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Your local shitty bar remains as predictably terrible as usual, like a bag full of late-night takeout hamburgers that you already regret before you've started stuffing them in your mouth. And yet you keep coming back, like you keep buying the burgers, in a cutesy bullshit pop-slogan version of crazy where you tell yourself that this time you'll get different results.
You're pretty sure that you're still motivated at least partly by irony when you decide to go after the guy in the corner. There's something kind of unbearably trashy about him: long hair, tank top, black eye. A broken tooth, for fuck's sake. But living in Texas has given you a lifetime's worth of experience in identifying subspecies of redneck, and this guy doesn't quite fit any of the types. Maybe he's putting on an act. Maybe he's something you haven't run into before. Either way, you're buying him a drink.
You order a pair of the sweetest, fruitiest drinks you can talk the bartender into giving you, and flash-step neatly through the crowd to land at the lucky winner's corner table. "This seat taken?" you ask, because that seems more polite than the truth, which is that he has already won tonight's grand prize and he should get used to the idea.
He looks up at you with his eyes wide and startled. There is barely enough light in here for you to tell that they're blue, this deep true blue that doesn't look natural at all. The fresh black eye you could see from across the room, but up close there's a little bit of yellow mottling on the other side from an older one. Bad news, and you should turn around. You don't. "Please," he says. "Feel free." His voice is low and smooth and you're pretty sure it would sound amazing in bed.
You plunk one of the drinks down in front of him and sip the other, eyebrow raised over your shades. He reaches for the glass slowly, super careful, like he expects it to explode the second he touches it. You watch his throat while he takes a sip, and there's something about the way the shadows fall there that seems weird, but mostly you're just watching his adam's apple work and thinking about the roughness of stubble when you progress to the part of the evening when you're licking him there.
He sets the glass down again equally carefully, and looks at you as if he wants to know whether he passed a test. Shit, he needs a top something fierce. "So," you say, gesturing with your glass toward his battered face. "You going to tell me I should see the other guy?"
"There's not much to see, I'm afraid," the guy says, and listening to him strokes your contradiction boner just right: he looks like NASCAR but he talks like Oxford. "He's in pieces in my basement."
Your shades hide the instant when you blink in surprise, but the little smile gets past your guard and makes itself at home on your face. "I should take that as a warning, huh?"
His eyes go wide again and he blushes, and you realize he didn't even think about how that was going to sound before he said it. "Ah, no, it's—goodness, I would not wish to give the impression—dear me, no. I build hand-to-hand combat robots."
Game. Fucking. Over.
"Come home with me," you say. "Maybe you can help me troubleshoot mine."
Now you're on the same page. You see him look down for a second like he's sizing you up. "If that is intended to be a lewd suggestion," he says.
"Nah," you say. "I mean, I do have plenty of those, if you want to hear them, but I meant that part literally. I build robots too." You offer him your hand. "Dirk Strider."
He takes it like now you're the explosive. His knuckles are battered and his palm calloused. "Equius Zahhak," he says. You have never heard a name that screamed not from around here louder than that, but you are not enough of an asshole to comment on it when this is your first meeting. When he tries to let go of your hand, you slide your grip down to his wrist and squeeze. His breath hitches in his chest and he licks his lips nervously. "I would be happy to accompany you. Sir."
You nod to let him know that was a good gamble. You can totally pick up what he just threw down. "Follow me," you say.
The bar's walking distance from your apartment on a warm night, and most of the year is made up of warm nights, which suits you fine. Equius follows you without asking any questions, all broad shoulders and jangly first-timer nerves; you'd bet good money he doesn't really know what he's doing. But he's got some idea what he wants, and he's going for it, and you know how hard that can be.
You size him up in the elevator under the buzzing fluorescent light: taller than you, which not a lot of guys are, and muscled like he works for it, not like some roid bunny. The lines of his face are all a little too sharp, a little too long, to come out handsome in the conventional movie-star way, but you sort of appreciate that. You get bored easily staring at people with generic good looks.
Your apartment is up on the top floor—you still like to be able to go up to the roof when you feel the urge—and it's a shitty old elevator, taking its sweet time. You take the opportunity to slide into Equius's personal space. He smells like machine oil and a leather tang that might be cologne and the sharpness of sweat. You're going to turn him inside out and he's going to love it.
"Jegus," you say, because up close you can get a clearer look at his throat and that's scarring there, thin brown lines of it like somebody's been playing really unsafe with piano wire. "What happened there?"
"I don't remember," he says, and with most guys you'd be sure that was a lie. Equius strikes you as shit at lying, though, so either you've completely misread him and he's good enough at it to fool you, or this really is a mystery garotting scar.
"Freaky," you say. You reach up to touch the marks.
