Chapter 10: Steam and Memories: Zayn's Shower-Stall Fantasies
The water turned cold. Zayn didn’t move, letting the icy needles punish his shoulders, wash the phantom warmth of his own hand down the drain. The memory of Eli in those black panties, the silk撕裂 sound they’d made when he’d finally ripped them off, was a branding iron on his brain. He’d fucked him raw that night, a desperate, wordless thing. Now, the fight was done. The money—a thick, ugly wad of it—was tucked under the loose floorboard, still smelling of sweat and the warehouse’s ozone and blood. His own. Some other guy’s. It all smelled the same.
He shut off the tap. The silence in the apartment was a living thing. He toweled off, the rough fabric catching on the fresh split on his knuckles, the blossoming purple and yellow along his ribs. He dressed slowly, jeans, a clean shirt that pulled tight across his shoulders. Each movement was a low throb of pain. Good pain. Earned pain.
The main room was dark, lit only by the streetlamp glow leaking around the boarded window. Eli was at the small table, a book open under the pool of a single lamp. He didn’t look up. The set of his shoulders, the deliberate stillness of his hands, said everything.
Zayn’s stomach tightened. He walked to the fridge, pulled out a beer, popped the cap on the edge of the counter. The hiss was loud.
“You’re home late,” Eli said, his voice calm. Too calm.
“Had some work.” Zayn took a long swallow, the beer bitter and cold.
“Work.” Eli turned a page. He hadn’t read a word. “Your ‘work’ leave a message.”
Zayn set the bottle down too hard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Finally, Eli looked up. His eyes, in the lamplight, were dark pools. They travelled over Zayn’s face, seeing what the dim light revealed: the swollen cut on his eyebrow, the way he favored his left side. “Rico called here. Looking for you. Sounded… excited. Said you ‘put on a fucking show.’” Eli’s voice didn’t waver, but the quiet in it was brittle. “So. How was the show?”
The air left the room. Zayn felt cornered, the same adrenaline from the warehouse flooding back, looking for a target. “It was a fight, Eli. That’s all. I got the money. It’s done.”
“Is it?” Eli closed the book with a soft, final sound. He stood up. He was wearing one of Zayn’s old hoodies, sleeves rolled, dwarfing his slender frame. He walked over until he was a foot away, well inside Zayn’s space. He looked up at him, his gaze unwavering. “Take off your shirt.”
“What?”
“Take it off. Let me see the show.”
“It’s nothing. Back off.”
“No.” The word was a stone. Eli reached out, his fingers catching the hem of Zayn’s shirt. He didn’t pull, just held on. “You don’t get to do this and then tell me to back off. You don’t get to bring that violence home and hide it from me. Let me see.”
A fury, hot and shameful, burned in Zayn’s throat. He swatted Eli’s hand away. “You wanna see? Fine. Fucking see.” He grabbed the collar of his own shirt and yanked it over his head, tossing it aside. He stood there, chest heaving, under the cruel light.
Eli’s breath hitched. The bruises were worse in the full light. A massive, dark bloom covered his left ribcage. Raw scrapes marked his shoulders from the warehouse concrete. The old tattoos were distorted by swelling.
For a long moment, Eli just stared. His face was pale, a muscle working in his jaw. Then his hands came up, not to strike, but to hover over the damage. His fingertips, when they finally made contact on the unbruised skin of Zayn’s right side, were cold. They traced down, over the hard plane of his stomach, coming to rest just above the waistband of his jeans.
“He hurt you,” Eli whispered. It wasn’t a question.
“I hurt him worse,” Zayn growled, but the fight was leaching out of him under those cold, gentle hands.
Eli’s fingers dipped below the waistband, popping the button. The zipper hissed down. “You’re a liar,” Eli said, his voice low and thick. “You’re a stupid, beautiful liar who thinks bruises are receipts.” He pushed the jeans and boxers down Zayn’s hips in one motion, letting them fall to the floor.
Zayn was half-hard already, a confused, angry response to the proximity, the tension, the tender violence of Eli’s touch. Eli sank to his knees on the cold floorboards. He didn’t look up at Zayn’s face. His eyes were on his cock, on the dark thatch of hair, on the bruises staining his hips.
“Eli, don’t—” The protest died as Eli leaned forward and pressed his open mouth to the worst of the bruising on Zayn’s hip. Not a kiss. A brand. His tongue swiped over the discolored skin, a wet, hot claim. Zayn jerked, a shot of pure sensation spearing through the pain.
“You belong here,” Eli murmured against his skin, his breath ghosting over Zayn’s swelling cock. “This body belongs to me. Not to some piece of shit in a warehouse.” His hand wrapped around the base of Zayn’s shaft, squeezing just shy of painful. “This is mine.”
Then he took him into his mouth.
