of ambience.
Sylvain draws in a breath. He’d been so good at this, once. So good at getting something, and good at convincing himself it was what he was after.
He looks up at Felix: controlled, stunning Felix. He’s surprised it doesn’t sound like he’s kidding when he says, “What if I said you were in charge?”
A beat. Felix considers him with dark eyes. Sizing him up, it feels like. “Okay,” he says. He crosses the room, meets Sylvain by the bed. “You’ll say when?”
Sylvain nods. Felix presses forward, movements telegraphed, one hand going to Sylvain’s jaw and another on his soft hip. It’s been a long time since Sylvain was kissed, really kissed, nothing drunk and fleeting. Felix pours his whole focus into it: licking into Sylvain’s mouth, working a hand into Sylvain’s hair. It lasts so long that Sylvain realizes kissing is a thing Felix likes to do. As far as introductions go, it’s killer. Sylvain feels messy, a little desperate, a little dazed by how easy it is to give himself up to Felix’s steady, exacting presence.
One of Felix’s hands slips up under his sweater and Sylvain gasps softly into Felix’s mouth. The flinch is uncontrollable, the sucking in of his stomach. Felix stops, pulls back an inch or two to look at Sylvain. Sylvain swallows. Slowly, deliberately, Felix follows the curve of Sylvain’s stomach, rucking up the hem of his sweater as he goes.
He’s exposed by inches. Bared to the room and to Felix, inexorable, until his tits are out. He feels unaccountably bashful. He’s never acted this much like a virgin in his life, but then, he didn’t have much to write home about up there until the last few years. Felix gropes with both hands. He drops his mouth from Sylvain’s neck to scrape his teeth over Sylvain’s nipple. He flicks the left one, the pierced one—a relic of younger, sluttier times—then tweaks it, looking up at Sylvain.
“You’re hot,” Felix says. Two words and they knock Sylvain in the head. Felix’s gaze is intent, almost animal. He tugs at Sylvain’s piercing with his teeth.
“Fuck,” Sylvain breathes out. “Let me— Let me do something for you.”
Anything, he means. Felix seems to consider, then points with his chin at Sylvain’s tits. “Play with those,” he says.
Sylvain groans, helplessly. His face is hot. He brings his hands up to knead his own tits. Not something he’s ever done before. Felix looks on; Sylvain thinks he appears pleased, and hungry, which in turn makes Sylvain desperate to keep that look on Felix’s face. He pushes Sylvain until Sylvain hits the bed, and lays back, tits and belly on display. Felix plants one knee on the bed and leans over him.
“Keep going,” Felix says. Sylvain sucks in a breath and pinches his own nipples.
He’s achingly hard. For a second, he thinks Felix might deign to do something about it, but when he bends close to Sylvain it’s to bring his mouth to Sylvain’s stomach and lick a long stripe up the curve of it. Sylvain can’t help it; his hips twitch. He hears and feels Felix give a soft huff of laughter, followed by a scrape of teeth. Felix alternates bites with sucking kisses against Sylvain’s stomach. It’s a brand new sensation for Sylvain. He thinks briefly, absurdly, that he might die of it, and then a more realistic fear: that he might come in his pants without ever even having his dick touched.
“Felix,” Sylvain grits out. It layers on another intimacy, this stranger’s name in his mouth.
“Still good?” Felix asks, almost lazily, flicking a look up at him.
“Let me suck you,” Sylvain says. He needs solid ground, needs something to focus on his besides own stupid dick.
Felix makes a considering noise, contained and unreadable.
“Please,” Sylvain says. He looks down at Felix, past the rise and fall of his own bare and hairy stomach. Felix’s hand drifts to the outline of Sylvain’s cock through his trousers. Just the ghost of a touch. Sylvain has to fight not to buck up into it.
“Hm,” Felix says. He draws one finger along the straining fabric. Then: “Beg.”
