Chapter 19: The Shower Confession
The walk from the basement stairs to the bathroom was a slow, sticky pilgrimage. Dried sweat glued their shirts to their backs, and the cooling ache of exertion had settled into their muscles. The triumphant haze of creation had morphed into a different, more animal awareness. Nathan flicked the bathroom light on, the stark white tiles a shock after the studio’s warm gloom.
He turned the shower taps, and the pipes in the walls groaned. Steam began to rise, blurring the single cracked mirror above the sink. Michael leaned against the doorframe, watching him. The domesticity of it, the simple act of Nathan testing the water temperature with his hand, sent a quiet thrill through him. This was real. This was a man preparing a shower for him, not an assistant or a handler, but a lover.
“C’mere,” Nathan said, his voice gravelly from disuse and earlier exertion.
They undressed each other slowly this time, not with the frantic hunger of the studio, but with a deliberate focus. Nathan peeled Michael’s stained shirt off, his fingers tracing a path through the dried streaks on his chest. Michael unbuckled Nathan’s jeans, pushing them down over his hips, letting them pool on the floor with a soft thud. Naked, they stood for a moment, the steam coiling around their ankles, looking at the maps they’d drawn on each other’s skin—red marks, faint bruises, the physical scripture of their session.
Nathan pushed the curtain aside, and they stepped into the torrent. The water was almost scalding, a punishing, perfect heat that hit Michael’s shoulders and made him gasp. It sluiced over them, turning Nathan’s blonde hair dark, streaming down the tense planes of his back.
Michael moved first. He pressed Nathan back against the cool, wet tile, his body slotting against his as the hot rain cascaded over them. He kissed him, a deep, searching kiss that tasted of shared exhaustion and lingering salt. Nathan’s hands came up to cradle his face, thumbs stroking his cheekbones, a tenderness that contrasted violently with the memory of his grip on the couch.
Then Nathan’s hands slid down, over the slick curve of Michael’s ass, grasping, pulling him closer so their erections slid together under the slick stream. A low groan vibrated through Nathan’s chest.
“Fuck,” Nathan breathed against his mouth.
Michael sank to his knees on the hard porcelain of the tub. The water beat against his back and shoulders as he took Nathan’s cock in his hand, already thick and hardening fully. He looked up, meeting Nathan’s darkened gaze through the steam, before leaning forward and taking him into his mouth.
He started slow, worshipful, lapping at the head, tracing the veins with his tongue. But Nathan’s quiet curse and the hand that fisted gently in his wet hair spurred him on. He took him deeper, relaxing his throat, hollowing his cheeks to suck hard. The taste was clean, just skin and heat and water. He worked him with a focused intensity, one hand cupping Nathan’s balls, rolling them gently, the other braced on Nathan’s thigh for balance.
“Shit, Michael… just like that,” Nathan choked out, his head tipping back against the tile with a dull thud. His hips gave a minute, involuntary thrust.
Michael increased the pressure, humming, the vibration making Nathan’s knees buckle. His fingers tightened in Michael’s hair, not guiding, just holding on. The sounds were obscenely loud in the small space: the drumming water, the wet, rhythmic suction, Nathan’s ragged breaths echoing off the walls.
Just as Nathan’s stomach muscles clenched, a precursor to the end, he pulled Michael up by the arms, his strength surprising. “Turn around,” he said, his voice a ragged command.
Michael obeyed, his heart hammering. Nathan turned him, bent him forward so his hands were splayed against the wet tile wall. The shower spray hit his back and sluiced down the cleft of his ass. He felt Nathan’s hand, slick with soap now, not lube, rub between his cheeks. The slide was rough, urgent.
“You ready?” Nathan asked, the head of his cock pressing against him. It wasn’t really a question.
“Yes. Do it. Now.”
Nathan pushed in with a single, relentless thrust, sheathing himself to the hilt in one brutal, breathtaking movement. The soap provided a slippery, unforgiving glide, a sharp, almost painful fullness that made Michael cry out, the sound swallowed by the shower’s roar.
Nathan didn’t pause. He set a hard, driving pace immediately, each snap of his hips jolting Michael forward against the wall. His hands gripped Michael’s hips, fingers digging in, holding him in place to be used. The water pounded on them, mixing with the sweat beading on their skin.
“Take it,” Nathan grunted, his thrusts gaining a brutal, piston-like rhythm. “Take all of it. Your ass is so fucking tight, even now.”
He leaned over, his chest plastered to Michael’s slick back, his mouth at his ear. “You love this, don’t you? Being my fucktoy. My little studio whore getting railed in the shower.”
The filthy words, rasped in that intimate space, detonated inside Michael. “Yes,” he gasped, “God, yes. Harder.”
One of Nathan’s hands snaked around Michael’s hip, finding his cock, which was hard and leaking against the cold tile. He matched his strokes to his thrusts, a rough, perfect coordination that tore a broken moan from Michael’s throat. The dual sensations were overwhelming—the deep, splitting fullness from behind, the tight, frantic friction from the front. Pleasure coiled, white-hot and dangerous, in his gut.
Nathan’s rhythm began to fracture. His thrusts became erratic, deeper, more desperate. The slap of skin on skin, the squelch of soap and water, his ragged pants filled the steam-choked air.
“I’m gonna fill you up,” Nathan snarled, a promise and a threat. “Gonna come so deep inside you.”
That was all it took. Michael’s orgasm ripped through him with a silent, open-mouthed scream, his seed striping the white tile in front of him, washed away by the relentless spray almost instantly. The convulsive clenching of his body around Nathan’s cock dragged Nathan over the edge with him. With a final, guttural shout that sounded like it was torn from his soul, Nathan drove in as deep as he could and held, pulsing hotly inside him.
They collapsed against the wall, a tangled, heaving mass of spent limbs under the cooling water. Nathan’s forehead rested between Michael’s shoulder blades, his breath hot on Michael’s skin. For a long time, they just stayed there, letting the water beat the tremors from their bodies.
Slowly, Nathan softened and slipped out. He reached for the bar of soap, the simple lavender scent cutting through the musk. His hands were gentle now, methodical. He washed Michael’s back, his shoulders, his arms, turning him to carefully clean his chest and stomach. The care in the action, following the raw possession of minutes before, made Michael’s throat tighten.
Nathan rinsed him, then handed him the soap. Michael returned the favor, washing away the studio grit, the sweat, the evidence of their passion from Nathan’s skin. It was silent, save for the water. No words were needed. The cracked mirror was fogged over completely, hiding their reflections.
Nathan turned the taps off. The sudden silence was a physical presence. He pulled back the curtain and grabbed two clean, worn towels from the rack, wrapping one around Michael’s shoulders and rubbing him down with a rough tenderness. He did the same for himself, then stood, looking at Michael in the steam-diffused light.
He reached out, tracing a faint, red mark on Michael’s hip—a bruise from the studio couch, or perhaps from the tiles just now. “We’re a fucking mess,” he said, but his voice was soft.
Michael caught his hand, lacing their fingers together. Water dripped from their hair onto the floor. “A beautiful mess,” he whispered.
A faint, almost shy smile touched Nathan’s lips. He pulled Michael into a hug, not sexual, but solid and complete. They stood there in the damp, cool air, the hum of the city outside the window a distant reminder of a world that, for now, had no claim on them. The track they’d built still looped in the basement below, a heartbeat under the house. And here, above it, they were clean, and quiet, and, for a stolen moment, whole.