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And that had been two years ago.
Two years of textbook domestic bliss.
Zee worked late, so they spent mornings together. They had a lot of sweet, tender morning sex. They took turns making breakfast, they sometimes distracted each other in the kitchen with kisses, with more than kisses. Zee went into the office around noon, and Trinket stayed home, in the huge, modernist house with the concrete, the glass, and the fantastic view of the city. Trinket kept working on his continuously pointless degree, climbed his way towards a doctorate. He collected dead languages, translated fragments of scanned papyrus, pictures of stone tablets, video-chatted with colleagues in different countries.
Two years of Zee taking him to ritzy events, then saying “Fuck it,” halfway through, and they would blow it off and go to the movies. Two years of Zee taking Tuesdays to work from home as an excuse to spend time with him, lying in bed naked and patient while Trinket asked his opinion on which interpretation of a petroglyph seemed most valid to him.
They compared work. They had sex.
Zee was good at sex. It was good he was good at it, because Trinket never stopped feeling self conscious, clumsy, not as good. He felt like he was his best on his back, or his stomach, best at lying there while Zee did what he wanted.
But sober Zee, boyfriend Zee, the Zee he lived with, Siebold Li at his best and most human, was a giver. He always seemed more interested in making Trinket come, in doing gentle things with his fingers and his mouth. Trinket grew addicted to feeling safe in his arms, learned to lie on his stomach and arch his back for Zee’s tongue. It felt shameful, at first, but eventually, in all the love, the trust, he forgot what shame felt like.
Now.
Standing on the step of his boyfriend’s home.
A tattoo raw on his stomach.
Imagining his cock was still sticky from the tattoo artist’s saliva.
Trinket learned shame all over again.
For some bizarre reason, he rang the doorbell to his own home.
He saw Zee’s shape coming up through the frosted glass. When Zee opened the door, he looked as puzzled as Trinket was by his own actions, glancing at him up and down. He held the door wordlessly open for Trinket, shut it behind him, then reached for his chin and pulled him in for a kiss.
Trinket held him back with a hand on his chest.
Zee let himself be held back, a question in his frown. He was dressed nicely, and smelled faintly of the kitchen. Fresh cut herbs. Hint of something sharp, something lemony. His cologne.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I told you on the phone,” whispered Trinket.
‘I want you to fuck me the second I walk in the door.’
Zee’s dark eyes deepened, the way they always did during sex, before sex. He leaned in, but Trinket’s hand on his chest held him back again.
“No kissing,” said Trinket. His heart was beating extra hard. “We can’t kiss.”
“Why not?” asked Zee, bemused and amused by the whole thing still. They didn’t play games. They never even brought up handcuffs, silk rope. They barely even went as far as holding each other’s hands above their heads during sex.
Trinket crossed his arms and pulled his shirt off overhead, wincing when it pulled taut the skin on his stomach.
He let the shirt fall on the floor, and Zee’s eyes dropped to his stomach and widened.
Wordlessly, Zee touched the edge of the tape holding the saran wrap over the fresh tattoo, looked at the bit of blood gathered on the edges like condensation.
Trinket could see from Zee’s expression, how the skin around his lips tightened, his pupils dilated, that he had given him the right kind of gift.
“Did it hurt?” whispered Zee.
“Yes,” said Trinket, with relish.
Zee looked at him in surprise at his tone, looked even more surprised by his face — it had been a long time since he had seen Trinket this way, seen him confusing and confused, flushed, embarrassed, excited.
“That’s why you can’t kiss me,” said Trinket, with an evenness that didn’t match his shivering or his hot face. “You have to fuck me from behind.”
Zee stared at him. The intensity in his eyes was frightening, was making Trinket painfully hard.
“Take off your clothes,” said Zee calmly.
Zee stepped aside, ushered him into the kitchen.
Dinner was already finished, ready for the table to be set, sitting on the lowest setting on the stove. The lights of the kitchen, the candles lit on the marble island, made it a warm setting, but Trinket’s bare skin felt cold.
He took a step towards the hall, towards the bedroom, but Zee stopped him.
