Chapter 98: Chapter 98
It was the quiet of a ship in safe harbor, the engines off, resting in deep, still water. That peace, so hard-won, held for a year and a half. Then winter leaked away, and spring arrived the day Felix turned twenty.
“We’re going out,” Cassian announced, pulling his good leather jacket—the one saved for funerals and formalities—from the back of the closet.
“The Otter?” Felix asked, grinning. The thought of celebrating his birthday in their old, sticky-floored haunt was perfect.
“No. Someplace with cocktails that cost more than my boots and no one knows us.” Cassian’s voice was firm. “You’re not getting puking-drunk in a place we can walk home from. We’re doing it proper. A clean slate.”
The restaurant was all dim corners and velvet banquettes. Cassian wore a deep emerald shirt that made his eyes look like glacial ice. Felix wore black, feeling grown in a way his teen years never allowed. They drank. First, martinis, cold and precise as surgical instruments. Then they switched to a bottle of Malbec, dark and plummy. The conversation, usually a trade of short phrases, loosened into a slow, meandering river.
“Remember that first time?” Felix murmured, swirling the wine. “In my old flat? I was so fucking scared of you.”
“I was scared of you,” Cassian countered, his thumb stroking the rim of his glass. “Of that… wanting. It was a hole I hadn’t seen before. You just opened up in front of me.”
“A hole you filled,” Felix said, the wine making him bold.
A slow, dark smile spread across Cassian’s face. “Repeatedly.” They clinked glasses, the sound pure and bright in the hushed room. “To the hole.”
It was a celebration of their peculiar architecture. By the time the dessert wine arrived, a sticky-sweet Sauternes, the world had developed a soft, pleasant blur. They stumbled into a cab, limbs tangled, laughing at nothing. Their laughter turned to groping in the backseat, Cassian’s mouth hot and searching on Felix’s throat, his hand sliding up Felix’s thigh until the driver coughed pointedly. They fell through the door of their flat, shedding clothes like they were on fire.
“My turn,” Felix slurred, pushing Cassian back against the wall. The alcohol sang in his veins, a fearless, buzzing anthem.
Cassian’s eyebrows shot up, a smirk playing on his lips. “Yeah? You think you can handle me?”
“I fucking own you,” Felix breathed, his hands fumbling with Cassian’s belt. The metal buckle clattered to the floor. He yanked Cassian’s trousers and briefs down in one rough pull, freeing his cock, which was already thick and heavy against his stomach. Cassian let out a sharp, incredulous laugh, his head thumping back against the wall.
Felix dropped to his knees. The parquet was hard against his bones. He took Cassian into his mouth, the weight and taste of him a familiar, beloved drug. He worked him with a sloppy, wine-wet enthusiasm, hollowing his cheeks, swallowing him deep until he hit the back of his throat. Cassian’s hands fisted in his hair, not guiding, just holding on.
“Fuck, Felix… your mouth….” Cassian’s voice was a ragged scrape. His hips gave a tiny, involuntary thrust. The surrender in that small movement went straight to Felix’s own aching cock. He pulled off with a wet pop, saliva stringing from his lips.
“On the bed,” Felix ordered, standing on shaky legs. “On your back. Now.”
Cassian obeyed, a slow, stunned crawl onto the mattress. He lay back, watching Felix with a dazed, heavy-lidded intensity Felix had never seen before. It was the look of a man handing over the reins, drunk on trust and expensive wine. Felix grabbed the lube from the nightstand, his fingers trembling with adrenaline. He slicked himself, then poured a generous, cold pool into his palm for Cassian.
“You sure?” Cassian asked, his voice rough.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Felix said, and it was true. He coated Cassian’s entrance, his fingers pushing inside with a purposeful, circling pressure. Cassian gasped, his body tensing then melting open. He was so tight, a hot, clenching vise, but he gave way, his legs falling apart in invitation.
Felix lined himself up. The head of his cock pressed against that forbidden pucker. He looked down at Cassian, at his husband spread out beneath him, vulnerable and willing. Cassian nodded once, a sharp jerk of his chin. Felix pushed.
