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"Ava and I - " Niall says to Ruben's angry red face knowing full-well that he's sticking his head in the mouth of a hungry lion looking for the closest antelope, " - She asked if I ever thought about having children."
Niall keeps his chin up as his confidence dwindles with each step Ruben takes towards him, each centimeter Ruben towers over him, every degree Ruben burns into his face with the iciness of his glare.
There's a moment where there's only the quiet of the neighborhood. Then another with Ruben exhaling loud and long from his nose. The one that follows leaves Niall about to crack.
"Have you?" Ruben rumbles, a deep velvet tone that wraps its hands around Niall's neck and waits for Niall to break.
Laugh it off or stick to his guns and deal with the blow up. A part of him enjoys the acrid scent of the smoke when Ruben explodes and leaves only Niall standing in the razed trees charred and crumbling at their feet.
The other part knows better.
"I - I don't know." Niall cracks, shoulders slumping, his chin falling. He smiles, chagrined. The better part of himself winning out and feeling worse for it. "It's why I wanted to ask you."
"Hm."
Ruben turns so Niall only sees his profile, the tight way he's coiled himself, square jaw clenching, vein at his temple thrumming, thinking. Considering the vast lack of Niall's paternal instincts. Connecting the dots, Niall knows, to his own lack of paternal physics.
Ruben tilts his head back to Niall, scouring the entirety of him for something. Sincerity, maybe. Seeing a future where Niall is changing nappies and he isn't.
His hand shoots out and grabs Niall by the scruff of his neck and reels him in and under the heavy and firm weight of his arm.
"I need a drink." Ruben declares, meaning they need a drink.
-
Niall takes Ruben to the pub he and Ava go to after her shifts where they talk and flirt and Niall doesn't deliver and Ava gave up calling any of his bluffs months ago. The Blue Dog with red lights and closed-knit tables. Enough of a crowd to blend in. Plenty of corners to hide out.
He'd told Ava about the men here. Gave her enough of a picture to get the idea and kept the worse details to himself, found a balance that would be endearing rather than appalling. Had come out to her and felt the lie like an itch in his ear.
I like women better, but, you know. Some men. Here and there.
Every trucker going through Glasgow is hardly a drop in the ocean.
They're sat at a table in the back. They get thick foamed lagers. Niall sips while Ruben downs his in one go, foam sticking to his mustache and a bit of his beard, already flagging a waiter down for another.
He wipes the foam off with the back of his hand and settles into his chair to look over Niall with a hitched up eyebrow, his arms crossing over his chest.
"You've only been dating a year." Ruben says.
"Well." Niall turns his glass, the flimsy coaster soaking up its condensation quickly. "When you know, you - "
" - And you know? With her?" Ruben's head tilts to the left. Narrowing his eyes just that much. "She's rich. Pretty. Nice house. Good to have a nurse in the family."
"She's a doctor."
"Right. And she's the one."
"I mean." Niall dips his finger into the foam and doesn't have the confidence to suck it off without telling on himself. He wipes it on a napkin and folds the napkin then crumples it, thinking himself prissy. "I like her a lot."
"You like her a lot.”
“And like you said, she’s pretty.”
“Hm.”
Niall’s sweating and he blames the pub.
Ruben gets up, the suddenness sets Niall on edge. He braces himself for anything.
Yelling.
A thrashing.
Worse and worse.
Ruben walks around the table, he knocks at Niall’s shoulder with the back of his hand and has him scoot to his left to the other side of the wooden bench. He slides in beside him, his thick arm resting on Niall’s shoulders rather than the bench or the divider separating them from the next table over. He leans in close, the smell of beer on his breath.
Niall tries to hold himself still without seeming like that's what he's doing, still unsure which way this can go. Ruben doesn't care who watches. Fucking or fighting. Niall or someone else. A sure hand on his cock or a boot to some poor boy's face.
"And you? What're you bringing to the table?" Ruben adjusts Niall's jacket. Tugs it closed and leaves his hand there pressed to Niall's chest. This heavy weight keeping Niall there. In his seat. In Ruben's sights.
