Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A BDSM Scene , not to be confused with the BDSM scene, is a single session where partners partake in their fetishes together. This is also called a Session , a Playdate, or Playtime.

PART ONE

“It’ll be fun,” Marge says to him over the phone as he’s unpacking another box in his tiny, one bedroom apartment. “I’ve been to a few other classes, it’s a good environment.”

“It doesn’t sound like my sort of environment, Marge,” Gale says, picking up an astrophysics textbook that pushes the bounds of what a single-handed grip is capable of. It strains the tendons in his wrist as he tries not to drop it on the way to its new home in the built-in bookshelf. The edges of it are bloated, almost rubbery with how many times it’s been painted over in the same shade of white, a few spots chipped away to show rich brown wood underneath.

“Your sort of environment is on a hill with a telescope, with nobody around.” 

“Exactly,” Gale says, embracing the jab with stubborn nonchalance. “So tell me why you think a– a–”

“Rope work class,” she supplies for him.

“Pervert class–”

Marge snorts.

Gale goes for the next book– one on black holes, slightly more manageable with one hand. “–would be somethin’ I was interested in.” 

“Hmm,” Marge hums, bright and airy like she’s truly giving it considerable thought. “Because it’s your first time out of the grand state of Wyoming, you have never been to a city as big as this one, and I think you’ll be happy hiding in your apartment and stargazing on the roof until your classes start unless I drag you out.”

“So I can third-wheel you and Rob?”

“Maybe you’ll meet someone there.”

“Due respect, Marge,I don’t think the sort of girls there are going to be the sort of girls I would be interested in.” 

A pause and Gale glances at the window, then the clock, noting the slow slip of the sun across the far wall– bare but with a framed photo of the night sky above the Tetons leaning against it waiting to be hung. He stands, knees clicking, and walks over to the kitchenette only to realize all his cookware is also packed. 

“Scared you might find someone you like?” Marge finally teases.

Gale’s spine stiffens. “I’m not scared.” 

“So come along. We can go out for dinner after.” 

He glances at the take-out menu that had been stuffed in his mailbox, as if they had known it was about to be in use, and the stack of boxes on the counter, topped off by the hatbox he needs to tuck away into the closet for safekeeping. Gale doesn’t know when he would need it now, in a city on the east coast. But he has no plans to return to Wyoming soon, if ever. So it came with him.

“If you’re paying,” he says. 

“Wear that pink striped shirt of yours,” she orders in a chirp. “It’s a nice restaurant.” 

The building itself is a squat, unobtrusive thing. One story on the outside, but split into a balcony and basement level on the inside with a handful of private rooms. A community center of sorts, with an apparent catering to more adult themes. There’s a billboard of posters advertising things like consent classes and leatherwork lessons– and not the sort of leatherwork Gale is used to. The pictures on the front are of dog-like masks and harnesses across hairy, oiled chests. Gale averts his eyes, arms folded across his chest and elbows cradled in palms. There’s a small group of people– most of them shockingly normal, but a few sporting tattoos, metal in places Gale isn’t used to, clothes of the sort he remembers more from MTV before his mother decided he was too young to be watching things like that. He’s too polite to stare, fixing his gaze somewhere on the far wall. 

“Haven’t done something like this before,” Rosie is saying, voice frenetic, nervous. “Have either of you?”

Gale nearly snorts. Marge smiles, small, secret, and leans up to kiss Rosie’s cheek. 

“Not much by way of sex education in Wyoming,” she says, “let alone how to make it somethin’ fun.” 

“I think my mother sat me down at like, eight, and gave me the whole talk,” Rosie says with remembered discomfort, face contorting. “She’s a sex therapist, so it was a lot of ‘making your body feel good’ phrasing.” 

“Mine said the best route was a couple glasses of wine and wait for it to be over,” Marge breezes, hand waving, either perfectly oblivious or simply ignoring Rosie’s badly hidden wince. 

There’s a stick of gum in Gale’s pocket, slightly softened by his body heat until the smell of mint leaks through the crumpled foil. He pops it in his mouth and says nothing. It’s the conundrum of sex in a conservative town. They were surrounded by it, animals fucking, animals breeding, but the simplicity of it ended with humans. For them, sex was for procreation, for married couples, something not spoken about or discussed– at least not in polite company. His sex talk had been a stilted, awkward lesson on condoms, with the less-than-subtle insinuation that anything but abstinence was a moral stain and not just a physical one. And still it happened– classmates having sex, boasting of conquests, while somehow everyone remained staunchly pure. It was a hypocritical lie that Gale had never been able to wrap his mind around. 

