Chapter Text
Arthur’s roommate was a man of few words. At least, Arthur and his roommate didn’t share words very often. Arthur had met him once before he’d moved in, for lunch, just to make sure they wouldn’t hate each other on sight before Arthur showed up with a pick-up truck full of most of his belongings. The ad had been terse, limited to the skeleton of details about the apartment, and Arthur hadn’t had a lot of options. They’d sat across from one another, Arthur’s appetite lost to nerves and watched as Eames worked through his barely-cooked steak. There was a muscle in his forearm that worked when he cut through the meat and Arthur kept trying not to stare.
It had only taken a few minutes before Eames had given him his prognosis: “You’ll do fine,” he said, staring hard at Arthur, like everything was decided and he now expected Arthur to fall into line. Eames had a blond mess of hair, and long fair eyelashes that seemed to disappear in the august sunlight and Arthur, tongue-tied, could only nod.
He hadn’t even realized the thing about him for months, because when he stalked around the apartment, he was all human, soft sloping shoulders and golden skin, and when he chatted on the phone, calling his mom on sunday’s like every parent wanted, his vowels and consonants were as indistinguishable as anything -- he could have been a weatherman from the midwest. It wasn’t until Arthur had come home one night after sitting through an open-mic night at his favorite coffee shop to a room full of people in various stages of shift, fur and skin on the same source, bright eyes and a woman with a beak, perched on their living room furniture that he’d caught on.
“Oh,” he said.
Eames, who’d had a mane and a long, powerful tail at the time, had met his eyes fiercely. “Yeah,” he said, in an even voice, “I have my pack over. Not a problem, is it?”
And Arthur, heart in his mouth looked down. “‘Course not, man,” he said. “We’re millennials. No big deal.”
*
Of course, it was a big deal. It probably explained the fact that Eames kept to himself so much. Arthur must have seemed so pathetic to him: a friendless human hovering in every doorway like some kind of hopeless idiot. No wonder they hardly talked. Everything he knew about the man he’d learned second-hand, from the discarded comments he’d make to his mother, padding through the apartment in a towel, phone pinched between his shoulder and his face, in the newspapers he left out with mostly finished crosswords, and the DVR, which was always full of trashy talk-shows.
It wasn’t like Eames was rude, but Arthur was awkward, and between being super gorgeous and the alpha of his pack, it was pretty clear that Eames was about a dozen kinds of out of his league, on top of probably straight, and in the spirit of not having a repeat of his most traumatic years, he mostly kept to himself.
Besides the notable time that he’d found a copy of one of his favorite sci-fi novels Spin, laying out on the kitchen table. “Are you done with this?” he asked.
“Yeah,” he’d grinned, taking opposite corners and holding the book between the points of his index fingers, “but I think I have to start over now that I’m done. They terra-form Mars in hyperspeed because of a time-shell.”
It was the most he’d heard from him since they'd started sharing an address, and it was as if someone had given him a cheat code that let him right into Arthur’s brain. For a minute, he forgot to be paralyzingly shy in the face of Eames’s gorgeous, sunbathed-predator bone structure. “I know! I read it when I was still young enough to really buy into hard sci-fi as the tech of the future and it messed up my ability to tell fact from fiction.”
Eames let out a full laugh, and Arthur felt pleased and a little warm. “Sounds like my high school autobiography. How to let books ruin your life by setting up weird expectations of how cool technology comes along, by me.”
“You’d have to use a very small font to fit that on the cover,” Arthur mused.
“Anyways, the terra-forming aside, I really, really love reading about weird cults. Especially religious ones. I might just skip back to those bits and read them again,” he said, gesturing with the book. Then, he actually went and did that and Arthur considered their conversation over.
For some reason, Arthur never seemed to be able to bring it up again. The next time he’d looked at him, the casual counter-top sitting roommate was gone and the predator was back, and instead of building on their tentative rapport, he’d clammed up and ducked out of the way.