Which was an asshole move, so you totally don't hold it against him when he intercepts your hand. You're a little surprised he was fast enough to do it, and then things just turn weird: he flips out, letting go of you right away and flattening himself back against the far wall of the elevator. "I'm sorry," he says. "Are you all right?"
This guy is made of equal parts hotness and warning signs. If you weren't Dirk Strider you'd be worried. But you are Dirk Strider, and you can handle yourself when shit gets weird. "I'm fine," you say. "You want to tell me what pushed your panic button just now?"
"I could have harmed you," Equius says.
"You barely touched me," you point out. "Takes more than a little love tap to put a dent in Dirk Strider."
He chews his lip like he's trying to figure out how to explain himself, and the elevator, with impeccable timing, dings as it reaches your floor. A lesser man would call this off. Equius clearly has some damage to work through.
"Come on," you say. "This is our stop." You step out of the elevator, digging for your keys, and you hear the floorboards creak as he follows you.
Your apartment's full of stuff, but it's clean, relatively speaking. There's no crap on the floor, anyway. The living room's lit by the standby lights of your DJ rig and the glow of Squarewave's eyes—you flip a light on so Squarewave will know you have company and not try to spring an impromptu battle on you. You wouldn't want to embarrass him in front of company.
Equius looks sort of interested in Squarewave, but you're more in the mood for lewd suggestions, you have to admit. "So I should stay away from your throat," you say. "Any other hot buttons you want to mention up front?"
"I...would not presume to give you orders," he says.
"Nuh-uh," you say. "We're not playing that game. You want to be pushed around, I will own the crap out of you, but not until we've established where the limits are."
"I...I have no—" Equius starts, and you shake your head. Not what you want to hear. "I have very little experience," he tries the second time. You keep your cool, nodding for him to keep going. "So I am not entirely sure where my limits would be. When I...panicked, in the elevator, that was—I have harmed people accidentally before when I lost control of my strength."
"You need someone who can keep up with you," you say. Coincidentally, that's something you're always on the lookout for, too. "I can work with that."
He looks at you with this desperately hopeful expression that would crush a lesser man. You're going to leave the toybox in the closet tonight, because you are fairly certain that you can ruin him six ways to Sunday without even a pair of fuzzy handcuffs to back you up, and you really don't want to give the poor guy an aneurysm or something.
You take a step closer. "First order," you say. "Most important one of the evening, so listen up." His spine straightens a little and he nods. "Any time I ask you how you're feeling, you tell me the straight truth. No holding back, no telling me stuff just because you think I want to hear it."
"Yes, sir," Equius breathes.
"Good," you say. "How you feeling now?"
He hesitates. You wait; if you give him a little time he'll top himself into answering you. He's got the need to please written all over him. "Nervous," he says. "But hopeful. I want to know what you plan to do with me."
You lick your lips deliberately, watching his eyes track the motion. "Turned on?"
"Yes," he says, almost a moan. "Very."
You push him up against the door and snarl a hand in his hair so you can drag him into kissing range. He whimpers and practically melts against you, mouth opening instantly. For a second you taste pineapple, from those drinks you abandoned, and then it's just the wet heat of his mouth and the scrape of the broken edges of his teeth against your tongue. "Meet me halfway, big guy," you tell him between one kiss and the next. "I can take it if you push back. And I want to feel it."
He's still a little tentative when you kiss him again, but you tighten your hand in his hair and he moans, starting to kiss back a little harder. You growl, kicking his ankle to make him spread his legs a little, so you can shove a thigh between them. The first time you grind your hip against the thick bulge in his jeans, he shudders like you nailed him with a taser. So you do it again. His hands finally get into the act as he grabs at the back of your shirt. Cloth tears, and he tenses up for a second like he thinks he fucked something up, so you shove him into the door harder and bite his lip to disabuse him of that notion.
When the door creaks, you figure okay, you've made your point. You pull back from the kiss. "Come on," you say, nodding at Squarewave. "Not in front of the kids."
"O-of course," he says. He looks like he just took a brick to the face, and that brick was made of everything he ever wanted. You bet he'd blow a load in his pants right now if you told him to.
Instead you nod toward the bedroom door. "After you," you say.
Equius nods. "Sir," he says.
You let him get one step ahead of you and then you grab his wrists so you can twist his arms up behind his back. He makes a low, needy sound and bows his head—his hair spills forward, baring the nape of his neck, showing off the breadth of his shoulders. "Yeah, that's about what I thought," you say. You catch both of his wrists in one hand; you can barely reach and your grip isn't secure at all, but you're pretty confident he doesn't want to try to get away. And that leaves you a free hand to reach around and give his dick a good squeeze, which drags an incredibly sweet noise out of his throat.
