Chapter 2: David storms back into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Before Ben can speak, David's mouth crashes against his, hands ripping at his sweatpants as he growls, 'I need to feel you come on my tongue before I fuck you raw against this wall.'
The click of the door was a period at the end of a sentence Ben didn’t understand. He lay in the wreckage of his sheets, the smell of David—wine, sweat, cedar—clinging to his skin. The silence was a physical weight. He replayed every second, from the knock to the final, flat instruction about the lock. Lift up on the handle. It felt less like a handy tip and more like a diagnosis of something broken.
He didn’t sleep. He showered, the hot water stinging the faint scratches on his back, and tried to wash the feeling of David’s hands away. It didn’t work. It was under his skin. He dressed in the same clothes from the day before, the fabric feeling alien against his clean skin. He made coffee and stared at the half-empty bottle of Syrah on the counter like it was an accomplice.
A whole day passed. The sun tracked across the floor, highlighting dust he’d never noticed. He tried to read, but the words were just shapes. He’d pick up a book, put it down, rearrange the same stack three times. His body was a live wire, every sound from the hallway making him jump. He was pathetic. He knew it.
The second night, the knock came again. The same firm, friendly rhythm.
Ben’s heart hammered against his ribs. He stood frozen in the middle of the room, his mug of cold coffee in his hand.
The knock came again, more insistent.
He set the mug down. His hands were trembling. He walked to the door, each step an effort. He didn’t look through the peephole. He just turned the knob, lifted up on the handle as instructed, and opened it.
David stood there. He looked like he hadn’t slept either. The jolly demeanor was gone, sandblasted away, leaving something raw and stark underneath. His eyes were dark hollows, his jaw tight. He didn’t have wine. He just had his hands, clenched at his sides.
“Ben,” he said, his voice rough.
That was all it took. Ben stepped back, a silent invitation, and David crossed the threshold, kicking the door shut behind him with a backward thrust of his foot. The click was louder this time, final.
In two strides, David had him. He grabbed the front of Ben’s shirt, fisting the fabric, and slammed him back against the nearest bookshelf. A few paperbacks rattled on their shelves. The impact knocked the air from Ben’s lungs.
“I shouldn’t have left,” David growled, his face inches away. His breath was hot, laced with coffee and a sharp, alcoholic edge. His eyes were wild, searching Ben’s. “That was a coward’s move.”
Ben could only stare, his pulse thrumming in his throat. The violence of the motion was shocking, but it wasn’t fear he felt. It was a terrifying, exhilarating relief.
“Say something,” David demanded, shaking him a little, his grip tightening on the shirt.
“You came back,” Ben whispered.
A low sound escaped David’s throat. He released Ben’s shirt and instead framed his face with both hands, his touch suddenly, astonishingly gentle. “I couldn’t stay away.” He leaned in, but didn’t kiss him. He pressed his forehead against Ben’s, his eyes squeezed shut. “I saw Mark in your eyes when I left. In the way you looked at me. It fucking destroyed me.”
The confession hung between them, stark and painful.
Then the gentleness vanished, consumed by a different kind of urgency. David’s mouth crashed down on his. This wasn’t the exploring kiss from the bed. This was pure hunger, a desperate claiming. He bit Ben’s lower lip, sucking it into his mouth, his tongue plunging deep. He tasted of regret and need.
His hands dropped from Ben’s face, yanking the shirt up over his head. Buttons popped and skittered across the floorboards. The cool air hit Ben’s skin, followed immediately by the scorching heat of David’s palms on his chest, his stomach.
“I’m going to fuck you until you forget my name,” David breathed against his mouth, his hands working at the button of Ben’s jeans. “Until you can’t think of anything but my cock in your ass.”
The filthy words, delivered in that gravelly professor’s voice, sent a jolt of pure lightning through Ben’s system. He helped, shoving his jeans and boxers down his thighs. David dropped to his knees, his hands gripping Ben’s bare hips, holding him steady against the bookshelf.
He didn’t tease. He took Ben’s hardening length into his mouth in one swift, greedy motion, his throat working around the head. He deep-throated him with a practiced, desperate ease, his nose buried in the coarse hair at the base. Ben cried out, his head thudding back against the shelves. One hand tangled in David’s short hair, the other gripping a shelf for support.
David sucked him with a furious intensity, like he was trying to consume him, to draw the very life out of him. The wet, slurping sounds were obscene in the quiet room. He pulled off with a wet pop, his lips swollen and slick.