Gale’s father had sat him down at fourteen, his lips brown from the cigarettes he rolled himself without any filter, the tar a smeared line in the center divot, and asked if Gale was being safe– no more no less. 

There was nobody for Gale to be safe with, none of the girls at school enough to catch his eye after Marge had– to near everyone’s surprise– shot his advances down. For some reason, it didn’t feel safe to tell his father this, so Gale had simply assured him he was, and they left it at that. Two weeks later, he tossed his virginity out the window with a girl from his science class, unsure why he felt the urge to prove. Unsure what he was proving. It had been nice, and she nicer when he had awkwardly said he wasn’t looking for anything serious. 

The gum pops between his teeth, a burst of fresh mint. 

“Gale’s always been too pretty for the girls at school,” Marge teases him in an unintentional mercy, saving him from having to provide his own answer. 

“And you were too pretty for me,” he says instead, smiling when she bumps their shoulders together. 

Rosie checks his watch– an old, delicate timepiece with a leather strap. Not expensive but clearly old. “Class starts at seven,” he says. “We should get inside, find a spot up front.”

There’s a split second where Gale thinks he might still beg this off– plea tiredness from the move, an ill-sat stomach from dinner, that he has no interest in exploring the bounds of his own sexual appetite. Especially in a room with a dozen or more strangers, his childhood best friend, and the man she was interested in tying up. Gale’s been called a stick in the mud before, but perhaps this time he might be a little bit justified. 

Instead, he follows them in to find Rosie has claimed a table up near the front. Not exactly the front, but a seat or two down from the forward lip of a slightly raised area, too low to be called a stage. Marge has an arm across the back of Rosie’s seat, one of her hands slowly tugging at a singular curl. The open seat is on Rosie’s side, and he has no interest in drawing the attention it would take to drag it over to Marge’s. Settling at Rosie’s side, Gale listens to the rest of the class shuffling in, murmuring voices and giggles. Someone goes around touching their shoulders, informing them there will be drinks afterward, if they wanted to stay for a meet and greet. 

Gale doesn’t drink and doesn’t see anyone he has much interest in meeting or greeting. 

There’s a table on the raised part of the floor, the center lit near perfectly by an industrial light hanging from the ceiling. It illuminates a pile of papers, glowing white in the light. He’s too far away to make out the words, but there are copy-machine-blurry photos included, a plastic pitcher of water that looks right out of the nineties, and a few paper cups. 

And a neat pyramid of rope, carefully wrapped and tied, dyed a myriad of bright colors. 

Something hot and prickly itches under Gale’s skin and he smooths flat the collar of his striped buttondown, left half-buttoned over a white sleeveless shirt. Adjusts the lay of his gold chain –bought for himself as a reward for getting into grad school– across his collarbone. The rope looks not exactly soft, but there aren’t any rough fibers glowing in the light, the ridges that make up the fibers smooth, lit with a slight shine. 

“Christ, they’re going to make us practice, too?” Rosie mutters

“They said that on the flyer,” Marge answers sweetly.

Gale rips his eyes from the rope. “What–”

A sharp whistle snaps Gale’s spine straight– as well as a few others’. Beside him, Rosie jumps, chair legs scraping against the wood floor. He turns his head to look, and whatever expectations Gale might have conceived are quickly disavowed.

Leather and studs, whips, paddles, boots or heels or brightly colored hair, and the sort of outfits that blended fascism and fetishism.

The guy standing in the door looks incredibly normal. 

Dressed in a plain white shirt and well-worn jeans, he has a strong chin, wide mouth, and a body like a workhorse. Big, but carried leanly, limbs long enough to make a strong argument for the width of his shoulders, the roundness of his thighs. He has a mustache, visible only when he’s close enough to toss a friendly smile to Gale– returned a second too late– and his brown hair curls out from underneath the baseball cap he wears. It reads Montreal Fetish Club on the front, purple lettering over black fabric. The I is a star, and the hat accentuates the almost childish jut of his ears. 

The stage creaks when he hops up onto it, leaning a hip against the table with his arms crossed over the slight give of his chest. Like a teacher, trying to be hip, approachable. Gale thinks that might be a bit of the point. He looks a bit like a former athlete, the kind of guy who still mostly takes care of himself. 

