Archive of Our Own

“I live here now.” 

And at first you barely register the words. It’s already enough of a struggle processing the sight. Because there’s a man sitting in your grandmother’s rocking chair, sitting in your home as if he’d lived there all his life. And where your heart had lurched to a stop when you laid eyes on him, it drums to life again in that moment, your pulse thundering in your ears as your palms sweat and your guts turn to water. 

I live here now. 

If he notices your fear, he’s unmoved, his attention already turning back to the wall as if you’re no more than another piece of furniture. The movement lights up his profile: sharp, strange features. Uncomfortably bright eyes. An awful fucking haircut. You feel the thump-thump of the rocking chair drum through your bare feet as he pushes off the floor with his toes again. 

It’s what had drawn you up here to begin with, the noise. You’d already been petrified when you first heard it, figured out what it was, thinking of her, of your grandmother, the way she’d soothed you to sleep as a child in that very chair. What you’d found was far worse than any ghost could have been. The gentle, rocking rhythm from your childhood twisted into something not, something other.

You take a shaky step back. Two. Then you’re off — bolting back down the stairs as fast as your unsteady legs will carry you. Uncaring about the splinters that stick in your feet from the rickety floorboards. You expect to hear him follow, feel him eating up the distance between you; a hand clapping over your mouth. 

You feel none of those things. You don’t hear anything either. And as your hand closes over the house phone, you pause, listening. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t even left the chair. You can still hear it thump-thumping steadily and you stand and stare at the ceiling, waiting for — for… 

Nothing. You end up standing there for so long you’re starting to doubt that there’s anything up there at all. That all this, the man, that steady, familiar thump-thump is no more than a figment of your imagination. Sleep’s usual nightmares lingering around you still. 

Cautiously, you climb the steps again and peer around the corner — and he’s there, never faltering in his rhythm. The thump-thump is in you now. In your chest. You duck behind the corner. Take a breath. Look back again. 

“A man will not touch you. Stop cowering like a dog.” He speaks with an accent you can’t quite place. Nordic, maybe. He speaks slowly, words stilted. 

You find your own voice. It’s quieter than you’d like and shaking slightly, but it’s there. “You broke into my home.” You try stating the obvious in the paper-thin chance that he’s just confused, lost, just not well. 

“I broke nothing.” The declaration is almost petulant, almost childlike, and so far from the point it might as well be in a different State. 

You want to tell him you have no money. Nothing worth stealing. That if he was looking for a place to rob, he’d picked the wrong house. The house of a dead woman which you barely had the money to maintain. But the words he spoke earlier are still ringing in your ears, and you know with some deep-set primal knowledge, that money isn’t what he’s after. I live here now. I live here now. I live here now. 

“Are you going to hurt me?” 

He shakes his head slowly, wearily, like his tiredness was bone-deep. Ancient. “A man has said.” 

The next words are out of your mouth before you can think about what you’re saying. Falling back on hospitality, on manners, the time-honoured, hopeful trade of decency for decency. “Do you… would you like some coffee?” 

He looks back at you, light moving over those sharp, strange features. The over-bright eyes. The awful haircut. He nods, just once. 

He calls himself Ole Munch. Ooh-la Moon-ckh. And you’re not stupid enough to believe for a minute that it’s his real name, and smart enough not to question it. He doesn’t hurt you. You don’t call the police. And he stays. 

—-

The house is too big for two people, let alone one, and you both rattle around it, sleeping and sitting and breathing among a dead woman’s possessions. It may be why you allowed him to stay in the first place. To fill the house with warm bodies instead of just memories. Ghosts. You remind yourself that ‘allowed’ is a generous word. 

It’s Halloween, and you’re curled up in your grandmother’s old armchair, the TV casting a pale, wobbling blue glow over everything, transmitting some horror flick from the 70s. You haven’t decorated for the season, can’t find the heart to, but the glow from the TV and the creaking noises you can hear from the floor above, make your home feel eerie enough as-is. And still, a bowlful of Halloween candy waits on the porch anyway, because you used to love this time of year. This holiday. 