What they must look like, sitting like this, sitting this close. Niall's ears go hot first. Always his ears than his cheeks than his fucking toes. He's flammable, burns all over so quickly and a furtive panicked glance around shows no one's even looking.
He tries to relax. It's just Ruben. He's not the same man he was a year ago, let alone four. He's changed. He's better. Knows better.
"You got her money and her house and her fucking job and the car I bought you." Ruben lists off, rubbing circles on Niall's sternum then lower to rest on his stomach, below the table. He says, "How often you fuck her, Bambi?"
Niall's hands rest frozen on the table. Staying still was a mistake. Moving would be another. He doesn't know how to be casual and unassuming when Ruben has him pinned like this.
It's just Ruben and Ruben can destroy worlds.
There's a throb between his legs.
"Don't be shy with me." Ruben jostles him by his shoulders. "I've seen how she looks at you. Like she wants you to ram her through."
Niall flexes his hands. He pastes his frown carefully, not too disapproving. A prude. A mental case who's only just gotten his first girlfriend.
"A few times." He clears his throat and adds with more confidence to his lie, "A week."
Ruben tuts at him. "Daily. Should be a couple times every day. You want to keep her, don’t you? Don't want her fucking around with some cunt on you?”
"Do you and Mona?" Niall's stomach drops. He doesn't want to picture it. He wants to see it. "Every day? More than once?"
Ruben snickers, pulling Niall closer so he's tucked completely into his side under the vast weight of his arm hugging him tighter. Again.
"Should see her, Niall. Always fucking wanting a piece of this." He grabs at his own crotch, the outline of his hardening dick fills his hand. "If you weren't with Miss Prissy, I'd invite you over."
Niall wraps his hands around his glass, pretending to mull it over. To find the idea appropriately endearing and amusing. His lager is still cool. The foam dissipating. The glass slick with moisture.
He shakes his head.
“You’re married, I couldn’t.”
Ruben shrugs. His grip on Niall steady and unwavering, nearly comforting, entirely familiar. Ruben's hands on him more reassuring and destructive than Niall's.
“My brother. My wife. You’re both family.”
Niall tries to grunt but it comes out strangled and cracked. Pieces of a stripped bare response.
“And family tells each other shit. You’re holding back on me and I’d better not find out it’s another stay at the hospital. If you’re breaking, I want to know.”
“You’d be the first I’d call.”
“Before Lori? Before Ava?”
Niall can allow this truth. Offer it for a peaceful night.
He nods. A small jerk of his head that curls around something inside of him to admit it and makes it ache.
Ruben awards him with his hand on Niall's head, his brick fingers combing through his hair softly. Breaking up the mousse. Messing it however he sees fit. Grounding Niall to the bench and this pub.
And Niall leans into it. Burns brighter under the red lights.
Ruben pets at him and hums and whispers into Niall's ear, “You give her a tonguing, don't you?"
"Too loud."
"No one's listening."
"Still. That's not - " Ruben tugs at his hair, quick and could be mistaken as an accident. Incidental. Intentional only to someone who wants it to be. "I don't want to talk about that."
"How do you think babies are made, Bambi? It's not magic. It's a cunt and a dick getting handsy."
"So romantic."
"It can be with the right bird. And you would know, wouldn't you?" Ruben tugs at his hair for the second time and Niall's mind quiets before he can want it to mean anything.
He downs his lager, not as swiftly as Ruben and not nearly as cleanly, but he needs something to do with his hands and something to muffle his head Ruben's fingers are digging into.
If only Ruben could reach inside and take his brain out. It would solve everything. No more mistakes. No babies. No fatherhood for him. The dirt would be scrubbed out of him. Mindless and happy.
The drink spills from the corner of his mouth and down his neck, soaking into his collar. He sets the glass back on the table with a heavy defeated thud.
"You're dripping." Ruben admonishes him, his thumb is at Niall's mouth, his hand cupping Niall's jaw in something close to tender, wiping the mess from Niall's lip down his chin. Uses the back of his fingers to clean the spill from Niall's neck, lingering on Niall's pulse.
He leans into it. He knows he does. He feels his body doing it without him. Maybe his brain isn't the only problem. It's all of him. The molecules that make him up are all twisted with perversions.
