What It Looks Like

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Rob lived clear across the city in a run-down area of Parson Cross, in a grubby but spacious flat he shared with his brother Danny. The drive was unpleasantly long, in Eli’s esteemed opinion, but Rob had a reputation locally, and, by daring to block his Suzuki in, Eli could label his car as belonging to someone in Rob Hawkes’ social circle. So at least he’d have all his tyres and glass intact when he came back to it.

The flat was on the top floor, up a narrow and dirty stairwell that usually stank of piss and weed. Eli hated the jog up, for the risk of some druggie thinking he’d have cash, or the local fucknut kids hanging about by the bins at the bottom—but the early evening created an odd lull at this time, and he was undisturbed.

Except by the music blaring from behind the door, the brass number nine—hanging by a single nail, and upside-down—shaking with the force of it.

Eli sighed, and hammered his fist on the wood. Repeatedly. And as loudly as possible. “Rob!” he shouted, in feeble hope Rob would do that thing of hearing your own name across a noisy, crowded room, but not convinced he would.

“Oi!”

Eli rolled his eyes and turned as the door to number ten flew open.

“‘E’s been playin’ tha’ fuckin’ crap all fuckin’ day!” the neighbour shrieked. She was a woman in her mid-forties, perhaps early fifties, with crooked yellow teeth and a fag end permanently attached to her lower lip. She’d once come right up to jab her finger in Eli’s chest, and she’d faintly smelled of piss herself. Uncharitably, Eli wondered if she was the one responsible for the stairwell.

“Yeah, well, I’m not his handler,” Eli grumbled, still knocking.

“‘E’s a fuckin’ nuisance!” she shrilled. “You tell ‘im, you tell ‘im tha’ I’ll—”

The door jerked away from Eli’s fist; the music spilled deafeningly onto the tiled landing, and Rob’s frame loomed in the open doorway. “You’ll what?” he sneered. He was wearing his T-shirt and boxers, a remote control dangling from one hand and a beer bottle cold and half-empty in the other. He’d gained a black eye from somewhere, and a dark mark on his lip that might have been a split. But more importantly, those long, muscled legs were on full view, and Eli unashamedly ogled.

“Turn it tha’ f**k off!” the neighbour bellowed.

Rob snorted, the remote control clicked, and the music stopped.

“There, you f*****g happy?”

“I’ll ‘ave the cops out on you!” she squalled. “Tha’ racket all day and night, tha’ friend o’ yours, tha’ smell—you’re growing canny i’ there, don’t you think I don’t know!”

“Oh, f**k off, you old bag,” Rob scoffed, stepping aside and drawing Eli in by a hand on his shoulder.

“I see your neighbourly relations aren’t any better,” Eli remarked tartly as Rob shut the door on her complaining and turned the music back on—albeit at a less deafening volume.

“Couldn’t get better if I killed her.”

“Uh-huh. Is that what happened to your face?”

“Nah—local got a bit lively,” Rob said flippantly. “So Danny’s out. Just you and me. You know the rules.”

Eli snorted, dropping his bag on the hall floor. The flat was a two-bed, with a narrow hall and what it lacked in being just about the dampest, draughtiest flat Eli had ever seen, it made up for in space. For a top-floor job in Parson Cross, it had sizeable rooms. “I’m not even here five minutes and you want me to take my clothes off?” he said testily.

Rob raised his eyebrows. “That’s the rules. You agreed to them.”

“Yeah, well, I’m really not in the—”

“If they were suggestions, I’d call ‘em such. Now you gonna do as you’re f*****g told, or do I have to—”

“Red.”

Eli’s voice was sharp—sharper than he’d intended, and he winced.

Rob’s jaw audibly clicked shut, then he turned and vanished into the kitchen. Eli groaned, rubbing both hands over his face and through his hair before exhaling heavily.

“Rob,” he called. “I—”

“Here.” Rob rematerialised with a can of Carlsberg, Eli’s usual poison here, and steered him into the living room. The TV was paused on a scene from Full Metal Jacket, a couple of dumbbells on the floor testimony to what Rob had been doing when Eli had shown up. Then Eli was walked right past the debris and pushed to sit on the sofa.

“I’m—oh-my-f*****g-God,” he groaned as Rob’s hands clamped down firmly on his shoulders and squeezed. The pressure burst the tension like a boil, and he sagged in Rob’s grip, groping for the arm of the sofa to steady himself.

“What’s up.” Rob’s tone was flat and factual.

Eli bit his lip.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he admitted.

“Not what I asked.”

