Chapter 13: Flip Flop
Eddie’s body sang a new song.
The frantic, pounding rhythm of Robert's first possession had subsided into something deeper, a resonant thrum that originated in the very core of him. Robert’s hips moved with deliberate, rolling purpose, his thick cock sliding in and out of Eddie’s well-lubricated, thoroughly opened channel. Eddie was no longer just a vessel being filled; he was a collaborator.
“There,” Robert grunted, his voice a low rumble against Eddie’s ear as he shifted his angle minutely. The broad head of his cock dragged along a specific, spongy ridge inside Eddie. “Feel that?”
Eddie gasped. A sharp, bright sensation, completely unlike the overwhelming stretch, shot through his lower belly. It was electric, a direct line to his own cock, which jumped and wept against his stomach. “Fuck. Yeah. What is that?”
“Your switch,” Robert whispered, nipping at his earlobe. “Your prostate. Now let’s really find it.”
Robert began a slower, more focused assault. Each thrust was a seeking push, a polished piston searching for the perfect fit. Eddie stopped simply taking it. He learned. As Robert pulled back, Eddie clenched his inner muscles, a tight, milking pressure that made Robert groan. “Oh, you clever boy.”
Emboldened, Eddie let his hands, which had been gripping the crumpled velvet bedsheets, roam up Robert’s massive, sweat-slicked back. He remembered. He found the flat, dark nipples buried in the forest of Robert’s chest hair and pinched them, rolling the nubs between his thumbs and forefingers.
“Jesus Christ,” Robert choked out, his rhythm faltering for a second. “Yes. Just like that.”
The give-and-take became a conversation written in friction, sweat, and grunts. Eddie pushed back against Robert’s thrusts, meeting him, learning the cadence. He worked his ass, alternating between tight clenches and loose, welcoming yields, and all the while, his fingers twisted and pulled at Robert’s nipples. The older man’s control was slipping, his breath coming in ragged huffs, but he held on, drawing the moment out, turning the fuck into a languid, deeply felt joining.
Eddie felt the coil in his own groin tighten beyond the point of no return. It wasn’t the frantic, jerking need of before. It was a deep, inevitable welling up. “Robert… I’m gonna…”
“Let it go,” Robert commanded, his voice strained with his own impending release. “Show me.”
Eddie’s climax wasn’t a blast. It was a drain. His cock pulsed, but no ropes of cum shot across his belly. Instead, a hot, steady stream simply poured out, a river of white spilling over his balls and onto the dark hair of his groin, a slow, luxurious emptying that seemed to go on forever. His whole body shuddered with the profound, vulnerable release.
The feeling of Eddie pulsing around him, the sight of that endless spill, shattered what remained of Robert’s composure. With a roar that seemed to shake the antlered heads on the walls, he slammed home one final time. Eddie felt the hot flood deep inside him, a second claim, hotter and more intense than the first. Robert collapsed forward, a dead weight of muscle and satisfaction, crushing Eddie into the mattress.
Eddie welcomed it. He wrapped his arms around Robert’s broad shoulders, his legs around his waist, holding him inside, holding him close. He kissed whatever he could reach: a sweaty temple, the grizzled line of a jaw, the salt-damp skin of a shoulder. “Thank you,” he murmured, again and again, the words muffled against Robert’s skin. “Oh god, thank you.”
Robert, spent, simply endured the worship. He panted, his great lungs heaving, and turned his head to bury his face in the crook of Eddie’s neck. For long minutes, they were just one creature, fused together by sweat and seed.
Finally, Robert pushed himself up on his elbows. He looked down at Eddie, his intense brown eyes soft, the hunter’s gaze gone completely. He brushed a damp curl from Eddie’s forehead. “I love you, Eddie,” he said, the words simple and shocking in their clarity.
Eddie’s eyes, already glazed with pleasure, filled with a different kind of heat. “I love you, too,” he answered, and it was the truest thing he’d ever said. He pulled Robert down for a kiss, slow and deep, a seal on the promise.
They rolled onto their sides, still entwined. Robert slipped from Eddie’s body with a soft, wet sound, followed by a warm trickle of the combined fluids that seeped onto the sheets. Robert glanced at the mess and gave a tired, dismissive grunt, pulling Eddie closer so his head was against Robert’s chest.
