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In the aftermath of seeing Ruben again, he finds himself thinking, near incessantly, about the rough scratch of his beard against his skin.
It's the most alien thing about this new Ruben, in some ways, that beard. He hadn't been one for facial hair when they were younger—shaved most mornings, even as a teenager, from the time they shared a room together, right on through until the time they didn't.
Niall remembers watching him at it some mornings. He thinks it might have reminded him a bit of the hazy memories of his father shaving in the mornings. Except—not at all really.
He remembers the bare line of Ruben's back through the open bathroom door, a towel around his waist; the rounded curve of his shoulder blade as he leaned over the ugly pink ceramic of the sink to inspect his work. He remembers how he himself had barely needed to reach for a razor at all back then.
You're alright, Bambers, Ruben had laughed at him once, hauling him in with an arm around his neck and slapping him lightly on the cheek. He'd gripped Niall's face with one hand and forced him to look in the mirror. The birds like it better smooth, anyway. His thumb rubbed a little circle over the hinge of Niall's jaw.
And so when Niall hugs him, when he sinks into his arms on that hospital bed, there is something familiar in it, in the feeling of this new, unfamiliar Ruben. The bruising grip of his fingers is still the same; the line of his back and the rounded curve of his shoulder blade. There is the scent of his skin, in that space right below where his old tattoo sits, and that is familiar too.
But still—those unfamiliar pieces. There's the sound of his voice now, deeper and lower than how Niall remembers it, his clever new words all spoken in a near growl; there is the added muscle, corded through his arms and across his chest. And again, there is the beard—thick and dark and scratching over Niall's jaw, roughly enough to leave a mark.
And he thinks it must leave some mark on him, feels like it does—if not then, as Ruben grips him tightly and presses his face into Niall's shoulder for the first time in nearly 15 years, surely it did before that. When Ruben had held him down on that same bed earlier.
The beard scraping across Niall's cheek and the back of his neck as he struggled underneath Ruben's weight; a rough drag across his temples as Ruben fought to cover Niall's mouth, to yank down the back of his underwear; that new, deep growl of a voice in Niall's ear saying—saying—
He drives Niall home the following afternoon. Niall's own car—which in reality, is also Ruben's car—is perhaps, best described as a lost cause at the moment. So Ruben had come back and picked him up at the hospital, in the same car Niall had vandalized not 24 hours before. He tries not to stare at the empty space where the bonnet ornament had once been. Squirms a little in the passenger seat. Sore; some other feeling he can't quite identify.
"You'll call me if you need anything else," Ruben says to him as they come to a stop in front of his place. The bedsit, which, like his wrecked car, is also actually Ruben's. "You'll call me and you'll ask me for it, Bambi."
And, well. It's not as though Niall can say that he won't. So. He bites the inside of his cheek, but he nods. "Yeah. Alright."
Ruben nods as well, like he's satisfied with the answer. Like he approves of it. His hand goes to the back of Niall's neck, gripping it tight as he pulls him in.
It's not a hug this time, but another familiar gesture, his forehead pressing against Niall's. He can feel Ruben's fingers card through the hair at the back of his head, once, twice.
Niall closes his eyes as something in him reluctantly settles.
He leaves the car and goes inside; he sits down on the rumpled bedding and takes a painkiller to numb the creeping throb of a returning headache. You were lucky, the doctor had said to him. A slight concussion was about the worst of his injuries. A few nasty abrasions and a whole lot of bruising. No lasting damage, apparently.
He spends a few days mostly holed up indoors, alternating between resting like he's supposed to, dodging his mum's calls, and slowly picking at the open word document on his laptop, whenever the ringing in his head isn't actively trying to kill him. His publisher hasn't replied to his email yet, but he knows Daniel fairly well by now—if he'd assumed the proposal was utter shit, he would have already told Niall so. A few days of silence means he might actually be taking the time to read it properly. It feels like a good sign. He wants it to be a good sign.
And either way, the writing is as good of an outlet as any, isn't it?
He's already thinking about Ruben; this gives him something to do with it. Somewhere to put it.
A little over a week into this routine, Niall finds himself waking up in the middle of the night, gasping for a breath.
He's caught in the remnants of a vivid dream, the feeling of it still clinging to his brain and to his body, even as he slams into wakefulness—a violent mix of memory and something else entirely.
In the dream, there are hands clinging to him, holding him down as he struggles; an arm that comes up and around his neck, locking him into a chokehold. In the dream, there are fingers that cover his lips at first, but then catch on the edge of his teeth, and force his mouth open.
In the dream, he tastes blood; in the dream, he tastes metal. In the dream, he tastes skin.
In his bed, Niall's cock is a hard and heavy line in his underwear.
It keeps happening.
The dreams don't come every single night, but they come often. Always strange, always violent—mean hands and mean fists and Niall's blood and Niall's spit. A knife thrown into the mix of it once or twice.