The resistance was immense, a hot, muscular grip that made him groan. He pushed again, sinking an inch, then two, into that breathtaking, impossible heat. Cassian let out a choked sound, his hands scrabbling at the sheets, his knuckles white. His face was a mask of pained, transcendent concentration.
“More,” Cassian gritted out. “Give it all to me.”
Felix drove forward, sheathing himself completely in a single, relentless thrust. They both cried out, a mirrored sound of shock and completion. Felix stayed there, buried to the hilt, feeling Cassian’s body pulse around him, adapting. He was inside Cassian. The world had tilted on its axis.
He began to move. The rhythm was clumsy at first, uncoordinated by alcohol and awe. But he found it, a deep, rolling cadence that punched ragged moans from Cassian’s throat. This wasn’t like anything they’d done before. The power dynamic they’d built, that sturdy scaffold of Cassian’s control, was inverted. Felix owned this moment. He saw it in the helpless clench of Cassian’s jaw, in the way his husband’s cock leaked onto his own stomach with each powerful thrust.
“You feel that?” Felix panted, sweat dripping from his brow onto Cassian’s chest. “You feel how deep I am in you?”
“Yes,” Cassian hissed, his eyes squeezed shut. “Christ, yes.”
“This is my birthday present,” Felix grunted, his pace quickening, his balls slapping against Cassian’s skin. “You.Like this. Opened up. Taken.” The filth poured out of him, a dark poetry fueled by possession. “My cock in your ass on my birthday. You’re my fucking cake, Cass.”
The vulgarity shattered Cassian’s last restraint. He came with a wordless, guttural roar, his release erupting in hot stripes across his stomach and chest, his body clamping down on Felix’s cock in rhythmic, vice-like pulses. The violent tightness tipped Felix over the edge. He hammered in one last time, as deep as he could go, and let go.
His orgasm was a white-hot detonation in the base of his spine, blinding and all-consuming. He emptied himself into Cassian’s body with a broken cry, each pulse feeling like a piece of his soul was being transferred. He collapsed forward, catching himself on trembling arms, still embedded. Their sweat mingled on Cassian’s heaving chest. The room smelled of sex, wine, and shattered precedent.
Slowly, Felix pulled out. Cassian winced, a hiss escaping his teeth. They lay side by side, not touching, staring at the ceiling, listening to the frantic thunder of their own hearts. The silence was profound, buzzing with the aftermath. Felix turned his head. Cassian was already looking at him, his expression unreadable in the dark.
Cassian shifted, wincing again as he moved onto his side. He reached out a hand, his fingers, still trembling, brushing a damp strand of hair from Felix’s forehead. His touch was impossibly gentle.
“Happy birthday, kid,” he whispered, his voice wrecked.
The harbor held for ten months. Felix’s twentieth birthday arrived on a Tuesday stained gray with persistent, chilly rain. They had no plans, and that was the plan: Cassian’s famous, heavily peppered stew, a six-pack of a new local IPA, and the new episode of a gritty shipbuilding documentary they both pretended not to be obsessed with. Comfortable.Safe. Predictable. That, Felix decided sometime around three in the afternoon as he stared at the dripping window, was the problem.
“We should go out,” he announced, turning from the glass. Cassian looked up from the engine part he was cleaning at the kitchen table, a disassembled carburetor laid out on newspaper like a chrome organ graft. His eyebrows lifted.
“Out.” Cassian repeated the word as if it were in a foreign dialect. “In the wet. On a Tuesday.”
“It’s my birthday. I want whisky. I want loud music. I want to feel… something else.” The ‘else’ hung between them, charged. They both knew what it meant: not the deep, still water, but the open, unpredictable sea that had brought them together.
A slow, knowing smirk spread across Cassian’s face. He wiped his hands on a greasy rag, the motion deliberate. “Something else, huh? Alright, kid. Your party.” The old nickname, unused for months, sent a jolt through Felix’s stomach.