There’s nothing put-on about his tone. None of the machismo or sly sadism Sylvain’s encountered before. Just simple, level, factual.
“Please,” Sylvain says again. “Please let me suck your cock. I want it. I’ll be good at it.”
Felix regards him, his gaze that drags like a slow lick of flame. Sylvain wets his lips. Silently, Felix removes Sylvain’s glasses, sets them on Sylvain’s night table beside a battered, actually-read copy of East of Eden. More proof he didn’t expect company.
In an even, almost flat voice, Felix asks, “How are you on your knees?”
“Great,” Sylvain says, too quickly.
Felix draws back to give him room to sit up. Sylvain slides to his knees in front of him. He feels stupid about the sweater bunched up under his armpits at the same time that Felix reaches down and draws it off over his head. The look on Felix’s face gives little away, but there’s color high on his cheeks, and his eyes are dark. Some of his hair has fallen forward and it draws shadows over him in the low light. Sylvain wants to kiss him again.
“Please,” Sylvain says again, into the silence stretching between them. “You can make me choke. I don’t mind.“ Daringly, he leans in and rubs his cheek over Felix’s bulge. He’s hard, too. He wants this, too. He meant it when he said Sylvain was hot.
“I’ll make it good,” Sylvain promises in a low voice. He runs a hand up Felix’s thigh, then looks up at Felix through his lashes, a patented move of his back in the day.
Felix tips his head to the side. “No,” he says shortly.
“Um,” Sylvain says. He blinks. His posture starts to slacken in retreat. “Sure. No worries. Am I down here for nothing, then?”
“No,” Felix says. “I think you’re capable of something more interesting.” Carefully, he nudges the toe of his boot between Sylvain’s spread legs.
Sylvain doubles over, hissing in a gasp. Spit floods his mouth. “Holy shit.” He looks up at Felix; Felix watches him with concentration, his thick eyebrows drawn slightly together, emphasizing a wrinkle between them. Such a serious man. So sure-handed. Maybe this was what he suspected, back at the bar, studying Felix’s sharp face in the low light—that if he brought Felix home, Felix would know what to do with the mess of him. Sylvain nods, open mouthed, for Felix to continue.
Felix toes at his balls, drags along the heft of his shaft, light pressure that keeps Sylvain frozen in place under the threat of more. He wants to move away and he wants to press into it. It feels like flirting with obliteration, with the unknown expanse of a stranger’s mercy.
“You’re gorgeous,” Sylvain rasps out. “You know that?”
“Even now?”
“Especially now,” Sylvain laughs, and the sound chokes off into a groan as the flat of Felix’s boot presses against the length of him.
“You want to come?” Felix asks.
Sylvain shudders and nods. “Need me to beg some more?”
“No.” Felix’s boot lifts away entirely. He sets it down flat, just an inch or two from Sylvain’s crotch. “Go on,” he says, voice low. “Get yourself off.”
Sylvain’s pent-up cock twitches. A high noise whines in his brain. The room seems to slide out of place and then back again.
“Ah,“ he says. “Fuck.”
“You can, can’t you? Or are you all talk?”
He can. He knows he can. It’s knowing that Felix can see this in him too that makes him drop his head to hide his burning face. If he does this, he thinks he’ll be different. Left in unknown territory with himself. But that was what he wanted, right? When he ceded control to the hot stranger with the unshakable bearing? To know himself differently. To not look up and find he’s trod the same ground as he has for years, turned to mud beneath his feet.
He shuffles forward to close the gap between them. He slots Felix’s leg between his own thighs; he has to adjust himself a little in his pants so the hard outline of his cock lines up right. Each step is more embarrassing than the last but it feels correct to have Felix—specifically Felix—watching him. Under Felix’s unwavering expression, the humiliation is sharp and good, somehow; it’s part of it without being the entire point.