It wasn’t like he really needed to be friends with him to live there, anyway. It was better like this, not jeopardizing his living situation with the silly stirrings of his stupid spider-web heart where he collected things and never found a way to purge them when he was done. He’d found a place to live in the city, and he had his job in the call center, following a rote flow-chart of what can I help you deal with, ma’am, and if he ever needed something else, well, that’s what strangers were for.
*
The man at the end of the bar had seemed incredibly interested in Arthur from afar, but now that he had stopped by, he couldn’t be less engaged. He’d been eyeing him for forty minutes, at least, while they’d both eaten on opposite ends of the bar, both seemingly watching the same game, and when Arthur floated into his space after, just to check, the other man had immediately offered Arthur a drink. He’d appreciated it, but indicated with a tilt of the glass tumbler he was still holding that he was still working on his own.
“Great game, huh?” Arthur said, smiling.
“What? Oh, no, sorry, I don’t really follow,” the other man said, waving vaguely with his unlit cigarette, as if he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word sport.
Arthur frowned. “Must have been mistaken,” he said. “I thought we’d been watching the same match.”
The man at the bar shrugged at him, as if Arthur was quite possibly mentally ill and was humoring him. Arthur wasn’t totally charmed with the way he’d run hot and cold in short order, but he’d been obvious enough with his appreciation of Arthur’s appearance, even if he seemed disinclined to chat. Some men, Arthur knew, liked to make him work for it.
Arthur, in an attempt to play along and alleviate the awkwardness that had descended in so quickly, tried to make small talk about all the things he was thinking about lately. The song playing had a reference to Nick Drake in it, which Arthur was charmed by. The saddest man on earth, he’d heard Drake called once. The people closest to him hoped for different things regarding his death: his mother had convinced herself that he’d been turning his life around and coming out of his depression, and had overdosed on accident, and his sister couldn’t bear the thought that he’d wanted to live, but had killed himself by mistake, so she hoped he had intended it. It boggled his brain that two people could look at the same situation and find opposite interpretations of what would be the very worst thing. The man at the bar frowned thoughtfully while he was talking, and Arthur had thought he was making progress. Then he’d opened his mouth and said, “How interesting,” as if he thought it was anything but.
Arthur felt the other man’s indifference settle in his stomach like a challenge. He gave it another try. He’d read the other day that you could tell what colony an individual bee by doing a DNA test on it, but the article had gone on to mention that DNA testing would only be necessary in legal proceedings. He wondered what sort of circumstances warranted a DNA investigation of bees.
Did that mean a beekeeper was legally accountable if a bee from one’s colony stung a human? He’d been doing some internet searches on the topic, but it hadn’t yielded any results. It was possible he was going to have to write a letter to a beekeeper. Beekeepers probably had email like everyone else, now, he mused, but for some reason he imagined the whole of the profession so very old fashioned, he’d have to purchase stationery to ask one.
When the man’s face still looked impassive, and he didn’t have anything to add, Arthur admitted defeat. “Sorry to have wasted your time,” he said, face growing warm as he gripped one wrist tightly like he did when he was feeling self-conscious, over the cuff of his shirt, pressing the cufflinks against the tender spot there. “I’ll stop rambling at you and let you get back to your drink.”
The man’s focus zoomed in on the action, and he stopped tapping his single cigarette against the bar. “No,” he said, reaching down to catch Arthur’s hands, one trapped in the vice of the other and making to pry away his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Arthur,” he said, his mouth dry. His stomach churned in anxiety as the other man pushed back his cuff, and inspected the fading circle of discolored skin there.
“Well Arthur,” he said, holding Arthur’s wrist in his own warm, calloused hand, and giving it a quick squeeze, causing him to shudder: “it seems my initial assessment about us having nothing in common was wrong.”
Which is pretty much how Arthur found himself following the man outside, half-dragged along by their own point of contact at his wrist. Arthur’s heart thumped loud in his ears with his rising sense of panic, and he had to remind himself, you wanted this, and chided himself for being finicky. He’d left the house earlier tonight with a desperate wish that he could just have someone’s focus. It was no time to punk out now.
