| |
It was a few more hours before Zee left the house. He needed to stop into the office, he said, kissing Trinket on the cheek. He would be back later. They would heat up last night’s dinner, have the meal they had interrupted for themselves.
Trinket said he loved him, kissed him goodbye.
And then he dug the business card out of his wallet and called Mini.
Mini answered breezily on the third ring. “Yeah,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“Trinket. Trinculo — Trinculo Gao.”
Mini was silent on the other end for a moment, then gloated thickly.
“That was fast,” he said.
Trinket found his tongue tied; he had no idea how to have this conversation, he realized. He wasn’t even sure what conversation they were having.
“How’d the anniversary go?” asked Mini.
“Good,” said Mini, then blurted out, “He pulled my hair.”
It was an absurdly TMI thing to say to a stranger, over the phone with no preamble, but Mini had pulled his pants down and sucked his dick with no preamble. Trinket felt almost entitled to shove the information in his face.
“I’m happy for you,” said Mini. “Is that why you're calling? To update me on your happy sex life? Or are you calling because he didn’t fuck you right and you still need taken care of? I might have a slot this afternoon.”
“No,” said Trinket — firmly, he thought. “You were right about the tattoos. I want another.”
Mini paused. “You know, if you’re thirsty, you can just say so. I would absolutely fuck you. You don’t need to dance around it, and honestly, I’d rather get to the point than spend an hour of foreplay pretending to consult on a tattoo. I have actual paying customers to deal with.”
“No, I mean it,” said Trinket. “I want another. He wants me to get another.”
Mini paused again. “You grew out your hair for your man, got inked for your man, now you wanna do it again, huh? What this time? Does he want his name as a tramp stamp? ‘Property of X’ tattooed right above your ass?”
“It’s not like that,” said Trinket, though he didn’t know what it was like, if not that. Mini wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right, either, Trinket told himself. What he wanted... it was elevated beyond the level of ‘tramp stamp’ of ‘property of.’ It was better than that. Or it was worse. Either way, it was more complicated. The stakes were higher. “Are you saying you won’t do it?”
“Hell, no,” said Mini. “I love this fucked up shit. And I like getting paid. But I also know the second you hang up, you’re going to snap back to your vanilla reality. You’re still riding the high of your first day in the fast lane, babe. Now you think you wanna live there. I’m telling you you’re wrong.”
Trinket’s cheeks flamed — with anger, he realized. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said.
“You ever let that boyfriend of yours drag you around on a leash?” asked Mini. “You ever play rape?”
“Jesus,” said Trinket.
Mini burst out laughing. “You are going to drown in this deep end, babe.”
“Don’t call me ‘babe,’” said Trinket. “He doesn’t even call me that.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Mini. “That’s why you’re calling me.”
Trinket lingered on the phone in silence for such a long time, neither of them hanging up, sharing the quiet long enough that the silence became intimate. He could hear Mini breathing, waiting for him.
Trinket didn’t know what he wanted him to say. Eventually he spoke, eventually he defaulted to, “It’s none of your business,” and added, “It’s a job. It’s your job. I have money.”
“He has money,” Mini corrected, too knowingly.
Trinket’s face burned again.
“Hang up the phone, ‘Trinket,’” said Mini, who hadn’t missed the nickname. “You can come by in two weeks. I’ll take a look, see how it’s healing and if it needs touched up. But by then you’ll be over it. My recommendation? Go jerk off. Give your boyfriend a handjob at a stoplight. Get the adventure out of your system. Once some time has passed, you’ll be embarrassed you even called me.”
Mini hung up.
—
He took Mini’s advice.
He jerked off.
Alone in the house, with nobody to tell him what to do, the exercise felt flat and stupid. When he came, he looked at it in his hand and felt stupider.
He couldn’t believe he had done that, any of that, for this.
‘Guilty’ was the wrong word — he didn’t feel ‘guilty’ for what had happened at the shop, because he had done it for Zee, even if he had lost control of the encounter halfway through. Even Mini’s touching, the blowjob, felt like they had by extension been for Zee, had served the purpose of filling Trinket with endorphins, purging him of his shame, putting him back on his boyfriend’s doorstep ready and willing to be fucked as hard as Zee wanted to fuck him.
He was glad he’d gone to the shop.
But the longer he was alone, the more he thought, the more he thought that he should feel guilty, and the tattoo had been a good present but a bad idea, and that more tattoos was a worse idea.
Part of him hoped Zee wouldn’t bring it up again.
And Zee didn’t.
Not right away.
