Work Text:
And I know that you know that you got
The potential to pick me up
And I want you to use it, blast the music
Bang it, bite it, bruise it
Whenever you want to begin, begin'I Want You To Love Me'
-- Fiona Apple
The strip club was Jordan’s idea.
It was a Friday, and Declan was supposed to be married on the following Tuesday. Technically the burden of planning his bachelor party should have fallen to Ronan, because Declan did not have any groomsmen. Ronan figured it was Declan’s own fault for being antisocial and unpopular, but Jordan didn’t share this sentiment. Instead of letting Ronan silently protest his role in Declan’s life and wedding, she had made reservations at a ludicrously expensive restaurant with at least one Michelin star and offered to let Ronan take the credit.
Ronan had no interest in doing that, and Declan would not believe he had done it, anyway. So dinner was Jordan’s idea, dessert was Jordan’s idea, and the subsequent, impromptu nightcap was also Jordan’s idea.
They didn’t know, at first, that they were being led to a strip club. I know a great little place that’s open late, was how Jordan had pitched it, and so the four of them had shrugged on their coats while Declan had ordered an Uber for Matthew. Without their blonde-haired fifth wheel, they were an odd looking bunch as they moved down the sidewalk. Hennessy and Jordan looked exactly alike in any light, and Ronan and Declan looked similar enough in shadow that they must have appeared to passersby as some kind of omen, or perhaps a weird pseudo-incestuous double date where several possible combinations of couples would be illegal in a handful of states.
“Come on,” Jordan said, as she dragged Declan down the block by the sleeve of his jacket. “It’s just up here.”
The neon sign was the first thing Ronan noticed: hot pink spilling luridly onto the sidewalk, and when he lifted his eyes and squinted upwards, he could see it proudly declared GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. There was a smaller one next to it, this one lime green, promising ALL NUDE, ALL THE TIME. Next to that was one of equal size, in the standard blue and red, advertising COLD BEER FULL BAR RESTROOMS. Ronan stopped dead in his tracks. Hennessy, whose arm was looped through his, made a sound not all too different from a squawk when she was pulled to an abrupt halt.
Declan, too, had stopped, and he whirled on Ronan with his eyes narrowed. The neon backlit him in fuschia, sheening his curls with artificial light. He hissed, “Whose idea was this?”
“Jordan’s,” Ronan replied.
“If this is supposed to be some kind of a joke,” Declan said, his voice full of a meaningless warning, “it’s not fucking funny.”
Ronan fixed him with a flat, glacial stare, and said, “Am I laughing?”
“Stop it,” Jordan tugged on Declan’s sleeve. “The drinks are good. We don’t have to sit by the dancers. Besides, this is a bachelor party, isn’t it?”
“This is a weird thing you’re doing,” Ronan told her. “I do not want to go in there.”
“Come off it,” Hennessy pulled her arm free and broke for the door. “Let’s go, you two. We can leave God’s last righteous man out here on the sidewalk.”
Declan and Ronan rolled their eyes in tandem. Ronan folded his arms over his chest.
“I don’t have any cash,” Declan said, but Ronan could tell he had already made his decision, and to no one’s surprise, it was the wrong one. He would probably follow Jordan anywhere, even if that meant diving headfirst into a room of half-naked women two days before he was supposed to attend confession.
“Liar,” Jordan teased lightly. “You always have cash. Ronan, are you coming?”
There was no pleading in her tone, simply an earnest inquiry; it meant little to Jordan whether Ronan participated or not, though she would at least attempt to include him. Hennessy had one hand on the door, her palm flat against the giant placard that read PUSH, and she was grinning like a menace: she didn’t think Ronan would do it, and it amused her to think of him skulking around outside a den of iniquity while everyone else drank watered-down liquor and tried to figure out where to put their hands and eyes.
“Come on,” Hennessy said. “Maybe they’ll let you sit in coat check with your iPad and a juice box.”
“Fuck you,” Ronan snapped, and he shoved past her into the dark, pulsating heart of the club.
The first thing he noticed was the noise; the second thing he noticed was the stage. It was warm inside, a dense, cloying heat, and the lighting scheme was dark: every surface was awash with reds, and a disco ball glimmered in the ceiling, dappling the dancers bodies with fractals of silver like stars. The whole place smelled like cigarettes and Axe body spray and stale sweat. Ronan didn’t like it.
“Mother of God,” Declan muttered as they peeled off their coats. “Whose idea was this, again?”
Ronan didn’t have anything to say to that. He had been dragged here against his will, and he fully intended to sit in silent protest for the duration. The music was both terrible and loud, some chopped and screwed reimagining of a Top 100 hit from several years ago, pumped through speakers that produced a shrill, droning whine atop the scant remnants of melody. Ronan lingered in the doorway while the others searched for a table. He kept his back against the wall until the bass reverberating in his sternum had a chance to soothe him, and then he made for the bar.
It was an enormous centerpiece of a thing, with a mirrored backsplash that stretched to the ceiling and a ludicrous number of bottles stacked atop the tiered shelves. There were vinyl and chrome stools set along the length of the counter, each a different color, completely indiscernible beneath the excessively vibrant lighting. Ronan tucked himself into the back corner, on the very last stool near the cash register and the fire exit. The bartop was sticky; his skin peeled away from the surface slowly when he lifted his arms off of it. It was darker against that wall, away from the stage lights and the bathrooms, but there was a recessed ceiling fixture spilling gaudy, noxious orange over everything. There was only one bartender working: a tall, slender man of about Ronan’s age with tousled sandy blonde hair and eyes so light they swallowed the orange from the ceiling, rendering him almost alien when he turned his attention to Ronan.
“What’ll you have?” he asked in a half-shout.
“Whiskey neat,” Ronan said.
The bartender tossed his counter mop over his shoulder and leaned in with a hand cupped around his right ear. A little louder, he asked, “What?”
A little louder, Ronan repeated, “Whiskey neat.”
Up close, Ronan could see the man’s eyes were blue: sunny-sky blue, underneath fair brows that drew together slightly as he worked. There was nothing complicated about a neat whiskey, but he made it look decidedly effortless as he pulled a clean glass from beneath the counter and set it on the mat. His hands were tapered, elegant, and the fine bones of his wrists flexed beneath his skin as he flipped a nearly empty bottle of well whiskey onto its head over the glass.