And every time it happens, he wakes up half choking, and so hard he feels sick with it.
He doesn't touch himself; instead Niall gets up and he paces and he writes. Instead, he pretends it never happened. Forces himself not to think about it.
He's out one night at a fairly reliable pub he knows, leaning against a dingy cubicle wall in the men's toilets, while a guy on his knees sucks him off.
He's younger than Niall, and slight; thick sandy brown where it's caught in Niall's fist. Niall's not especially choosy about the men he fucks, as long as he gets to fuck, but he does like it when they look like this. He likes it when they can make him feel big. Craves it now, especially after—everything.
The man on his knees bobs his head, taking Niall deeper into his mouth; his hands are braced against the bare skin of Niall's thighs, where his jeans and shorts are pushed down and out of the way. Niall lets his eyes slip closed and his head tip back against the cubicle wall. It's good. It is good. This is what he'd come out for tonight. This is what he likes. Fuck whatever else has been going on in his head.
The hands on Niall's thighs palm over his skin, stroking. One slides back to grab at his ass for leverage; the fingers nudge, briefly, into Niall's crease.
Niall feels the way his cock pulses in the wet cavern of the guy's mouth, at the same time that his stomach drops as though he's just walked off a fucking ledge.
He wrenches himself away from the guy so hard and so quickly that they both nearly fall over.
"Whoa, hey," the guy is saying, his hands up in the universal gesture of meaning no harm. "Why'd you—hey I wasn't trying to shove 'em in, I was just—"
But Niall can barely even hear him; there's a strange rushing sound in his ears, like white noise. His heart is beating too quickly. He says something to the guy, he's not sure what—could be sorry or it's alright or fuck you—and yanks his underwear and jeans back up, before fleeing the cubicle.
It's a little better, once he's made it all the way outside and into the cool night air, but it still takes too fucking long for his heartbeat to slow down. To settle.
Christ. For fuck's sake.
Niall walks back home. It's late enough now that the communal bathroom is unoccupied, so he strips out of his dirty clothes and he steps into the shower.
Under the warm spray of the water, he closes his eyes.
He lets himself give in.
He doesn't imagine himself back in the hospital. He doesn't want that. He really doesn't.
What comes to him instead, is almost worse in a way.
He's on the ground, somewhere abandoned perhaps, or no, perhaps—the car park, in the middle of the night. Yes, that, he thinks. He imagines other people around him, other men watching—not close enough to stop whatever it is that's about to happen, but close enough to see. Close enough to touch themselves to the sight of it.
Niall is on the ground and he's laid out on his stomach; there is a hand pressing the side of his face into the asphalt, the gravel digging into his cheek and making it bleed.
He can feel the heavy weight of a man's body on top of him, keeping him in place. A hand reaches down to pull at his trousers, to yank his underwear down and expose his ass. It spreads him open; there is the blunt, unfamiliar feeling of a hard cock pressing up against his hole.
In the shower, Niall is hard again, and stroking himself, quick and a little desperate already. He braces his other arm against the tile, his breaths going heavy as he imagines the man entering him. He spreads his legs a little where he stands.
He's never been on the receiving end like that before (not unless, not unless you were to count—) but he's given it enough times and he's sucked enough cock that he can imagine what he wants it to feel like.
And he does, he does imagine it: in his mind, the man behind him takes him hard, deep. He knows how to fuck; he does it better than Niall's ever done it—than he could ever dream of doing it.
There is the hard rasp of a beard against the hinge of his jaw—
(You're alright, Bambers. The birds like it better smooth, anyway. But Niall's not a bird and he doesn't care whether it's smooth or not, likes it maybe, that it isn't fucking smooth—)
—-and there's a low mean voice, growling in his ear: pathetic cunt, worthless fucking rat. This is what you've always wanted from me, isn't it?
Yes, this is what you've always wanted.
In the shower, Niall lets out a quiet moan.
There is an awful word clawing at the inside of his throat, a word that he's used to asking for, but never giving. He can't say it aloud, but he presses his open mouth to the wrist braced against the tile; licks around the shape of it on his skin. The D of it. The Y of it. His strokes speed up without his permission, frantic and sloppy about it now, his skin slapping wet and likely a little too loud, a low groan overlaying the word he cannot say.
But, in his horrible, awful little fantasy, he does say it—he offers it up to the man fucking him so roughly and so perfectly into the ground.
The man grunts his approval; Niall feels him press his face into the juncture between his neck and shoulder and breathe him in. He feels his fingers card through the hair at the back of Niall's head. Once. Twice.
Niall comes less than a minute later, spilling against the water-slicked tiles.
Afterwards, he feels—less awful than he expects. He doesn't even throw up until after he's tried to force down a tepid cup of tea an hour later.
(He thinks of that night again, briefly, a year later—when he's hunched over the sink at the clinic; he thinks of it as he lets the medicine in his gut purge every shameful, unwanted desire out of him. Gone, gone, gone.)