He let the other man roughhouse him into his car, even though his own was still parked at the bar. Being assertive was hardly his strong suit. He was always letting himself get swept along, and making inconvenient arrangements behind himself: he’d take a cab back here from the other man’s place later, he thought, amending his evening’s plan on the fly, fumbling into the passenger’s seat.
“Nice car, uh,” he said, pausing, to let the other man tell him his name, which he’d left out intentionally when Arthur had introduced himself, part of his game, obviously, but now Arthur thought they’d moved past it. He was in his car and everything. He’d buckled his seatbelt.
“Sir is fine,” he said, flicking his car into drive noiselessly.
Arthur almost rolled his eyes. It seemed a little familiar to be that douchey, but he was here, and he’d be focused on him for a while, which was more contact than Arthur had had with another human in a while. He swallowed his reply and sat silently in the car, watching out the window as they whirred past the night sky, everything outside turning into a navy blur. Arthur gave himself a few moments to fantasize that things were happening differently, because he had this stupid thought his heart couldn’t seem to let go of that one day he was going to try to tell someone about something inside of him: the world’s loneliest whale who sings in fifty-two hertz or about growing a vegetable and coaxing it into the wrong shape, and someone was going to respond in kind with something they also found interesting.
It didn’t even matter what: Arthur could be interested in anything, so long as someone got passionate talking about it. If he’d met the man driving and he’d responded, and they’d had a nice chat and then he’d said, let’s get something to eat, I’d love to tell you about the most well-loved forgery in Paris, it hung in the Louvre for years… the tension in the car would have been something else, and the night sky, a smeared mess of stars and smoky nighttime clouds, would have been uncontainably gorgeous. He would have been wound tight with something else.
Arthur sat in his fantasy for a few quiet minutes, long enough to be indulgent with himself, and then put himself back where he was, half anticipating but dreading it equally. The other man was interested in Arthur like a shark: he wanted blood in the water. He’d clearly been ready to dismiss him before he’d seen the half-ring of bruises on his wrist, realize that Arthur was lonely enough to let himself be thumped around if it meant he’d get someone’s full attention for an hour or two.
Which, he supposed, wasn’t inaccurate.
And he was handsome, in a sterilized, over-moneyed sort of way. But he didn’t even have a name. Arthur could already tell that he was going to spend the evening trying creatively side-step calling him sir.
He hadn’t even said anything since they’d gotten in the car: he’d just let Arthur stew in his own anxiety. He wondered if anyone ever liked it, if people thought this tension was nice. The other man had been unfriendly before they’d left together, so it was probably the way he was, which was disappointing. Usually that was the appeal of the whole thing: the types of guys that wanted to take Arthur home and thump him around often liked to give him a bit of a cuddle when he was all battered, touch reverently the places they’d damaged. A lot of guys that took him home got sweet after, and having a snack with someone after they’d gone boneless was the highlight of the whole evening.
He had no such hopes for this evening. He imagined the man beside him would be just as tense and uptight afterwards. He amended his plan again: he’d wait for him to get off and he’d take off. He wouldn’t even shower, because he could do that at home. He wished they had a detailed itinerary already, so he could call a cab in advance. It was cold outside, and it’d be awkward to wait on the curb. He could shower when he got home, and if he came in quietly enough, he wouldn’t disturb his roommate, who wouldn’t be impressed with the state of him.
The drive from the bar to the man’s apartment was long enough that Arthur had time to regret getting in the car, which was the worst part. The asshole hadn’t even put any music on, or made any attempt to make small talk. He was going to do all the things that Arthur tolerated, and even liked, a bit, if it were paired with the rest, without any of the rest. He tried to keep track of the turns, and eventually, they made it into a fancy-looking neighborhood, where his sleek Jaguar was hardly the nicest car in the lot.