—
Zee worked late, late enough that when he got home, Trinket was already half asleep on the couch. He apologized. They heated up their anniversary dinner, ate, and chatted about their respective separate lives; Zee about some church expansion he was consulting on, about some drama with a landscaper. Trinket found he didn’t have much to talk about, said something pithy about petroglyphs that made Zee laugh.
They polished off the dinner and two, almost three bottles of wine.
They kissed a lot, and Zee undressed him amorously enough, but not to fuck him. He just liked to touch him — to take off his clothes, to kiss him from ankle to ear, to run his fingers through Trinket’s hair. He stripped Trinket all the way, but barely bothered to take his own jacket off.
In a drunken, detached way, Trinket wondered what that meant. Wondered what judgment Mini would make of it.
He pulled at Zee’s belt a little, but Zee didn’t seem interested in being touched, didn’t seem interested in anything more than kissing Trinket. His lips, his face, his neck. Chest. Stomach.
Trinket stared at the ceiling until it spun, and closed his eyes while Zee slowly sucked him off.
The whole time, Zee’s fingers stroked the raised ink on his stomach.
—
Two weeks passed, and Trinket still hadn’t worked up the nerve to try and give his boyfriend a handjob at a stoplight.
And Zee still hadn’t mentioned the tattoos.
They still hadn’t fucked like they had the night of the anniversary dinner. They had sex, and it was good, but Zee didn’t wrap his hair around his fist again, didn’t bend him over or drag him roughly into differently positions. Trinket didn’t stray a word from his normal dialogue, didn’t dare say anything more explicit than ‘Yes.’ ‘Please.’ ‘That feels good.’
When the time came, Trinket called the tattoo shop directly.
“Hello?”
He thought he recognized the voice of the girl from the night he’d been there. He thought he heard the click of lip jewelry.
“Hey, I got tattooed two weeks ago, and I’m supposed to come in to get it looked at.”
“Okay,” she said. “Who was your artist?”
“Uh,” he said. “Is there another artist available?”
“Another artist as opposed to...?”
“I saw Mini, before.”
“Hey, Mini!” He heard her shout. His heart fluttered. He closed his eyes and pressed his phone to his forehead.
The familiar voice picked up.
“Yeah,” it said. “What do you want?”
Trinket didn’t say anything at first.
Annoyed, Mini said, “Yo. Hello? Who is it?”
“It’s Trinculo Gao.”
“Oh, Trinket,” said Mini, as easily and casually as if he had been expecting the call. “You let your boyfriend walk you around on a leash yet?”
Trinket’s face flamed. He glanced at Zee, on the other end of the room at his desk, absorbed in some work email. “No,” he said shortly.
Mini read him instantly. “Oh, is he in the room?” he asked eagerly. “Do we need to speak in code?”
“I need the tattoo looked at,” said Trinket. “I think it’s healing fine, but I don’t know anything about tattoos, so...”
“Oh, I’ll take a look at you,” said Mini. “He can’t hear me, can he? But he can hear you. Bad move, Trinket. Here, pretend I said something about aftercare.”
Trinket’s mouth went dry. His lips managed something. “Yeah, I’ve been using the lotion.”
“If he hasn’t walked you around on a leash yet, I’ll do it for him. I’ll give you a crash course. Fucks up your knees real bad, but there’s nothing like a nice, wide, flat collar snugged up tight and getting yanked on. Wide enough you can’t put your chin down. Fixes your posture. Kind of like a constant, lowkey, hint-of-choking feeling. Then I would tie you up by it — tie it high, make you stand on your tiptoes while I fucked you. Is he still there? Is your dick hard yet? Say something else about the lotion.”
“Yeah, I ran out, but I went and got unscented stuff like you said.”
“God, you’re a good liar. And you’re game.” Mini was laughing. “I was sure you were going to hang up the second I mentioned a leash. Ask me when you can come in.”
“When can I come in?”
“I want you in my chair in an hour. Think you can manage that?”
“...maybe.”
“Come on, you can do better than that, babe. Oh, but wait. You don’t like the pet names, do you?”
“Right.”
“Babe. Baby. Sweetheart.”
Trinket didn’t breathe.
“In an hour.”
“Okay,” he said.
He swallowed hard, turned and looked at Zee focused on his computer with a frown, forehead furrowed, not paying attention.
He covered the phone with his hand.
“Hey,” he said, and his mouth almost supplied the word ‘babe.’ “I’m gonna go down to the tattoo shop. Just to get it looked at.”
Zee finally glanced up from his work. He smiled, his eyes instantly warming from the work scowl. He closed his laptop. “I’ll drop you off,” He said. “I need to stop and argue with someone in person downtown, anyway.”
“Thanks,” said Trinket, smiling at him, heart fluttering fearfully in his chest.
He uncovered the phone.