It wasn’t like before. There was no slow tease, no practiced seduction. Eli swallowed him down deep, his throat opening in a hot, tight glide that made Zayn cry out. Eli’s head bobbed, a ruthless, driving rhythm, his lips stretched tight around the girth. He used his tongue roughly, dragging it along the sensitive vein underneath, humming around him. One of his hands fondled Zayn’s balls, rolling them, tightening just enough to make Zayn’s knees buckle. The other hand pressed firmly against the bruised ribs, not avoiding the hurt but asserting a new, sharper, more exquisite pain-pleasure.
“Fuck… Eli… Christ…” Zayn’s hands flew to Eli’s head, fingers tangling in the blond curls. He didn’t guide, just held on as Eli fucked his own face on Zayn’s cock, the obscene, wet sounds loud in the silent apartment. Spit dripped down onto his balls, onto Eli’s knuckles. It was raw, almost angry. A reclamation.
Zayn felt the orgasm coil, savage and quick. “Gonna come… gonna come down your fucking throat…”
Eli pulled off with a wet pop, his lips slick and swollen. He looked up, his eyes blazing. “No. Not like this.” He rose to his feet, pushing Zayn backward toward the futon. Zayn went, stumbling, his cock jutting out, dripping pre-come. He landed on the mattress, and Eli was on him in an instant, straddling his thighs. He’d shoved his own sweats and briefs down, just enough.
Eli spat into his own hand, slicking Zayn’s cock with a crude, urgent motion. Then he positioned himself and sank down.
It was too fast, too dry for a second, a blinding flash of friction that made them both gasp. Eli’s face contorted, a mask of pure, unvarnished need. He bore down, forcing his body to take it, to take all of him, right now.
“You feel that?” Eli panted, his voice shredded. “You feel where you are? You’re here. In me. Not there.”
He began to ride, a punishing, vertical bounce that slammed their bodies together. The futon frame screamed in protest. Each downstroke was a deep, brutal impalement. Zayn could only watch, gripped by a awe that bordered on terror. Eli’s cock, hard and leaking, slapped against his stomach with each violent move. His face was a beautiful wreck—eyes squeezed shut, mouth open on silent cries, tears of strain or pain or fury tracking through the sweat on his temples.
Zayn’s hands found his hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh, trying to slow him, to deepen him. “Easy, baby, easy, you’re gonna hurt—”
“I want it to hurt!” Eli shouted, the sound raw and startling. He slammed down harder, taking Zayn impossibly deep. “I want you to feel it tomorrow. I want you to feel me when you’re in that fucking place. I want this ache to be all you can think about.”
The words unlocked something feral in Zayn. He flipped them, pinning Eli beneath him, driving up into him with a force that shoved Eli up the mattress. He hooked Eli’s legs over his shoulders, bending him nearly in half, and fucked into him with short, devastating pumps aimed straight at his core.
“Is this what you want?” Zayn snarled, sweat dripping from his chin onto Eli’s chest. “You want me to ruin this sweet hole? Make it so you can’t walk without remembering my cock?”
“Yes! God, yes, ruin it, mark it, make it yours!” Eli babbled, his hands scrabbling at Zayn’s back, raking over the bruises, owning every hurt.
The pace was animalistic. The slick, meaty sound of their coupling, the smell of sex and sweat, the choked-off gasps—it was a fight of a different kind. Zayn felt the familiar, tight clutch of Eli’s orgasm begin, the frantic fluttering around his pounding length. He reached between them, fisting Eli’s cock, his thumb smearing pre-come over the head.
“Come for me,” Zayn demanded, his thrusts becoming erratic, brutal. “Come on my cock while I’m fucking my claim into you. Do it.”
With a shattered cry that was half a sob, Eli obeyed. His body arched, his hole clamping down in vicious, rhythmic spasms as his release striped his stomach and Zayn’s hand. The violent milking tore Zayn’s own climax from him. He drove in once, twice more, and emptied himself deep inside with a guttural groan, pumping pulse after hot pulse into Eli’s convulsing heat.
He collapsed, his weight driving the breath from Eli’s lungs. He didn’t roll away. He stayed buried, softening inside him, his face buried in the damp hollow of Eli’s neck. He could feel Eli’s heartbeat hammering against his own bruised chest. Feel the slow, hot trickle of his own release leaking out around where they were still joined.
Long minutes passed. The room settled. The only sound was their ragged breathing syncing, slowing.
Eli’s hand came up, his fingers tracing the wet, swollen cut on Zayn’s eyebrow. His touch was feather-light now. “I bought groceries,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “The good coffee. The kind you like.”
Zayn closed his eyes. The money was under the floor. The fight was over. This bruise on his ribs would fade. The one on his soul felt seen, touched, held. He didn’t have the words. He never did. So he held on tighter, his nose nudging the shell of Eli’s ear, where the hearing aid was discarded on the pillow. A silent vow in the dark.
Tomorrow was another day. The warehouse was still out there. Rico would call again. But for now, the only thing that was real was the heat between them, the salt on their skin, and the terrible, beautiful truth that they could break each other and still be the only thing holding the other together.