Chapter Text
When Zayne had first watched Caleb leave, the very first time he’d flown away, he had watched it with a detached understanding. An awareness that he would be watching something similar over and over again.
Zayne had been fine with that. With his own feet planted firmly on the ground, he never doubted that the young upstart pilot would eventually return.
Zayne didn’t mind waiting.
What he hadn’t anticipated, as his childhood best friend, turned sweetheart, turned lover, saluted awkwardly from the helm of a Deepspace aircraft, was Caleb’s last request…
“Don’t wait up for me,”
Zayne, like many others, had seen Caleb’s promise from the beginning. As his star rose in the city and he became a highly sought-after pilot and navigator, Zayne had been patient, allowing the world to take bite-sized pieces out of his best friend, and consoling himself with the fact that this was simply how it worked.
Change was the only inevitable thing. Zayne had planned for that, had built his entire life around it so that when things did go awry, his life remained as stable as possible.
Caleb had always been the exception.
Still, how could he tell his friend that he had accepted a long time ago that Zayne would never have every single atom of Caleb? That he had been grateful to have any of him at all, as their childhoods got away from them and living truly took hold?
Zayne wasn’t good at explaining himself with words, and especially not when he knew they were pointless.
He was happy for Caleb. He was… concerned for him. A Deepspace mission with no foreseeable end-date only looked appealing if you were as sky-eyed and confident as his foolish best friend. The part of Zayne that felt abandoned, that wanted to make this decision all about him and his, apparently lackluster company, froze in his chest as he caught endless glimpses of Caleb’s true self.
His friend had been in love with the stars much longer than he’d loved Zayne. The doctor, having learned by now to accept many things and heal many others, had accepted this fact first. But he had never learned to heal it.
Zayne had only cleared his schedule enough to send Caleb off. They’d spent the evening prior together, not a date, not a hookup… not anything but Caleb’s excitement and momentary sheepishness when he’d kissed Zayne on the cheek and said-
“You know why I have to do this, right? It’s not… it’s not like I won’t miss you.”
Zayne had only shushed him and held Caleb’s watery gaze.
He had wished in that moment that he wasn’t so agreeable. He’d briefly wished he had some of Caleb’s own fire, and had grabbed the other man in an unyielding fist and promised he would never stop waiting as long as he lived.
But Caleb’s request made sense.
Zayne was already busy enough with hospital duties. Watching the night sky for the briefest flicker of silver was going to drive him mad. It was… childhood sentiment that wanted to cling to his friend and forbid him from leaving.
But Caleb left. And, Zayne had to let him go, knowing there was a chance that this time the person he loved would never come back.
***
Six months later, Zayne is doing alright. The loneliness is like a splinter he can’t get rid of, a constant droning ache with moments of stinging pain, but he’s been getting by. Work is sufficiently distracting, but nothing seems to numb the feeling entirely.
It’s been nine months, during a summer heatwave, when Dr. Zayne wakes up drenched in sweat, gasping and groaning as his mind replays the last few seconds of his dream…
It had been a different summer. Zayne’s dorm-room air conditioning was broken, so he was staying with Caleb. Both nineteen but already leagues ahead of their fellow classmates, Zayne’s mind was full of words like ‘deadline’ and ‘exam’ while Caleb thought more in terms of enjoyment. He seemed to want to squeeze every ounce of living he could from their college experience.
Zayne hadn’t hesitated to accept the icy confection when it was offered to him, but it got difficult to focus on his own when, across the kitchen, Caleb was doing that… thing with his lips that drove him crazy.
Zayne had glared at him. Caleb just grinned, knowing full-well what he was doing to the poor, besotted med student.
Tongue still somewhat blue and freezing from his popsicle, Caleb had dropped to his knees in the living room and ignored Zayne’s half-hearted protests as he peeled off his shorts.
It was too hot outside to bother with much else, Caleb had gotten Zayne off with his mouth and then rubbed himself lazily to completion. It hadn’t even been close to their first time, nor was it particularly pleasant, with sweat and chill both sticking to their skin, but somehow Zayne had been captivated by that image… of Caleb setting aside one version of enjoyment for something else. Something Zayne could give him.
Waking up hard, confused, and a touch embarrassed, Zayne took a cold shower and tried not to let the lingering heat under his skin get to him.
He lasted another couple weeks.
When he dreamed of Caleb it was often like this… short scenes of their youth, some tame, some not. Finally, when it was getting too difficult to repress his own urges, he’d caved. Brought himself over the edge in the shower before bed, a strange mixture of disappointment and guilt warring within him until Zayne tumbled headfirst into another salacious dream.
This time, they were having sex.
Zayne was prone, face-first on the mattress, ass hiked up for all the world to see as a hard, lithe body moved over and inside him. He thinks he must be making some sort of noise, because he hears the man behind him whisper softly…
“Shh, I’ve got you-“
Was it even Caleb? Dream-logic be damned… did Zayne even care??