“Want to close out?” he asked when he slid the glass over the counter towards Ronan.
Ronan shook his head.
The man grinned, all white teeth and the shadow of a dimple, and pointed to a little nametag pinned near the collar of his snug-fitting white t-shirt.
“I’m Adam, if you need anything else,” he said. He rapped his knuckles on the countertop three times before he turned away.
In Ronan’s opinion it was not especially busy in the club, though he had never been in a place like this and couldn’t be sure if he was making the correct assumptions about the volume of clientele. There were six other people seated at a bar designed to hold eighteen, while only about half of the tables near the dance stages were full. Hennessy and Declan were sitting at a table perilously close to the stage, and Jordan was standing beside them. It looked like she was going through Declan’s wallet; she was probably on the hunt for bills smaller than a fifty. If Ronan had been there, he would have made some crack about her finding Declan’s Young Republicans voter registration card. As it happened, though, he wasn’t, so he didn’t. Instead, he closed his hand around his glass and pretended not to stare at the bartender’s back while he worked.
He was quick, not overly polite, and delivered even the complicated, vividly colored cocktails topped by umbrellas with blistering speed. It was a marvel to watch him flip bottles and glasses. The only thing he did slowly was take toppings out of the garnish bar; the tiny tongs looked ridiculously small in his hands, and the corners of his mouth pulled down in a concentrated frown whenever he was forced to extract a maraschino cherry from the jar.
Hennessy came and went routinely, and would depart each time with an assortment of glasses wobbling atop a tray. There was an actual organized bachelor party in the club, which would have been immediately apparent to Ronan even if they had decided not to wear matching trucker caps declaring the evening TUCKER’S LAST STAND. Aside from the cardinal sin of wearing a hideous hat indoors, all of them wore some unGodly combination of pastel Vineyard Vine shorts and Hey Dudes. They were loud and raucous and flinging cash at the stage like they had more than enough to spare; it was the kind of behavior Ronan had never been able to participate in and could not wrap his head around.
One particular member of the group did not toss singles at the scantily clad women, but instead, kept making trips to the bar to order a near-continuous stream of vodka sodas. He was flirting with Adam, which took Ronan by surprise; it didn’t come as a shock that someone should hit on Adam. It did bother him to see Adam flirt back. There was a cleft in the man’s chin, and he had a garish tattoo of a tiger consuming the entirety of his forearm in faded swathes of jade green and orange. Each time he took away a vodka soda, he left a crumpled twenty dollar bill on the counter. Other than that, everyone else who approached the bar looked the same to Ronan: paunchy, unlovable, middle-aged gentlemen, some still dressed for the office, all ordering something top-shelf and paying with a black credit card, one drink at a time.
When Bright Eyes and his golf shorts and his hat had swanned away after his fifth vodka soda, Ronan watched Adam fold his fifth twenty dollar bill up very small and cram it into the change pocket of his jeans. Meticulously, he wiped down the bartop, and then he slowly turned over his shoulder to meet Ronan’s gaze. There was no escaping the weight of his stare: he had caught Ronan ogling him, though it was possible he had noticed it all along and finally decided to call him on it. With a small, bemused grin, he closed the short distance between the two counters and settled his elbow on the bartop in front of Ronan.
“What’s your deal?” he asked loudly. “You look like you bite. I’m kind of into it.”
“I haven’t bitten anyone since elementary school,” Ronan said sullenly. “They put me on an IEP.”
Adam’s ensuing laughter was unrestrained, and it seemed to catch him off guard; he hadn’t expected Ronan to make a joke. Still smiling, Adam turned and gestured loosely towards the table that currently hosted Jordan and Hennessy and Declan and a dancer: Jordan was astride Declan’s lap, and there was a stripper astride Hennesy’s. Ronan wasn’t sure whose tongue belonged to whom. He grimaced, and looked away.
“Are you here with them?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “How’d you guess?”
“Every time the single girl comes up here, she tells me to put her whole order on your tab,” Adam said. “So either she’s a friend of yours, or she’s a shameless con artist.”
“She’s both,” Ronan muttered.
“I’m guessing you don’t really want to be here, either,” Adam continued conversationally. “Are strippers not your thing?”
“No,” Ronan said, a little too quick, perhaps a touch too vehement, and then he blurted, “I’m not here to hook up.”
“No, I didn’t think you were,” Adam said. “You’re in the wrong place for that, anyway. Boys’ night is Wednesday. You’d have better luck cruising then.”
Ronan was not cruising , and he took affront to the insinuation . Before he had a chance to respond in his own defense, Adam reached behind himself for a bottle, drawing the fabric of his t-shirt snug around his lats. Ronan could see that he was wearing jeans, faded and worn, but well-fitted to the taper of his narrow hips. His forearms were freckled, and he wore a watch on his wrist, a cheap digital thing from Walmart with an elastic strap and a dimly lit neon green display. Adam refilled Ronan’s glass slowly, and put the bottle back under the counter.
“I wouldn’t come here on boys’ night, either,” Ronan said. “It’s not my thing.”
“What’s not your thing?” Adam asked curiously. “Is it the fact you’re in public, or is it the outfits? Panties really don’t do the job for you?”
Ronan tried to picture it. He would be wasting his time to imagine women in any kind of elaborate underwear, and he only needed to turn his head to see half a dozen. It didn’t do much for him to imagine a boy in panties, either; he could appreciate the fact it would be more revealing than men’s underwear, though being naked would have the same effect. He couldn’t summon up any kind of interest in the idea.
“Does it do anything for you?” Ronan asked. “Panties and shit?”
Adam’s gaze was heavy, but level, when he replied, “Yeah.”
Heat simmered in Ronan’s stomach. He resented it immediately, the traitorous response of his body towards the intensity in Adam’s face. Adam had flirted with a man in a trucker cap and salmon-pink deck shoes just a few minutes ago. It meant nothing that he had joined Ronan in his bubble to talk about underwear and PDA and hooking up. Ronan exhaled, long and steady, and dragged a hand over the crown of his head, short-shorn hair velvety on his palm. It was meant to be a grounding gesture, but it proved useless: Adam tracked the movement with his keen, roving eyes, and Ronan felt sweat begin to prick at the base of his neck.