Eli blew upwards into his hair and rolled his head back into Rob’s hands as the massage migrated up his spine to the base of his skull. “So Danny ambushed me and Jenny shopping, and let slip I was planning to come with you for Christmas…and I hadn’t, you know, actually got round to telling them yet…”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. There was a huge row,” Eli mumbled. “Dad just about flipped his s**t and tried to ban me from coming to see you again—”

Rob snorted and laughed. The deep sound brought a reluctant smile to Eli’s own face, and he reached over his shoulder to squeeze one of Rob’s wrists.

“I didn’t exactly take that one well,” he admitted. “And then there was all the usual crap about you and everything, and I just—urgh, I had to get away.”

Rob shifted on the sofa until Eli was bracketed by his legs on either side. Sighing, Eli allowed himself to be pulled back into Rob’s chest, the heavy weight of his arms comforting and the enclosure formed by his raised thighs either side of Eli’s hips like a shield.

“I’m sorry I snapped,” Eli mumbled.

Rob just hummed and butted his chin lightly against Eli’s ear in an oddly nuzzling sort of motion.

“I didn’t mean to use a safeword.”

Rob huffed. “We’ve talked about this,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. “Rules are only rules as long as you don’t safeword. No safeword, no option.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No,” Rob interrupted firmly. “If you hadn’t used it, I would have forced you to strip. You know I can.”

Eli shifted, the memory of the first time he’d played that game with Rob still a hot flush in the base of his gut. “Yeah,” he murmured lowly. “It was f*****g hot, too.”

Rob smirked against his ear. “Aye,” he agreed, “but this time you didn’t want to play, and as it’s one of the rules, it’s the only way you’ve got of telling me you’re not f*****g kidding and you’re genuinely not up for it. Otherwise I’m just gonna think you’re f*****g with me again.”

Eli pulled a face, stroking his hand along Rob’s arm. Both arms were locked around his chest, and Eli traced the patterns of ink under the hair. “It just feels stupid, safewording outside the bedroom, for f*****g clothes,” he grumbled.

“Shut it.” Rob’s voice was suddenly harsh and sharp.

Eli flinched.

“I mean it. If I can’t f*****g trust you to use them when you don’t want the rules to apply, then it’s all off.”

Eli winced, and broke Rob’s hold to turn around and clasp his head between both hands. The kiss was gentle, Rob barely responding, and Eli pressed his nose into Rob’s cheek, closing his eyes to whisper, “Don’t f*****g say that.”

“It’s true.” Rob clasped both hands around the back of Eli’s neck, pulling him back until all Eli could see were those incredible, intense grey-white eyes. “I have to be able to trust you to use them, Eli,” Rob said slowly, his voice deep and rolling, the words cut and deliberate. “Any rule, any place, any time, whenever you are genuinely telling me to stop. Use. Them.”

Eli felt pinned by Rob’s eyes, unable to breathe under the sheer weight of his gaze. He swallowed dumbly before pressing forward to kiss Rob’s lips again and whisper, “I will,” there like a fervent prayer.

Rob’s expression didn’t flicker, and Eli grimaced.

“I will,” he insisted. “I did, didn’t I? I just blurted it out and felt stupid after, I still said it. And…and anyway, I know I’m being silly, it’s just…I was grumpy and…I think I meant to use amber instead of red. Just put you on hold for ten minutes?”

Rob raised an eyebrow; Eli kissed it, and looped both arms around Rob’s neck.

“You were hugging all the grumpiness out of me,” he murmured. “Do it again.”

Rob chuckled then. Eli smiled into his cheek, pleased with himself for lifting the sudden severity that had settled. Rob’s grip tightened and he shifted until they were lying down, Eli wriggling into the hard contours of muscle and powerful joints until he found a comfortable place. Rob clicked the film back into life, and Eli hummed as he felt a kiss being pressed to the top of his head.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m still getting used to you and your rules.”

Rob snorted. “You’re the one who f*****g needs ‘em, you kinky shit.”

“Oh, like you can talk!” Eli protested, smacking Rob’s chest. “I have handcuffs, Rob, not a whole chain!”

“It’s a bike chain!”

“With a collar!”

They were both laughing by that point, Rob’s deep guffaws rocking Eli’s upper body against his ribs and chest. Eli kissed the tattooed heart affectionately and pulled himself further up to nuzzle Rob’s stubble with his nose.

“You need them, too, the words,” he said. “Or you’d not have been able to stop me that time with the flogger.”

Rob grimaced. “Oh, f**k, I forgot about that. Fucker stung.”

“Do I ever get a second chance with that?”