You fall into a doze, and wake up to find a figure hovering in the doorway of your sitting room. It’s dark, but you can see the way the TV light catches on his eyes, looking at you. 

“Going out, lapine.” He speaks like every word is an effort. Like he’s drawing them up like water from the bottom of a dark well. 

You don’t question where, why, or the unusual nickname he bestows on you as he turns away and disappears out the door. When he eventually returns, he’s a mess of blood and dirt.

You stand half-peering around the shower curtain as he talks about life and death and kings and potatoes and you’re terrified, and because you’re you, beneath that terror is the dim, distant knowledge that grandma would be very upset at the state he’s left the bathroom in. There was dirt in the tub, dirt on the floor where he’d tracked it all through the house. There was even dirt on the dirt. And Ole Munch himself looks like he’s been rolling around in a swamp. You can’t help but ask him:

“Please. I don’t understand.” You understand very little anymore. “Why are you here? What do you want?” 

He looks at you in the way you’ve seen people look at shrines. The ornate, sacred ceilings of a church. He looks at you like you’re the lights of a house in a dark, vast wilderness, his eyes near-black — and that’s frightening too. This reverence you've done nothing to earn. Then he stands, slowly, brown water trickling from his skin, all those sinewy limbs, and he’s bare before you and you brace yourself and think it’s now, it’s going to happen now and he’s too tall, too strong to fight, but you will anyway, you will, you will even if he kills you for it but he just stands there. And when he speaks what he says is: 

“Pancakes.” 

—-

You don’t have your grandmother's magic touch. The pancakes are nowhere near as fluffy as she used to make them, more crepes than anything really, but they taste good enough with a sprinkling of sugar and squeeze of lemon. You suck the sweet sharpness from your fingertips after and watch him watch, something you thought long-dead unfurling and stretching within you at the sight. He eats his own share like a man starved, scraping the floral crockery clean with his knife and setting it down with a delicacy that’s surprising in a man that covers himself head to toe in dirt and breaks into people’s houses. 

He’s with it enough to wrap the towel you’d offered around his hips, your one condition of agreeing to cook the pancakes, but this does nothing to cover his chest, the barely-there softness of his stomach, his long, long legs and fine, bony feet. 

Later, you catch his hands admiring the fur collar of your grandmother’s coat, still waiting for its owner by the door. The one that she wore on her best and brightest days. And even though his nails are dark, dirty crescents; even though it feels like handing a piece of her over, you offer it to him. He takes it with a reverence that soothes something in you, and watching him put it on makes him seem strangely soft. Human. It suits him somehow. And sometime later than that, he returns with his own worn brown coat in his hands. He hands it to you. 

“Fair is fair,” he says. 

You take it, getting a noseful of its smoke and gunmetal and grave-dirt smell, and nod. 

— 

“I need you to leave,” you tell a man, a different man, another uninvited guest, sitting in your kitchen with his elbow on the table. “Now, please. I already told you, I’m not your girl anymore.” 

It earns you your first black eye in a while. His fist so quick, so practiced that it lands before you can flinch. And you’re recovering your senses on the floor, clutching your temple and trying to figure out which way is up while Eric calls you a bitch and a cunt and spits his venom down on you. A shadow crosses the doorway. 

“Who the fuck is this?” Eric snarls. 

“I live here now,” Ole says. 

“What the fuck?" Eric. "This why you don’t want me ‘round no more, huh sweetheart? Been shackin’ up with Frankenstein here?” 

Frankenstein’s monster, the bitch and the cunt in you wants to correct. But he’s not a monster, just a man (at least, you think he is, sometimes you have your doubts) and you would never make that comparison, and your head hurts, so you say nothing. The fabric of a kilt and Eric’s red, ratlike face — the face that all dirtbags of the North seemed to inherit — and the ceiling and the leg of the table, all swim in and out of view. 

“—you know who your fuckin’ with here, asshole? Putting your fuckin’ hands on my girl—“ 

“Not your girl,” you murmur. You feel sick. You hear voices. Words. 