“Like, on girls?” Ronan asked.
“On anybody,” Adam said with a shrug. “What does it for you, then, if it’s not panties and grinding?”
“I don’t know,” Ronan replied.
It was a partial truth: there were a few things that brought him to a near-blinding climax every time he touched himself without fail, but it wasn’t the kind of stuff he felt like admitting to a total stranger, even if the air surrounding them did feel intensely private.
“I think I could guess,” Adam teased, a little arrogantly. “I bet you’re into some freaky shit.”
“No,” Ronan lied. “I’m a good Catholic boy.”
“I’m sure you are,” Adam’s voice was a warm, low murmur, barely audible over the roar of blood in Ronan’s ears and the constant thrum of blisteringly loud music.
Ronan was saved having to come up with an equally flirtatious response by the arrival of customers: Adam turned away without a word to make six Cosmopolitans and a Mojito. By then it was nearly 1AM, and Ronan had grown weary of the noise and the watery whiskey and the booming voice of the announcer as he welcomed girls to the stage.
At 1AM, Adam’s watch beeped. He closed out Ronan’s tab and waited while Ronan signed off on whatever ludicrous amount Hennessy had charged to his card. Ronan pulled out his wallet to tip him in cash with seven crisp twenty dollar bills. A smile tugged at the corner of Adam’s mouth as he folded them up one at a time and tucked them into the change pocket of his jeans.
When he had pocketed his money and balanced his cash drawer and made ready to leave, Adam once again came to stand in front of Ronan. He took a quick, bracing breath, and then asked, “You’re a virgin, right?”
Ronan stared at him blankly. It was an appalling question.
“Okay, I guess that doesn’t really matter,” Adam said, and he pulled a pen from behind his ear. “Here’s my number. I’m here every Friday and Saturday from nine to one. If you want, you can come back next Friday, and I’ll have something to give you. No pressure. You’re cute, though. I’d like it if you came back.”
“Okay,” Ronan said slowly, and then took the penny tab with Adam’s number scribbled on it. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Adam rapped his knuckles on the countertop and said, “See you Friday.”
For the duration of the following week, Ronan agonized over the slip of paper in his wallet that bore Adam’s phone number.
It wasn’t that he was embarrassed to have been identified as a virgin, nor was he balking at the idea of going back to the strip club. Ronan did not engage in casual sex for several reasons. The first being that he couldn’t fathom the concept of a situationship or a fuck buddy. He was familiar with the concept of friends with benefits, but couldn’t comprehend what the benefit was supposed to be. It seemed to him that if you were friends and also fucking, then that was just a relationship. For some reason, it was apparently taboo to refer to it as such. As far as Ronan was concerned, he had never been in love, and so therefore, he’d never had sex. His distaste for casual displays of sexuality had little to do with his religion and more to do with his own approach to attraction, although guilt did nag at the back of his mind while he debated his options.
Ronan might have been a virgin, but he was not an idiot: Adam wanted to fuck him, and it didn’t sit right with Ronan that he found himself amenable to the idea. It was possible Adam was the kind of person who preferred to engage in an endless string of meaningless one-off encounters, similar to Declan during his pre-Jordan era. He had dated a comically long string of women named Ashley, all frigid blondes, and Ronan had taunted him mercilessly each time he replaced the previous Ashley with a new one. Now, though, that was different: Jordan was nothing like any of the Ashleys, and it was clear she cared a lot about Declan’s happiness and well-being. Inevitably, Declan had met his match and found the one person for whom he could develop some complexity of feelings. Ronan had not yet been so lucky.
For someone like Ronan, who was predisposed to turning ordinary human men into objects of near-dizzying devotion, a hookup was a terrible idea. He arrived in love like a dog with its jaw locked around a dying thing in its teeth, and no amount of coaxing or tugging or stern warnings could get him to drop it. The attraction had been immediate: he had laid eyes on Adam in the hideous, sickly lighting of the bar and had wanted him in a strange, nebulous way of Ronan’s own intimate understanding, which ultimately meant next to nothing. He could daydream all he liked, but he couldn’t make any of it real; it was likely Adam would use him and move on. Ronan wasn’t sure he could have Adam once. He might find that once wasn’t enough, and then he would be left to talk himself out of imagining a future where they shared a robust prenuptial agreement and vacationed in Bar Harbor.
On Wednesday, he texted Adam’s number, with a simple:
Hi. It’s Ronan, from the bar.
Adam’s response was prompt:
Hi, Ronan. Will I be seeing you at boys' night?
Immediately, Ronan replied:
You will not.
Subconsciously, Ronan had already made up his mind: he had stayed an entire week in DC after the wedding, sleeping in Declan’s guest room and stumbling over the piles of wrapped registry gifts stacked in the halls. Technically he was supposed to stay with Matthew while Declan was on his honeymoon, but he could’ve taken Matthew home to the farm in Singer’s Falls. Instead, they stayed in DC, and on Friday, Ronan put on his coat and got in his car and went to the club.
Adam was behind the bar, this time in a gray t-shirt and blue jeans, and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. Much to Ronan’s dismay, he was still handsome, all chiseled cheekbones and functional muscle and fluid, capable movement. When he saw Ronan, he held up a finger, signaling him wait as he worked his way through a long order. Ronan took a seat on one of the narrow vinyl stools, and idly turned himself back and forth, catching the heel of his boots against the bar rail as he swayed left to right. Finally, when Adam had sent the server off with a loaded tray and stuck the fulfilled ticket onto the stack by the register, he leaned over the counter to whisper in Ronan’s ear.
“I have to get something from the back,” he said. “Wait here.”
Ronan nodded. When Adam came back, he was holding a small cardboard box.
“I’m not going to tell you what’s inside,” Adam said. “You’re welcome to text me when you open it, though.”
With a slow, wary nod, Ronan took the box from Adam. As he climbed off the stool, Adam reached out and stopped him with a soft, loose grip around his wrist.
“I’m glad you came,” he said in a low, earnest voice.