In profile, he was quite handsome, body long and flattered in his well-fitted suit, and the strong line of his jaw would probably feel rather pleasant if rubbed playfully over Arthur’s collar, but he doubted any of that was in store for him.
*
He’d been right, of course. He’d taken off his leather jacket at the other man’s request, and it was so stupid that he was in someone’s home, preparing to have rough sex with someone who wouldn’t even give him his name that Arthur was berating himself at length. He was down to his button up, and he’d at least expected to be offered a bottle of water.
“Go wait back there,” he said, pointing at the door past the kitchen with his elbow without looking in that direction. Arthur sidled past him, tongue set between his molars in a punishing clench, and giving a curt nod.
Fuck , he thought, the word sinking in his chest like something set to sea. They hadn’t even talked about the details, and he was already ushering him into his room. It wasn’t too late to do something else. He had a fleeting, panicky thought: he could call Eames. As soon as he’d had it, Arthur’s inner, sane, intelligent thoughts took over, shoving that idea down with the force it deserved. One did not panic during sexual encounters and call one’s straight roommates to pick one up from sketchy encounters, not when both of you were adults and one of you was secretly attracted to the other. This was why he needed to be here: otherwise he just spent all of his time hovering on the edges of their shared flat, hoping wistfully to make eye contact with his cohabitant, and feeling like those moments sustained him til the next. He was bound to make him uncomfortable enough sooner or later that Eames was going to ask him to leave.
Instead, he was going to sit awkwardly on the edge of this stranger’s bed, gripping his own wrist until his heart rate evened out. A minute unfolded, and then another. Which was frustrating, because he didn’t even really get turned on by this sort of encounter except that someone that brought you over to hurt you was usually pretty magnetized to your presence, at least for as long as it took to get them suitably worn out. Arthur was feeling a little miffed that so far his night had jumped the rails completely. He should have gone home to reread The Graveyard Book.
Neil Gaiman never made him wait alone in his room without anything to do with his hands.
Something occurred to Arthur, intimidating on the horizon. This stranger had been quite stoic, and seemed unlikely to make conversation. At some point, Arthur was going to have to be mindful, and if the stranger didn’t go for one of his own accord, Arthur was going to have to insist he put a condom on, he thought miserably. He knew it was stupid to get worked up before an issue even presented itself (maybe he’d been all wrong and he’d play by the book and be polite afterward, make him a mug of tea before he asked him to leave) but he had a sinking feeling. He amended and amended and amended, but that wasn’t something he was willing to amend. He felt the preemptive awkwardness of confrontation, and practiced while he was alone. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to insist,” he said, in a very quiet voice.
“Did you say something?” the man asked, entering the room with his finger already in his tie.
“No,” Arthur said, blushing.
“And you’re not on the floor.”
Arthur let his mouth fall open. “You didn’t ask me to be,” he stuttered, and then, with more nerve than he thought he had, he went on, “and we haven’t talked about anything yet.”
The man in front of him sneered a bit, and his expression chilled the air in his lungs. “I assumed you’d done this before, and I wasn’t dealing with a child.”
Arthur swallowed hard against a tidal wave of humiliation. “I, I’m not a child.”
“Really?” he taunted, and Arthur knew it was fucked up, but he felt a little better now that he wasn’t just waiting, tying himself in knots in a stranger’s room. Even sneering, at least he had his whole focus. “Are you sure? Because we can call your mom to pick you up and I can set you outside with a juice box to wait for her.”
For a blank moment, all Arthur could think was: yes please, door number one sounds good. Instead, he rasped, “Yes. I’m sure.”
“Yes what,” he said in a low voice, moving toward Arthur and putting a demanding hand in his hair.