They dozed, murmured, their hands lazily stroking each other’s skin. Eddie felt a curious energy returning, a spark ignited by fulfilment rather than drained by it. His hand drifted down, over the curve of Robert’s hip, through the dense thatch of hair, and found the deep, muscular cleft of his ass. He stroked a finger along the furrow.
Robert tensed for a second, then chuckled, a low vibration against Eddie’s back. “I wasn’t sure you’d have the energy after all of that.”
“It would feel… incomplete… if I didn’t,” Eddie whispered, echoing Robert’s earlier sentiment. “And I want to. So much.”
Without a word, Robert shifted. He brought himself up onto his elbows and knees, presenting himself. The lamplight played over the powerful hemispheres of his ass, the dark hair, the clean, pink pucker nestled between them. He began to speak, his voice taking on that instructive tone. “The asshole is more resilient than a vagina, so whilst a virgin hole still needs some gentle thoughtfulness, as you have experienced, it can…”
He was cut off by Eddie’s mouth.
Eddie didn’t tease. He dove in, spearing his tongue deep into Robert’s hole on the first, passionate pass. He tasted clean skin and a faint, musky essence that was purely Robert.
“Fuck!” Robert yelped, his body jolting. Then a shudder of pure delight racked him, and a deep, guttural moan tore from his throat. “Oh, god… yes…”
Eddie ate him with the fervent hunger of a convert, replicating every blissful torture Robert had visited upon him. He worked the tight rim with the tip of his tongue, then sucked the muscle into his mouth, feeling it flutter against his lips. He fucked him with broad, flat strokes of his tongue, delving as deep as he could, then licking up and down the entire cleft, kissing and nibbling the hairy, muscular cheeks. He was learning by doing, and the textbook was Robert’s trembling, yielding body.
Soon, the lessons turned to pleas. Robert’s powerful frame began to shake. “Eddie… please… need your cock. Fuck me with it, son. Please.”
Eddie remembered his own desperate begging. He knew the value of the wait. He redoubled his efforts, tongue-fucking Robert with relentless, wet strokes, sucking on his hole until it bloomed open under the pressure, a slick, pink star. He wanted to bring Robert to the very edge of sanity.
He heard the shift. The grunts became broken whimpers. The moans held a raw, desperate intensity. Robert was pushing back against Eddie’s face now, wordlessly begging for more, for something harder.
Eddie pulled back just enough to speak, his lips still brushing Robert’s spit-slicked ring. “Hmm,” he murmured, his voice thick. “Maybe I should stop. Give you a rest, old man. This seems like… too much for you.”
With a growl, Robert flipped himself over onto his back. He hooked his hands behind his knees and pulled his legs back and apart, offering himself completely. His hole, puffy and glistening from Eddie’s attention, pulsed in the open air. His face was a mask of need. “Enough games,” he panted. “Fuck me. Fuck me like you’re trying to break me in half.”
Eddie’s heart hammered against his ribs. He slicked his renewed erection with the spittle and pre-cum mingling on his hand, then added a generous dollop to Robert’s waiting entrance. He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock nudging against that resilient, hungry muscle. He locked eyes with Robert, saw the fierce encouragement there, the complete surrender to sensation.
He pushed.
There was resistance, a tight, hot clench, but it gave way before his relentless pressure. He didn’t stop. He buried himself to the root in one long, inexorable thrust, sheathing himself fully inside the man who had just remade him. Robert’s back arched off the bed, a strangled roar tearing from his throat, a sound of perfect, brutal fulfilment. Eddie was inside him. Completely. The circle was closed.
Eddie held himself there, buried deep, mesmerized by the rapturous agony on Robert’s face. The man’s powerful thighs trembled against his hips. This felt nothing like the warm, soft grip of a vagina. This was a hot, tight, living hug of slick muscle.
“Move,” Robert rasped, his voice shredded. “Please fuck me.”
Eddie pulled back slowly, watching his slick cock withdraw, then slid home again. Robert’s entire body responded, not just receiving but taking. His inner muscles clenched in a rippling, undulating wave that sucked Eddie deeper, milking him on the inward stroke.
“Oh, fuck,” Eddie gasped. It was like being actively swallowed.
He started a rhythm, a steady, deep pace that rocked the massive bed. Each thrust was a lesson. Robert’s body was an eloquent teacher, speaking through clenches and releases. Eddie could feel the subtle difference when his angle was off, a smooth glide of hot flesh. He shifted his hips, seeking. He thought of Robert’s cock hammering against that spot inside him, that electric shock.