“No,” he said, voice still holding that calm, deceptive steadiness. “Here.”
“The windows,” said Trinket, glancing at them.
The kitchen had floor to ceiling windows from wall to wall. Now, with the house lit up, and the night fallen outside, it was impossible to see outside. It could have been possible for anyone to be looking in. Not probable — it wasn’t a highly populated neighborhood, and they were on a high level, elevated out of sight of most people — but still. His natural shame flickered.
“All of them,” said Zee calmly. And he turned, walked off down the hall, leaving Trinket to strip in the kitchen.
He did — feeling his skin growing hotter with each item of clothing shed, no longer cold. He tossed his clothes all to the side, then thought about picking them up and putting them on a chair, and realized that would require bending over in front of the big dark windows. So he didn’t.
As he waited, he found himself starting to regret his actions.
He felt suddenly self conscious; he felt as if Zee returning to find him naked was something to be ashamed of, as if they hadn’t been naked together so many times before. He didn’t know if he should cross his arms or keep them at his sides. He wanted to cover himself, but knew that would be the most shameful option out of all.
Zee returned still fully dressed. He stopped in the doorway with the bottle of lube in his hand, and looked at Trinket in silence for so long that Trinket felt his skin burning, knew he was blushing from cheeks to chest. He could feel Zee’s eyes like a hand on him, could almost feel the sting on his tattoo.
Zee came to him.
They stood face to face, nearly nose to nose, and for a second Trinket thought Zee was going to try to kiss him again. But Zee only said softly, “Turn around, then.”
Trinket turned around. He rested his arms on the counter. He heard the click of the bottle opening. He heard the clink of Zee’s belt.
Zee didn’t finger him. He put his hard cock, slick with lube, between Trinket’s legs and left it there for a moment between his thighs, tantalizingly close, but agonizingly not what he wanted.
“Were you thinking about me all day?” Zee asked softly, breathing on his shoulder.
Mini’s words played in Trinket’s head:
‘If you were mine, I’d never be able to keep my fingers out of your hair. The minute you came home from work, I’d grab it, and bend you over something.’
‘I bet you let him fuck you hard with no foreplay. I bet he comes home stressed from work and you’ve already got your back arched, waiting for him.’
“Yes,” he said breathlessly. His back was arched, his cock was twitching on his stomach. He shifted back and squeezed his thighs tight around Zee’s cock, back and forth. He felt Zee’s sharp exhale on his neck — Trinket had never done that before, never been like this before.
“This is all I think about... all day,” said Trinket, face burning around his words. “Every day. I just want you to come home and fuck me. I just want you to feel good inside of me.”
He never talked dirty, but now he couldn’t stop himself. It was too much to bear — the guilt, the memory of Mini’s throat around his cock, and now Zee’s hands barely touching him, Zee’s cock pressing up against him but not inside, and how the shame of standing naked in front of the window fell away, how much he suddenly didn’t care, only cared about one thing.
He couldn’t bear it anymore. He could feel Zee waiting; he didn’t know if it was hesitation because Trinket was acting so strange, he didn’t know if Zee was only teasing him, but he couldn’t bear it.
“Please, put it in. I want to feel it inside me. I want it so bad.”
Zee slipped the tip inside, and then let the whole of it follow in a single, unteased thrust, shoving Trinket open with a jolt that made him cry out and grip the counter.
“Is that what you want?” asked Zee. His voice still held that strange evenness, but it was tenderer now, making Trinket near to sobbing with relief. Everything wasn’t ruined. Everything was still good. It was so good.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Zee didn’t move to fuck him, only kept his cock inside and pushed Trinket closer up to the counter, reaching down and around to fondle his cock. Trinket could feel Zee’s shirt brushing up against his back, pant legs against his bare thighs, reminding him how completely naked he was, naked and bent over in full view of the window.
“How do you want it?” asked Zee.
The dirty talk kept spilling out of Trinket’s mouth as if Mini had planted them in him, as if he were speaking with Trinket’s tongue.
