Behind the Scene

Behind the Scene

By Emory Vargas

Copyright 2012 - Emory Vargas

For Alax

It takes four months for Robert to work up the courage to approach Ethan in the parking lot outside the Compound, and on the day he does, he blames it on the wind. The winter chill is biting and damp, heavy with the threat of snow, and Ethan is like a bending willow dressed in a fleece hoodie.

Robert wants to wrap around him, to make him warm. "Hi," he says.

Ethan glances up briefly from digging around in his messenger bag, presumably for his car keys. His pale cheeks and the tip of his nose are already flush from the cold. "Oh. Hi" he says, halting. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, I mean, I'm Robert. From inside?" Robert gestures toward the unmarked entrance, just another plain grey door along the side of a huge warehouse.

"I know. I've seen you," Ethan says, still looking in his bag. It's hard to tell if he's genuinely searching or if he's lowering his eyes, so Robert walks around the car, his boots crunching noisily in the gritty old snow on the pavement.

At the sound, Ethan looks up again and Robert ducks to meet his eye pointedly and says, "I was wondering if I could see you. Outside."

"I don't date," Ethan says. He's careful. Apologetic.

"We could skip dating," Robert says.

Ethan smiles and it changes his entire face; the curve at his lips chases away the wariness in his eyes and the nervous twitch at his chin. "Okay," he says, "but I need to eat something first or I'm gonna get a wicked headache."

Robert's been at this long enough to know that Ethan won't want to be in the vulnerable position of hosting a stranger in his home, especially after scening for nearly six hours. "Don't laugh at me," he says. "I have stew simmering in the slow cooker. You could follow me home in your car?"

"Do you have aloe?"

Looking at Ethan in his over-sized hoodie, one would never know that his back and ass are covered in welts and rope burns. But Robert saw each blow, and he remembers each mark as if it's a bruise on his own skin, hot and angry. His cock stirs and he clears his throat and says, "I've got some in the fridge."

"Mm," Ethan hums. "Perfect."

• • •

On the drive to his apartment, Robert glances at his rear view mirror to watch Ethan's headlights behind him. The sun sets in the distance, making the bare trees alongside the highway flash like a film reel, backlit by the fiery pink sky. He wonders if Ethan is really safe to drive, but trusts that his Mistress wouldn't have cleared him to leave unassisted unless all his motor skills were back in order.

He considers what he knows about Ethan, and it's basically nothing. They appear to be the same age. Ethan is fit, but not overly muscular. He's tall and keeps his black hair shaggy in an artful, deliberate way. It curls when he sweats and he sweats when he's being fucked. He's been scening with the same Mistress for a year or so, but they aren't exclusive. His body sings under a cane, he can take a fist, and he's the most beautiful man Robert's ever laid eyes on.

Every time Robert checks in at the front desk at the Compound and changes in the locker room, he hopes he'll be brought in on a scene with Ethan--but he's only ever been permitted to watch. Today, Robert's Master edged him while they watched Ethan's flogging together. His Master pushed him to the brink again and again until Robert had tears running down his face.

It was a good day.

• • •

Ethan carries his leather messenger bag inside, holding it against his belly like a child holding a stuffed animal. Even after the drive, his hair is still damp, and he's shivering a little.

"Oh cool," he says, "a fireplace."

Robert turns on the lights, one by one, a quick routine that leaves his small kitchen and living room illuminated. "I can light it, just give me a sec. It's gas."

While Robert gets the fire started, Ethan sits down on the couch, still holding his bag and looking around the room. "I like your art."

"They're all prints. The walls were bare for a long time and my sister came by one Christmas and decorated for me."

"She has good taste."

When the flames begin to crackle softly, Ethan slips off the couch and crosses the room on his knees, sliding easily on the carpet until he's next to Robert and the heat. He makes small, content noises as he holds out his hands. "This is great. I hate winter so much. My fingers get terminally cold."

