Jash and Ghaeten
An embrace after a play was something that was like Ghaeten himself- surprising, unorthodox, and in the end appropriate only because it was him. Jash reacted too late to pull him in as close as he would have liked, but made up for this by fencing Ghaeten in with two hands at the base of his back. “Theater is like love. It only happens sometimes, and you have to find the right one.” He considered submitting Ghaeten to his familiar philosophies on Ayeneeian theater, how it was too idealistic, too superficial, but he assumed this would seem too much like he thought his own work the only kind valuable. And while this was true, it was too early yet to let Ghaeten know he was egotistical. Jash leaned over the wooden railing, fingers laced as he waited out the crowd’s parting rituals. “You can tell- some of them are in love right now, still looking at the stage like some part of the story might still be left to tell. And some of them are completely unfazed.” He gestured, feeling godlike, and thereby grinning over his shoulder at Ghaeten.
He may as well have written himself like a curse onto Ghaeten’s heart with sentences like that, for the irrepressible, unintelligent hopeful in him responded as shadow to light when cast under a happy possibility. He took the way Jash talked of love as a hint at what his expectations for romance might be, smiled straight down into his soul, and thanked the director internally for having visited his shop despite how hard he’d tried to board himself up against affection. Leaning a hip on the rail to glance below, Ghaeten nodded along and eventually offered to the topic of people still in love: “They are. I am.” Eyes obscured by their own ability looked at Jash’s face. “Thanks for bringing me, I really loved it.”
He had known love, though he had never known to call it by its name. Jash had always supposed that love would make him loyal, and for that he had stubbornly made an enemy of the concept. For as far as he’d run from the idea, he tried to excommunicate it swiftly as a misunderstood possibility between himself and someone he kissed and took to bed. Had he known then that Ghaeten mistook him for a loyal man, he would have kissed him sweetly a last time and gone to bed alone, but the playwright was only sailing the surface of his own meaning. Despite this, he was as endeared as Ghaeten was, though certainly for a different reason, and as he sensed the progress of attraction, he pulled him near with a finger in the waist of his pants. “Did you? Or are you trying to persuade me to adore you?”
His face was flirtation come to life when drawn near in such a fashion, and he countered by coiling his long arms around Jash’s neck, twisting out his fingers when they met on the other side. “Couldn’t I do both?,” he asked, the slant of his head inviting any number of sins.
Jash gamely pretended to consider this when he relieved the rail of his weight and rubbed his chin with the freed hand. “I don’t know.” He pulled Ghaeten nearer and slid his hand under his jacket, between his shoulders, under the guise of testing the man’s proposal with his proximity. “Could you?” In the cleave behind Ghaeten’s ear, warmed between two stretches of skin, Jash kissed in long wet strokes, then painted it with his tongue at the same time as he drew him by his upper arms into the darker part of the director’s box.
Ghaeten would never have returned to physical intimacy without Jash’s initiation, not under these particular circumstances. He would’ve feared it an insult, to end a sentence appreciating his work with a want to be against him, would’ve shied from the unpleasant chance at ruining their evening by favoring desire over art. It was lucky for the both that Jash was versed in being a relationship’s campagning force, for Ghaeten fell back into the moment they’d left behind with relief and a refreshed sense of himself, someone another person craved. His eyes shut at the same moment his mouth opened, releasing a twist of breath at pleasure’s advancing tongue, and he pulled all ten nails in a line down Jash’s suited back, following its curve with pressure just enough to say what he was thinking wordlessly.
He had settled before for men and women that disinterested him and because of this Jash had learned to speak in a language primal and wordless. Though Ghaeten pleased him in being able to use his tongue in the two ways that were important to Jash, he uncoiled when he was reduced to the muggy hushes against Ghaeten’s neck. He disliked pretenses, and clothes were one- preachers of the notion that bodies were shameful, that sex was discreet and precious. Until he bedded a lover, he was always a little more tense than he was beforehand. It was not the conquest that relieved him, but the rush into uncivilized simplicity. As his throat moved he was reminded in irritation of his tied, broke bond just long enough to snatch loose its knot, and returned with energy refreshed, hands in Ghaeten’s hair and a gravelly groan against his neck.
Ghaeten thought in broken bits of passionate fever, each word in his head both confusing and delightful. A familiar voice somewhere dominantly carnal in him cried out ‘finally!’ despite having met this man only days ago, and told of how beautiful it felt to be handled wanted and knocked over into lustfulness all over again, every sentence cutting off the one before it and leaving him dizzy as Jash’s kisses. The same pretty blue eyes that were hiding under mischievous secrets all night rolled up into his head and fell shut, enamored, aroused, spellbound by the sound heaved out against his neck. Hungry hands reached to the belly of the other’s dress shirt and pulled up just until it was untucked, just until he had room enough to explore new skin, then prompt, attentive fingertips wandered inside over his abdomen. He smiled the smile for nervousness and lovers, asking in a quiet, impish whisper close to Jash’s body, “You had this in mind from the minute you met me, didn’t you?”
The skin of his belly shuddered like a horse’s coat, freckled with goosebumps, then sighed under the relief of new hands. Jash unbuttoned his shirt from the bottom, opening it up a step at a time above Ghaeten’s hands, then stopped then it was half undone to dedicate himself to response. He pulled Ghaeten’s nearer by his hips, crushed their bodies together at their centers with a motion not quite a thrust, but a sturdy declaration of presence, of firmness and relentlessness. “No,” he grinned with half his mouth, which became elastic and serpentine as it slid into his cheek. “Before that- when I first saw you.” Jash raised both hands to drag his fingers through the hair along Ghaeten’s temples, then caught two fistfuls of it and kissed his forehead.