“I want you to fuck me like you had a long day at work, like you came home frustrated and you just need to take it out on something. Take it out on me. Fuck me until you feel better.”
Zee didn’t say a word. For a real second Trinket thought he had gone too far, said too much.
And then Zee did what he asked.
Trinket hadn’t been fucked hard, not truly hard since that first night. Had nearly forgotten what it felt like, how his unprepared body resisted, and how that made it feel even better, so good, like he was going to break something, but didn’t care, like Zee was going to split him in half, and he would let him.
Zee fucked him like he knew about Mini, like he knew about the lips that had sucked him off only hours ago, like he was going to make him forget, like he could shake the memories out of his head by fucking him hard enough.
Trinket could almost imagine that Zee was fucking him to punish him, and that made it so much better, so much worse. Real tears were rolling down his face, but he turned his face into his shoulder to hide them, panting and shaking. He couldn’t tell if he was crying from pain, guilt, pleasure, laughter. It was all the same thing.
“Is that good?” he asked. “Do you feel good, do you feel better?”
“Yes,” said Zee. He was panting, too. He slowed his thrusts, but each one became harder, making Trinket cry out every few seconds. “Is it too much?” he asked.
“No, no, it’s good,” Trinket was quick to reassure him. “Don’t worry about me, don’t stop. Deep like that, please...”
“Tell me more about how you like it,” Zee said into his neck, into his ear. His hands stroked up Trinket’s sides. One went to his nipple, the other to his dick. Trinket remembered Mini’s pierced tongue stroking over his nipple and felt like he could come just thinking about it, just from the guilt and the good memory.
“I just want you to fuck me until I can’t stand,” Trinket said, words rushing out, racing to say them before he was too humiliated. “Fuck me until you think I can’t take it, then fuck me more. Don’t treat me nicely, It’s yours, it’s all for you. You can put me in the hospital as long as it makes you feel good.”
Zee gripped his dick, pinched his nipple, pulled totally out, and thrust back in — all in the same hard, punishing motion. Trinket cried out. Zee repeated it, repeated it again, kept pinching his nipples as if he knew someone else had been touching them, knew that someone had been licking, sucking them, kept hitting Trinket with deep thrusts but not actually fucking him, not in a predictable rhythm, but like a deep, striking punishment.
“How does that feel?” asked Zee, still almost neutral despite his grip, with only a suppressed, bit-back intensity to his words.
“Good,” whispered Trinket, shuddering. “So good.” But his legs were beginning to shake. “I can’t stay up,” he managed. “My legs—”
“Didn’t you say to fuck you until you couldn’t take it?” asked Zee. “Then fuck you more?”
Trinket put his face down on the cold marble countertop and whimpered his assent, spread his legs farther, arched his back, just like Mini had said he would.
‘Does he make you cum hard? Like, really hard? Does he know you like your hair pulled?’
“Pull my hair,” he said. “I love it when you pull my hair.”
Whatever Zee had been holding back, he let go. He stopped teasing Trinket’s nipples. He reached up and wrapped his hand in his hair, as hard as if he was going to drag Trinket somewhere by it. He pulled his head back, pulled him upright, dragged him up and pushed up him against the glass of the window. And he fucked him. Hard, hard, harder. Trinket moaned, cried out with each thrust, but it was so fast, so unrelenting, he couldn’t even fall into a rhythm, could only sob continuously. He had never felt Zee so intense, so nearly out of control. He wondered how long Zee had been fantasizing about this. How long he had been holding back this part of himself.
Hands and chest braced against the cold glass, Trinket stared at the blackness outside.
Unseeing, he pictured himself seen from someone else’s eyes. Saw himself naked, legs open, being fucked from behind, totally unresisting, pliable eyes half closed in numb oblivion. Just fucked senseless.
He hadn’t known if he could handle it. Even now, he still didn’t know; every moment, every thrust left him wondering, whimpering, thinking ‘I can’t stand this, I’m going to fall, I’m going to cry’ and then every time Zee withdrew, thinking ‘No, don’t stop, do it again, don’t take it out.’ He had to clench his teeth to stop himself telling Zee to stop, to stop himself from begging for it more, harder.