"What's got you all excited?" Ruben murmurs, hand in Niall's hair, hand on Niall's neck, body snug and burly and hot pressed to Niall's, wrapped up from all sides in Ruben. "You really want to be a daddy, Niall?"
It takes him a moment to hear the question and pick it apart and find an answer while Ruben rubs his fingers up and down Niall's pulse, his touch firm and unashamed as he spreads his fingers and his hand settles on Niall's neck. A collar. A reminder.
Ruben doesn't care and Niall's sick with caring. Trembles with it. Gets hard with it.
"That's what I'm meant to want, isn't it? A man should have a house and a wife and a baby." Niall says, turning his face up to Ruben's. Close to his. The sky-blue of his eyes heavy-lidded and dark in the red lights of the pub. "Isn't it?"
"Aye." Ruben nods, putting pressure on Niall's neck. "But do you? Little Prince Niall Brandon Kennedy?"
Niall's hands fall to his lap. Fidgeting with his slacks. Going loose. Cornered and no idea what to do with any of it.
"Ava does."
"Think you can give her that? Just a few times a week. Living off her money. My money." Ruben's hold on him loosens and slides down to rest at the bottom of Niall's neck, his hand fanning out under his shirt collar to touch Niall's clavicle from end to end, his other hand cards through his hair to pinch at his ear.
Niall's eyes had fluttered shut somewhere and he wrenches them back open with a gasp.
"You've got one thing going for you, Niall. Prove it to me you've got what it takes to be a man, aye?"
-
There's everything to blame. The pub for having such an obvious back door. The alleyway for being deserted. The security camera for having a clear blindspot two steps from the exit. The swindler for not doing a good enough job at setting Niall straight. Ruben for pushing him against the brick wall and holding him there with his large hand, panting lager-breath in his face, keen to get Niall out of his pants.
"Show me." Ruben says, pawing at Niall's chest. Two of his shirt buttons come undone. Niall grabs at Ruben's thick forearm, holding onto him, can feel his corded muscles through the leather pushing at Niall.
Niall glances at the door. Down the alley. At the buildings surrounding them. Pubs and restaurants full of people Niall can hear and that could see them. Niall's head spins and his dick only fills out more at the idea of it. Worse when he looks Ruben in the eye and sees so much heat. At him. Only him.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea, Ruben." He slides his hand down to hold Ruben's wrist where his jacket sleeve ends. Bare skin covered in dark hair. Worse. A mistake. A pattern. "I mean, what if we're - we could get caught."
Ruben's laughter is manic, his crooked smile has that edge just before he goes off, where Niall can only roll over and hope that does the trick.
"Fuck getting caught." Ruben grabs Niall by his jaw, draws his face to look at Ruben and hear Ruben and there's a plea in there underneath the machismo and orders and rough grip digging his fingers into the hinges of Niall’s jaw. "A bit of time on the inside would do you good, Niall."
Niall shakes at the idea. Both hands cling to Ruben’s wrist. Terror and worse worse worse than what he should have had expelled out of him.
The hold on Niall’s jaw softens. So does that crooked smile, rounded at the corners.
"No fags on the ground, Bambi. No one's coming out here until they're taking out the trash." Ruben loosens his hold on Niall and Niall stays exactly where he'd been put. Pressed to the brick wall. Ruben whispers, "No one's gonna do shit to you with me here."
It's a relief that comes on as sudden as the horror. An old wash of protectiveness from days when Niall would be shaken from a glimpse across the room or a street at any boy because when he did peek out at the world they just knew. Like god had written faggot on his forehead that everyone else could see except for him.
Ruben had stood between Niall and boys and god, keeping the world's hands off of him.
“You first.” Niall says. Manages it. Tired of knowing better. Craves the sulfur stench of the burned down woods.
That thin eyebrow of his curves again, rising to new heights while its brother stays put.
“Fair enough.” Ruben says. Nods. Too casual. He takes his hand off of Niall and Niall is forced to let go. His fingers cramped. Clutching in the air at nothing. He leans off of the brick wall, taking half of a step forward before he realizes what he’s doing.