“Tell me when I find it,” Eddie breathed, grinding deeper. He tilted his pelvis upward.
“Not yet,” Robert grunted, though his breath hitched. “Lower. You’re brushing it. Just… ah… just to the left.”
Eddie adjusted, sweat dripping from his nose onto Robert’s chest. He pushed in at this new angle. It felt good, deep and full, but not transformational. He pulled back, plunged in again, searching with the blunt head of his cock like a miner seeking a vein.
“Am I hitting it yet?” he asked, frustration and desire tightening his voice. “Is that it?”
“No, son, that’s just my fucking colon,” Robert panted, a laugh in his throat. “You’ll know. You’ll—”
Eddie thrust. Hard.
The head of his cock nudged something firm, small, and exquisitely sensitive. It wasn't a wall. It was a button.
Robert’s reaction was instantaneous and volcanic.
His back arched violently off the bed, a choked scream ripping from his throat that was pure, unadulterated shock. His legs, hooked around Eddie’s back, spasmed and shook as if electrified. For a few seconds, he convulsed, his eyes rolled back, his fingers scrabbling at the sheets, body seizing around Eddie’s cock in a series of frantic, rhythmic pulses. Then it subsided, leaving him gasping, his limbs trembling uncontrollably, a low, continuous moan leaking from his lips.
Eddie stared, stunned.
A fierce, possessive pride surged through him. He’d done that. He’d found the switch and flipped it. “Got you,” he whispered, a feral grin spreading across his face.
He did it again. A shorter, aimed thrust right back onto that magic spot.
Robert cried out, a broken, needy sound. His control was obliterated. His eyes, when they focused, held a glazed, unfocused look of sheer wanton surrender. He was putty.
Eddie began to play. He established a merciless, targeted rhythm, each inward stroke a precise hammer-blow to Robert’s prostate. He varied the speed, the depth, but never lost contact. He watched Robert unravel into a mindless, gooning wreck, reduced to a shuddering mass of nerve-endings, his mouth slack, his moans a constant, pleading soundtrack. He was utterly beholden to the length of Eddie’s cock.
Eddie felt drunk on power. This was his. This knowledge.
Then, through the haze of his own pleasure, he felt a change. Robert’s trembling stilled. His breathing, though ragged, found a new cadence. The muscles around Eddie’s cock, which had been clenching in involuntary spasms, began to work with a different, practiced intelligence.
They tightened in a slow, deliberate, circular squeeze, a perfect, velvet fist that rode Eddie’s shaft on the upstroke. Then, as Eddie pushed back in, they relaxed just enough to invite him deeper before clamping down again, a milking pressure that started at the base and fluttered all the way to the tip.
“Oh, god,” Eddie moaned. It was a virtuoso performance. Robert was fucking him back, expertly, using his own body to draw the climax out of Eddie.
The sensation was too exquisite, too knowledgeable. Eddie’s triumphant control evaporated. His thrusts became ragged, desperate. He was a passenger again, his hips pistoning frantically as Robert’s ass masterfully worked him.
“That’s it,” Robert growled, his voice regaining a shred of its command, but it was a command to surrender. “Give it to me. Fill me up, son.”
Eddie’s orgasm was ripped from him. He slammed in one final time, burying himself as Robert’s muscles wrenched him dry. His cock throbbed, pulsing deep inside Robert’s grasping heat, each spurt a seismic release that vibrated through his entire skeleton. He collapsed forward, his body going limp, his face buried in the sweat-damp thicket of Robert’s chest hair.
Robert’s arms closed around him, holding him tight, holding him inside as they both shook through the aftershocks. The room was silent except for their ragged, syncopated breathing and the crackle of the dying fire.
Eddie, spent and mindless, floated in the warm, salty darkness of Robert’s skin. He nuzzled closer, inhaling the potent, musky scent of sex and man. A soft, disbelieving laugh shook his chest.
“Maybe I am gay,” he mumbled, the words muffled against Robert’s sternum.
He pulled his head back to look at him, a huge, satiated grin breaking across his face.
Robert’s expression was soft, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I was just wondering the same.”
“If I’d known gay sex was this good…” Eddie said, shaking his head slowly.