Arthur felt a wave of distaste as he lowered his eyes. “Yes, sir. ”
*
In the end, he hadn’t had to fight about the condom situation, which was just about the only upside to his entire fucking night. The man he’d gone home with was relentless, and a little cruel, all blunt pressure and sharp edges with none of the momentary relief. Arthur pushed himself as hard as he would go, but it did him little good. Normally, these were the bits he liked best about stressful encounters: when he hit the mark, and he often did, because he had no sense of self preservation and thought he could weather any storm, so long as it would end in his favor, there was usually a touch to his jaw, his scalp, his lip, where the man who’d taken him home murmured something soft.
He collected them in a secret place inside of himself, brought them out sometimes when he jacked off alone, with more build up than anyone had ever given him outside of a fantasy, touching his own elbow and the backs of his knees as he replayed his greatest hits: that’s it, how lovely, what a good boy you are, you must be so tired, you did so well, all of the things that would have felt so condescending if it weren’t for the way the men usually looked at him when they said them, pleased and warm.
There was none of that, just a stranger, setting him up for failure, fucking his throat relentlessly until he was light headed with the lack of air and throat convulsing, on the verge of choking at the rough, ticklish pressure behind his soft palate, and then a swift thumping for pushing at his hip to give himself a moment to breathe; he’d made him count and thank him for every movement, humiliation burning worse in his throat than the man’s penis had. He’d cried a bit at the end there, and then he’d cuffed him to the post of the bed while he’d faffed off, padding off through the door to do God knows what, and Arthur had felt fiercely angry, explaining in his imagination that he didn’t like to be stuck stationary, he only liked to be tied to himself -- his own wrists bound together or wrist to knee, something where he still had a certain degree to move, but as always, his nerves glued his mouth shut.
This is why he’d pretended to be straight for so long: girls never wanted to use hand-on-his-heart whips with the express goal of making him near-hysterical or left him alone for long periods of time, mid-sex, just to ratchet up his anxiety.
The man, on the other hand, was really, really into both of those things, and after an hour and a half, he was still wearing his suit trousers, having buttoned them back up after he’d come down Arthur’s throat the first time. He’d yet to get his hand on Arthur’s dick, which was probably for the best because there was no way he was going to will it into hardness.
Arthur, a little miserable and spaced out in a way that wasn’t the pleasant disconnect from reality he could get when the balance was right. Instead, he mainly felt sore, like more damage than person, overwhelmed and helplessly angry. He was half-drooling when he saw his chance, the man who’d quickly earned the title of least favorite one night stand ever pulled something out of his drawer and set it down on the bed, and it only took half a second for it to sink in that there were condoms there but no little bottle. As the culmination of terrible nights went (humiliated, spunk drying in a splatter on his chest, exhausted and his backside burning from shoulders -- and serious, who the fuck tries to damage someone’s shoulders, there’s no fat there -- to his thighs, cock soft and uninterested in ever participating in life ever again...) it was pretty much the proverbial straw, even for him.
“Uh,” he said, and pulled on his arm hard enough to cause some serious strain. Worse case, he thought, he’d break his wrist and stumble to the front door. He wouldn’t even have to talk to him, just fifteen feet to the front door and he could get outside, pants on the way, ignore him ignore him, all of those thoughts swirling around in a panicked haze, and he was almost surprised by the way his hand finally came free of the handcuff with no sickly sound of displaced bone, just the rough scrape of his hand coming through the metal circle of the cuff.
The man he was with looked at him with a gaping lower jaw. “What the fuck?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur stuttered. “I think there’s … I have another commitment,” he said, sounding like an idiot. He scrambled for his clothes on the floor and coming up with only his jeans, panicking about where the hell his shirt could be before his flight, flight only flight reflexes kicked him in the teeth for being ridiculous and he scrambled out of the room, jeans in his arms, and taking his leather jacket from the front door.
He put his jeans on over his bare ass in the hallway, the man still yelling at him from the apartment, threading his arms through his jacket as he bolted, shoeless, down the stairs. Even feeling like a raw nerve, by the time he hit the pavement outside of the apartment, he was already feeling better.
He must have looked like a mess, because the first taxi wouldn’t take him.
Eventually, though, he made it home.