“Nope,” Rob said in an easy drawl. “No way was that going to turn hot. There’s pain and then there’s pain, you know?”

Eli chewed on his lip, studying Rob’s face, then said, “Can I try something else?”

“What, now?”

“Yeah.”

“After you already safeworded once?”

“I mean try something to you.”

Rob’s wary expression eased. “I guess so.”

Eli slid off that rock-solid body to perch on the coffee table.

“I want you to go and get that collar and chain,” he said lowly.

Rob raised his eyebrows, but nodded and rolled off the sofa in one fluid motion. His steps were heavy on the boards, and Eli listened to him rummaging in the next room for a near minute before coming back with a cardboard box. The chain was a dark coil inside, a simple brown collar attached to one end—a dog collar, Eli suspected, and when he picked it up, it was made of a strong, rough leather.

“Take off your clothes.”

“All of them?”

“All of them. And don’t ask questions.”

A fleeting smirk crossed Rob’s face, but then his T-shirt obscured it. He wasted no time, and in about half a second, was standing in full naked glory in front of the coffee table. He wasn’t entirely soft either.

Eli stroked his fingers lightly over that flushed c**k.

“Kneel.”

Rob knelt. Eli fisted a hand into his hair and kissed him roughly, forcing his mouth to yield to it. The taste of cheap Grolsch was unpleasant, and Eli wrinkled his nose.

“You’ll have to have something else,” he muttered. “Neck.” The collar slid shut satisfyingly around Rob’s throat, and Eli kissed the skin above it before sitting back and surveying him coolly. Or at least, trying to—the sight of the collar was unexpectedly hot, and Rob just kneeling there in front of him, completely naked…

“Anything else?”

Eli slapped him. Rob’s face snapped to the side, and he didn’t move. His c**k twitched, and Eli licked his lips before grinning. “I said don’t ask questions,” he whispered, pitching his voice as slow and low as he dared.

Rob could only be teased so much. He could—and Eli knew it from experience—come without being touched at all. And Eli didn’t want to give him that pleasure too soon.

He tested the weight of the chain in his hand before standing up. Rob’s head turned back towards him, but didn’t lift, and Eli took an experimental pace away, wondering if Rob would dare to stand, or—

He shuffled forward on his knees, one hand dropping to the carpet.

Eli beamed.

“Good,” he praised, raking a hand through that dark hair gently. “Now listen. For the next hour, you will do exactly as I tell you. You will agree to anything I ask of you, no matter what it is. The only way out is a safeword. Repeat them.”

This—technically—was Rob’s rule, the repetition of safewords. Initially, it had been to drill them into Eli’s head so he’d remember them in the middle of a game, but since…well, Eli rather appreciated them since. He knew his own kinks could get a bit…heavy. Rob was all about how they had s*x—when and where and if he could tie Eli up or not. But it was all about s*x, the act itself. Eli’s, his real kinks, not his little exhibitionist streak or his thing for being f****d bent over the bathroom counter, were more about control and dominance, either being dominated, or…or getting Rob on the other end of a chain and crawling naked across his own carpet because Eli f*****g told him to.

So since, Eli kind of liked this rule. It wasn’t a kink rule, as Rob called it, it was a real-world rule. One that had absolutely no opt-out clause. If Eli didn’t ask, Rob would stop the scene anyway. And Eli, knowing his own kinks could go too far—and indeed, Rob had stopped him before, with the flogger and the choker—now appreciated them much more for what they really were.

“Red,” Rob said.

“For?”

“Stop. Immediately.”

“And?”

“Amber—for a pause, or slowing down.”

“And?”

“Green if prompted for permission to continue, or agreement to an activity.”

Eli nodded, smoothing Rob’s hair before leading him back to the sofa. “Sit there, between my knees,” he said softly, pointing at a patch on the carpet. Rob obeyed. “This is what we’re gonna play for the next hour. I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen about sorting it out this crap between you and my dad. You’re going to agree to it, and then you’re going to put that mouth to use and relieve the last of my…tension, exactly the way I like it. If you’re good, I’ll let you play, too. You argue with me, you disobey me, then I’ll punish you—and you won’t like it. Understood?”

Rob nodded, those bright-white eyes fixed on Eli’s face.

“Colour?” Eli prompted softly. The question he needed more than Rob did, really—the question…

“Green.”

…an answer that told Eli he wasn’t going too far. That even when Rob pulled faces or argued or made sounds of distress or pain, he was enjoying it and he did want it, and Eli wasn’t…wasn’t forcing him. Not really.

Eli kissed him, soft and open, and tapped the end of his nose. “Alright,” he said. “Here’s the deal. You’re coming to a family dinner with my folks.”