“That’s the thing, my dear boy,” Robert said, his thumb stroking Eddie’s jaw. “It isn’t usually this good. Even this brief moment between us has eclipsed a lifetime of honing my understanding of sex, its skills and possibilities. You have a gift.” He sighed, a contented sound. "We," Eddie interrupted, "it isn't just me."
“Very well," Robert smiled, "I find it interesting that this doesn’t make me want this in exclusion of others. This… It’s kindled something new. It’s made me want to apply what you’ve shown me, what we’ve discovered, to my broader work. You inspire me in so many ways, son.”
“Exactly,” Eddie added, his own thoughts crystallizing. “I don’t want to suddenly put MJ out of the picture. I want to see what I can bring to that relationship. When she’s ready for this.” He took a breath, his heart thumping against Robert’s. “Actually, I’d like to see what we can bring to that relationship.” He finished, blushing slightly, searching Robert’s eyes for his feelings. “I know you mentioned the idea of us both being with her, but I wasn’t sure you meant… like… a real thing.”
“Oh, my dear boy,” Robert said, his arms tightening. “Mary-Jane is very keen to play with us both. She is somewhat insatiable at times, and I think between us, we might finally stand a chance of truly giving her what she craves.”
“But,” Eddie interrupted, his voice suddenly small. “I don’t want to lose this. This. Here with you. This is my foundation. This is where I want to… be… when I can.”
“Edward,” Robert said, with profound earnestness. “I want you here. That’s why I showed you the private side entrance. So you can come and go as you wish. Any time. Day or night.”
A slow, wicked smile spread on Eddie’s lips. “You might regret offering that, Daddy. I may never leave.”
“Oh no,” Robert crooned, a playful glint in his eye. “Whatever will I do?” He leaned in and claimed Eddie’s mouth in a kiss that was slow and sensually deep, a promise that tasted of sweat and salt and shared secrets. It lasted for a long, breathless moment.
When they finally parted, Robert murmured, “Would you like to shower before we bed down for good?”
Eddie hesitated. “I will if you prefer to, but I…” He paused, feeling suddenly shy.
“Go on,” Robert urged gently.
“I like the smells,” Eddie confessed in a rush. “On us. I want to wake up smelling this. Smelling us.”
Robert’s gaze softened into something unbearably fond. He said nothing, simply pulled Eddie back against him, rearranging the ruined sheets over them both. He extinguished the lights with the flick of one switch, casting the room in a deep, cocoon-like gloom. Eddie listened to the steady, strong heartbeat under his ear, felt the rise and fall of the chest beneath him, and knew he was home.
Eddie listened to the steady, strong heartbeat under his ear, felt the rise and fall of the chest beneath him, and knew he was home.
The smell enveloped him like a second blanket: sweat, the dark musk of Robert's skin, the scent of cum cooling on their bellies and thighs. This intoxicating fingerprint of their union was the last conscious thought Eddie held before sleep dragged him under. His face nestled deeper into the damp forest of coarse hair, finding the trench of Robert’s sternum, his lips parting against the warm flesh.
He awoke hours later to total stillness. The fire was grey ash. The room was a deep charcoal blue, only the vague shapes of furniture outlined against the windows. He had shifted. His head now rested low on Robert’s stomach, just above the V of his hips. Eddie didn’t open his eyes, he just inhaled slowly, consciously, savoring the olfactory tapestry: slept-in skin, the dry warmth of cotton sheets, sex. Beneath that, the man’s permanent notes: clean sweat, leather, soap.
His nose brushed against it then, a soft weight on the plane of Robert’s belly. Through the slight fuzz of blurred, half-open vision, he saw it. His own breath stilled. Lying there against a bed of dense, dark curls, nestled in a fold of flesh and hair, was Robert’s cock.Sleeping. It was soft. Limp and thick, its substantial length curving placidly to one side against his thigh, the heavy head crowned dark and loose against the root. An unthinking calm settled in Eddie's mind. No lust, no strategy. It was just there.
He moved without a single word forming in his thoughts. He simply scooted lower, scuffling the sheets down his own back, shifting his pillow of warm stomach meat. His face settled into the heated grove of Robert’s lap. He exhaled against the skin and the organ. The curled, downy pubic hair tickled his cheek. The proximity felt insufficient. He opened his mouth, his tongue dampening his lower lip. He nudged forward.
His tongue touched the bottom side first. Soft.Giving. A yielding velvet weight. The neutral, fleshy taste of a man at complete rest. He let his lower lip cradle it, then caught the foreskin with his upper teeth. He drew the soft organ slowly, completely, into his mouth.