The "The Tipsy Otter" was not particularly rowdy that night, but they made it their own. They started with whisky, neat. Then another. They moved to pints of dark, malty stout that tasted of bread and earth. Cassian, loosened by the third drink, told a story about a near-catastrophic crane malfunction that had Felix gripping the sticky table edge. Felix, buoyant and warm, recounted the most outrageous client requests from his fledgling freelance design work. They laughed, a loud, syncopated sound that drew glances. The jukebox played a steady thrum of classic rock. Leo, Ben, and a few others from the periphery of their world drifted in and out of their orbit, offering congratulatory shots. They accepted every one.
Time liquefied. The amber in their glasses became a blur. The warm, wood-paneled room swayed gently. Felix’s limbs felt loose and electric. Cassian’s eyes, usually so sharply focused, had gone soft and dark, his gaze lingering on Felix’s mouth, his throat, with a proprietorial hunger that felt newly dangerous. They stumbled out into the cold, late-night air just after one, the rain reduced to a fine, glittering mist under the streetlights. They were drunk. Profoundly, stupidly, gloriously drunk.
Cassian fumbled with the keys at their apartment door, his large hands uncharacteristically clumsy. He got it open, and they half-fell inside, a tangle of damp coats and unsteady laughter. The familiar space felt alien, tilted. Cassian pushed the door shut with his shoulder and turned, his back against it, looking at Felix who was swaying in the middle of their living room.
“Happy birthday, you little shit,” Cassian slurred, his voice a warm, gravelly rumble.
Felix grinned, a wide, unguarded thing. “You’re fucking wasted, old man.”
“So are you.” Cassian pushed off the door. The distance between them evaporated. He cupped Felix’s face, his thumbs rough on his cheekbones. The smell of whisky, stout, and cold night air poured off him. “Still pretty, though. Even wasted.”
The kiss was a collision. It tasted of booze and salt and the latent, simmering aggression the alcohol had stripped bare. This wasn’t their practiced, tender love-making. This was a reclamation of the primal muck from which they’d first crawled. Cassian’s tongue shoved into Felix’s mouth, possessive and demanding. Felix met him with equal force, biting Cassian’s lower lip, sucking it hard. A low groan vibrated from Cassian’s chest into Felix’s.
Hands tore at clothing. Buttons flew. Belts clattered to the hardwood. They left a trail from the living room to the bedroom: a sweater, a shirt, a sock. They fell onto the bed, a heap of heated, drunk skin. Cassian rolled on top, his weight immense and anchoring. He rutted against Felix, his cock a thick, hard ridge against Felix’s thigh. “Gonna fuck you so deep,” Cassian mumbled into the sweat-damp hollow of Felix’s neck. “Gonna ruin you for your birthday.”
But Felix, swimming up through the alcoholic fog with a surge of raw, unprecedented power, shoved against Cassian’s massive chest. “No.”
Cassian froze, his body going rigid. His drunk eyes struggled to focus, confusion and a flicker of hurt swimming in the blue. “What?”
“My birthday,” Felix said, the words thick but clear. A new, intoxicating authority flooded his veins, hotter than the whisky. “My rules tonight. Turn over.”
For a heartbeat, Cassian didn’t move. He just stared down, his expression unreadable. The only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant hiss of a radiator. Then, with a slow, deliberate exhalation, Cassian obeyed. He rolled onto his back, his body a vast landscape of muscle and scars against their dark sheets. He looked up at Felix, his face stripped of its usual armored control, showing only raw, vulnerable expectation.
The sight stole Felix’s breath. He had never been given this before. He straddled Cassian’s thick waist, feeling the hot, solid flesh under his thighs. He leaned down, kissing Cassian with a sloppy, wet intensity, then moved his mouth lower. He traced the old scar through Cassian’s eyebrow with his tongue, then down the strong line of his jaw, his throat. He took one of Cassian’s nipples into his mouth, biting down just enough to make the bigger man jolt and hiss.
“Fuck, Felix,” Cassian gasped, his hands coming up to grip Felix’s hips, his fingers digging in.