It mattered little to him about the sex, more so that he could feel his body being held. It was such a relief, being able to completely let go and trust that he would be caught in someone’s arms.
He’s crying now, sobbing as two burning-hot hands hold him down and they both reach their peak together.
Adrift in a blur, half-asleep, content, Zayne is blessedly unaware of anything until, like a whip across the face, he is struck by the dream turning into a nightmare.
Caleb is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, uniform still on, suitcase in hand. The expression on his face… for a moment it doesn’t even look like Caleb, because Zayne is positive he’s never seen Caleb look at him like that.
Zayne, who dreams he is lying naked in bed, covered head to toe in sweat, tears, and cum, blinks wetly at Caleb’s disgusted sneer and feels his own heart break.
“How could you?” Dream-Caleb says.
Zayne shivers… he wishes he was still being held-
“You promised you’d wait for me!”
You PROMISED-
Zayne hits the floor after thrashing awake and tumbling from his bed. Reality lands like a final verdict, and now he knows he has a problem.
Head in his hands as he listens to the dawn slowly approaching outside his window, Zayne pulls lungfulls of desperate air into his body and begins to concoct a plan.
He can’t go on like this. He… doesn’t want anyone else to ever have access to his heart the way Caleb does, but that doesn’t mean Zayne should be alone forever.
Caleb had wanted him to move on, to live his own life, and Zayne… he’s been depriving himself of that life. Of the opportunity to find enjoyment again.
Maybe it would start as a simple trip to the supermarket to buy popsicles, or maybe Zayne should invest in some more robust self-care… Either way, it’s clear from the floor of his bedroom that he doesn’t want to go on like this.
The sun rises slowly.
Zayne rises soon after.
***
It’s been a year since Caleb left. Zayne waited a few more weeks, just in case. He wanted to make this kind of decision with a clear head, unaffected by whatever traumatic memories the anniversary of Caleb’s departure brought back.
He finally coaxes himself into looking up some dating apps when, at work, he realizes he’s started extending professional handshakes with people a second or two longer than is necessary.
Zayne might be stubborn, and he might not want to change, but he’ll be damned if he lets anything start to affect his work…
But, dating? It feels… not wrong, per se. How would Zayne even know? He’d never technically dated anyone. Caleb had just… always been there, and then they’d gotten together in high school and never looked back.
For his whole life, dating, like many other things, felt like a societal expectation that Zayne was thankful he didn’t have to participate in.
And, even now, it wasn’t really what he wanted.
Zayne knew what he wanted, more or less, and that was to be held. Say nothing about trust or intimacy, he would have settled for a simple one-night stand with a practical stranger so long as it got him the relief he craved.
And so, a year and some time after Caleb had been gone, Zayne signed up for a matchmaking app for the first time in his twenty-seven years of life.
He had tried to do his research, to find what would help him the most. It seemed the consensus on various Internet forums was to try a specific app. Not exclusive to gay men, but open to anyone’s preferences, the messaging platform seemed similar to what Zayne had expected…
Simple, non-descript on his phone. He’d been a little nervous inputting his needs and wants at first, not fully understanding the wording of some of the questions, but after investigating the profiles of others, Zayne did the best he could.
It seemed like there was a culture of being… very open and forward with your preferences, and so Zayne tried to articulate what it was he wanted.
I desire to be held down, so strength is important. One-night only. No kissing. I am willing to help facilitate my partner’s desires as well, and would prefer someone with experience.
He hesitated, blushing at the mere thought of what he was putting out there, anonymously, but still! In the end, Zayne also wrote-
Looking for a man who can take me out of my head…
After coming to terms with the fact that he’d have to upload photos of himself, Zayne scoured his socials and decided none had the right… aesthetic. The photos of men on the app were extremely sensual. Downright pornographic.
Zayne was committed now, so it only took a short while to convince himself to take a post-shower photo in the bathroom mirror, towel slung low over his narrow hips, water dripping from his pale skin… he cropped his face out of it, but left the edge of his jaw and his lips, hoping it was enough.
At the last minute, he added a photo of his hands, feeling silly, but remembering how Caleb had always ranted on and on about them being Zayne’s prettiest feature. Zayne saw his hands as another tool of his profession. They were skilled hands, precise. Objectively, he supposed his fingers could be considered elegant, and he did tend to admire prominent veins on other people, so perhaps Caleb had been right.
Shuttering his mind of all thoughts of the man, Zayne sighed and uploaded his profile. Hidden behind the pseudonym ‘Dawnbreaker’ he idly scrolled through other profiles in the late hours of the night, seeing much of the same thing and a lot of frightening terminology. And cocks. Many, many cocks…
Exhausted, feeling fed up, he was about to call it a night at last when he received a direct message from someone.
Zayne wasn’t feeling it anymore, and was even considering giving up before he’d even truly started, but something about the subject line of the message made him pause…
I Know What You Need.
Zayne frowned. Unlikely. He didn’t even know what he needed. It was frankly impossible to know, with Caleb gone and all of Zayne’s experience intertwined with him.