Each fingertip obeyed the path layed out for it by Jash’s unbuttoning, their motions slow and dedicated yet unobtrusive. When he moved from the task half-finished, those fingertips had nowhere left to comfortably go, and thought otherwise of that unsatisfying position. They concluded what Jash began, so that when the director’s hands were buried in dark brown hair, Ghaeten’s own were squeezing their tender, affectionate grip on the top of either shoulder. The kiss above his brow changed the moment impressively; he’d gone from feeling ravished and addicting to cherished and adored. With breathless sentiment alongside leading flirtation, he inquired, “And do you already know what happens next?” as though they were watching the play again and Ghaeten couldn’t wait for actors to fill in the blanks.
“Yes.” He stroked the hair at the base of Ghaeten’s skull into a little duck’s tail then, concluding their scene in the director’s box, he pulled his tied from under the fold of his collar and cast it onto the back of the nearest of the two chairs in their midst. “But I won’t ruin it for you.” With purposefulness so abrupt that it seemed he’d lost interest in their on-goings, Jash squeezed Ghaeten’s elbow to suggest he follow, then left the box through the archway opposite the one through which they had entered. A staircase followed against the structure’s curved wall and eventually led to a cluster of three private doors. Jash paused before one of them, withdrew a key from his trouser pocket, and unlocked it, to stand aside and invite Ghaeten first with a straightened arm and a jagged grin. Inside was the most secluded of the three rooms among which Jash had spread his residence, the other two being an office and a washroom. The door opened into a bedroom that became a kitchen by the time it reached the wall farthest from them. The bed was made neatly, sheets and pillows all a single shade of dusky red. Stacks of papers and parchment claimed every surface- the nightstand by the bed, the dresser and drawers surrounding it, and at least part of the counter in the kitchen. Jash had decorated with no real interest in the effort- about the place were gifts given to him by old lovers that sometimes did not quite suit him, such as a ship inside a bottle the size of a large cat and a pair of literary novels which he had never read.
With any degree of pessimism Ghaeten might’ve begun to wonder how a man like this had happened upon him so randomly. With any degree of pessimism, the flavor those words left on the air would’ve furthered his suspicion that it was all too good to be true. Sorry enough for everyone’s sad-eyed lover, he was nothing if not optimistic in the presence of passion, and simply assumed himself - swore himself! - phenomenally lucky to have been present when Fate dropped Jash on his side of town for a stroll. He followed behind with a casual loyalty, still giving moments of himself to the study of his surroundings, but soon after he’d taken his fill of the room’s decor when he entered, all attention wandered back where it belonged - on his date, his soon-to-be lover. Thinking these very words sent a shudder with which he was closely acquainted down the backs of his legs, and to distract from its presence he removed his own jacket, then tossed it on the nearest surface. His shoulders shrugged up as if to capture his giggling grin after that, the noises peppering his invitation. “Don’t keep me in suspense, gorgeous. A boy’ll only wait so long.”
Jash followed Ghaeten inside and, with no focus at all on the endeavor, pulled loose his key and shut the door behind him. “This is where it gets good.” Jash took his limp, unbottoned shirt by its separated sides and maneuvered it loose with a sharp roll of his shoulders, then came up behind Ghaeten. “This. . .” He rubbed one of his shoulders with a steady, long hand while the other slide up Ghaeten’s back from underneath his shirt. “Is where the dashing playwright takes his new little darling into his hands.” Slowing down the pursuit of fingers to do so, Jash whispered a light, airy kiss against Ghaeten’s ear. “And tells him to take off his clothes.”
The continued inclusion of metaphors from Jash’s job inspired in Ghaeten a level of arousal not previously experienced. It made every corner of the room intriguing rather than simply new, made each breath passed between them electric rather than simply hungry, made all exchanges of word or touch sinful rather than simply sexual. He’d rarely been as excited by a lover so early in the proceedings, had never known foreplay to be even half the thrill of actually falling into a tangle of limbs together. The responses to Jash’s fingers were subtle but certain, little pinches of skin yielding after the effort of touch and slowing his breath down to a purr that murmured into a moan. He moved into undressing with a half-smile that battled for larger ground, almost vainly, boyishly glad for the chance to show himself off to someone new who wanted him. Steady knuckles worked in knots to relieve each button its post, then moved up and slid his shirt completely off his shoulders, youthfully slender but colored in by hard work. He leaned back against Jash’s frame when repeating these motions with his pants, head turned at barely enough of an angle to show an expression on his face of blunt, suggestive territory. Shrugging himself free any physical restriction and maintaining their position, Ghaeten tossed back an arm around Jash’s head, pulling it down and baring the part of his shoulder he wanted him to taste.
He was never the same lover; with each new body between his sheets, he changed, so that he could not say whether he was a gentle, rough, loud or quiet in lovemaking. Jash’s was a system that worked largely in reflections, and the energy that Ghaeten gave him was a simmering, frank and adoring one. Under command, he dropped his lips into the hammock of warm skin between neck and shoulder and worked down the slope in thick, wet, heavy kisses. One hand held steady the courted shoulder while the other found a handle of Ghaeten’s hip; Jash squeezed the flat skin there as he felt a warm alertness subtly change the settle of his pants. Obeying it, he moved his hand to the front of Ghaeten’s thigh and pushed him backward at the same time as he buried a slow, eventual, clothed thrust into the other from behind. To this incitement he groaned, opened his mouth and bit the curve of Ghaeten’s shoulder- a flat, blunt bite, wide enough to use the teeth in the back of his mouth.
To have a lover who was good at his craft seemed to Ghaeten like a blessing almost divine. There’d been times when he sought men for quick sport and wound up disappointed, at least once to the specifics of closing his eyes during intercourse to picture someone who did not talk. Jash gave him no reason to do so tonight, and responded to his unspoken requests with startling ability. He’d asked for a kiss and received one bottled on the very breeding ground of lust. The shop-keep freed a noise waiting patiently in his throat all along at the advance of strong hips toward his backside, then topped it with an answer for teeth on bare skin, reminding him of the moment’s reality and sending his head back in rapture.