“Quiet,” Felix commanded, and moved lower. He took Cassian’s cock in his hand, feeling the sheer, daunting weight of it. He’d done this before, but never like this, never with this driving, predatory need. He licked a broad stripe from base to tip, then swallowed him down as far as he could, his throat working, his eyes watering. Cassian’s hips bucked off the bed with a choked-off shout.
“Jesus Christ!”
Felix pulled off, saliva stringing from his lips. He reached blindly for the lube in the bedside drawer, fumbling the cap. He poured a slick, cool pool into his palm, warming it before grasping Cassian’s cock again, stroking him slowly, thoroughly. Then he coated his own entrance, his movements clumsy but determined. He positioned himself, one hand braced on Cassian’s heaving stomach, the other guiding Cassian’s cock to his hole.
He looked down, meeting Cassian’s gaze. Cassian was watching him, his eyes black with need, his teeth sunk into his own lip. No instructions. No taking.Just waiting.
Felix pushed down.
The stretch was agonizing, magnificent, a white-hot brand of fullness that made him cry out. He lowered himself inch by torturous inch, his body screaming in protest and glorious welcome. Cassian’s hands flew to his hips again, not to guide, but to hold on, his knuckles white. When Felix was fully seated, impaled, he paused, panting, feeling the throb of Cassian inside him, a part of his very core.
“Move,” Cassian begged, his voice shattered. “Please, Felix, fuck yourself on me. Use me.”
The plea unlocked something feral in Felix. He began to ride him, starting with slow, grinding circles that drew ragged moans from them both. Then he lifted himself almost all the way off before slamming back down, taking Cassian deep in a hard, punishing rhythm. The slap of skin filled the room. Felix threw his head back, his hands roaming over his own chest, pinching his nipples, glorying in the power, in the obscene, beautiful submission of the man beneath him.
“You feel that?” Felix grunted, driving down again and again. “You feel how fucking tight I am?This is mine. You’re mine.”
“Yours,” Cassian gasped, his composure gone, his body arching up to meet every thrust. “All yours. Fuck, just like that. Don’t stop.”
The pace became frenetic, a drunk, desperate race. Felix could feel his own climax coiling, a superheated wire in his gut. Cassian’s breath was coming in sharp, hitched pants. “I’m gonna come,” Cassian warned, his fingers like vices on Felix’s flesh. “Gonna fill you up.”
“Do it,” Felix snarled. “Come inside me. Mark me.” He pistoned faster, his own orgasm tearing through him with a silent, violent intensity. His cock jerked, spilling hot streaks across Cassian’s stomach and chest as his body clamped down in rhythmic, milking spasms.
Cassian roared, a raw, unfiltered sound of surrender. His hips pistoned up off the bed three final times as he emptied himself deep into Felix, the hot pulses seeming to go on forever. Felix collapsed forward, spent, his forehead resting on Cassian’s pounding chest. The smells of sex, sweat, and stale booze wrapped around them.
They lay there, wrecked, for a long time. Cassian’s arms, trembling slightly, came up and wrapped around Felix, holding him close even as he softened inside him. The radiator hissed. A siren wailed somewhere in the wet night.
Cassian’s lips moved against Felix’s sweaty hair. His voice, when it came, was hoarse and filled with a wonder that had nothing to do with alcohol. “Happy birthday,” he whispered.
It was the quiet of a ship in safe harbor, the engines off, resting in deep, still water. This quiet held for three serene months, right up until the week of Felix’s twentieth birthday. A low-grade excitement buzzed between them, a shared secret. Cassian had booked the private karaoke room at The Tipsy Otter for a Saturday night, inviting a handful of Felix’s friends from the print shop and his own gruff, good-natured crew from the docks. It was an unprecedented gesture. “You only turn twenty once,” Cassian had said, shrugging as if the planning hadn’t cost him days of muttered phone calls.
The room was a riot of colored lights and off-key Bon Jovi by ten pm. Felix, flushed and happy, was sandwiched between Leo, who was enthusiastically describing the typographic merits of a new Thai restaurant menu, and Ben, who kept offering him spicy margaritas with a jolly, “It’s your birthday, live a little!” Cassian held court in a corner with two of his welders, but his eyes constantly tracked back to Felix, a softness in his gaze that was reserved only for him. They drank. They drank sweet, potent cocktails and shots of smoky mezcal that Cassian’s foreman produced from a dusty bottle. They drank to Felix, to the wedding, to ships and sealing wax.