It's all Robert can do to keep his hands off Ethan. He steadies himself with a breath, and nods and says, "Stay here, warm up. I'll grab you some dinner on a tray. Do you... do you need a blanket or anything?"

"The fire is good. Thank you," Ethan says, shifting to set cross-legged in front of the fireplace.

• • •

They eat together on the floor, silently tucking away small portions of vegetable stew and French bread. Ethan looks sleepy by the time he's finished, his posture shifting and easing, as if he's been drinking wine and not ice water.

Robert lets his mind wander. He'd like to kiss Ethan now--or just reach and touch his knee, or the hard plane of his inner thigh. Or simply graze his fingers along the back of Ethan's neck. He's almost certain that they'll fuck tonight. But right now, over empty dishes and next to a peaceful fire, it's difficult to imagine how they'll breach the gap between casual conversation and casual sex.

"This place has a Jacuzzi tub," Robert says.

"No way. You dick," Ethan says, grinning. "My tub sucks. I swear, when I move I'm basing my entire living situation on finding a better bathroom."

"That was an invitation, you know."

Ethan watches him for a moment, and then looks down and fidgets with their dinner trays, stacking the bowls and the glasses and placing the spoons inside of them. A server, maybe. Or an ex-server. As frequently as Ethan takes beatings, it's unlikely he spends entire evenings on his feet carrying heavy plates around.

"An invitation to what?" Ethan asks.

"Play."

Ethan's gaze snaps up, and Robert amends the offer quickly, shaking his head. "Not--no rules. Honestly? I just want to touch you," he says.

"You're always checking me out in the parking lot," Ethan says, visibly calming. It sounds more like an observation than an accusation.

"I might have a small crush."

"I don't do crushes either."

Disappointment flares in Robert's gut, but he smiles and asks, "What do you do?"

"Depends. Do you top?"

Desire begins to mingle with the disappointment. It feels a little like indigestion. "Yes," Robert says.

"To be honest, I usually spend a night like this in a heated blanket watching House Hunters, but I could do a long bath and a long fuck, if you have it in you," Ethan says steadily, as if he's asking Robert to go for a brisk walk with him.

For all the steadiness, there's something else there, something Robert can't place, and a tiny red warning light goes off somewhere in the barely functioning rational part of his brain. Be careful, it says, while the rest of him starts devising creative sex positions and an obscene agenda that will hopefully last for hours.

Robert picks up the trays and stands. Ethan's eyebrows arch delicately as he casts a pointed glance at Robert's tented slacks.

"Oh. Yes," Robert says, with a short laugh. "That's a yes."

• • •

Robert's impulse to invite Ethan over was more wishful thinking than concrete plan, and he hasn't prepared enough. His apartment is clean, but the bathroom is the bathroom of a man who rarely has guests over. He spends a few awkward minutes trying to tidy up while Ethan fills the tub and examines the fixtures politely instead of watching Robert shove a red butt plug and several brands of lube into a bathroom drawer.

"Food magazines," Ethan says, pointing at the pile beside the toilet. "Cool."

Robert cringes at the mess of bathroom literature. "It's more of a wannabe hobby than anything."

"I don't know about that. The stew was good. Really good." Ethan turns the water off, stands, and starts undressing.

"Thanks," Robert says. "It's the slow cooker, it makes everything easy." He watches Ethan get stuck in his shirt for a moment, perplexed, before he realizes Ethan's making a soft, grunting noise.

"Ow," Ethan says. "Help me?"

Robert helps him out of the shirt carefully, gentle with the marks on his back. "Sore?" he asks, dropping the shirt over the towel rack.

"Yeah. I stiffen up pretty quick. I think it's worse when it's cold outside."

"I can tell. Your shoulders are tense," Robert says, getting Ethan's belt for him. He sinks to the floor and opens Ethan's fly easily. Pulling Ethan's jeans and briefs down his thighs, he tries to keep his breathing calm--but he feels like he's opening a Christmas present. Ethan's cock is long and ruddy and close enough to make Robert's mouth water.