In equal, wolfish measures, he liked bringing a lover to him and pursuing one. Both were orchestrations of power; Jash was comfortably cushioned in the throne of his sexuality and from it he slid his tongue up Ghaeten’s neck, collar to jaw. One hand held his head in place by his hair while the other loosened his shorts with a thumb lapping around the band, until his hips lost grip and they wrinkled into a loose hang. Jash rested his cheek against Ghaeten for the moment when he slid both palms down the base of his back and over the curve of his rear. He watched himself uncover it with sharp, open-mouthed attention, reverent of the particular moon-shaped body part, a pale and perfect peach. To be able to touch a beautiful body was, he sometimes thought, nearly enough for him, enough to finish splendor on his own without assistance. Both hands were attracted to new skin and Jash stretched his fingers as far across the cool curves as he could, squeezed, lifted and groaned into Ghaeten’s hair.
Their evening was not unlike a stage production. It opened on sweetness, was sustained by intrigue, and wound to a finale of physical collisions leading here, to a taste of his neck that made him moan deep in his belly. Ghaeten kept the arm he’d slung about Jash’s neck in place until the man moved his hands down, then assisted with coy fingertips the removal of the last of his clothing. He stepped free one foot at a time and broke the intensity of their moment with an unanticipated laugh, small, hiding in the caverns at the back of his throat, but there nonetheless and expressing an animalistic happiness. Before long, perhaps even before Jash had done with the worship of a well-formed body, Ghaeten turned around - needing to see the other’s face again, see what its expressions said of the moment. He brought them back into a kiss, worked eight fingers into the hem of regrettable pants, and walked slowly backward until his shoulders touched the nearest wall, unfastening as they relocated. A sudden end worked through and broke their lips apart, the dark area just behind his eyes where concern lived its dirty life considering whether or not he looked too easy, too eager. With new lovers, first impressions could be salvation or curse. With a mouth still hungry to be where the lift of his head interrupted it, he said, “I’m not usually like this,” then reunited them.
Jash grinned, secured Ghaeten to the wall with a rough assertion of his hands at the man’s shoulders, and hung in a suckle on his bottom lip even as he spoke. “What? Adorable? Sexy? Perfect? That’s too bad.” Lovers had said the same words to him before- the sentiment had lost its flattery for him, but he entertained it in the way he thought would put Ghaeten at ease. He lifted both hands to his cheeks and kissed his sad, down-turned mouth. “I like you the way you are,” he left on his lips, propped an arm over his head, against the wall, and loosened his pants with his free hand until he could step out of the puddle of them and hold his breath in the shock of paired nudity.
Months from now Ghaeten would mourn that sentence, mourn it as the thing that damned him to a brand new misery; ‘I like you the way you are.’ It was the first time in twenty-seven years of life that anyone had ever told him they liked him as he was, whether they’d known him for two minutes or two years. He sobbed out an enraptured groan when Jash pinned him, drinking of those words over and over again and refilling himself with the memory of their departed sound until at last they were nude together, and his hands framed Jash from hip to breast and back again.
Sentiments were usually casual for him, despite their truths. He liked Ghaeten, but he had liked and would continued to like many men, not in the same way, but not with any less (or more, for that matter) attachment. Jash lamented that he could not see them from outside his own body, naked and warm in the long shadows and wheat-waving movement of candlelight. In regrets like these he was subdued, attentive and nearly sad. “I want to be so deep inside you,” he confessed in a voice not his, low, morbid and almost pained with his lips dragging across Ghaeten’s collarbone. “I want to be deep enough to touch your little blue heart.” He fit his teeth around the bar of bone and nibbled along it.
If only sentiments were casual for him! So many of the problems that little blue heart got into were a result of poorly managed sentiments; taken too seriously, taken too soon, and given back in much the same fashion as they were mistakenly received. Every word from Jash’s addictive lips fueled the fire of quick attachment in Ghaeten; how could a man speak so intensely and not feel as he spoke! Syllables buried themselves in him and made his stomach churn with the rabid, immediate flowers of affection, a silver time in any relationship where things sing and sway no matter what your beloved has done or said. “Nothing’s stopping you,” he provoked, head leant back against the wall as though in preparation of an entry that was not yet to come. “I’ll bet you could do it,” the enamored continued, toning each word with a sexual antagonism he hoped would not be ignored, “You could get that deep in me, you could if you tried.” Fingers nearly shuddering their anticipation sought to steady themselves in hair lighter than his own, raking through and camping at the base of Jash’s neck.
Almost angry at having to do so, Jash fumbled out of contact just long enough to pull open a dresser drawer and plow a hand through the things inside until he retrieved a small bottle half-filled with transparent gel, tinted vaguely blue. He pinned the cork between his teeth, forced a finger inside the glass mouth, and turned the bottle upside down until his skin was saturated. Then he shook it loose, allowing it to break against the wooden surface of the dresser, all with an insistence reckless enough to suggest that Ghaeten might be worryingly injured or considering escape. Impatiently, he crossed his left arm over his chest to grab Ghaeten’s opposite and spin him belly against the wall again. His hands announced their journey along the length of his body, then, the wet finger lifted, apart. Jash tested the tightness and width of the backs of Ghaeten’s thighs with crushing caresses; before he thrust a gelled finger inside, he bit into the soft curve of his rear as if it were the peach it resembled.
Ghaeten was always careful not to watch his lovers during this particular moment, preferring to allow them a continued shroud of dignity which would be broken if the mechanics of comfortable sex were witnessed. One must be miles into a relationship before that level of understanding is any less than dangerous. Before their entry into the room, before their arrival at the door of the theater, Ghaeten was still uncertain of his role in relation to this, in relation to lovemaking. He never decided too soon, preferring to find what excited his partner and conforming himself thereafter. In this instance, he was a doll, spun without effort to face the wall again and grunting a hard, wet breath for reward. It rose up into one quiet, adoring cry atop another, first for entry, then for the selection Jash’s bite made. His shoulders shrunk in and fists half-balled against the wall, wanting something to cling to but further excited by the lack. “More,” he told him, begged him, “More.”