Ronan felt his face flush. He nodded again, and Adam released him. His eagerness to be out of the club and to know what was in the box carried him through the door and onto the sidewalk on autopilot. The pounding of the music seemed to chase him down the street as he jogged to his car, towards the barely legal spot where he had crammed his glistening black BMW. Inside it was quiet, with only the constant dingdingding of the onboard system as it prompted him to turn the key.
The box was not taped, but folded, and Ronan pried it open with little delicacy. Inside were three things: a clear plastic package containing two butt plugs, one small and one not as small, and a pair of black satin panties with a little bow in the center of the waistband. Stupefied, Ronan took the underwear out of the box and held it up in front of him. They were soft, high cut, shiny in the mellow light, and somehow, just his size. He dropped them back into the box and realized, belatedly, that his hands were shaking.
Without thinking, he texted Adam.
I opened it.
Immediately, Adam replied:
I hope all of it fits.
Ronan turned off his phone and threw himself back in his seat with a short, punched-out exhale. He knew he had given himself away by his reaction to Adam accusing him of being into freaky shit. Despite that, this was not what Ronan usually had in mind when he pictured his first sexual experiences. It wasn’t surprising to find that he liked being given directions; he had always known that would be one of his hypothetical non-negotiables. Adam had made a few wild guesses about Ronan’s preferences and, at the same time, had made some of his own very clear.
It was a game but also a choice. The ball was in Ronan’s court. If he wasn’t into it, he could throw out the box and delete Adam’s number, and that would be the end of the whole thing. Even though he wasn’t yet sure how he felt about the panties, he was already very sure about his feelings for Adam.
When he got back to the townhouse, Matthew was out, which irritated Ronan; it was past his curfew.
He turned his phone back on to fire off what he hoped was a convincing be home in twenty or else and ignored a new, unread message from Adam. Ronan wasn’t sure he could handle anything else at that moment. Quickly, he made his way upstairs and locked himself in the guest bedroom. Ronan tossed his box onto the bed and flung the closet open wide to assess himself in the full length mirror that hung on the back of the door. There was nothing really feminine about him, which he already knew, and though he wasn’t able to spot any meekness in his bearing, he knew there was a certain diffidence to his behavior when he was out of his element. Typically, if he didn’t like or understand something, he would get angry. He didn’t see any reason to be angry about this.
Still, frustration simmered under his skin like dozens of marching ants as he took off his clothes: jacket, t-shirt, boots, socks, and then, after only a beat of hesitation, boxers. He retrieved the underwear from the box, and without looking his reflection in the eye, slipped it on. It was a snug fit, though not uncomfortable: the delicate waistband lay flat against the muscular cut of his hips. They were surprisingly comfortable, soft and unobtrusive. He lifted his head to look at himself. At first, he was scrutinous. He did look good, but that was because he would look good in just about anything; Adam could be into schoolgirl roleplay or pet play or any number of things, and there was not a costume or accessory he could dream up that Ronan was not entirely convinced he could pull off.
He dragged his thumbs along the seams, first over his hip bones, then down the front, over the softer skin between his thighs. It made sense how someone could find this erotic. Ronan didn’t think the underwear softened the overall effect of his appearance, though it did sit in stark contrast to the cushioned muscle of his chest and legs. The stark lines of his tattoos appeared more sinuous against the elegant cut of the panties, bringing forward the floral motifs and the fluid looping vines that were tucked in among the thorns and claws and teeth. Ronan wondered what Adam would think of how he looked. He would be approving, probably, perhaps even complimentary. It was possible he would reward Ronan for doing as he was told. Maybe he would back Ronan up against a wall and force open the button of his jeans and slide his quick, capable hands into his pants to cup Ronan’s cock.
Ronan was prone to falling victim to his overactive, runaway imagination, and the mental images his subconscious supplied were almost too much. He closed his eyes. In his mind he saw Adam’s hands all over him, inside his jeans, beneath the elastic of the panties, rucking up his shirt to roll one of his nipples between two tan, slender fingers. There was a little doubt Adam would live up to the expectations set forth by Ronan’s desires.
Despite his swiftly mounting excitement, Ronan felt a bit out of his depth. There was nobody he could talk to about this: family was out of the question, and the only friend he was close enough to even consider discussing something so personal with was Hennessy, though she would have little interest in talking him through this crisis. His next option would be a priest, but all the priests at the Lynch family’s preferred DC area Catholic church knew him by name, and his sex life was none of their business. It was possible to mail the Pope a letter, something that should be reserved for desperate or urgent matters. Ronan decided that would take too long; he didn’t have time to wait for the Postal Service to deliver His Holiness’ advice on sex and relationships and underwear. The only person that remained was the second party involved: Adam.
Ronan picked up his phone. To his surprise, Adam answered. It was bone-numbingly loud in the club, and the loud music reverberated through the speaker, tinny and compressed.
“Ronan,” Adam said. “Do you need something?”
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “What—what is this?”
“It’s sex, hopefully,” Adam raised his voice just enough to be heard over the concussive, looping bass. “It’s fine if you need to tap out.”
“I’m not tapping out,” Ronan scowled at himself in the mirror. “I guess I’m just—you don’t even know me.”
“Do I need to?” Adam sounded perplexed. “Is that a prerequisite for you?”
“No,” Ronan said. “Do you do this a lot?”
“Buy underwear for hot guys?” Adam asked. “No. I can tell you with total honesty that this is the first time I have ever given a guy panties.”
That was encouraging, and it made Ronan feel a little bit special, which he liked. While everything involved was a first for him, it was nice to know that some of it was new ground to be covered for Adam, too.
“This would be my first time,” Ronan said, though it embarrassed him to admit it. “I don’t—it’s not a religion thing, I’ve just never met anyone that I would want. Like that. This.”
“And you’re seriously considering doing this with me?” Adam asked, and then he said, “Hang on,” and his voice got a little louder as he shouted, “Yeah, I fucking heard you, three vodka crans, I’m not fucking deaf,” and then softer, he said to Ronan, “Sorry. I have to go. It doesn’t bother me that you’re a virgin, and it won’t bother me if you decide not to do this. I like you, I want to fuck you, I think you will look hot in those panties. It’s up to you.”