“—you’re not fuckin' him, just who the hell is he, huh? A boarder?” 

“Trade,” Ole supplies. 

“What?” And oh, that’s anger, that’s real anger in Eric’s voice there, and you know what’s coming next will make the shiner he’s just given you look like a love-tap. 

“No payment. Trade. Like the dog in the yard, we guard the house.” And you shake your head helplessly, because god, doesn’t he know what that sounds like? It has the same effect as dropping a lit match on gasoline. Eric is up in your face in an instant, all teeth and mad, rabid eyes, screaming out his hatred. Your gaze keeps slipping to Ole, motionless beyond Eric’s shoulder, and the expression on his face makes your tears boil over, hot and humiliating on your cheeks. 

For a while all you know is the feeling of curling in on yourself, your spine pressing against the table leg while Eric calls you a whore, the parting word feeling like spit on your skin. He tells Munch to watch his fucking back. You want to lash out. To hurt something. You just sit and cry like a child. Eric leaves. 

Ole follows. 

There’s commotion outside — but you don’t see it. You stay where you are. Stay on the floor where you can’t see and can’t know what is happening. Stay staring at your own knees while you hear an awful loaded silence — a scream cut short. Then for a while, nothing. You watch dust motes settle. You watch a single strand of hair flutter in the stream of your own breath. Eventually, you watch a pair of booted feet move toward you. 

“Lapine.” 

Slow, steady steps. Feet on creaking floorboards. Long, cool fingers on your forehead.

You look at the blood drying in his nail beds, sprayed across one pitted cheek, and feel nothing besides the throbbing in your temple. 

—- 

It might be because he’s there. It might be because he’s tall with large, graceful, capable hands. It might be because he’s beautiful in some strange way. It might be because you’re so fucking scared and so fucking lonely it makes your bones ache. 

You tell him about your grandmother. How she was bright and beautiful and so, so kind. You tell him about Eric. How he was kind to begin with and then, not so much. He stays still and silent while you talk, the way his eyes never leave you the only indication that he’s listening. You talk until there are almost no words left in you. You’re tucked into the armchair again, your dried tears feeling stiff on your cheeks. 

For a while, you just watch him, admiring how the dim light deepens every crease in his face, every scar. And he’s not a classically handsome man by any means, but he’s — something. All brows and nose and jaw with an animal’s mouth, and you feel that thing within you, the thing that had stretched and unfurled when you caught him looking at you, stir to life. Sink its claws into your belly. You stand up, shedding the blanket you’d cocooned yourself in, and make your first slow steps towards him. At your approach, he lifts his chin to watch you, all of him still. 

He’s looking up at you with that same expression as he’d done in the bathtub. Some strange reverence, eyes full and dark and yet trembling with light. Some instinct drives you forward. Drives you to steady yourself on the back of the sofa, over his shoulder. You lean in, carefully, so carefully, inhaling smoke and earth and gunmetal and — you brush the tip of your nose against his sharp one, a fair warning, before you touch his mouth with your own. 

He doesn’t kiss you back, doesn’t move a muscle. But he draws in a ragged breath when you pull away a little. You hope you haven’t misread things. Hope to god you haven’t just embarrassed yourself. Only you think you can feel him yearning; think you can see all the subtle strain in his body. 

“I need a yes or a no,” you tell him softly. 

“Yes,” he draws the word out. Hisses it from between those crowded, crooked teeth like it’s being drawn from a wound.

So you climb into his lap, cautiously, one leg at a time and even though he’s solid and still and warm beneath you, it leaves you with the feeling that you’re curling up to the dark. It makes you shiver. You lower your mouth to his again. He kisses like someone out of practice. Slow, and halting, but with a little coaxing, his mouth softens just enough. You keep your tongue to yourself, but still taste his smoker’s breath. Something old and cold and coppery. Lemon. At some point one of those fine, graceful hands comes up to touch your chin, gentle beyond belief. 