And then went suddenly blind, gasping. Coming.
He couldn’t stand through it. He would have collapsed to the floor if Zee hadn’t held him up — one hand still holding his hair, the other around his waist, still fucking him steadily to the end of his orgasm, then lowered him shaking to the floor, to the white carpet.
Trinket couldn’t see his own face, but he imagined it snotty, pathetic, red-eyed. He had to sit, sat shaking and trying to get his breath back. The bliss of the orgasm bumped up against the pain in his body.
Zee knelt beside him; Trinket saw the tender concern in his eyes, the question on his lips, and stopped it from coming out by kissing him again.
“Hey,” he said raggedly against Zee’s lips. “Don’t stop. You haven’t come yet. You can keep fucking me — I want you to come in me.” He pulled back to look at him, to make sure he was heard.
He could see from Zee’s eyes that they wanted the same thing.
“Okay,” said Zee softly.
He spread Trinket’s legs and lifted his hips to slip back inside of him. Trinket bit his lip; it was a whole different kind of pain after he had come, a pain that instantly tried to turn into pleasure. He shivered. Zee’s hands ran down his thighs, traced back up with the tips of his fingernails, watching Trinket’s face. He seemed to want a reaction, so Trinket let himself whimper. Zee’s fingers tightened, his nails dug in, and Trinket let himself moan.
Zee’s dark eyes were opaque with desire, with restraint. “I love the tattoo,” he murmured. His eyes ran over Trinket’s naked body, over the raised red marks of his nails, the raised red edges of the black ink. “Did it hurt?” The concern in his voice was real, and he stroked Trinket’s hips with his thumbs.
As if Zee knew, he swept his hand down Trinket’s side, up to stroke his nipple the same way Mini hand.
Zee had never done that— not so intentionally. Occasionally, during sex, his hands would brush him there, occasionally his lips would pause on the way up to his mouth, but he had never so pointedly targeted his nipple, not just stroking but pinching it, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, and it hurt. He watched Trinket’s face, watched him bite his lip against any words that might stop it.
“It didn’t hurt that bad,” whispered Trinket. “I just thought about you the whole time.”
Zee thrust his dick slowly, and Trinket closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and thought of Mini’s fingers teasing his nipple, and spread his legs for Zee to keep fucking him, to go deep again.
“I wanted you on my skin,” he breathed. “Under it. Permanently. I always want you on me, on top of me, inside of me, just like this.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Zee. “You’re beautiful. You look so good like this. You feel so good.” His voice was getting heavier again, he was losing his restraint, picking up speed again, his dick pushing in and out. “Spread your legs for me,” he whispered. He didn’t have to say it — Trinket had already spread them, Zee was pushing them apart with his own hands — but he was saying it because he could say it, because Trinket’s shocking, unrepentant dirty talk had given him permission to say it. To order, instead of ask. “Spread your legs for me, so I can fuck you.”
Trinket arched his back, reached down to wrap his hands around the backs of his thighs, and lay back and open in the most embarrassing, pornographic way he could. Zee pushed his hips higher, started fucking him deeper, harder. Trinket lifted his head to look at it, watched Zee drive in and out of him.
“I love seeing you like this,” said Zee. “Legs open for me, tattooed for me. I want to see you covered in ink, only under your clothes, only where I can see them, I want my name tattooed between your legs, I want to push your thighs apart and see my name inside of them.”
“Fuck,” whimpered Trinket, grabbing his own cock, no longer able to resist the mental image or the idea, the idea of Mini’s needle stinging him there, of lying with his legs open for the tattoo gun and Mini’s eyes for hours, trembling for hours, for as long as it took, the shame and the idea of Zee treasuring the ink with his tongue, of seeing proof of his possession needled and burned into Trinket’s whole body — “Come in me, please, I want you to come in me.”
Zee seized his thighs, relentless, fucking him harder, faster, towards orgasm, watching Trinket holding his legs open for him and stroking himself, whole chest and face flushed as red as the skin around the tattoo.
“You’re the only one who’s ever come inside of me,” Trinket managed.