Rob’s face instantly turned mutinous.

“Don’t,” Eli warned, jerking the chain sharply and forcing Rob to break eye contact. “You will attend. You will behave yourself. You will not antagonise Dad, and you will not make a fool out of me. If you do, I will beat you.”

Rob’s gaze shifted and hardened.

“Question?”

Rob opened his mouth, then appeared to think better of it, and lowered his face. He kissed Eli’s knee through his jeans instead.

“Rob.”

“No question. I won’t disappoint you.”

“Then you’ll come?” It was a false question. They both knew what would happen if Rob refused. And apparently Rob wasn’t in the mood to play rough, for—

“I’ll do as I’m told.”

The stilted reply made the pulse in Eli’s crotch a little too powerful. He popped the button on his jeans with a snap.

“Good,” he praised softly, petting Rob’s hair again. “You fighting with my dad makes me angry, Rob. You know it does. You’re hurting me, you’re acting out against me, when you do it.”

“I don’t mean to.”

Eli jerked the chain again. Rob grunted harshly, face downturned.

“You do mean to,” he said sharply. “You do it on purpose.”

“I don’t mean to hurt you by doing it,” Rob explained in the softest voice Eli had ever heard him use. “I don’t mean to make you angry.”

Eli felt himself softening, too. Rob’s contrite voice was a weapon, and one Eli was defenceless against.

“You’re not bad,” Eli said softly, tugging on Rob’s hair and guiding his face to Eli’s crotch. “You will come to dinner, you will be a model citizen and boyfriend, you will show them that sweet, caring side of you that I see. Then after—if you behave yourself, and I’m not forced to punish you again—then we can play whatever game you like.”

Rob’s hands curled into the edge of the sofa cushions. “Whatever game?”

“Whatever game,” Eli promised, pulling on Rob’s hair. “Right now, I want your mouth being used the way it’s made to be used.”

Rob’s gaze was open, for once, not the stern and calculating stare he usually offered. The brush of his lips over the denim was as searing as though they were on Eli’s bare skin before his teeth caught the zip and began to pull.

The flat door slammed. “Oi, faggot! I’m home!”

Rob jerked back; Eli dropped the chain barely in time to let him.

“I wouldn’t come in here if I were you, Danny!” Eli yelled hastily, seizing Rob’s hair and pressing a kiss to his forehead, pulled wide by his nervous laugh. “Red,” he whispered. “End scene.”

“Thank f**k for that,” Rob muttered, grabbing for his jeans.

A fist hit the living room door. “Are you two doing something f*****g vile in there?”

“Yes!” Eli shouted.

“Oh my God! On the sofa?”

“Not quite, I’m on the floor!” Rob shouted, pulling his jeans up over his thighs. His c**k was still half-hard, and he grimaced as he tucked himself in.

Eli laughed, kissing Rob’s neck as he removed the collar.

“Another time, maybe,” he said, folding it back into the box.

Rob grinned.

“No s**t, you kinky b***h. You were gonna go off the minute I got my tongue on you.”

“Maybe,” Eli teased.

“You’re both f*****g disgusting!” Danny bellowed through the door. “Pervs! And who’s gonna pay to dry-clean the sofa? Me!”

“I’ll dry-clean your f*****g face if you don’t shut the f**k up!” Rob yelled, switching the telly off, and wiggling his eyebrows at Eli. “Bedroom?”

“Only if you’ve fixed the lock.”

Rob smirked.

“I have, actually,” he said, before jerking the living room door open. Danny’s horrified face was stuck in a twisted grimace. “Oh, f**k off, like you haven’t had one of your hookers on that sofa.”

“I f*****g haven’t!”

“Yeah? Oh s**t, no, that were me an’ all,” Rob said, snapping his fingers.

Danny slapped Rob around the head, and Eli ducked past the bickering brothers to nip into Rob’s room and kick the box back under the bed. After a moment, the door snapped shut behind him, and he turned in time to see Rob’s grin as he rolled the new lock over and the bolt slid into place.

“I know that face,” Eli said, eyeing Rob sceptically. “Unfortunately, that scene’s over, and I don’t much feel like just spreading my legs for y—”

The sentence was cut off, partly by Rob’s teeth around Eli’s jugular, and partly by the impact of being tackled bodily onto the bed.

“f*****g spread your f*****g legs,” Rob snarled, his voice barely high enough in his throat to count as speech at all, “or I’ll spread ‘em for you.”

Eli laughed, tangled both hands into Rob’s hair, and spread his f*****g legs.