You let your teeth scrape the back of his bare shoulder, your hand kneading his junk and proceeding to turn the rest of him to jello, until he manages to take a deep, shaky breath and say, "As much as I a-appreciate the attention, sir, I—oh—believe you wished to adjourn?"
His dirty talk must be a thing of beauty. "Oh, hey, you're right," you say. You let go of his dick and get both hands on his wrists again, marching him into your room.
You're expecting him to get weird about the horse theme to your decorating. Most people do. And yeah, he does stare at the full pony harness one a little, but not in a weirded-out way. More in a "something I didn't know I wanted" way. You add that information to your new mental database Zahhak, Equius, ways to devastate.
"You attached to this shirt?" you ask, tugging on the hem of it as you let his wrists go. He doesn't move them, leaves them right there crossed at his spine.
"No, sir," he says.
You circle around in front of him, hook your fingers in the neckline of his tank top, and tear it straight down the middle. It's a cheap trick; the only part that takes real strength is the little reinforced band at the collar. But Equius whimpers, looking at you like he's begging you to put him on his knees. You look him up and down slowly, taking in the sharp lines of muscle, the thin sheen of nervous sweat, the dark treasure trail leading down from his navel into his pants. The generous bulge in said pants. You wouldn't say you're a size queen—you would, in fact, be a little annoyed with someone who tried to insist that was still a thing—but you can definitely appreciate a good physical challenge.
"You should get your pants off before I ruin those, too," you tell him.
If you said jump, he wouldn't even stop to ask how high.
Equius gets down on one knee to unlace his boots. You turn away and set your shades down so you can strip off your t-shirt. Your jeans stay, though, because you are all about the symbolic power of wearing the only remaining pants in this relationship.
When you turn back, he has his boots lined up against the wall, socks tucked into them, and he's folding his pants to leave them on top. You figured he'd do the neat-and-orderly thing.
What you didn't figure was that he'd get up again with his boxers still on and look you in the eyes and ask, "If I...failed to remove these as ordered, would you...?"
"Rip them right off your fine ass?" you finish for him, and you can see his cock jump at the suggestion. "Hell. Yes." They're fancy silk, too, dark navy blue, the kind of shit that's either super classy or else trying too hard. Or both.
"Then I have little incentive to cooperate," he says, his cheeks flushing. His face is so easy to read you'd be embarrassed for him, if embarrassed was a thing Striders ever were. It's nothing short of apeshit bananas that he hasn't already found himself some action, he's so into this.
You nod your approval of this development. "Guess I'll just have to make you," you say. You put a hand on his chest and push, and he lets himself be steered down onto your bed almost too easily. He looks great there and everything, it's just you want a little more bucking out of this bronco. "You okay to get marked up?" you ask as you follow him down.
He hesitates. "I—that is..."
"Straight answer, man," you tell him. "It's fine if the answer's no. Just don't bullshit me about it."
"Of course," Equius says. Shaky. "I would have no objections, but...my employer...." he shakes his head.
"Keep it below the collar line?" you ask. Your hand finds one of his wrists and pins it to the mattress. He shivers under you.
"Please," he says.
You stretch yourself out over him and lean down to bite, low on his trapezius. The clean-salt taste of his sweat makes your mouth water, and his groan of surrender makes your cock ache. You grind down against him as you suck a fresh bruise to the surface of his skin; he shivers and gasps under you but still isn't really pushing back, isn't making you work for it.
You lick the mark you've made. "Come on, make me work for it," you say. "Let me feel some of that strength."
He goes tense and honestly reluctant for the first time all night. "I-I apologize," he says. "I do not mean to be uncooperative. I am simply...wary of doing you accidental harm."
Someone else might need to be logic-topped through this, convinced that it would be okay, but you're pretty sure right now that's bonerkill zone for both of you. Instead you yank hard on his hair to make sure he's paying attention, give his earlobe a sharp bite, and growl in his ear, "Do. As. You're. Told."
He comes alive like you just took his gain and feedback knobs and cranked them all the way to the right. Suddenly you do have two-hundred-plus pounds of struggle pinned under you, and you grab for his wrists without stopping to ask if it's okay to bruise him there. You can feel tendons flex as he pulls against your grip, muscles bunching under you as he writhes. He's still holding back a little, you're pretty sure, but just in the ordinary way where he doesn't want to win and he thinks that having fifty pounds of muscle on you means he has an advantage. As if you don't have years of experience strifing someone bigger than you who was never afraid to fight dirty.
"Now we're starting to get somewhere," you say. "That the best you've got?" You know the answer. "Come on, let's see you try to throw me. Give it one good shot, tough guy."
"You are exceedingly confident," Equius says, a little breathless. He's not making the panic face anymore, though.