And you want more. To do more. To fuck and be fucked and watch him fray at the edges and see if he was telling the truth, if he would hurt you when he said he wouldn’t. But instead, you slide off his lap, not missing the way his fingertips spasm towards you as you withdraw, and tell him goodnight.

—- 

You spend the majority of the next day in bed. Wrapped in the threadbare, time-worn sheets that had been there since you were a child. You’re not avoiding him exactly — okay maybe you are a little — but you’re also sitting with what you’d done, examining it and turning it over in your hands and mind and seeing how you liked it. When restlessness calls you downstairs, you find him sitting on the couch in precisely the same spot as the previous night; precisely the same position. His hands resting on his kilted knees. 

You murmur a greeting that he doesn’t return. Just lifts his gaze a little and follows your progress around the room. You’re draining a cup of water when he speaks from behind your turned back. 

“A man would—I would like. If a woman is… willing—“ He cuts himself off with a swallow. It sounds like it hurts. 

He wants to kiss again, you think and you wipe the water and the smile from your mouth before you turn around. You can feel the softness in your eyes as you look at him; see that same look in his eyes all over again as you close the distance between you and climb back into his lap, your hands coming to rest on his shoulders, the cardigan he wears soft from time. He lets out a ragged sigh at the contact, and this time it’s him kissing you. Those strange, grimy, capable hands slowly capturing your jaw once more, holding you still while he explores. 

The first touch of his mouth is a beginner’s attempt, he lists forwards and presses his lips over yours like a stamp, breath harsh. You draw back a little, nuzzle gently, and try to coax him to kiss you gently, wet and soft, the way you liked. Open-close, open-close. He softens again, the same as he did the previous night, warming to it quickly and it shocks you, how much you like it. How he kisses like a man starved. 

When you reach out to touch your tongue to his lower lip, a full body shudder wracks him and you withdraw immediately. Baby steps, then. But he opens his mouth for it, hungry. And soon you’re swallowing his moans and rocking gently in his lap as he starts to stir beneath you. He feels so good. All shadow and sinew. You squirm, and feel him swallow.

“Lapine,” he says, his voice scraping over the syllables, thick and foreign.

—- 

It ends, as things are wont to do, in darkness. You’re coming back from getting groceries, of all things. It’s cold, and you’re wearing the coat he gave you — traded you — its hem wet from the snow. You have flour, eggs, butter, oranges and lemons. You could both use a little more citrus, you think. 

You’re not there to hear the glass smash, but you’re close enough behind that you catch the boy rooting through your grandmother’s car. Her pride and joy, besides you. 

All it takes is a shove. 

There’s the concrete. There’s the snow. And then, nothing.

In the end you get some of what you want. You get to watch him fray at the edges. You get to feel him and hear him and taste him — get to savour the last piece of softness that hasn’t been starved out of him. It’s still dark, and you’re still sat in his lap. Still touching and nuzzling that strange, animal’s mouth with your own. He calls you that name again, lapine, as your fingers find the hem of his kilt, stirring just beneath the fabric and coming to tease the cool, bony dome of his kneecap. 

The reaction is immediate. He goes completely taught beneath you. His breath shuddering and his chin tucking — it pulls his mouth from yours. And your first instinct is to chase it with your own, capture it, keep tasting. Only — only Ole’s eyes are pressed shut. You can detect the subtle uptick in his breathing. The tension in every limb. You stop, your fingers completely abandoning their planned route of a long, slow meandering trail up his thigh, towards the hardness you can see tenting the front of his kilt. Instead, you just rest them there on his skin, not too light, not too firm. His own hands, one which he’d been clenching and unclenching in the fabric on the sofa, the other hesitantly resting on the no-man’s-land between your ribs and hip, are both hovering in thin air now. You pull your focus to his face, which is doing something complicated, tilting to one side by a fraction, a half-aborted head-shake.

You know conflict when you see it. You remove your hand from his knee entirely. Lift it to his jaw. “Hey,” you tell him, with a gentle swipe of your thumb. “Where’d you go, hm?” The backs of your fingers, petting.