He hadn’t told Zee he had been the first person to fuck him, didn’t know if Zee would be upset, or would like it, but he could see that Zee loved learning he had been the first and only one to fuck him raw. Loved it, not just sexually, not just because it turned him on, but because of the intimacy of it, and because it appealed to that possessive side of him they never talked about, the part of him that went dark in the eyes that time a colleague slipped Trinket his number, the part of him that had gone out of his way to arrange his life, his home to keep Trinket in it, to keep him in his bed, to get him out of that apartment, to have him eating Zee’s food, to be half naked in his kitchen in the morning, being there for Zee to come home to, to wake up with, to fuck long, slow, silently in the morning as the sun came up, not saying a word, kissing slowly, unhurried, lying there inside of him just kissing, still, content in the physical knowledge that he had him, was inside of him, and no one else.
Zee grabbed him by the hair again, bent down to kiss him ruthlessly, to fuck him ruthlessly, fucking so hard Trinket felt himself going numb, but wrapping his arm around Zee’s neck still, letting Zee’s tongue part his lips aggressively, feeling Zee come in short, hard, jolting strokes. His nails buried themselves in Trinket’s thighs. He stayed there for a minute longer, too breathless and shuddering to kiss, so Trinket kissed for him, sucking his lips, his tongue.
Eventually Zee drew back, glassy-eyed and shuddering, to look down at him.
Satisfaction better than an orgasm ran through Trinket.
He had done so fucking well.
He could see it in Zee’s face. There was so much love there, buzzing like a high, dazed in Zee’s dark eyes. It had been two years, but they had been two years of hesitation, of sex with a question mark.
Tonight was more than an anniversary. It was a landmark.
“I love you,” said Zee.
Trinket could count on one hand the number of times they’d said ‘I love you.’
He knew Zee loved him. He had known it the morning after their first time, the way Zee looked at him. Eventually, he had said it. They had both said it. And they had both meant it.
But none of the previous times had hurt his heart like this, had burned Trinket with love hot in his chest, with the way Zee looked at him. Softness looked so alien on Zee’s hard face. The gentleness, the tender honesty, was so rare, was so unlike him.
“I love you,” said Trinket, as if he hadn’t shown it enough that night already. “Happy anniversary.”
Zee actually laughed. “Happy anniversary,” he said, agreed. “Thank you for the present. I love it. I really do.”
“I’m glad,” said Trinket. “Tattoo removal is expensive.”
Zee smiled. Running his fingers soothingly up and down Trinket’s thighs, he asked softly, “Will you do one more thing for me?”
“Anything,” said Trinket immediately. “Anything you want.”
He earned another hot, wanting, loving look for that.
“I want you to come for me again,” said Zee. “With my cum still in you. With my cock still in you. Can you do that?”
It was an order disguised as a request, but it was also an honest question. He had put Trinket through a lot.
But it was also what Zee really wanted.
So Trinket said, “Yes.”
He reached down; his dick was already hard, was still hard from how rough Zee had been, how possessive, grabby.
He watched Zee ease his cock nearly out — out to the tip, just enough to see cum glistening on the tip, the sticky white strand that clung to it before he sank it back into Trinket, to the hilt.
Trinket didn’t have to try hard.
All it took was the presence of Zee still inside of him, the hint of pain from fucking so hard, even without moving, the way just touching himself jarred his insides, made him clench around the cock.
It was the final, most debasing act — it didn’t matter that it was the man he loved watching him, that it was his boyfriend of two years, it didn’t matter that Zee was the one who had put him in this position, legs open, cock in him, had come in him. Trinket felt as shocked at himself, as bare and humiliated, as he had in the tattoo shop.
That was probably why he came so hard.
Even though he came, shaking and trembling, moaning “Zee,” saying “It feels so good, it feels so good, fuck I feel so good,” in rapidfire, nonsensical ecstasy, his eyes squeezed tight shut, and in his head, involuntary, he pictured a different pair of hands holding his legs open, hands with tattoos all down the knuckles, and a different voice laughing, saying, ‘Relax.’