“Turn around,” he commanded, his voice thick.
Ben turned, bracing his hands against the shelves, his cheek pressed against the cool spines of his books. He heard the rip of a foil packet, the rustle of clothing. Then David was against him, his solid, hairy chest hot against Ben’s back. One hand wrapped around his throat, not choking, but holding, possessing. The other hand guided his thick, slick cock to Ben’s entrance.
“You’re still loose from me,” David muttered, a note of dark satisfaction in his voice. He pushed the head in. There was a brief, sharp sting of resistance, then a yielding. He slid home in one relentless, filling stroke.
Ben groaned, his fingers clawing at the books. It was so much deeper like this, the angle brutal. David didn’t wait for him to adjust. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each thrust slamming Ben against the shelves. The whole unit shook. A copy of On the Road fell to the floor with a slap.
“Is this what you wanted?” David grunted, his breath hot in Ben’s ear. His hand tightened on Ben’s throat. “You lying in your bed all day, thinking about this? Thinking about my dick splitting you open?”
“Yes!” Ben gasped, the word torn from him.
“You wanted me to come back and use you? To fuck this pretty, tight ass until you screamed?”
“Yes, David, fuck, yes!”
David’s thrusts became wilder, harder, losing any semblance of rhythm. It was just pure, animalistic driving. The slap of their skin, David’s guttural grunts, the creak of the bookshelf—it was a symphony of obliteration. Ben was mindless with it, reduced to a vessel for this raw, punishing need. The pleasure was so intense it bordered on pain, a white-hot friction that burned away every thought, every fear, every memory of the lonely day.
“I’m gonna come,” David snarled, his hips pistoning. “I’m gonna fill this condom up inside you. You want that? You want my come in you?”
“Yes! Please! David, please!”
With a final, deep, shuddering thrust, David stilled, buried to the hilt. A raw, broken shout was torn from his chest as he came. Ben felt the pulsing throb through the latex, the ultimate violation and fulfillment. It triggered his own orgasm. He came untouched, his release streaking the lower shelves of his bookcase, his body clenching violently around David’s spent cock.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, David’s weight heavy against him, both of them panting, slick with sweat. The room stank of sex and old paper. Slowly, David softened and slipped out. He rested his forehead between Ben’s shoulder blades, his breath slowly evening out.
He stepped back. Ben heard him dealing with the condom. He didn’t turn around. He couldn’t. He just stayed braced against the bookshelf, his legs shaking.
He felt David’s hands on his shoulders, turning him gently. The raw hunger was gone from his eyes, replaced by a deep, weary tenderness. He looked at the come splattered on the books, then back at Ben.
“I’m a mess, Ben,” he said quietly. “You should know that.”
Ben looked at the man in front of him—the grief, the desire, the profound human complication. He reached out, his hand trembling, and cupped David’s jaw. The beard was rough against his palm.
“I don’t care,” Ben said.
And for the first time, he meant it.
David’s breath hitched. He turned his face into Ben’s palm, his eyes closing for a long moment. When he opened them, the weary tenderness was still there, but something else had shifted, solidified. “Okay,” he breathed, the word a surrender. “Okay.”
He stepped back, his gaze drifting to the bookshelf they had just rattled. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “I think we broke your Isherwood.”
Ben followed his look. The shelf was tilted at a precarious angle, several books shoved out of alignment. A small, incredulous laugh escaped him. It felt good. “It’s a sturdy book. It’ll survive.”
“Come here,” David said, his voice low. He didn’t wait, instead taking Ben’s hand and leading him away from the wreckage of the shelf toward the bed. This time, there was no violence in his touch, only a deliberate certainty. He sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled Ben down to stand between his spread knees.
He looked up at him, his hands resting on Ben’s hips. “Last time was… a reaction. This time, I want to look at you.” His thumbs stroked the sharp bones of Ben’s hips. “I want to learn the map of you.”
Ben’s skin prickled under the intensity of that blue gaze. David leaned forward and pressed his open mouth to Ben’s stomach, his tongue tracing a slow, wet path through the fine hair. He licked and nipped his way down, his beard a delicious abrasion against Ben’s sensitive skin. He took Ben’s softening cock into his mouth, not to devour, but to taste, to revive.
He sucked with a lazy, relentless pressure that made Ben’s knees buckle. He hummed, the vibration traveling straight to Ben’s core. Ben tangled his hands in David’s hair again, but this time it was to feel the connection, to anchor himself in this slow, building storm.