Niall stops and watches and Ruben watches him back.
His large hands fall to his leather belt. He undoes the buckle swiftly and pops the button of his jeans one handed. He doesn’t pause on the zipper. There’s little build up, yet in Niall’s mind behind his wide-eyes catching every single detail to keep in his chest under lock and key, he’s slow. Taking his time. Alert and in tune to Niall’s breath speeding up before catching and stopping altogether.
Ruben shoves the front of his jeans down and pulls out his hard cock. Large. Fits perfectly in his huge hands. Veiny on his thick shaft and dark curls at the base. With only a small light above the pub’s back door, Niall stresses to pinpoint the color of him. Rosy. A light pretty red, nearly pink with a fat head at its tip peeking out from its foreskin.
Ruben strokes himself twice with a dirt-low hum.
Niall stares at it and makes sure, like his life depends on it, that he doesn’t lick his lips. Because he wants to. Because he wants Ruben in his mouth. Can taste him in the air and it's not nearly enough.
Thirty thousand dollars of Ruben’s money and what does he have to show for it?
“C’mon, son." Ruben puts his hand on the wall over Niall's shoulder bringing them nearly nose to nose. There's a challenge in his eyes. Dark in the shadows and if Niall were still like that, it's the kind of look with a name. Ruben juts out his chin. Lays it out at Niall's feet, "Show me what’ll make you a proper daddy.”
It hits Niall in the gut worse like this. Ruben's dick in his hand. Stroking himself slow and loose-fisted while he looks at Niall. No Mona in sight. No other girl to take his attention away. Just Niall and a cold night in Glasgow and a pair of blue eyes he'd feel before seeing.
Niall's mouth parts. Cracks down the middle. Halved and halved again. He licks at his lips and only after does he hope it comes across as incidental.
His hands shake reaching for his belt and he hates it. Hates that he fumbles at his buckle. Hates that Ruben snickers in his face. That his dick throbs at it. The meanness of it. Feels indecent because of it.
Niall gets his fly down and hesitates and hates that worst of all.
"Bambi." Ruben drawls, pulling back foreskin to rub his thumb at his slit. He smiles at him. Crooked, still, but kinder. Softer. One he'd use when it was just the two of them and no one else mattered.
Niall holds his breath and rides the dizzying high of Ruben's attention, his smile, and pulls down his fly. Shoves his boxers and jeans down to his thighs.
"Really are a dark horse." Ruben rumbles, eyes roaming downwards. "Shit, Niall. Fucking massive cock on you."
Niall takes hold of himself like Ruben does. Loosely jerks himself like Ruben. Touches himself the same way at the pride in Ruben's voice, the pleasure from Niall's cock or from touching himself - Niall doesn't care right then which it is - he pulls his own foreskin down to rub at his slit and chews at his bottom lip.
"Tell me. Don't leave me with my dick in my hand." He laughs at his own joke and Niall follows along, it bubbles out of him. Ridiculous. The whole thing is insane. Ruben grins with his sharpest teeth, says, "Am I as big as you thought?"
Bigger than he remembered. Irritates him that he could misremember anything about Ruben. That he could change like this and Niall wouldn't know. Burlier and bigger and longer and darker and every cock Niall's met couldn't compare to this. An alley that stinks of grime and his brother warm and dark and not even touching him.
"It's good. Really - " He can't stop swallowing, gulping for air that isn't going to go down and fill him up. "You're big, Ruben. Fucking huge."
Ruben groans, his fist speeding up, his cock getting wetter. Squelching in his hand. He tilts his hips closer to Niall, lines the two of them up and Niall can hardly comprehend that it's Niall who's thicker, longer - bigger.
He nearly comes right then. Has to squeeze the base of himself and bite back a hiss.
"Massive fuckin' dick. The hell." Ruben says, pride still ringing in his words as if he's talking about himself. "You always have that, Shagger? The fuck did it come from?"
"My mom, probably."
It punches another gut laugh from Ruben and he leans further in, covers Niall more and more in his shadow. An alcove made out of brother and man and years of wanting and not having and thirty grand spent for it all to come crashing down in a pretentious pub's back alley.