He clicked on the message thread, opening it fully and finding a short, polite greeting from a user named ‘Skye’…
I Know What You Need.
Good evening, Dawnbreaker. We seem to be compatible, though I haven’t seen you here before. New?
-Skye
Zayne hesitated to reply, though he realized with a bit of urgency that it showed Skye was still currently online.
Quickly following his username to his profile, Zayne squinted in the dark, having to adjust his glasses in order to make out the image that started back at him.
A dark, red-tinged photo of a man in a leather chair. From the angle it was taken, whoever captured the moment had been on their knees, looking up…
Zayne felt himself swallow, embarrassment and something more foreign curling in his chest as he took in the lazy but still elegant posture of the man who reclined. He was tall… he looked tall. His legs went on for miles, though Zayne was intrigued and confused to find no bare skin aside from the large hand that held a glass up to his lips. The man’s face was partially obscured, but Zayne could see his eyes.
Two red, searching eyes, and a gaze that felt like it saw through him even through the phone…
A bit shaky, Zayne realized he could swipe down to read more. He was both gratified and shocked by what he found.
A similar photo to the one Zayne had just taken in the bathroom. The man was so muscular it made Zayne’s eyes bulge. His shoulders were, frankly, a little intimidating, not to mention his absurdly sculpted serratus anterior muscles.
Zayne’s doctor brain was busy cataloging the most impressive musculature he had probably ever seen when he accidentally clicked on the photo and saw the rest of the picture.
Which was not… cropped.
He blinked. The man was-
“Beautiful is a term traditionally used to describe women.”
Caleb had rolled his eyes, “It’s also a term traditionally used to describe a sunset, so shut up, dummy. You’re beautiful-“
Zayne swallowed.
The man in the photo was definitely beautiful, and Zayne felt a bit strange, finally feeling like he understood what Caleb meant.
Beautiful didn’t have to be soft, and this man was anything but. With a jawline that could cut glass, a rakish tilt to his peach-colored lips, and an angular, sharp nose, he was beautiful the way Zayne had always found a snow-capped mountain beautiful. A thing that was larger than life, and almost certainly too distant to reach.
Zayne admired the photo for a while longer, intrigued by the man’s white hair and red eyes, so full of possibilities and a kind of intensity that was sorely missing from Zayne’s life.
At last, when he swiped away, intending to read more about this person’s interests, another message came through. Zayne did not hesitate to click…
See anything you like?
Zayne blushed, feeling like he was being watched. How did the man know he had been staring at his picture for, what-? Zayne checked the time… oh god-
Hastily typing a message, Zayne tried to respond as eloquently as possible.
My apologies for the delay. I am impressed by your physique and would like to know more about you if you are amenable. I am new to the app.
He waited for a response, then decided to read the rest of Skye’s profile in the meantime. As with the rest of the app, there were some things Zayne didn’t understand. He felt embarrassed though, and somewhat ashamed, thinking it must be his lack of experience that made certain terms a mystery.
Still, Skye’s profile seems to align with his…
Experienced Dom. Looking for a new kitten to play with. Some experience necessary. I won’t go easy. If you’re good, I’ll take care of you.
Zayne squinted, unused to the term ‘Dom’ and he wasn’t sure about ‘kitten’ either, but he supposed he had some experience, and being taken care of sounded nice.
Skye messaged him back.
Subbed before? Hard limits? You look strong, but I think I could toss you around…
Zayne’s blush turned into an inferno, and he briefly closed the app.
He’d never… he didn’t realize how much it would affect him to voice these desires… to see them written in words. To tell someone.
Stealing himself, he managed to open the conversation again and type out a shaky sentence or two, hoping it answered Skye’s questions.
Yes, I only sub.
That meant… be on the bottom, surely. Zayne sighed, a deep, awkward breath as he felt his skin begin to tingle. It was somewhat arousing to be so forward like this! Who knew?!
Hard limits sounded straightforward enough…
No kissing, and no visible marks left on my body.
He bit his lower lip, deciding to add-
You look like you could give me what I need.
It was a thrill, honestly. Zayne waited breathlessly for the reply, and when it came, he nearly jumped out of bed in a sudden rush of excitement and trepidation.
Is that so? I’m pleased to hear it. Let us meet somewhere in public first, to go over a few things. I have time later this week. Shall I send you my availability?
Zayne replied in the affirmative and also added his own schedule. They agreed to meet on Thursday, a rare off-day for Zayne. When Skye asked where he’d feel most comfortable meeting, Zayne instinctively said the bakery a few blocks down.
Hopefully that hadn’t been a mistake… he didn’t want to have any awkward run-ins with the man later on if this didn’t end up working out.
Excellent. I look forward to meeting you, Dawnbreaker. I have a feeling we could be very good for each other…
-Skye
Zayne collapsed back into his bed, heart pounding. He hoped, with a subtle ache, that it could be true. Experience told him not to get too excited, but any excitement was surely an improvement.
Skye… I hope you are just what I need.