He enjoyed it, the command that was also obedience, the dizzying cycle of thrust, pull, ache, itch, relief and frustration. Jash was never more satisfied than when a lover surprised him and Ghaeten had- with the dirty vulnerability, the gaping willingness that had come from his shy, boyish face. Perhaps there was nothing better than a bruise of a boy, someone startlingly needing, someone with a fuck-shaped hole not only between their legs, but in their hearts as well, where the itch sent them looking for him. With this in mind he tilted his head, bunched together a fresh handful of flesh, and bit into it at the same time as he twisted his finger, then plunged it in and out in shallow, quick little thrusts.
He encouraged with every little part of him; with the hips that bucked instinctively forward, with the tightening of his shoulders and arms where they clung to an unreceptive wall, with the ragged, half-drunk way he tossed out praise: “God, oh, God, yes!,” and at last with the relaxed, understanding welcome from his body to anything Jash wanted to give it. His forehead rolled in an arch against its support, nails digging their frustration over how badly he wanted to be filled. Faith in the man who’d turned the typicals preceding sex into something near as pleasurable as the act itself made Ghaeten loose and frantic inside, almost desperate to move forward and be assured that anticipation would not disappoint him. For one long symphony of a moment, there was nothing between them but the question of long fingers and the answer of a shameless voice in groans and whimpers; Jash had selected a vocal lover, whose wordless declarations of ecstasy grew only more confident with time. But he was also impatient, dominated by craving, and eventually he fell victim to his own imagination. “Come here,” he breathed, a blind hand wandering down the wall, “Come up here, I need you.”
Jash rose one long lean leg at a time, just after forcing a middle finger in to the second knuckle, then pulling it out in order to fit both hands at the bottom of his rear’s curve. A thumb passed over the softer flesh, testing the slick ring of red impressions his mouth had made. “It’s okay.” He whispered, a frail warm cirrus faintness against the back of Ghaeten’s ear. “I’m right here.” As if to consummate this sentiment, he used his thumbs to pluck the pale curves in differing directions and made his loins a snug nest there, breath intense as his focus whittled to the fine dark hairs rooted in Ghaeten’s skin. Jash loosed one hand to guide himself by the base, dragging up and slowly down, sliding across slicked tight heat.
If there was a mind on earth naive and hopeful enough to believe in the speed with which Ghaeten swore he loved, he loved Jash right at the feet of his perfect, poison words. Though his body remained a hard, hungry strain of muscles awaiting their reward for stacked months of celibacy, his face relaxed, the pout and darkness irreparably there softening by degrees until they were simply a haunt. Again the arm which abandoned its post to relocate moved backward, pulling Jash’s head with an affectionate tug to keep it close, to encourage kisses, to be sure that any word he spoke hereafter was delivered just to the ears in need of it. He murmured quiet encouragements of motion, breath catching over the burn that relieved him in the same way that it highlighted his greed for satisfaction.
Jash could coddle, could soothe and assure, all with honesty, for he adored without loving but thrived on being a source of comfort. His expressions were all sincere, however misleading. “I’m right here, Beautiful,” he breathed, lips against the very edge of the well that lead into Ghaeten’s brain. While one hand steadied the other’s hips, its opposite gently fluttered the thin, soft hair at the nape of Ghaeten’s neck. “I’m so close to you.” A sudden firmness of grip forewarned the entrance, then Jash exhaled a sharp, throaty relief at being inside. “You feel how close I am?” He took the thinnest rim of ear between his lips and touched it with the tip of his tongue.
Years ago, when his sexuality took its first unsteady breath and tried to move into something more mature, he’d tightened and cried at the sting of a lover’s entry, unable to control himself and put beneath several minutes of pain before he found the worth of it all (assuming the young men he chose were able to sustain for that long). Jash would suffer no such disappointment tonight, and was instead met with a sudden and jubilant relaxation, brought by the relief his words and his entry had caused. Sex settled him like water a man in the desert. After a long, low groan, he was Ghaeten again, the same Ghaeten he had been earlier in the evening - playful, impish, eager and talented. A slow gesture of hip pushed him with attentive subtlety back onto Jash as he introduced himself, words tripping over the innocent challenge of his wide smile. “Even closer,” he told him, “I want more than that.” His eyes fell down their long black lashes, enhancing an image of skin against skin. “I want you deep enough to taste.”
He was one of those men who milked a carnal satisfaction out of holding a lover by the hips, pumping their bodies like contraptions along his length. Jash would watch the friction and always thought that he felt it more deeply in doing so. “Yeah? You want that?” A drag of hips backward took him only far enough to drive into Ghaeten again, insistent, sharp. This began a lovemaking of a different rhythm, however, as Jash swung slowly, patiently inside with his fingertips crushing the skin of Ghaeten’s hips. “Do you want that?” He maneuvered Ghaeten’s head with a fistful of his hair to turn it and force in a wet hot tongue and repeat the slow, deep thrusts there.
Repeatedly put to a shock almost worshipful by how well and how fast his desires were being answered, Ghaeten gave himself over completely to the direction of Jash’s hands, much as he imagined his actors did on stage. They’d done already with the jokes and jabs of slow mounting passion, but still did the ghost-eyed lover entertain notions of control almost professorial from his companion, eager to be molded into positions he thought were satisfying. He’d just enough time to answer in part, to tell him, “Yes, yes, I want that, I want you,” before being swallowed into a kiss that he released all of his love-sounds during - each entry spurred a gesture at the back of his throat silenced at Jash’s lips.