“Get on the bed,” David murmured against his flesh. “On your back.”
Ben obeyed, stretching out on the rumpled sheets. David stood and stripped off his own clothes, his movements economical, his eyes never leaving Ben’s body. He joined him, kneeling between his legs, his own thick cock already hard again. He didn’t reach for another condom. Instead, he leaned down, his hands braced on either side of Ben’s head.
“I want to feel you,” David said, his voice rough with intent. “All of you. No more latex.”
The raw statement sent a shock of pure, illicit heat through Ben. “Yes,” he breathed, any thought of caution incinerated by the need in David’s eyes.
David spat into his own palm, a crude, practical gesture that made Ben’s heart hammer. He reached between Ben’s legs, his slick fingers pressing against his entrance. He worked one, then two fingers inside, stretching him with a focused, patient rhythm. “So open for me already,” he muttered, his breath hot on Ben’s neck. “You’re still stretched from my cock. You’re made for this.”
He positioned himself, the broad, blunt head of his cock pressing where his fingers had been. He pushed, and the slide was different this time—a hot, shocking, intimate friction. Ben gasped, his nails digging into David’s shoulders. The feeling of being filled, skin to skin, with nothing between them, was overwhelmingly intense.
David sank in until he was fully sheathed, his body trembling with the effort of his control. He held there, his forehead pressed to Ben’s, their breath mingling. “Christ, Ben,” he choked out. “You feel… you feel like coming home.”
Then he began to move. It was a deep, rolling rhythm, each thrust a slow, deliberate claiming. Ben wrapped his legs high around David’s waist, pulling him in deeper, meeting every slow, grinding push. The wet, slapping sound of their bodies was obscene and beautiful. David’s thrusts grew harder, faster, his control fraying at the edges.
“Touch yourself,” David grunted, his voice strained. “I want to watch you make yourself come while I’m inside you.”
Ben’s hand flew to his own cock, stroking in time with David’s plunges. The dual sensations were too much, too good. He was babbling, a stream of filth and praise. “Your cock is so deep, fuck, I can feel you everywhere, don’t stop, don’t ever stop.”
“Gonna come inside you,” David growled, his rhythm becoming frantic, brutal. “Gonna fill you up. Mark you. You want that? You want my come in your guts?”
“Yes! Do it, David, please, fill me up!”
With a final, shuddering roar, David drove in and froze, his body seizing. Ben felt the hot, pulsing rush deep inside him, a visceral, claiming heat that triggered his own climax. He came with a broken cry, his release streaking across his stomach and chest, his body clenching wildly around David’s still-spurting cock.
They collapsed together, a tangled, sweating, spent heap. David’s weight was a solid, anchoring presence. Ben could feel the slow, final throb of him inside, a wet, intimate reminder. For a long time, the only sound was their ragged breathing slowly returning to normal.
David eventually shifted, slipping out of Ben with a soft, wet sound. He didn’t move away. He rolled onto his side, facing Ben, and draped a heavy arm across his waist. His fingers traced idle patterns on Ben’s damp skin.
“The shelf is actually broken,” Ben said into the quiet, his voice hoarse.
David let out a soft, rumbling laugh. “I’ll fix it tomorrow.” He propped his head on his hand. “I have tools.”
Ben looked at him—the bald head, the intelligent eyes, the body that had just been inside his own. The man who had walked out and come back. “You’re staying?”
David’s gaze was steady, clear of its earlier ghosts. “If you’ll have me.” He leaned over and kissed Ben, a soft, lingering press of lips. “Now, let’s get you cleaned up.”
He got up with a grunt and padded, naked and unselfconscious, to the bathroom. Ben heard the water running. He lay there, feeling the slow leak of David’s come between his thighs, and stared at the cracked spine of A Single Man on the crooked shelf. David returned with a warm, wet cloth. He cleaned Ben with a surprising, gentle thoroughness, wiping the sweat from his chest and the spend from his stomach before tending to the mess between his legs.
It was more intimate than the sex had been.
When he was done, he tossed the cloth aside and pulled the sheet over them both. He settled behind Ben, molding his body to Ben’s back, his arm a secure band across his chest. The streetlamp’s hum was the only sound.
“The lock still sticks,” Ben murmured, already half-asleep, sinking into the warmth at his back.
David’s hold tightened. “I know,” he said into his hair. “I’ll fix that, too.”