"Far as I can tell I've got good reason to be," you point out. The look he gives you when you smirk down at him says he loves it when you're an asshole and would you please do it always. You roll your hips, slow and hard, grinding against his dick, and he hisses. "You want me to do something about this? Then bring it on."
He bares his teeth like you're finally really getting to him, and when he bucks up off the mattress this time it really does take work to hold on. He tries to twist free underneath you, and you push a leg between his, hooking your ankle around his calf so he can't get any distance. When his first push doesn't get him anywhere he tries to roll you over, and that almost works—it takes quick thinking and hard work to counterbalance him. You might be making a little noise now yourself, half-swallowed grunts of effort as you work to keep him right where you both want him to be. You have not been this close to going off in your pants since you were fifteen.
When you get close enough for another bite, Equius shudders hard enough that for a second you think that was it. "Please," he gasps out on his next breath. "Please, sir, I w-want—"
"You want to come?" you ask, because you can tell he's going to lock up there and not get the words out. It would be a triumph to get dirty talk out of him, never mind how good it would sound.
He nods helplessly.
Lucky for him, you want that too. You shift, pinning his wrists with one hand—he lets you with no complaint—and you reach down to grab the waistband of his boxers with the other. You pull, not fast but steady, and the sound of silk tearing is, you're not afraid to admit, totally awesome. The elastic in the waist snaps against your arm when it gives, but it's a small price to pay for the way you've got Equius squirming and whimpering under you now. The head of his cock is flushed dark, and wet with precome.
You fumble your jeans unbuttoned, damn grateful for the dexterity that lets you do that kind of shit one-handed, and shove jeans and boxers both down far enough that they're out of the way. Equius moans when you lower yourself back down on top of him, bare cock against cock, and cage your hand around them both. You're getting most of your leverage from your grip on his wrists when you start to move, but you don't think he really minds.
Pretty sure if he minded, he'd be saying something besides "Please, please, oh—yes, god," while you lick your way up the line of his throat, freaky scars and all. He tips his head to meet you and you kiss, sloppy and wet, distracted, both of you paying more attention to the friction going on further south. He's rocking up into your hand, this whole body motion that keeps you—both of you, probably—thoroughly conscious of the fact that you're pinning him down. You suck on his tongue and bite his lip and you're both making harsh, animal need sounds as you get close.
And half the trick to getting somebody to come on command is knowing when to give the command in the first place, so you're paying seriously close attention to all his little tells, the little tightening shivers and twitches, the hitch in his breath, so when you're pretty sure he couldn't stop for love or money you look him in the eyes and you tell him, "Let me feel you come, give it up for me," and he does, slicking your hand and both of your cocks as he bucks almost hard enough to throw you, finally, when he can't control himself at all. And you're close, too, ready to make a mess of your own—
"Please," he says, "I-I want to feel you," and when he hesitates you shake your head.
"Say it," you demand, and now you're damn close to no return but trying to hold out until he gives in.
Equius squeezes his eyes shut and he makes this face like it hurts to say the words, but he chokes out, "Please, sir, come on me," and that is it, done, money shot, you are earning your paycheck all over him.
You realize he's got the shakes as soon as you catch your breath. You let go of him, ease down onto the mattress with as much finesse as you can manage. You slide an arm under his shoulders and give him a minute. "How you feeling?" you ask after he's had a little bit for this to settle.
He's quiet for a minute. "Overwhelmed," he says eventually. "And—faintly ridiculous." You cock an eyebrow at that, and he gestures vaguely toward the fine art on your wall. "You didn't even...use any apparatus, and here I am, acting as though...." He trails off, shaking his head.
"Tch, no, all that stuff's icing," you say. "The cake is the part where we play off each other, and that was plenty intense." You could tell him that your opinion on the matter of toys is only one of many, why em em vee, but you don't. No point screwing him up with too many options when he's clearly still getting the hang of novice mode.
"Thank you," he says. "You're being very patient with me."
You are a fount of helpful advice tonight. "If you find yourself with a dom who isn't patient with you when you're coming down, the guy's an asshole and you should bail on him," you say. "That's important, too. Remember that."
He nods. "I will," he says. He shifts like he wants to roll over, closer to you, and then makes a really awful face when the mess of cooling spooge on his stomach makes a break for freedom. Your cool facade breaks enough for you to laugh, a little bit. You blame endorphins.
"Here, why don't we go get a shower?" you suggest. "It's a little cramped for two, but I bet we can make it work." And it allows for more physical contact for a while, in case he needs that, and it doesn't have to have an overt how-about-round-two overtone, in case he needs a break, but it can have that overtone, in case he's still looking for more. All the contingencies, you are planning for them.
"That sounds excellent," he says.
You roll out of bed, skinning your jeans off and leaving them on the floor, and offer Equius your hand. "Come on. This way."