Hard, hot breath and the beat of his hips made his kisses imprecise and sloppy, but twice as passionate. Each stroke caused one of a different speed and length until Jash propped a bent arm on the wall above Ghaeten’s head and clung, with his free hand, to the blushing muscle coming from between Ghaeten’s own two legs. Between attentive but slow milking gestures and short, quick bursts of his groin deeper into his lover, Jash’s lips still hung at Ghaeten’s ear, both commanding and comforting him. “You look so beautiful. You look so good with me in you.” He nuzzled his chin down into the other’s shoulder, bowed his head into his neck and firmed a double grip on his hips to buck as hard as he had yet into him, sudden and frantic, as if their time had somehow been regulated.
He may as well have written himself like a curse onto Ghaeten’s heart with sentences like that, for the irrepressible, unintelligent hopeful in him responded as shadow to light when cast under a happy possibility. He took the way Jash talked of love as a hint at what his expectations for romance might be, smiled straight down into his soul, and thanked the director internally for having visited his shop despite how hard he’d tried to board himself up against affection. Leaning a hip on the rail to glance below, Ghaeten nodded along and eventually offered to the topic of people still in love: “They are. I am.” Eyes obscured by their own ability looked at Jash’s face. “Thanks for bringing me, I really loved it.”
He had known love, though he had never known to call it by its name. Jash had always supposed that love would make him loyal, and for that he had stubbornly made an enemy of the concept. For as far as he’d run from the idea, he tried to excommunicate it swiftly as a misunderstood possibility between himself and someone he kissed and took to bed. Had he known then that Ghaeten mistook him for a loyal man, he would have kissed him sweetly a last time and gone to bed alone, but the playwright was only sailing the surface of his own meaning. Despite this, he was as endeared as Ghaeten was, though certainly for a different reason, and as he sensed the progress of attraction, he pulled him near with a finger in the waist of his pants. “Did you? Or are you trying to persuade me to adore you?”
His face was flirtation come to life when drawn near in such a fashion, and he countered by coiling his long arms around Jash’s neck, twisting out his fingers when they met on the other side. “Couldn’t I do both?,” he asked, the slant of his head inviting any number of sins.
Jash gamely pretended to consider this when he relieved the rail of his weight and rubbed his chin with the freed hand. “I don’t know.” He pulled Ghaeten nearer and slid his hand under his jacket, between his shoulders, under the guise of testing the man’s proposal with his proximity. “Could you?” In the cleave behind Ghaeten’s ear, warmed between two stretches of skin, Jash kissed in long wet strokes, then painted it with his tongue at the same time as he drew him by his upper arms into the darker part of the director’s box.
Ghaeten would never have returned to physical intimacy without Jash’s initiation, not under these particular circumstances. He would’ve feared it an insult, to end a sentence appreciating his work with a want to be against him, would’ve shied from the unpleasant chance at ruining their evening by favoring desire over art. It was lucky for the both that Jash was versed in being a relationship’s campagning force, for Ghaeten fell back into the moment they’d left behind with relief and a refreshed sense of himself, someone another person craved. His eyes shut at the same moment his mouth opened, releasing a twist of breath at pleasure’s advancing tongue, and he pulled all ten nails in a line down Jash’s suited back, following its curve with pressure just enough to say what he was thinking wordlessly.
He had settled before for men and women that disinterested him and because of this Jash had learned to speak in a language primal and wordless. Though Ghaeten pleased him in being able to use his tongue in the two ways that were important to Jash, he uncoiled when he was reduced to the muggy hushes against Ghaeten’s neck. He disliked pretenses, and clothes were one- preachers of the notion that bodies were shameful, that sex was discreet and precious. Until he bedded a lover, he was always a little more tense than he was beforehand. It was not the conquest that relieved him, but the rush into uncivilized simplicity. As his throat moved he was reminded in irritation of his tied, broke bond just long enough to snatch loose its knot, and returned with energy refreshed, hands in Ghaeten’s hair and a gravelly groan against his neck.
Ghaeten thought in broken bits of passionate fever, each word in his head both confusing and delightful. A familiar voice somewhere dominantly carnal in him cried out ‘finally!’ despite having met this man only days ago, and told of how beautiful it felt to be handled wanted and knocked over into lustfulness all over again, every sentence cutting off the one before it and leaving him dizzy as Jash’s kisses. The same pretty blue eyes that were hiding under mischievous secrets all night rolled up into his head and fell shut, enamored, aroused, spellbound by the sound heaved out against his neck. Hungry hands reached to the belly of the other’s dress shirt and pulled up just until it was untucked, just until he had room enough to explore new skin, then prompt, attentive fingertips wandered inside over his abdomen. He smiled the smile for nervousness and lovers, asking in a quiet, impish whisper close to Jash’s body, “You had this in mind from the minute you met me, didn’t you?”
The skin of his belly shuddered like a horse’s coat, freckled with goosebumps, then sighed under the relief of new hands. Jash unbuttoned his shirt from the bottom, opening it up a step at a time above Ghaeten’s hands, then stopped then it was half undone to dedicate himself to response. He pulled Ghaeten’s nearer by his hips, crushed their bodies together at their centers with a motion not quite a thrust, but a sturdy declaration of presence, of firmness and relentlessness. “No,” he grinned with half his mouth, which became elastic and serpentine as it slid into his cheek. “Before that- when I first saw you.” Jash raised both hands to drag his fingers through the hair along Ghaeten’s temples, then caught two fistfuls of it and kissed his forehead.
Each fingertip obeyed the path layed out for it by Jash’s unbuttoning, their motions slow and dedicated yet unobtrusive. When he moved from the task half-finished, those fingertips had nowhere left to comfortably go, and thought otherwise of that unsatisfying position. They concluded what Jash began, so that when the director’s hands were buried in dark brown hair, Ghaeten’s own were squeezing their tender, affectionate grip on the top of either shoulder. The kiss above his brow changed the moment impressively; he’d gone from feeling ravished and addicting to cherished and adored. With breathless sentiment alongside leading flirtation, he inquired, “And do you already know what happens next?” as though they were watching the play again and Ghaeten couldn’t wait for actors to fill in the blanks.