Another half head-shake. A noise. What might have been the beginning of a word that splinters into nothing like old wood. You brush your hand over the long brown strands of hair that hang near his undamaged ear — a story you want to learn one day, later, you think, when the time is right. When your heart isn’t pounding. You watch his throat work, thinking. 

It’s not that you think he hasn’t done this before — not quite. But his desperation, trepidation, makes you suspect that it’s been a while. More than a while. And you suspect that there’s been a whole lot of loneliness, a whole lot of hurt, and a whole lot of time between now and the last instance where he was touched like this. You stroke his hair again, feeling its texture beneath your hands — slightly waxy, uncared for. 

“S’Okay,” you tell him, the words as careful as you can manage. You barely put any breath behind them but you mean them, every one. “It’s okay, we don’t have to… anything. We don’t have to do anything.” 

He makes a noise at that. Half-shakes his head again, that awkward, gentle, jerking motion. The man’s eyes find your own, and you’re struck still by the look in them. It’s that same trembling look of reverence, only tempered with something darker, hotter, his pupil’s blown, searching — for what you don’t know, but for something — and the sight pieces through you, clean and painful, like an arrow. 

“A man wants,” and again, he hisses the words out like they hurt. All crooked, crowded teeth. And there’s shame and longing and heat and all other manner of knotted, complicated things in those small, heavy syllables. It creeps up on you, out of nowhere, the utter strangeness of this situation. This man, who had broken into your home and disappeared at all hours and came back with blood on his hands. That you’d made him pancakes, climbed into his lap, and coaxed him into a kiss. This man who sometimes didn’t feel like a man at all, who was taut beneath you at the prospect of a tryst on a worn out sofa. It leaves you with the feeling that you’ve swallowed a star. It sits and burns in your belly. The trust. The inexplicable, tender hunger that had grown between the two of you. 

You stroke a hand over his hair again gently —  over that awkward, blunt, sixties-esque style you’re oddly endeared by. His chest shudders. You feel like you’re gentling a felled animal, petting its fur, your fingers careful around a wet, wide and mortal wound.

You understand, you think. “You’ll have,” you tell him. Another slow pet of his hair. “Any way you like.” You mean these words too.

You watch the words settle over him. Watch the subtle lift of his eyebrows, the stillness of those chapped lips — their shape, as flat and straight as a knife’s edge, so unusual. To be the focus of that primordial, all-seeing gaze is — there’s no other word for it — intense. 

You want to kiss him again. Want him solid and pliant and desperate beneath you once more as much as you want to break this trembling thread of tension between you. Want to temper that darkness with softness. The arousal you’d been feeling, which had dimmed in the face of his conflict, stretches and curls once more as you become aware again of how close you are. Your position in his lap. That he wants this enough that he almost seems afraid of it. Or himself. You keep on petting his hair. 

“Is more kissing okay?” You ask, after a long minute of silence. Because you want to put your mouth back on him, but only if he wants it there.

The moment trembles onward. Then: he gives a short nod, almost shy. Almost deferent. Chin tucked. You stifle a smile, but let the warmth of it shine through in your eyes. “Good,” your murmur, running a hand from his hairline to the nape of his neck, watching him shudder. “That’s good.” 

“And…” you bite your lower lip. His eyes follow. It’s like a watching him watch you suck sugar and lemon off your fingertips all over again. You shift your hips slightly, feeding that hot, sweet ache in your stomach, and lower. “Is more of this okay?” His breath stutters a little. Another nod. 

“Now?” You ask. You need to be sure. “Or some other time?” 

The surly set of his brow furrows. He looks like he’s trying to read in a language he can’t quite translate. “Now. Now is…” Sounds like he’s almost forgotten how to speak. Like every word in a monumental effort. You gentle him through it, and don’t push, petting the hair at the nape of his neck. At last, he nods again. 

“Okay,” you tell him. “Now, then.” 