“You are deaf,” Ronan said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah, I know, but that’s none of this guy’s business,” Adam said dryly. “He wasn’t going to tip me, anyway. I hope I’ll see you Friday, but if I don’t, that’s fine. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ronan replied. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Adam said. “Bye.”
The silence after Adam hung up the phone was blissful. Ronan took off the panties and put his boxers back on. For Adam to have put it in such simple terms was dizzying: Ronan knew he was good looking, and could probably have anybody he wanted if he ever decided to want someone, but nobody had ever expressed such straightforward desire to him before. Adam treated it like it was simple, not a means to an end, though not something he bothered to tie himself up in knots about, either. It might take Ronan some time to get himself there, yet it didn’t feel impossible; he wanted so many things, and had always wanted so many things, which had always been clear to himself and others. What complicated it now was that his wanting had been seen, and answered. When faced with the possibility of fulfillment, he felt anxious, taut with anticipation and hesitant about his own inexperience.
After another moment of ponderance, Ronan put the panties back in the box and hid it under the bed. He had distilled the matter down to a fixed, fine point: Adam could give Ronan what he wanted. Ronan had seven days to decide whether or not he was ready to take it.
On the following Friday, the club was packed. The throng of bodies was overwhelming and uncomfortable; Ronan did not like to be jostled around by strangers, and he did not like to be restricted by his environment. He wove his way through the heaving mass of men, all independently intent upon standing directly in his way, and took a seat at the bar. There were two bartenders working: Adam and a girl with bright red hair and glasses. They were moving fast, a feverish yet oddly coordinated dance, occupying the same space without infringing upon the other’s movement.
Ronan watched Adam top off a long row of plastic cups with seltzer from the retractable spigot, then drop a dozen lime wedges into the sparkling liquid. As soon as he’d pushed them to the front edge of the counter, hands appeared from within the crowd to take them away. Adam set out more cups and proficiently eyeballed more shots and dropped more lime wedges. Every so often he would crouch to take a White Claw or a beer out of the fridge beneath the counter. He popped tabs and tossed bent lids into the trash and turned his right ear towards his coworker whenever she tapped his shoulder for assistance or attention.
For nearly twenty minutes, Adam didn’t notice Ronan sitting there. The red-headed bartender took his order and promptly set a neat whiskey on the bar top in front of him. She didn’t offer her name, but she didn’t attempt to close out his tab, either. There was a brief lull, during which Adam and the girl wiped down the counters and topped up the garnishes and took inventory of their remaining glassware. In an eventual, blessed moment of respite, Adam pulled his white t-shirt free from the belted waist of his jeans to mop the sweat from his forehead. His torso was toned, just as tan as his arms, and he had a small mole near his navel. When he lowered his shirt, Ronan lifted his head. Adam was staring at him.
He didn’t smile, but he did hurry over to stand near where Ronan sat, nursing his whiskey.
“Are you wearing it?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” Ronan replied.
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” Adam said in a low voice.
There was color high in his face, florid red along his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. He was sweaty still, blonde made darker at his temples and hairline, droplets standing on his skin and catching the hideous orange light of the ceiling fixture like a tree oozing sap.
“Liar,” Ronan muttered. “You told me to. I did. You knew I would.”
“I get a break in thirty minutes,” Adam propped his elbow up on the counter and pulled himself up to lean more fully into Ronan’s space. “Be a good boy and wait for me.”
Ronan could feel his pulse fluttering in the base of his throat, and it steadily began to pick up speed as he nodded in acknowledgement of Adam’s request.
“Good,” Adam said. “Are you also wearing the—“
“Yes,” Ronan interrupted, his face hot and his heart rate thunderous.
Adam’s smile was slow, an arrogant, pleased expression that made Ronan’s stomach twist with the desire to do something. What, he wasn’t sure. If Adam asked him to do anything in that moment, Ronan would have complied without a second thought.
“Thirty minutes,” Adam said, and Ronan nodded.
Half an hour was already a long time to pass with nothing to do, but it posed more of a challenge when you had something so enormous to look forward to at the end of it. Ronan sipped his tepid whiskey and watched Adam twist orange rind into over a dozen Old Fashioned glasses while his coworker popped the tops off what had to be an entire case of light beer. The tips appeared to be good, at least; Adam had run out of room in his change pocket and was instead shoving hastily folded wads of bills into both of his front pockets. After thirty minutes, his watch beeped.
“I’m taking my fifteen,” Adam said.
“Hurry up,” was the reply.
Adam came around the counter and hooked his fingers into the hem of Ronan’s t-shirt.
“Come on,” he said, and he led Ronan towards the back of the club.
At the end of a dark, narrow hallway in the recesses of the building, there was a door labeled MAINTENANCE. Adam pulled a key out of his pocket to unlock it, and he pulled Ronan inside. He swiftly locked the door behind them. It was a cramped supply closet, cluttered and disorganized, lit by a single flickering bulb in the ceiling. There was nothing romantic about it, although it was definitely private, and any sound would be drowned out by the ever present music pumping through the house speakers.
For a moment they stared at each other. Finally, Ronan said, “So is this the part where you—“ he was interrupted by a sudden swell of light: overhead, the bulb flared bright, then fizzled out with an audible pop.
Darkness subsumed them. The only light came from Adam’s wrist: the dim green display of his watch was steadily counting down the seconds left of his fifteen minute break.
Tension drew the air out of the room. They were so close to each other Ronan wouldn’t even have to lean forward in order to kiss Adam. He debated it briefly, but Adam acted first. The sudden urgency he moved with was heady; in two swift steps he had Ronan backed up against the wall and had unbuttoned his jeans with deft, exploratory fingers. He slid his hand into Ronan’s pants, palm flat against the lower plane of his belly, and dragged his knuckles over the soft, satin line of Ronan’s clothed cock.
“Fuck,” Adam said, low, but vehement, on the rush of an exhale. “You’re going to look so pretty for me when I fuck you.”
Ronan made a soft, involuntary sound in the back of his throat. The thought of being fucked was overwhelming enough; the fact it would be Adam doing it further compounded the swiftly mounting need that needled at his skin and warmed him from the inside out. He didn’t necessarily want to have sex in that cramped supply closet. If they were to do so it would be easy, because Ronan was wearing the bigger of the two plugs Adam had given him. All Adam would have to do is bend him over and pull the panties aside and Ronan would be ready, wet and loose and already primed to beg. He made a ragged sound at the idea. Now that he had summoned it up, Ronan couldn’t get the image out of his mind. What brought him back to reality was the sudden remembrance of the fact Adam would eventually have to stop touching him and return to work.