“Yes.” He stroked the hair at the base of Ghaeten’s skull into a little duck’s tail then, concluding their scene in the director’s box, he pulled his tied from under the fold of his collar and cast it onto the back of the nearest of the two chairs in their midst. “But I won’t ruin it for you.” With purposefulness so abrupt that it seemed he’d lost interest in their on-goings, Jash squeezed Ghaeten’s elbow to suggest he follow, then left the box through the archway opposite the one through which they had entered. A staircase followed against the structure’s curved wall and eventually led to a cluster of three private doors. Jash paused before one of them, withdrew a key from his trouser pocket, and unlocked it, to stand aside and invite Ghaeten first with a straightened arm and a jagged grin. Inside was the most secluded of the three rooms among which Jash had spread his residence, the other two being an office and a washroom. The door opened into a bedroom that became a kitchen by the time it reached the wall farthest from them. The bed was made neatly, sheets and pillows all a single shade of dusky red. Stacks of papers and parchment claimed every surface- the nightstand by the bed, the dresser and drawers surrounding it, and at least part of the counter in the kitchen. Jash had decorated with no real interest in the effort- about the place were gifts given to him by old lovers that sometimes did not quite suit him, such as a ship inside a bottle the size of a large cat and a pair of literary novels which he had never read.
With any degree of pessimism Ghaeten might’ve begun to wonder how a man like this had happened upon him so randomly. With any degree of pessimism, the flavor those words left on the air would’ve furthered his suspicion that it was all too good to be true. Sorry enough for everyone’s sad-eyed lover, he was nothing if not optimistic in the presence of passion, and simply assumed himself - swore himself! - phenomenally lucky to have been present when Fate dropped Jash on his side of town for a stroll. He followed behind with a casual loyalty, still giving moments of himself to the study of his surroundings, but soon after he’d taken his fill of the room’s decor when he entered, all attention wandered back where it belonged - on his date, his soon-to-be lover. Thinking these very words sent a shudder with which he was closely acquainted down the backs of his legs, and to distract from its presence he removed his own jacket, then tossed it on the nearest surface. His shoulders shrugged up as if to capture his giggling grin after that, the noises peppering his invitation. “Don’t keep me in suspense, gorgeous. A boy’ll only wait so long.”
Jash followed Ghaeten inside and, with no focus at all on the endeavor, pulled loose his key and shut the door behind him. “This is where it gets good.” Jash took his limp, unbottoned shirt by its separated sides and maneuvered it loose with a sharp roll of his shoulders, then came up behind Ghaeten. “This. . .” He rubbed one of his shoulders with a steady, long hand while the other slide up Ghaeten’s back from underneath his shirt. “Is where the dashing playwright takes his new little darling into his hands.” Slowing down the pursuit of fingers to do so, Jash whispered a light, airy kiss against Ghaeten’s ear. “And tells him to take off his clothes.”
The continued inclusion of metaphors from Jash’s job inspired in Ghaeten a level of arousal not previously experienced. It made every corner of the room intriguing rather than simply new, made each breath passed between them electric rather than simply hungry, made all exchanges of word or touch sinful rather than simply sexual. He’d rarely been as excited by a lover so early in the proceedings, had never known foreplay to be even half the thrill of actually falling into a tangle of limbs together. The responses to Jash’s fingers were subtle but certain, little pinches of skin yielding after the effort of touch and slowing his breath down to a purr that murmured into a moan. He moved into undressing with a half-smile that battled for larger ground, almost vainly, boyishly glad for the chance to show himself off to someone new who wanted him. Steady knuckles worked in knots to relieve each button its post, then moved up and slid his shirt completely off his shoulders, youthfully slender but colored in by hard work. He leaned back against Jash’s frame when repeating these motions with his pants, head turned at barely enough of an angle to show an expression on his face of blunt, suggestive territory. Shrugging himself free any physical restriction and maintaining their position, Ghaeten tossed back an arm around Jash’s head, pulling it down and baring the part of his shoulder he wanted him to taste.
He was never the same lover; with each new body between his sheets, he changed, so that he could not say whether he was a gentle, rough, loud or quiet in lovemaking. Jash’s was a system that worked largely in reflections, and the energy that Ghaeten gave him was a simmering, frank and adoring one. Under command, he dropped his lips into the hammock of warm skin between neck and shoulder and worked down the slope in thick, wet, heavy kisses. One hand held steady the courted shoulder while the other found a handle of Ghaeten’s hip; Jash squeezed the flat skin there as he felt a warm alertness subtly change the settle of his pants. Obeying it, he moved his hand to the front of Ghaeten’s thigh and pushed him backward at the same time as he buried a slow, eventual, clothed thrust into the other from behind. To this incitement he groaned, opened his mouth and bit the curve of Ghaeten’s shoulder- a flat, blunt bite, wide enough to use the teeth in the back of his mouth.
To have a lover who was good at his craft seemed to Ghaeten like a blessing almost divine. There’d been times when he sought men for quick sport and wound up disappointed, at least once to the specifics of closing his eyes during intercourse to picture someone who did not talk. Jash gave him no reason to do so tonight, and responded to his unspoken requests with startling ability. He’d asked for a kiss and received one bottled on the very breeding ground of lust. The shop-keep freed a noise waiting patiently in his throat all along at the advance of strong hips toward his backside, then topped it with an answer for teeth on bare skin, reminding him of the moment’s reality and sending his head back in rapture.
In equal, wolfish measures, he liked bringing a lover to him and pursuing one. Both were orchestrations of power; Jash was comfortably cushioned in the throne of his sexuality and from it he slid his tongue up Ghaeten’s neck, collar to jaw. One hand held his head in place by his hair while the other loosened his shorts with a thumb lapping around the band, until his hips lost grip and they wrinkled into a loose hang. Jash rested his cheek against Ghaeten for the moment when he slid both palms down the base of his back and over the curve of his rear. He watched himself uncover it with sharp, open-mouthed attention, reverent of the particular moon-shaped body part, a pale and perfect peach. To be able to touch a beautiful body was, he sometimes thought, nearly enough for him, enough to finish splendor on his own without assistance. Both hands were attracted to new skin and Jash stretched his fingers as far across the cool curves as he could, squeezed, lifted and groaned into Ghaeten’s hair.