Felix’s boots are leather, lots of laces, climbing halfway up the leg like riding boots. Sylvain had thoughts about those boots, when he first laid on eyes them. He rolls his hips once, tentatively; it takes a second before he gets a good rhythm going, before it feels good enough to sink into, despite how compromising his position is. He grabs at the back of Felix’s thigh, looking for more pressure, looking for something warm past the unyielding leather.
“Good,” Felix says. Only that. He combs his hand through Sylvain’s hair, like he’s trying to see Sylvain’s face better.
Sylvain touches a hand to Felix’s wrist; Felix abides and tugs at the roots of Sylvain’s hair. It makes Sylvain feel trapped, pleasantly, in a way that renders his inhibitions useless, dwindling as they are.
“Fuck,” he says. Every thrust against Felix’s leg only just takes the edge off, the good thing a flash at the end of every movement. “This is— I haven’t done this, you know? I don’t normally do this.“
“But for me,” Felix says, and leaves off the end of it.
“Yeah,” Sylvain gasps. “For you.” His hips jerk in small, desperate motions; he’s embarrassed, and he’s so, so hard. His cock leaks pre through his pants.
He presses his open mouth to Felix’s thigh, muffling his whines. Felix keeps a good grip on his hair. He can almost feel the heat of Felix’s trapped cock, inches from his face.
Sylvain looks up at Felix, blinking through the wetness that’s sprung to his eyes.
“Please,” he says again. His voice cracks.
“Yeah,” Felix says, gratifyingly breathless.
Sylvain groans and unzips Felix’s pants. What he lacks in coordination he makes up for in enthusiasm. He moans around Felix’s cock and thrusts against Felix’s leg and pulls against Felix’s hand in his hair, glutted on the feeling of it all. Full up, for once.
It’s not long, then: feels like all his pieces shudder together instead of apart, with the click of something unlocking—he comes with a groan and his mouth still stuffed with Felix’s cock. Blindly, he sucks Felix through it, and before his own aftershocks have subsided, Felix is tugging on his hair in warning. Sylvain doubles down and swallows.
He rests on his haunches, panting, a light sheen of sweat cooling on his skin. Felix is pink-faced, his bottom lip bitten, looking only slightly disarrayed. He tucks his softening cock away and offers Sylvain a hand.
The arm that hoists him up has strength behind it that Sylvain shouldn’t be surprised by. He totters a little; with a hand on his back, Felix steadies him. Sylvain huffs a laugh, giddy, not quite back on earth yet. Felix’s hand is warm, amusement playing over the bare curve of his lips.
“One sec,” Sylvain says. He stops off at the dresser before a trip to the bathroom to clean himself up. He swishes mouthwash while he considers himself in the mirror. He blushes and looks away, then back again.
Sylvain finds Felix in the kitchen afterward. He’s leaning against the counter holding a glass of water. The subtle barometer of his expression has moved two ticks from total dispassion and onto what Sylvain thinks might be a touch of awkwardness. The fact he didn’t just up and leave means something, maybe.
“Hey,“ Sylvain says, and Felix’s sharp eyes fix on him. “You hungry?”
Felix just considers him for a second, which is window enough for Sylvain to ramble. “Not for home cooking, if that helps. But no worries if you’re busy with the holiday and everything. There’s just a really good diner down the street. If you’re interested.”
One slow blink. “The day before New Year’s Eve isn’t a holiday.”
“Okay. Is that a no?”
“No,” Felix says, gaze sliding onto and off of Sylvain’s face. “I could eat.”
Sylvain feels himself grin and fights it down to something more reasonable. Then he loses the battle all over again when Felix accepts his scarf in deference to the fingertips of snow falling soundlessly past the window. He winds it around Felix’s neck himself. Being allowed this feels like an accomplishment for reasons he chooses not to name.
Outside, on the powdered sidewalk, Sylvain watches the clouds of Felix’s breathing against the muffled expanse of night.
Eyes forward, Felix says, “This is the part I don’t normally do.”
But for me? Sylvain thinks, and leaves off the end of it.