“Adam,” he said, and if he had been more in control of his faculties he might’ve been embarrassed by how choked and desperate his own voice sounded.
“Yeah,” Adam replied, though he sounded a little distracted. The ceaseless back-and-forth of his hand was turning Ronan’s brain to liquid. “What do you need, baby?”
Another fuse blew, this one nestled deep in Ronan’s central nervous system. With his eyes screwed closed, he pleaded, “Kiss me.”
Adam cupped a possessive hand around the back of Ronan’s head and drew him down into a searing, open-mouthed kiss. It was all breath and spit and teeth; Adam was panting heavily, like he’d just cleared a hurdle. He pressed Ronan back against the wall, his body weight heavy against Ronan’s solar plexus, and started to shift his hand back and forth with purpose. Ronan groaned into his open mouth, a sound that Adam matched with a guttural, choked off inhale.
“If I give you a key to my apartment, will you wait for me there?” Adam asked. “I get off at one.”
“Yeah,” Ronan replied unquestioningly. “Yeah, I will.”
“Okay,” Adam dropped to his knees and gave Ronan’s pants a firm tug, yanking them down around his thighs. “God, fuck, I really wish I could see you right now.”
Ronan braced himself against the wall with both hands, his palms flat against the textured paint. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, and he didn’t dare look down. Even though he wouldn’t be able to see Adam on his knees in the dark, he wasn’t willing to take the chance of something embarrassing happening if he focused his mind too closely on the position he found himself in. Adam slipped his fingers under the waistband of the panties. Briefly, Ronan wondered if he should offer a prayer of gratitude, or if that would be considered inappropriate at the precise moment of consummation. To his immense irritation, like a warning from the heavens, Adam’s watch started to beep, signaling the end of his break.
“Fuck,” Adam swore as he staggered to his feet. “Fuck. Okay. I’ll give you the address. Just—promise you’ll wait.”
“I will,” Ronan said. “I’ll wait.”
With shaking hands, Ronan pulled up his pants and tucked in his t-shirt while Adam fumbled with the lock, swearing under his breath all the while. His watch continued to beep, an incessant high-pitched countdown to nothing. Adam disappeared halfway down the shadowed hall, leaving Ronan to follow him back into the belly of the building. He flinched away from the strobe lights and made his way to the door. On his way by the bar, Adam pushed a key, a fob, and a crumpled receipt into his hand. They didn’t look at each other, nor did they speak; the clandestine nature of their private exchange made Ronan feel strangely exhilarated. He pocketed the key and fought his way back out onto the sidewalk. If he was lucky, Ronan would never have to go back inside the club again; if God was on his side, Ronan wouldn’t have to be alone much longer, either.
Outside, it had started to rain. Ronan let it soak into the shoulders of his shirt for a moment, cold and bracing, and then he unfolded the receipt. Adam’s handwriting was cramped and oddly decorative, a hurried mess of scrawled loops and half-finished letters, all smelling strongly of Sharpie. On the back, he had written in bold, legible, black letters:
I can’t wait to fuck you.
Ronan shoved the receipt into his pocket with the keys, and started the walk to his car.
Adam’s apartment was near the river, tucked between two college campuses, adjacent to a bank and a shuttered coffee shop. College students were spread out in the lobby of the building, with their shoes up on the furniture and their messenger bags tossed to the floor, spilling notes and laptops and battered textbooks onto the rug. Ronan made a beeline for the elevator. It hadn’t occurred to him that Adam might be a student; it hadn’t occurred to him that Adam might be wildly different from himself, someone with ambition and purpose and a plan to get out of Virginia. That was a nauseating thought: Ronan often wondered if he would let the foothills smother him, or if he would eventually be able to leave the valley behind. He had a thing about leaving; it was fine for everyone else, and people insisted upon doing it. Ronan himself had yet to master, or even attempt, the act.
He locked the door to Adam’s apartment behind him, and skated his hand along the wall, looking for a lightswitch. He found one, though it only appeared to control one fixture: the single bulb that hung over the front door.
With the lights on Ronan could see it was a studio, four walls, large glass-pane windows and an eclectic assortment of what appeared to be secondhand furniture. In contrast to the high-end finishes of the space and the snobby decor of the lobby, Adam’s apartment was lived-in and held only the essentials. The bedframe occupied most of the space where it sat shoved into the corner of the room, some Ikea masterpiece piled high with blankets and fully exposed to the rest of the room. Near the bathroom was the kitchen, or the suggestion of one, consisting of only a narrow fridge and sink, a cheap coffee pot and small microwave constantly announcing the time as 12:00. It was really 11:30, which meant Ronan had at least an hour and a half to kill in Adam’s apartment.
There was no television, no radio, nothing by way of entertainment except a narrow bookshelf, crammed full of what appeared to be weathered tomes related to Adam’s education. Above that hung a framed Bachelor of Science from an Ivy League, presented proudly to ADAM PARRISH, dated two years prior. Ronan cocked his head to examine a few of the spines on the bookshelves, and scoffed lightly under his breath as he made sense of the titles.
Grinning, he pulled out his phone.
Dude. Engineering?
Moments later, Adam’s response came:
Dude. Don’t snoop.
Ronan tossed his phone onto the sagging, faded couch and kicked off his shoes. His clothes were still damp from the rain, and the heat wasn’t on; he shivered. A quick glance around the room didn’t betray the presence of a thermostat anywhere. Without giving it a second thought, Ronan burrowed himself into Adam’s bed and pulled the blankets up around his shoulders. The pillowcases smelled like sweat and shampoo and something Ronan could only assume must be Adam. He would know for sure, soon enough. There was a large window across from the bed that looked out over the glimmering river, a great swathe of mirror-surface black carving its way through the grayish-blue concrete sprawl of DC. It was quiet, not like the farm, which was a silence borne of isolation. Instead it was quiet like the moment of breathlessness before the sound of a firework reached your ears. Ronan was waiting for something to happen, and the night seemed to be waiting with him. Outside he could hear traffic; downstairs he could hear people. He closed his eyes.