Their evening was not unlike a stage production. It opened on sweetness, was sustained by intrigue, and wound to a finale of physical collisions leading here, to a taste of his neck that made him moan deep in his belly. Ghaeten kept the arm he’d slung about Jash’s neck in place until the man moved his hands down, then assisted with coy fingertips the removal of the last of his clothing. He stepped free one foot at a time and broke the intensity of their moment with an unanticipated laugh, small, hiding in the caverns at the back of his throat, but there nonetheless and expressing an animalistic happiness. Before long, perhaps even before Jash had done with the worship of a well-formed body, Ghaeten turned around - needing to see the other’s face again, see what its expressions said of the moment. He brought them back into a kiss, worked eight fingers into the hem of regrettable pants, and walked slowly backward until his shoulders touched the nearest wall, unfastening as they relocated. A sudden end worked through and broke their lips apart, the dark area just behind his eyes where concern lived its dirty life considering whether or not he looked too easy, too eager. With new lovers, first impressions could be salvation or curse. With a mouth still hungry to be where the lift of his head interrupted it, he said, “I’m not usually like this,” then reunited them.
Jash grinned, secured Ghaeten to the wall with a rough assertion of his hands at the man’s shoulders, and hung in a suckle on his bottom lip even as he spoke. “What? Adorable? Sexy? Perfect? That’s too bad.” Lovers had said the same words to him before- the sentiment had lost its flattery for him, but he entertained it in the way he thought would put Ghaeten at ease. He lifted both hands to his cheeks and kissed his sad, down-turned mouth. “I like you the way you are,” he left on his lips, propped an arm over his head, against the wall, and loosened his pants with his free hand until he could step out of the puddle of them and hold his breath in the shock of paired nudity.
Months from now Ghaeten would mourn that sentence, mourn it as the thing that damned him to a brand new misery; ‘I like you the way you are.’ It was the first time in twenty-seven years of life that anyone had ever told him they liked him as he was, whether they’d known him for two minutes or two years. He sobbed out an enraptured groan when Jash pinned him, drinking of those words over and over again and refilling himself with the memory of their departed sound until at last they were nude together, and his hands framed Jash from hip to breast and back again.
Sentiments were usually casual for him, despite their truths. He liked Ghaeten, but he had liked and would continued to like many men, not in the same way, but not with any less (or more, for that matter) attachment. Jash lamented that he could not see them from outside his own body, naked and warm in the long shadows and wheat-waving movement of candlelight. In regrets like these he was subdued, attentive and nearly sad. “I want to be so deep inside you,” he confessed in a voice not his, low, morbid and almost pained with his lips dragging across Ghaeten’s collarbone. “I want to be deep enough to touch your little blue heart.” He fit his teeth around the bar of bone and nibbled along it.
If only sentiments were casual for him! So many of the problems that little blue heart got into were a result of poorly managed sentiments; taken too seriously, taken too soon, and given back in much the same fashion as they were mistakenly received. Every word from Jash’s addictive lips fueled the fire of quick attachment in Ghaeten; how could a man speak so intensely and not feel as he spoke! Syllables buried themselves in him and made his stomach churn with the rabid, immediate flowers of affection, a silver time in any relationship where things sing and sway no matter what your beloved has done or said. “Nothing’s stopping you,” he provoked, head leant back against the wall as though in preparation of an entry that was not yet to come. “I’ll bet you could do it,” the enamored continued, toning each word with a sexual antagonism he hoped would not be ignored, “You could get that deep in me, you could if you tried.” Fingers nearly shuddering their anticipation sought to steady themselves in hair lighter than his own, raking through and camping at the base of Jash’s neck.
Almost angry at having to do so, Jash fumbled out of contact just long enough to pull open a dresser drawer and plow a hand through the things inside until he retrieved a small bottle half-filled with transparent gel, tinted vaguely blue. He pinned the cork between his teeth, forced a finger inside the glass mouth, and turned the bottle upside down until his skin was saturated. Then he shook it loose, allowing it to break against the wooden surface of the dresser, all with an insistence reckless enough to suggest that Ghaeten might be worryingly injured or considering escape. Impatiently, he crossed his left arm over his chest to grab Ghaeten’s opposite and spin him belly against the wall again. His hands announced their journey along the length of his body, then, the wet finger lifted, apart. Jash tested the tightness and width of the backs of Ghaeten’s thighs with crushing caresses; before he thrust a gelled finger inside, he bit into the soft curve of his rear as if it were the peach it resembled.
Ghaeten was always careful not to watch his lovers during this particular moment, preferring to allow them a continued shroud of dignity which would be broken if the mechanics of comfortable sex were witnessed. One must be miles into a relationship before that level of understanding is any less than dangerous. Before their entry into the room, before their arrival at the door of the theater, Ghaeten was still uncertain of his role in relation to this, in relation to lovemaking. He never decided too soon, preferring to find what excited his partner and conforming himself thereafter. In this instance, he was a doll, spun without effort to face the wall again and grunting a hard, wet breath for reward. It rose up into one quiet, adoring cry atop another, first for entry, then for the selection Jash’s bite made. His shoulders shrunk in and fists half-balled against the wall, wanting something to cling to but further excited by the lack. “More,” he told him, begged him, “More.”