"Shoes," Ethan says, a laugh puffing out with his breath as he grabs onto Robert's shoulders and toes his sneakers off before they get tangled up in his jeans.

When Ethan is fully undressed, Robert slings an arm around his lower back and helps him step into the tub. The steam has already whited out his mirrors, and it feels private and crowded and good in his bathroom, with Ethan filling his tub with wiry legs and long arms and big hands. Robert smells the fresh, bright scent of Ethan's deodorant on the steam.

"Aren't you going to get in? There's room," Ethan says, reclining with his head against the smooth ledge and his knees sticking out of the water. The water flattens the hair on his legs, makes it look darker and silky.

"Just relax," Robert says, folding his legs to sit on the bath mat beside the tub.

• • •

Ethan falls asleep in the tub.

Careful not to wake him, Robert places a folded washcloth behind Ethan's head and reads a few articles about inventive vegetarian appetizers in one of the wrinkled copies of
Gourmet
on the floor.

Every few sentences, he realizes he isn't paying attention to the words at all. He's just glancing up at Ethan, admiring the way his face softens with sleep, how his lips part and his forehead smooths out.

It's nothing like the tension he saw in Ethan all afternoon, the way Ethan clenched his jaw as if fighting his descent, the way his nostrils flared with tight, pained breaths until his Mistress set an uneven rhythm he couldn't breathe through and startled a cry out of him. Robert can still hear that cry, the sharpness of it, the way it clipped off as if Ethan had tried--and failed--to swallow it back. He recalls the exact moment Ethan's body changed as if gravity stopped affecting him, allowing him to float, serene with pain.

After fifteen minutes, Robert reaches over and brushes his thumb through Ethan's damp hair. "I hate to wake you, but I don't think too much soaking is good for those welts. Also, you might drown."

Ethan wakes with a low groan. He sinks under the water and comes back up quickly, blinking and mumbling incoherently, something about being embarrassed and how he doesn't normally nap in bath tubs. He shakes his hair out like a wet dog and looks around blearily, until Robert hands him a folded up towel.

"Sorry about that," Ethan says, his lashes clumped together with water. Even sheepish and soaked, he's pretty.

"I think you needed it."

"Were you there the whole time today?" Ethan asks, standing and toweling himself off from the knees up.

"Only the flogging. It was... you were really beautiful."

Ethan's nose wrinkles. "She knows I don't like an audience."

"Oh. I'm--we shouldn't talk about it, then. Right? I'm sorry," Robert says.

"No, no." Ethan steps out of the tub and crouches to dry his feet. "She's good to me. The things I don't want... I. I probably really want them. You know how it is."

Robert nods, pulling a thankfully-fresh robe off the hook on the wall and handing it to Ethan--and thinking that no, he doesn't know how it is. He's been pushed down deep and twisted up, and he's lost hours, intoxicated and flying in his subspace, but he's never shattered the way he's seen Ethan shatter. Robert resurfaces feeling blissful and sated. Ethan lingers in the nesting lounge, shaking in his Mistress's arms and crying hoarsely, blindly.

In the rare times they both ended up in the Compound's locker room at the same time, Ethan was woozy and slow, sitting on the bench in the shower stall with the water beating down on his chest. Robert knows it's tactless of him to pay such close attention, but that doesn't change the fact that he has, that he's watched and listened and wanted. Sometimes Robert wonders if he's missing something.

Ethan pulls the robe on. "You've never scened with Mistress Vanessa," he says, in that same just-an-observation tone that makes Robert start to wonder if Ethan's been watching him too, putting together a patchwork picture, a lacy understanding.

"She didn't think we were a good fit," Robert says.

Ethan laughs, very quietly. "So," he says. "Bedroom?"

• • •

Robert spreads chilled aloe gel on Ethan's back first, remaining silent as he takes his time with it, coating every inch of skin on his back, from his hairline down to the divot of his tailbone. Ethan breathes evenly through it, head cradled in his arms, eyes closed. The clear gel makes his skin gleam like vinyl.