He woke up to the sound of a key in the lock, and a split second of panic seized him before he remembered where he was. Adam came in with little bombast and no greeting, carrying a dripping umbrella and soaking wet coat. As he shook rainwater out of his hair, he dumped the wet things unceremoniously onto the floor. The storm had worsened while Ronan had been asleep: the city outside was now a black and gold blur, colors run together by the shed of water against the glass.
Ronan wasn’t sure what to say. Adam didn’t speak, either. Instead, he took off his shoes and his belt and crossed the room with intensity burning in his face. The mattress bowed beneath his weight. Still without saying a word, Adam started to pull the blankets away, until he had uncovered Ronan’s body. His hands were cold as he slid them underneath Ronan’s shirt to peel it off over his head. Ronan felt goosebumps rise in the wake of his fingertips, and he shuddered, a slight, knee-jerk reaction to the sensation of being touched. Adam tossed the shirt onto the floor, and reached for the button on Ronan’s jeans.
The silence was heavy, dense with anticipation, as Ronan let himself be undressed. He lifted his hips when Adam pulled his pants down his legs, leaving him nestled among the blankets in just the black satin underwear and his socks.
“Fuck,” Adam said.
He moved with a coiled, brittle tension and fervent urgency as he worked his knee between Ronan’s legs to press his weight down into the bed, his legs folded underneath him, his hands still a shock of temperature against Ronan’s sleep-warm skin. The storm had soaked Adam through, and the wet denim of his jeans chafed against the soft inside of Ronan’s thighs. For a moment, Adam sat and stared, and then he planted one hand on the bed next to Ronan’s head to cage him in. Instinctively, hopefully, Ronan opened his mouth to be kissed. He watched the tendons in Adam’s arm shift as he lowered himself to oblige. His t-shirt was chilly and damp, in contrast to the warmth of his mouth, practiced and encouraging as he pressed in with his tongue and swallowed all of Ronan’s keening whimpers.
“So pretty for me,” Adam murmured. “I’ve been thinking about you like this for weeks.”
“Yeah?” Ronan asked, distracted, as he gripped a handful of Adam’s t-shirt and tried to wrestle it free from his waistband. “Get this fucking—take your shirt off.”
Adam sat back on his haunches and stripped off his shirt, and Ronan took advantage of the change in position to push Adam back, down onto the bed, so he could straddle his waist. He braced his weight with both hands on Adam’s solid, freckled chest and rolled his body down against Adam’s clothed hips. The wet denim caught against the satin, and Ronan closed his eyes to luxuriate in the friction as he dragged his body over the hard line of Adam’s cock in a slow, continuous circle. Adam let him do it, and busied himself with mapping the planes of Ronan’s torso with his calloused hands. The pressure of his grip was ever changing as he acquainted himself with each scar, freckle, tattoo, and cord of muscle. He tucked a finger into the waistband of Ronan’s panties and pulled, just enough to free the head of Ronan’s cock.
Rain pelted the windows with force, almost loud enough to drown out Adam’s shuddering exhale as he ran his knuckles along the satin covered skin. Ronan heard it; he opened his eyes and looked down to meet Adam’s gaze. Adam opened his mouth, maybe to speak, maybe to kiss, and then changed his mind. He looped his arm around Ronan’s neck and pulled him down, welcoming the weight of Ronan’s body as he pushed himself up on one elbow to sink his teeth into the column of Ronan’s throat. It was a dull, mounting pain, a persistent throb that built under his skin as a bruise bloomed. Ronan’s movement stuttered as the intensity crested, and he cried out softly, a mere moment before Adam pulled away. He next latched onto the bulk of Ronan’s chest, near his nipple, just above the delineation of his rib cage, and didn’t back off until another vivid violet-red mark had appeared. Each time he pulled away, he left Ronan’s skin shiny with spit and marked deeply by his teeth. When he had littered Ronan’s neck and collarbone with sore, slick bruises, he sat up, and shoved Ronan onto his back.
Ronan was surprised to be manhandled, overwhelmed and temporarily disarmed by the unrelenting need in Adam’s eyes. He spread his legs and bent his knees and waited. Adam skated a hand along the inside of Ronan’s thigh, his palm flat, then reached up beside his head to pull a partial bottle of lube out from under one of the pillows. It was businesslike, perfunctory, but still somehow alluring. He settled himself on his stomach between Ronan’s legs. The sound of the lube being opened reverberated like thunder, and Ronan’s breath hitched in his chest as he began to tremble with anticipation of what he knew would be next. Adam lowered his head to lave his open mouth back and forth across the satin, smearing it with spit.
“You’re so wet, baby,” he murmured.
There was approval evident in his tone alongside the obvious arousal, something Ronan was surprised to find made his stomach twist into knots and his voice catch in his throat.
“Oh, you like that?” Adam asked. “You like it when I tell you what a good boy you are?”
Heat rose in Ronan’s face as he nodded, and a familiar humiliated flush brought temperature to his skin. He was sweaty and gasping, though Adam had barely touched him; there was a real possibility the act of getting fucked might drive him out of his mind.
“You were right, at the club,” Adam said. “I knew you would do anything I told you to do. It was easy to make you come back to me in these pretty little panties with a plug in your hole. You wanted me to touch you that badly, huh?”
“Yes,” tears stung at the corner of Ronan’s eyes, hot and threatening, and he dragged in a wet, stuttering inhale. “Please, I was good.”
“Please?” Adam echoed. “Please, what? You want me to fuck you?”
“Adam,” Ronan pleaded shakily. “Yes, I want—you know what I want.”
Adam laughed lightly, but it did nothing to soften the overall effect of his countenance: his eyes were dark, iris swallowed by pupil, and he was tracking the movement of his own thumb as it traced a gentle circle over the flushed, wet tip of Ronan’s cock.
“Turn over,” he said in a hard, heavy voice.