And you lean in, just as slowly as you did the first time, coaxing his jaw up to kiss him once more — slow and full and sweet. It takes him a minute to get to grips with the sensations again, takes a minute for him to soften into it. But you’re patient, despite the warm, thick satisfaction you’re feeling. Never pushing, just — guiding, until his mouth is meeting yours with equal parts hunger and hesitation, like a beggar being presented with a banquet. His hands close slowly over your waist, not holding or gripping. Resting. Reverent. Those large, graceful, capable hands — hands which you know, in some primal, bone-deep way, have handled weapons, flesh and blood, and all manner of dark, awful things. You shiver, and reach out to touch his lower lip with your tongue. The breath he releases is as sharp as a blade, cuts through you, slicing down from sternum to core, where you’re slick and soft and wanting. 

You part ways with a suck to his lower lip — feel all of him tense beneath you, and it makes you pulse. You slow right down, meeting him with light, lingering kisses, until you’re barely kissing him at all, just ghosting your mouth against his. He follows you press for press, breath for breath. You hear the sound of fabric on fabric, His ragged exhales, expelling that smoker’s breath and earth-scent that makes your stomach twist. You withdraw just enough until your mouth is drifting to the corner of his, until you’re kissing his cheek, his jaw — then nosing up underneath it while he swallows and curls his hands into the fabric of your t-shirt. 

You let him feel your breath, the softness of the tip of your nose and your lips. The scent of him — all smoke and wet dark earth and copper — is thicker here. Warmer. And you find yourself pulling in deep lungfuls of it before you press a handful of kisses to his skin. All scars and pits. “Lapine,” he says, strangled. And something in his tone makes you glance down, taking in the sight of him straining against the fabric of his kilt. Knowing he’s there, hard and aching for you, just beneath a thin layer of fabric, makes all of you itch. 

You dare to scoot forwards, just a little, soothing the way with a little kisses to his jaw, throat. Pleasure lights up your spine as the movement drags your achingly slick core against him — you let out a little stuttering breath of your own, and feel a fresh tremor break through him. You draw up to kiss the slope of his chin, his cheeks, the sharp edge of his nose, that furrowed brow, drawn low.

Before he can draw another breath, you’re dipping down to tease his neck once more. “Do you want me to stop?” You murmur, letting him feel every word. He shakes his head, stiffly. You nod, nuzzling, and wonder if he’s already dripping for you under there — think he must be, from the sound he makes in his throat when you hum in response —a half-rumble. And you’re aching for it too, you’re not ashamed to admit it. Want to feel him in you, want to banish all the empty hurt inside of you — all you can do is roll your hips against him, slick, desperate little shifts. You keep mouthing at the skin of his throat, open and wet. Pressing your mouth to his pulse point gets you a harsh breath. His jaw, a thick swallow. Lapping at the soft, defenceless spot of skin beneath his ear, a low, croaking moan. A tightening of his grip.  

The heat is getting to you. The damp, heady little ecosystem you’ve created in the crook of his neck, the rising warmth of his skin and your breath, his skin gleaming with this hedonistic, possessive coating of your saliva. It only allows for a smoother glide, your mouth skimming down to the space where his neck meets shoulder. You stroke your mouth there too, over the barrier where his skin meets the fabric of his knit, and imagine how maddening the sensation must be. You roll your hips, and feel his thighs tensing and bunching beneath you. He must be so desperate, so desperate to rock up into your weight. He doesn’t move a muscle.

It makes you want to bite down. To take. To mark. So you do. Only gently, so gently, the barest graze. Only sensation, no pain. You have the feeling he’s had enough of that in his lifetime. And you want to be sweet to him, so sweet to him. You feel Ole’s answering rumble through your teeth, and you soothe the spot you’ve worried anyway, a soft, slick little swipe of your tongue. His strangled shudders of enjoyment feel as good as your own. The urge to grind down, to feel him blood-hot and hard beneath you, is too much. You adjust your position, seating yourself right over the thick line of him. And you start to move in earnest now, tiny little liquid shifts, stoking the fire, that star burning in you from heart to gut. 