By midnight, the quiet harbor had become a storm-lashed sea. The world melted into a warm, shimmering blur. Felix remembered laughing uncontrollably, his forehead pressed against Cassian’s shoulder. He remembered Cassian’s low, rumbling laugh vibrating through his own chest. He remembered stumbling, Cassian’s impossibly solid arm around his waist, holding him upright as they weaved through the bar’s main room, a united front against gravity.
“You’re fucking wasted, birthday boy,” Cassian slurred into his ear, his breath hot and smelling of lime and tequila.
“You’re my fucking husband,” Felix giggled back, the word feeling huge and wonderful in his mouth. “My big, drunk husband.”
The cold night air did nothing to sober them. It was a slap that merely confused. The taxi ride was a nauseating swirl of streetlights. They fell into their flat, a tangle of limbs and suppressed laughter, shushing each other loudly. Cassian kicked the door shut and immediately slumped against it, pulling Felix with him. They slid to the floor in the dark entryway, a heap of celebration.
Cassian’s hands were in Felix’s hair, gripping tight. His kisses were sloppy, wet, desperate things that tasted of salt and alcohol. “My twenty-year-old husband,” he mumbled between kisses, his words thick. “Fuck. Fuck.” His hands groped at Felix’s clothes, tugging his shirt up, fumbling with his belt.
Usually, Cassian led. He was the anchor, the director. But the liquor had leveled them, sunk Cassian into a heavy, pliable state. A switch flipped in Felix’s gin-addled brain. Possession, hot and sharp, flared through the pleasant fog. His husband. Sprawled and vulnerable beneath him. The man who built his desk, who wore his ring, who was currently trying to lick Felix’s chin.
“No,” Felix said, his own voice a rough, unfamiliar growl. He pushed at Cassian’s broad chest. “My turn.”
Cassian blinked up at him, his blue eyes glassy with confusion and drink. “What?”
“You heard me.” Felix shoved himself up, kneeling over Cassian’s prone form. The power was intoxicating, a new kind of drunk. He made quick, brutal work of Cassian’s belt and jeans, yanking them down over his thick thighs with a strength the alcohol loaned him. Cassian offered no resistance, just a low, bewildered groan as the cold air hit his skin. His cock, half-hard, lay against his stomach. Felix spat into his own hand, the sound obscenely loud in the dark. He didn’t slick himself. He used the saliva to roughly stroke Cassian to full, throbbing hardness.
“Felix… wait,” Cassian breathed, but it was a protest without force, his head lolling back against the door.
“No waiting.” Felix positioned himself, one hand guiding Cassian’s cock, the other braced on the door. He sank down, impaling himself in one excruciating, deliberate motion. The stretch burned, a bright, brutal frontier breached. He cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the room. Cassian shouted, his back arching off the floor, his hands flying to Felix’s hips, fingers digging in like claws.
“Christ! Fuck! Easy!” Cassian gasped, his eyes wide.
Felix didn’t go easy. He began to move, a punishing, up-down rhythm that was less about pleasure and more about conquest. He rode him hard, using gravity and fury, each slam of his body taking Cassian deeper, chasing the feeling of total control. The wet, filthy sound of their joining echoed off the bare walls. Sweat dripped from Felix’s brow onto Cassian’s heaving chest.
“You’re mine,” Felix panted, the words crashing out of him with each downward thrust. “This big, fuckoff cock is mine. This is mine. Say it.”
Cassian could only moan, a deep, ragged sound torn from his gut. His hands slid from Felix’s hips to his ass, gripping the cheeks, spreading them, helping him take it even deeper. His surrender was complete. “Yours,” he choked out. “All yours. Fuck. Ruin me.”