Ruben bumps their cockheads together, Ruben slows down so their knuckles knock. It's sticky and warm and he's so goddamn soft, a chill races through Niall, sharp and electric, filling him out further somehow.
His head leaves his body. His toes no longer touching the brick on the ground. He holds his dick steady and rubs its head in circles against Ruben's, their slits touching, their come running and smearing thick on each other, the two of them moan together. Their voices carrying down the alley into the shadows like they're one man.
"The way you looked as a kid." Ruben huffs in Niall's face and there's that soft smile again, fond. Just for Niall. "Slender. Top to fucking bottom, like a damn stick. Remember how you felt in my hand. You been hiding this from me the whole time?"
Niall can hardly tear his eyes away from the sight of Ruben dripping in his own hand, against Niall, on Niall, Niall doing the same to Rubn, and meets his eyes - black and edging towards a warning sign.
Niall's good at ignoring those.
"I would've - Christ - I would've shown you if you asked."
"Yeah? Just like that?"
"Yeah. Yes. Of course. " A slow pull of his cock, hesitating, unsure if he can touch Ruben, if it would snap them both out of this precarious moment and feels faint at the prospect of it. The very idea brought this close to the surface strikes terror and so much want inside of Niall that surely, Ruben's name has been carved into his veins.
I'd do anything for you, he wants to say and knows it would break whatever this is and lose Ruben and his soft smile and sticky cock.
He can't say it. He can't put words to whats making his heart pump petrol through him anticipating the match Ruben will strike.
Burn me, Niall thinks. He wants it.
Drips thick with it between the toes of their shoes onto the ground, the bricks eating it up before Niall could think to drop to his knees and do it himself. Do it properly.
"Look at us. Family resemblance, eh, Niall?" Ruben's practically giddy, a flush settling dark and high on his sharp cheeks. He touches his forehead to Niall's. He's sweaty and Niall is, too. "Two big pricks. Brothers."
"Like we're twins." Niall says. Has to pause, grip himself deathly tight until it hurts and the pain feels worse than the good. "Got our good looks from our mom."
Ruben nods a bit frantic, his forehead scraping along Niall's.
"And our massive cocks from da."
Ruben's pace quickens, stripping his cock harshly, the veins in his hand matching the ones pumping thick along his shaft, stirring Niall to hasten his own pace. Panting in Niall's face and Niall gasping in his. Breathless. Winded with his ass out in the cold and their cocks a furnace.
It's all he can do o not break his knees on the brick and lick the length of Ruben, bury his nose in those dark curls at the root of him and suck him, swallow every drop and make up for the ones he'd missed.
"Ask me." Ruben says, panting.
Do it again and again. He'd never leave the ground. He'd forget how to stand. He'd show Ruben he's better than Mona. Than any girl.
"What?"
"Ask me." Ruben growls the words out, fucking his fist with brutal bucks of his hips. "Ask me to let you have a fucking baby, Bambi. C'mon."
The words get clogged in his throat. His balls pull tight, his cock pulsing in his hand, threatening to come. Standing on the edge and seeing only hell.
"Ruben." He whimpers. Hates that he whimpers. That his voice can crack at this age, in front of Ruben. "Can I? Please? Can I have a baby?"
Ruben's growl turns into a groan deep from his chest, his mouth falls open - blood-flushed red lips and the shadowed pink of his tongue and the sharp teeth of a lion finally getting its antelope - he keeps his eyes open, on Niall, no one else, just Niall, his brother stares at him and inside of him and shoots off. Covering Niall's shirt, his pants, his cock in a heavy splattering load that sears where it touches. Makes Niall's prick more slick and his own hand flies and its one choked breath before he comes, splattering on Ruben's hand, on his spent twitching cock, on the lucky bricks below them eating what Niall deserves more.
Ruben grumbles. He rubs their foreheads together. His come covered hand curls around the back of Niall's neck, smearing himself across Niall's skin, branding him.
"My brother from another lover." Ruben laughs. Delight shining in his eyes. He brushes his nose to Niall's and Niall has no words, no anything for what's rampaging through him. "You'll be a da and I'll be an Uncle Rube."
Niall laughs with him, cracking.