It filled his mouth with an inert, profound weight. Not even a glimmer of movement from Robert, whose deep, rhythmic breathing didn’t alter. He’d been cleaned meticulously before bed, yet underneath the cleanness there lingered the ghost of evening’s musk: leather and spice and distant metal. Eddie just laid there, breathing through his nose, the man’s soft cock resting heavily on his tongue. He held it. He tasted the rich, malty intimacy of it. This quiet possession in the dark.
Imperceptibly at first, then undeniable, it changed. It was a deep gathering, a gentle thickening from the root outward. Pulses of quiet blood flooded the spongy tissues, expanding them subtly, lengthening them. Eddie’s lips and jaw instinctively adjusted, making space. The limp weight turned into a firming presence, pushing carefully against the constraints of his mouth. Its expansion moved the tip to the back of his throat. His body knew the drill. He’d practiced this for them. His muscles loosened, his throat opened in a familiar, consenting sigh.
Suddenly his nose was buried completely in the coarse, humid pubic hair, the heavy sac of Robert’s balls soft and warm against his chin. The shaft was halfway to full rigidness, stretching Eddie’s mouth, a gentle but insistent pressure on the soft palate. A wave of sleepy pleasure shivered through Eddie’s own body. He began to suckle.Gentle draws. Slow. Saliva welled, coating his tongue, spilling in a warm trail from the corner of his mouth down into Robert’s hair.
Then he felt the heavy hand land on his head. Not guiding. Caressing. It traced through his curls and massively patted the back of his skull in a slow rhythm that mirrored Eddie's unthinking, hypnotic suckling. A deep, sleep-graveled groan vibrated the body beneath him.
“Son… ah, baby boy…” Robert’s voice was barely a vocalisation, more a plea forged in a dream. It was filled with sublime, sleepy affection. His fingers carded Eddie's curls as his hips gave the faintest, unconscious upward press.
Eddie let his mouth lead. He didn't work it. He responded to the incremental swells of hardness, his inner cheeks drawing in gentle pulses, his throat accepting each minute, sleepy thrust with a wet, acquiescent sound. He was a vessel being slowly, lovingly filled, the seepage of Robert’s pre-cum a faint mineral tang among the honey of their shared sleep. He nursed and swallowed.
The climax came like a dawn tide. It was no explosion. Robert's entire body shuddered in one long, profound release, his grip tightening gently in Eddie's hair. Eddie felt him flood. Thick, salty warmth flowed in several long pulses directly from the root, coating his tongue and throat in continuous, lazy cascades. He swallowed greedily, noisily, draining him.
As the final spasm faded, a low muttering, thick with satiation, came from above. “…lovely, fuck… pretty thing…” The hand in his hair softened, becoming a comforting, heavy weight. Robert’s entire frame melted, the residual tension draining as he slipped back into true sleep.
Eddie let the softening flesh gently slide from his lips, resting his head back onto its warm nest. He cuddled close, turned his face into Robert's side, and was asleep again in moments.
He surfaced slowly, layer by layer, into awareness. Something soft and warm was moving over his mouth, his cheek, his eyelids. It coaxed him up from the deep dark.
“Good morning, my handsome boy.” The voice was low, a morning melody of gravel and honey. Robert’s lips returned to his cheekbone.
Eddie burrowed closer, half asleep. He wrapped an arm over Robert's broad chest, grinding their bodies together, seeking every point of contact. He mumbled into the yielding flesh, “Mmm. Good morning, sexy Daddy.”
“Thank you for my nighttime gift,” Robert whispered against his ear, then kissed the top of his tousled head. “You were spectacular.”
Eddie chuckled, the sound sleep-damp. “Wasn’t sure if you’d woken up enough to notice.”
“I always notice,” Robert drawled, voice dipping lower as his knuckle brushed the slope of Eddie's cheek, “when my cock gets deep-throated, you talented little slut.”
Eddie gave a dramatic, fluttering gasp. He reared back, attempting to look indignant. Before he could muster a protest, Robert’s hands framed his face, holding his gaze. There was only a flicker of a smile before he moved, a sudden, fluid playfulness that Eddie didn't anticipate. He shoved his shoulders firmly and spun him onto his back. Eddie huffed as the air left his lungs.