“I can be there in an hour,” he said.
“See you soon... babe.”
—
Trinket’s heart shook in his chest on the drive down the hill, back into the city.
Zee didn’t turn on the radio, didn’t make conversation. Neither of them did. As always, Zee looked at the buildings they passed and at the road ahead, at the cityscape through whatever artisanal lens he viewed the world.
They hit the first red light.
Though Trinket’s heart trembled, somehow his hand didn’t, as he reached over and slid a hand up Zee’s thigh.
Trinket felt his bulge through his pants, felt it get hard immediately.
Zee didn’t say anything, didn’t look at him sharply. He reached down and unbuttoned his own pants, opened his belt for easy access.
Heart thudding in his chest, ears, limbs, Trinket slipped his hand under Zee’s waistband and took his cock into his hand.
They sat in silence at the light, Trinket with his hand down Zee’s pants, stroking him.
Zee’s lack of reaction, the casual way he looked across the street, the way he didn’t even clench his hands on the wheel... made Trinket want to make him clench his hands.
He tried to pull it out where he could see it. Zee drove down to the end of the next block, calmly, and pushed his pants down to let it spring out, stand hard in the light.
Trinket didn’t even know what part of the city they were in.
“Pull over somewhere,” he said.
“You’ll be late to your appointment,” was all Zee said, tone incredibly even.
“Pull over.”
Trinket wasn’t paying enough attention to see where they stopped, whether it was a parking garage or a lot, a back street or in front of somebody’s home. He didn’t dare look. He didn’t even dare look at Zee’s face.
He waited only as long as it took for the car to stop, for Zee to put it in park, and then he pushed his hair back out of his face and lowered his mouth to it.
Over the last two years Trinket had gotten better at sucking dick. He knew this objectively.
He had subjected himself to the humiliation of research, and had learned from Zee’s reactions how to please him, was game at swallowing, but he knew he wasn’t good at it.
He knew he wasn’t good because he didn’t like it. He knew he wasn’t good because he was self conscious. He knew he wasn’t good because Zee never solicited it, never asked for it, because Zee was so quick to suck him off, instead.
And Zee was good at it.
Trinket didn’t even have time to feel bad about his own lacking skills, he was too busy coming.
And he knew Zee didn’t care about any particular act — Zee cared about him, wanted him and his body, and not specific acts.
He still felt bad.
He felt like he should have wanted to do it.
And right now, he did.
He wanted it in his mouth, he wanted to suck on it, he wanted it on his tongue, to lick it, wanted to drag his lips back and forth over the soft, silky skin.
He had never really understood the appeal, but now.
Was it the guilt? Was it Mini’s prompting? Was it something in his own brain finally snapping, finally giving him permission?
Whatever it was, it made him start sucking the second his mouth touched skin, before he could even get the whole thing in his mouth. He couldn’t take the time to lick, to tease, even if he had known how to.
He heard Zee let out a soft exclamation overhead.
Once again, he felt those fingers twist in his hair, curl into an iron fist, and then he was hard, so hard.
He sucked hard.
He must have done well, even if it was sloppy feeling, mindless and without technique, because Zee came quickly, came with a combination of swearing and saying his name, of complimenting and validating him in a rush, saying “Yes, that’s perfect, that’s good, that feels so good, that’s amazing, fuck that’s deep... can you breathe okay? Fuck that’s good.”
Trinket swallowed thoughtlessly. He didn’t even get to taste it.
When he lifted his head, pushing his hair back, he looked up to see Zee’s eyes closed the way they did after he got back from the gym. Zee reached over blindly to rub his near shoulder with one hand.
In the moments after orgasm, surprised by it, surprised by the whole situation in general — Trinket had never surprised him with that before — Zee said probably more of the truth than he intended.
“God I love having your lips around me,” he said. “I wish I could just hold you down and make you live there.”
He seemed to realize the intensity of his words a moment later, looked at Trinket with that almost-apology in his eyes, the uncertainty of their changing dynamic.
“You can,” said Trinket immediately, just as thoughtlessly. “I want you to fill my throat for hours. I just want you deep inside me, feeling good — I don’t care where.”
He said it because he was intensely aroused, but it was also the truth.
Zee saw it in his eyes; silently he stroked Trinket’s face with one hand. His face was almost quelled from coming, but Trinket could see a promise there, could see the kind of love that was so hard it hurt.
“Do you want me to get you off quick?” Zee asked, running his thumb across his cheek.
“No,” said Trinket. He leaned over; Zee met him halfway, and they kissed. “I’ll call you when I need picked up. Take care of your work stuff. When we get home—” He hesitated.
“I’ll fuck you,” said Zee.