The direction caught Ronan off guard. He hurried to obey. It was easy to get himself up on hands and knees, his hips canted back and his arms bent at the elbow, his forehead resting against the length of his own forearm. Like this he could see nothing but his own hands and the city through the window in front of him, made blurry by rain and fog, a suggestion of a skyline rendered from memory. Adam followed the lines of Ronan’s tattoo near his hips, up to the center of his back where the Celtic knot held it all together like a heart or a brain with veins or nerves spiraling free from it, adorned with feathers and flowers, drawn taut over the muscle of Ronan’s shoulders.
The air seemed to shimmer, hot and immediate, underscored by their heavy breathing and the unrelenting lashing of rain against the building. When Adam pulled down Ronan’s panties it was only partially; he left them halfway down his thighs, a sharp cut of elastic into the meat of his body. Ronan tightened his hands into fists and reminded himself to breathe, in and then out again, even as his limbs quivered.
Adam tapped the end of the plug gently. It felt to Ronan like biting down on a live wire; he sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth, and exhaled roughly around an uninhibited moan. His reaction only spurred Adam on: what followed was an agonizing series of light, teasing touches, enough to have Ronan’s voice rising in his throat, never intended to abate his need. It wasn’t until Ronan was reduced to a ceaseless litany of please please please Adam please that Adam pulled the plug free, and rose up on his knees.
He curved a hand around the back of Ronan’s neck to pin him in place, and then slowly, carefully, teased the hot, slick length of his cock against him. Ronan could no longer beg with his face pressed firmly into the pillow, but he did manage to whine, long and plaintive. Adam’s grip tightened for a brief, warning moment. When Ronan was still, and quiet, Adam shifted his weight, and started to sink inside. There was little burn, only a consistent, present stretch as Ronan’s body opened for him. It felt impossible, that Adam should be so close, that Ronan should be in someone’s bed with lube and precome all over his thighs, that Adam should be inside of him.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” Adam’s voice was strained, pitched low in his chest. “You feel so fucking good. I knew the moment I saw you that would be so good, so fucking good, and I was right. Fuck, Ronan.”
Ronan breathed heavily against the pillow. The cotton sheets felt coarse against his flushed, sensitive skin. Adam didn’t move, hadn’t moved since he’d brought his hips flush against Ronan’s.
“I knew you’d be like this,” Adam said. “Perfect. I knew right away.”
In any other context Ronan might have brushed that off, dismissed it as the insane ramblings of a man trying to avoid the tripwire in an effort to get his dick wet. Now, though, with Adam’s abdomen pressed to the small of Ronan’s back and his cock buried deep and his fingers leaving five perfect, dime shaped bruises on his neck, Ronan believed every word of it. When Adam started to move, Ronan started to cry. Adam kept talking, a near-senseless stream of such a pretty boy so perfect for me taking my cock so well in your pretty panties so wet and tight so fucking good that Ronan wanted to tuck away into a secret part of his brain, to keep for another lonely night when he needed to remember what it felt like to be wanted. His tears stained the pillowcase, burning his skin with salt.
It felt like an age before Adam let him up for air, though the relief was short-lived: he promptly closed a looser grip around Ronan’s cock with his free hand. The sound Ronan made was torn out of him, desperate and pleading, not words, shaped like a fervid prayer. He drew his abdomen tight as Adam dragged his calloused palm along the length of Ronan’s cock in time with the movement of his hips. Every nerve ending in his body was alight, and when he closed his eyes, stars erupted in his field of vision as Adam pushed inside of him, over and over again.
“Can I come?” Ronan asked, breathless and almost hysterical, still wet and heaving with sobs. “Please, Adam, can I come?”
“Yes, baby, you can come,” Adam sounded just as undone, stretched thin with exertion. “You asked me so nicely, I’m so proud of you, of course you can come.”
He quickened his pace and brought Ronan up to his peak with short, rapid strokes. As Ronan cried out, his every muscle drawn up tight, Adam followed after him, circling his hips relentlessly into the clutch of Ronan’s body. When Ronan’s arms gave out, Adam fell heavily to the mattress with him, his chest still pressed close to the long line of Ronan’s back. It was a long time before either of them moved, when sweat started to prickle uncomfortably and Ronan started to become too aware of his own come on the sheets and Adam’s come between his thighs. Adam sat up, and flopped onto his back within arm’s reach. Slowly, Ronan rolled over to join him.
They lay on their backs in the silence, twin starfish on Adam’s narrow mattress, while the ceiling fan turned silent, constant, dizzying circles above their heads. The rain had stopped some time ago, and the city glowed, washed clean, its usual cacophony of sound muted by fog.
“Do you want to get dinner with me?” Adam asked.
“Right now?” Ronan couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice as he turned his head to look at him.
“Now is fine,” Adam said. “I was thinking tomorrow night, though. Maybe Sunday night, too. Every night, if you want. Maybe someday we could even have lunch. Or breakfast, if you’re into that. As long as you’re not busy.”
“I’m not,” Ronan said. “I’m not busy.”
Adam shot him a brief smile, devastating even in the dark, and pushed himself to sit up.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s a twenty-four hour place not far from here. I hope you like waffles. Tomorrow I’ll take you somewhere fancy.”
Ronan didn’t have strong feelings about waffles one way or another. He lay still and watched Adam put his clothes back on: underwear, jeans, t-shirt, socks, and run a hand through his tousled hair.
“Why?” Ronan asked.
Adam sighed. He bent at the waist to pick up Ronan’s clothes and tossed the wadded up armful of fabric onto the bed within Ronan’s reach. Ronan felt compelled to speak by the lingering, raw intimacy of the moment, but he didn’t know what to say.
“When I came in earlier,” Adam said, “I liked seeing you asleep in my bed. All night I thought about the fact you were here waiting for me, and when I opened the door, there you were.”
It was more than Ronan could have hoped for; he had been expecting a skilled, practiced display of evasion tactics. He’d been prepared to do the work justifying it to himself. After all, everybody said things in the heat of the moment, and Adam couldn’t be held responsible for letting his mouth run away with his brain when he had his cock inside someone. Instead, Adam had readily admitted to something almost inappropriately intimate, and hadn’t run away, or changed his mind about dinner, or asked Ronan to put some pants on and give him some space.
“You too?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “The whole time.”
“I knew it,” Adam was smug as he held out his hand towards Ronan. “I told you. Perfect.”
Ronan took his hand.
They went and got waffles.