The permission shattered Felix’s last restraint. He pistoned faster, his own neglected cock slapping against his stomach. The pain had transmuted into a searing, overwhelming fullness that tipped into a blinding, violent peak. He came untouched, his release splattering Cassian’s shirt in hot stripes, his internal muscles clamping down in rhythmic, vicious spasms. The intense, milking contraction pulled Cassian over the edge. With a broken roar, Cassian emptied into him, his hips bucking off the floor, his body bowing as he pulsed deep inside Felix’s clenching heat.
The aftermath was a slow-motion collapse. Felix slid off, crumpling onto the floor beside Cassian, a boneless, aching heap. Their breathing was the only sound, loud and ragged in the silent dark. The cold from the hardwood seeped into Felix’s bare legs. Cassian’s hand found his in the space between them, their fingers interlocking with a sticky, desperate tightness.
Neither spoke. The heavy consequences gathered around them, invisible and immediate. The throb between Felix’s legs was a raw, stunning ache. The smell of sex and tequila sweat filled the entryway. A thin line of Cassian’s release leaked down Felix’s inner thigh, a warm, uncomfortable trickle.
Sunlight was a cruel invention. It speared through the blinds, landing directly on Felix’s face, which was pressed against the unforgiving floor. A groan didn’t just escape him; it seemed to be excavated from the very core of his misery. Every cell in his body screamed. His head was a cave of throbbing pain, his mouth tasted of ash and regret, and a deep, hot ache pulsed mercilessly between his legs. He remembered. The shoving, the claiming, the obscene sound of his own body taking what it wanted.
He turned his head, a monumental effort. Cassian was on his back beside him, still mostly dressed in his ripped-open shirt and jeans around his ankles. His face was pale, slack with a sleep that looked more like a coma. A trail of dried saliva marked his stubbled cheek.
A swell of nausea, pure and violent, overwhelmed Felix. He scrambled to his hands and knees, the movement sending sharp bolts of pain through his skull and pelvis. He barely made it to the toilet before he vomited, a gut-wrenching expulsion of tequila, lime, and the ghost of birthday cake. He heaved until there was nothing left, then slumped against the cool porcelain, shivering.
The flat was a crime scene. In the harsh morning light, he saw the puddle of spilled margarita salt by the sofa, a lonely wedge of lime under the coffee table. Their wedding photo, in its simple frame, lay face down on the bookshelf, knocked over in the stumble. And there, in the entryway, the evidence was stark: two parallel streaks on the inside of the door where Cassian’s shoulders had been braced, and a darker, damp patch on the floorboards.
Cassian stirred. A low, pained moan rumbled from his chest. He dragged a heavy hand over his face, his eyes squinting open. They found Felix in the bathroom doorway. For a long moment, they just stared at each other across the devastated living room, two shipwreck survivors on separate rafts.
“Water,” Cassian rasped, the single word sounding shredded.
Felix nodded, a tiny movement that hurt. He pushed himself up, every muscle protesting, and filled two glasses from the tap. He walked slowly back, handing one to Cassian, who had managed to pull his jeans up but not button them. They drank in silence, the water a balm and a judgment.
Cassian’s eyes, bloodshot and tired, finally looked down at himself, at Felix, at the door. “Did I…?” he began, then stopped, uncertainty clouding his features.
“No,” Felix said, his voice hoarse. “It was me. I fucked you. On the floor.”
The memory seemed to reassemble behind Cassian’s eyes. He didn’t look shocked. He looked… measured. He took another long sip of water, his gaze dropping to Felix’s trembling hands. “Rough?”
“Yes.”
Cassian nodded slowly. He set his glass down with deliberate care. He reached out, his hand surprisingly steady, and brushed a thumb over the prominent bruise Felix could now feel blooming on his own hip from the impact with the floor. “Good,” Cassian said, the word quiet but definitive. He looked up, meeting Felix’s swollen eyes. “We should… clean up.”
It was a practical statement, but it felt like an absolution. The heavy consequences weren’t a punishment; they were a shared weight, a new, sore landmark in the territory of them. Felix took his husband’s offered hand, and together, they hauled themselves up from the wreckage.