He enjoyed it, the command that was also obedience, the dizzying cycle of thrust, pull, ache, itch, relief and frustration. Jash was never more satisfied than when a lover surprised him and Ghaeten had- with the dirty vulnerability, the gaping willingness that had come from his shy, boyish face. Perhaps there was nothing better than a bruise of a boy, someone startlingly needing, someone with a fuck-shaped hole not only between their legs, but in their hearts as well, where the itch sent them looking for him. With this in mind he tilted his head, bunched together a fresh handful of flesh, and bit into it at the same time as he twisted his finger, then plunged it in and out in shallow, quick little thrusts.
He encouraged with every little part of him; with the hips that bucked instinctively forward, with the tightening of his shoulders and arms where they clung to an unreceptive wall, with the ragged, half-drunk way he tossed out praise: “God, oh, God, yes!,” and at last with the relaxed, understanding welcome from his body to anything Jash wanted to give it. His forehead rolled in an arch against its support, nails digging their frustration over how badly he wanted to be filled. Faith in the man who’d turned the typicals preceding sex into something near as pleasurable as the act itself made Ghaeten loose and frantic inside, almost desperate to move forward and be assured that anticipation would not disappoint him. For one long symphony of a moment, there was nothing between them but the question of long fingers and the answer of a shameless voice in groans and whimpers; Jash had selected a vocal lover, whose wordless declarations of ecstasy grew only more confident with time. But he was also impatient, dominated by craving, and eventually he fell victim to his own imagination. “Come here,” he breathed, a blind hand wandering down the wall, “Come up here, I need you.”
Jash rose one long lean leg at a time, just after forcing a middle finger in to the second knuckle, then pulling it out in order to fit both hands at the bottom of his rear’s curve. A thumb passed over the softer flesh, testing the slick ring of red impressions his mouth had made. “It’s okay.” He whispered, a frail warm cirrus faintness against the back of Ghaeten’s ear. “I’m right here.” As if to consummate this sentiment, he used his thumbs to pluck the pale curves in differing directions and made his loins a snug nest there, breath intense as his focus whittled to the fine dark hairs rooted in Ghaeten’s skin. Jash loosed one hand to guide himself by the base, dragging up and slowly down, sliding across slicked tight heat.
If there was a mind on earth naive and hopeful enough to believe in the speed with which Ghaeten swore he loved, he loved Jash right at the feet of his perfect, poison words. Though his body remained a hard, hungry strain of muscles awaiting their reward for stacked months of celibacy, his face relaxed, the pout and darkness irreparably there softening by degrees until they were simply a haunt. Again the arm which abandoned its post to relocate moved backward, pulling Jash’s head with an affectionate tug to keep it close, to encourage kisses, to be sure that any word he spoke hereafter was delivered just to the ears in need of it. He murmured quiet encouragements of motion, breath catching over the burn that relieved him in the same way that it highlighted his greed for satisfaction.
Jash could coddle, could soothe and assure, all with honesty, for he adored without loving but thrived on being a source of comfort. His expressions were all sincere, however misleading. “I’m right here, Beautiful,” he breathed, lips against the very edge of the well that lead into Ghaeten’s brain. While one hand steadied the other’s hips, its opposite gently fluttered the thin, soft hair at the nape of Ghaeten’s neck. “I’m so close to you.” A sudden firmness of grip forewarned the entrance, then Jash exhaled a sharp, throaty relief at being inside. “You feel how close I am?” He took the thinnest rim of ear between his lips and touched it with the tip of his tongue.
Years ago, when his sexuality took its first unsteady breath and tried to move into something more mature, he’d tightened and cried at the sting of a lover’s entry, unable to control himself and put beneath several minutes of pain before he found the worth of it all (assuming the young men he chose were able to sustain for that long). Jash would suffer no such disappointment tonight, and was instead met with a sudden and jubilant relaxation, brought by the relief his words and his entry had caused. Sex settled him like water a man in the desert. After a long, low groan, he was Ghaeten again, the same Ghaeten he had been earlier in the evening - playful, impish, eager and talented. A slow gesture of hip pushed him with attentive subtlety back onto Jash as he introduced himself, words tripping over the innocent challenge of his wide smile. “Even closer,” he told him, “I want more than that.” His eyes fell down their long black lashes, enhancing an image of skin against skin. “I want you deep enough to taste.”
He was one of those men who milked a carnal satisfaction out of holding a lover by the hips, pumping their bodies like contraptions along his length. Jash would watch the friction and always thought that he felt it more deeply in doing so. “Yeah? You want that?” A drag of hips backward took him only far enough to drive into Ghaeten again, insistent, sharp. This began a lovemaking of a different rhythm, however, as Jash swung slowly, patiently inside with his fingertips crushing the skin of Ghaeten’s hips. “Do you want that?” He maneuvered Ghaeten’s head with a fistful of his hair to turn it and force in a wet hot tongue and repeat the slow, deep thrusts there.
Repeatedly put to a shock almost worshipful by how well and how fast his desires were being answered, Ghaeten gave himself over completely to the direction of Jash’s hands, much as he imagined his actors did on stage. They’d done already with the jokes and jabs of slow mounting passion, but still did the ghost-eyed lover entertain notions of control almost professorial from his companion, eager to be molded into positions he thought were satisfying. He’d just enough time to answer in part, to tell him, “Yes, yes, I want that, I want you,” before being swallowed into a kiss that he released all of his love-sounds during - each entry spurred a gesture at the back of his throat silenced at Jash’s lips.
Hard, hot breath and the beat of his hips made his kisses imprecise and sloppy, but twice as passionate. Each stroke caused one of a different speed and length until Jash propped a bent arm on the wall above Ghaeten’s head and clung, with his free hand, to the blushing muscle coming from between Ghaeten’s own two legs. Between attentive but slow milking gestures and short, quick bursts of his groin deeper into his lover, Jash’s lips still hung at Ghaeten’s ear, both commanding and comforting him. “You look so beautiful. You look so good with me in you.” He nuzzled his chin down into the other’s shoulder, bowed his head into his neck and firmed a double grip on his hips to buck as hard as he had yet into him, sudden and frantic, as if their time had somehow been regulated.