One of you is trembling, or is it both? You keep kissing every inch of skin you can reach, sweet friction building. You’re chasing it desperately with deeper grinds of your hips, when you feel him pawing at your back with his fingertips. You pull up — catch a glimpse of his flushed, dazed, desperate expression, all pinched brows and eyes and ragged teeth, half a prophet, half a pauper — you pull him in, mouth catching awkwardly against his before you adjust. You kiss and grind and pet, and a wretched noise builds in his chest. 

It won’t take much more, you can tell. He’s going to come. He’s going to come without you even wrapping a hand around his cock. You’re driven by the feel and the heat of him and the sickly twist of your own ego and your loneliness and his strength and the desire to see and know. Some hunger in you has you dragging yourself out of the kiss to plant your mouth on his neck again. You take a modest, tiny mouthful of flesh and give the skin between your teeth a soft, slow suck — there’s a shattered, hitching gasp, one sudden, juddering thrust upwards — and he’s coming. A breath breaking its way from his chest. Fingertips digging into your back. A slow spread of warmth beneath you. 

“Lapine,” he says through a breath. Gritted teeth. 

“Please,” you gasp back, “please let me.” 

You chase your own release with deeper presses of your hips, pulling in desperate sips of air. You feel the rough-chopped strands of his hair and the soft wool of his cardigan against your cheeks. Feel the furnace-heat of him and the reality of his bounding heart. Your own heart knocks itself against your ribcage as your pleasure blossoms — steady, warm, like the spread of a bloodstain. Pressure, a little friction, rhythm, building and building until you tremble. Until you’re wet almost through the seat of your pants. Until the feeling finally crests — until you come too, groaning into the cradle of his shoulder. 

Details return to you slowly. How he’s lean beneath the warmth of your thighs. The texture of his kilt. How his panting breath is stirring your hair. How the night has slunk in and around and beneath the furniture, creating a little island for you both in the dark. For a minute, you just nestle contentedly into his shoulder, enjoying the wiry strength you can feel there; the buttery afterglow of your orgasm. His smoky, wet-earth-and-copper scent. Denser now. Wilder. His fingertips are still on the small of your back, touching almost furtively. You give his shoulder a parting snub of your nose, and withdraw to see the mess you’ve made of him. 

You’re not disappointed. His hair is slightly ruffled from your constant petting. His eyes glisten like wet, dark stones. His face — those sharp, pitted features — is flushed. He’s trembling like an arrow pulled taught. It does something complicated to your insides: to see him so sated and yet so… You can’t resist the urge to soothe, leaning forward to touch his sharp nose with your own. 

“Hi,” you say, softly. 

He visibly hesitates — then sags, his forehead dropping forward to meet your own. He rubs it there, a gruff, leonine gesture of affection. You bring your hands up to frame his face — mindful of his damaged ear — and let the quiet settle over you both. You can feel him thinking, breathing in everything that had just occurred between you both. You can feel the humming of his skin; the wetness in your lap, his and your own, and out of nowhere, you’re struck again by just how beautiful you find him. He turns his face away from yours a fraction, and speaks: 

“A man did not see,” his voice is low, halting. You pull back to meet his eye, put your head to one side, not understanding. Ole pushes on, his voice coming clipped and quiet. “Your… pleasure. You did not let a man see.”

Affection, understanding, something warm and pink and shivering, flushes through you. You’re aware, in some distant way, of how strange the situation is. This ridiculous, reckless thing you’ve just done. You don’t care. 

“You wanted to watch me come?” You ask. 

“…Yes,” he says. And it’s that same tone you recognise from when you first laid eyes on him. That almost petulant I broke nothing. You nudge his forehead with your lips, trying to coax him to look at you once more. He complies, speaking his next words right into your mouth, soft as smoke. You taste them as much as you hear them: “A man would have liked to make you. ” 

You shiver all over. Feel warm all over. “Next time,” you tell him quietly. You say it like a promise. 

“Next time,” he repeats. Then with more certainty: “A man will make you come, lapine.” He sounds like he’s trying the words out, holding them in his mouth to test their weight and meaning before releasing them. You smile a little, a warm, sated, bashful thing, and feel the words beating in your blood: next time, next time, next time.