Robert landed atop him, the full, pleasurable weight of his morning wood pressing heavy against Eddie's hip. “My turn now.” The words vibrated against Eddie’s neck.
Then his head was gone, sliding south in a hot, moist trail down Eddie’s torso. Eddie's cock, half-hard and as warm as the rest of him, was suddenly engulfed. There was no preamble. Robert’s mouth, wet and brilliant in its purpose, wrapped his thick shaft and sunk deep in a single, gliding motion. The head clicked against the back of his throat.
“Oh fuck, oh Jesus.” Eddie’s own hands fisted the sheets.
Robert began to work him with a slow, focused intensity. Up and down, glidingly wet. His strong hands came up under Eddie’s hips, tipping them. And then something cool and blunt and wet nudged at his loosened entrance. A fingertip. Lubricant from the nightstand. Robert circled his hole slowly, pressing as his mouth travelled, not penetrating, but stroking teasingly over that sensitised, slightly puffy rim. The sensation was a dizzying feedback loop. Every caress of his ass made his dick pulse harder in the vacuum of Robert's mouth. Every long, throaty pull made his hole flutter and beg against that skilled finger.
Robert twisted his head minutely, his cheek bumping against Eddie's heavy balls, his thumb joining the finger to press against his taint, massaging that deep internal point from the outside as his mouth swallowed him. It was a duel assault of pure sensation. Eddie couldn’t think, he could only participate, his body twisting, a continuous, guttural moan pulled from his lungs. He began to pulse pre-cum in erratic bursts, hitting the back of Robert’s throat as gentle encouraging growls met each surrender.
The pressure fused, coalescing into one tightening coil of sublime pleasure radiating out from his balls. The sweeping strokes of Robert’s tongue, the relentless massage of his opening, his constant, encouraging swallow… his hips began to stutter, thrusting helplessly upward.
“Daddy… I’m… fuck… right there…”
As if he heard him but wanted more, Robert pressed his finger just inside, a sweet, sparking sting, and twisted his head down, taking Eddie’s cock as far into his throat as it could go and clamping his throat muscles.
It did it. The orgasm was a geyser.
White heat surged from his base, ripping out of him in violent convulsive spurts. Robert swallowed seamlessly. He moaned around him, the vibrations dragging every drop out, as the clever finger stroked rhythmically just inside Eddie’s rim, milking the aftershocks from the sensitive tissue until Eddie collapsed, shaking, his skin buzzing.
Robert released him, finally withdrawing his glistening finger and slumping up beside him, planting a light smack on Eddie's now-overstimulated cock, making him flinch with a hoarse whimper. “There,” Robert breathed, his voice rough with spit and effort. “Now we’re even.”
He sighed then, rolling to look at the window. Sun streamed through it now, golden and revealing the motes of dust dancing. “Sadly, it is time to get up and going. I have my morning routine, then a video conference just after lunch that I need to prepare for.”
“Should I go?” Eddie asked, propping himself up on an elbow. The question was nakedly sincere, a boyish tilt to his head hoping the answer would be a smile.
Robert looked at him, eyes crinkling. “Good Lord, I hope not.” He sat up, stretching mightily, vertebrae popping. The muscles across his back and shoulders rippled in the fresh morning light. “I’d like you to stay, if you’re happy to busy yourself when I need to concentrate. Library downstairs is stocked, gym through that door. Entirely up to you.”
“Sure. I will,” Eddie grinned. “I’ll follow where you lead.”
“Good man.” Robert swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulling a yawning Eddie up after him. He walked bare-skinned to the center of the room, a glorious mountain of a man framed by morning light. “Then let’s begin.” He began a series of deep lunges, twisting stretches, broad rotations of his shoulders. He flowed through them with quiet focus, muscle and sinew and joint moving deliberately, no sight of a wanton hunger, just physics.
Eddie watched for a few moments, the etched landscape of Robert’s back, the corded strength of his thighs, all of it suddenly glowed different after the night. He began to mimic as best he could, his own body awkward in comparison. But Robert didn’t watch or coach; he was in his own world, simply sharing it. For ten minutes, they moved to the sound of only their breathing and the soft tension of their joints. Then Robert, invigorated and ready to be tactile again, winked and grabbed his hand, leading them both toward the bathroom, to steam and sleek tiles and shared soap before they’d navigate the soft banter of picking out borrowed clothes and settle for the day ahead.