He smiles. “Hi.” 

The boom of his voice echoes nicely, not quite as deep as Gale’s own, but with a pleasant rasp to it. He’s looking around the entire room, but there’s a moment where he catches Gale’s eyes and tosses him a wink. “My name is John Egan, and I’ll be teaching you how to tie knots today.” 

He reaches over and picks up the top coil of rope, which flops in his hands in a laughably pointed way as he slaps it against his palm. The thud of it is soft. 

Gale glances to his left and watches Marge lean in to whisper something in Rosie’s red ear. A wet, pink flash of tongue and Gale looks away quickly. Back up to the stage and John Egan. 

“My friends call me Bucky, though,” he says, crooked grin on his face again, “and you’re welcome to, too.” 

There’s something TEDTalk, nineties aerobics instructional video, motivational speaker about him. It should be irritating, insincere, but somehow Gale finds it almost charming– amusing, even. It’s a joke being told, a game being played, and they’ve all been invited to join in. And just annoying enough to make him likeable. 

“So three things, now that we’re all friends here,” John continues. “Firstly, directions. Fire exit is to the back of the building, out that door to your left. Bathrooms are out that door and to your right, and concessions will be across the hall. Secondly, rules. Consent is the point here, and also a class I teach on Wednesdays– signup sheets are at the back, thanks. Please ask anyone, friend, partner, stranger, before touching or tying them. We have a lot of first-timers here and nobody wants anybody getting hurt. Rule two: please wait for me to entirely run through a knot before attempting it on your partner. Nobody does anything below the belt, above the clothes, or beneath them, either, so long as you’re on this property. Whatever you go home and do is your business. And finally, now that we’re all friends, please pair off with someone. Can be whoever you came in here with, or you can find yourself a new friend.”

Gale isn’t a superstitious man– isn’t even religious, despite the deep Baptist claws sunk into his childhood. But he knows when he’s being fucked by karma, or perhaps just a being with a very twisted sense of humor. There’s nobody else looking around the same way he is, hoping to find another poor loner. 

“Any straggler can buddy up with me,” John says with another smile, of which he seemed to have on endless supply.

There’s a low murmur, people shuffling in their seats, Gale clearly the odd one out. And then Rosie nudges him, drawing John’s eyes to the movement. Gale’s too busy glaring at Marge’s new obsession to notice at first, but when he looks back up at the stage John’s smile has grown wider, and he jerks a thumb to the empty space on his left. Gale clenches his fists, heat climbing up his neck as mortification fills him. This wasn’t what he signed up for, wasn’t what he expected. 

But he wasn’t raised to be the sort of man who backed down from things.

The platform creaks as Gale steps up, the wood old and tired, and takes John’s offered hand. His grip is strong, firm, palm dry, callouses rasping on Gale’s own. They’re both tall, nearly eye level, but John is just a bit taller, a bit broader, fills the air more so it feels like he’s already dominating the space, not just teaching them how to tie rope. 

“Hey, man,” John says. There’s a faint, dark shadow of a tattoo under his shirt, stretched over one pec. “Pretty cool comin’ to this alone, takes guts.”

“Thanks,” Gale says, dropping his hand.

“You got a name?”

“Ah.” Gale glances back over to Marge and Rosie, whose heads are still bent together. Marge flashes him a thumbs up and he twists his mouth at her faintly. “This isn’t really my scene, I’ll be honest. I don’t think I–”

“That’s fine.” John waves an easy hand, wide-palmed and long fingered. He’s handsome in a way that Gale keeps not expecting. Nothing like a guy who held court in the grotesque sex dungeons Gale has been picturing. He looks like any of the guys who frequent the bars back home; tired laborers, handsome in a home-grown way. “Plenty of us don’t use our real names. How about I call you Buck, huh?” 

Gale balks. “Buck?”

“Unless you’ve got a better one on hand– which I doubt.”

There’s a twinkle in John’s eye, irresistible charismatic mirth. Gale can’t help the thread of amusement that curves his lips. 

“Now, Buck,” John says, with extra emphasis like he was checking to make sure Gale didn’t have any last objections. Gale did, but he wasn't about to give John the satisfaction. “With your help, I’d like to teach these yokels how to tie a knot.” 

The conversation is still quiet enough to stay between them, but Gale glances over to the crowd anyways. “I’m not–” 

Interested in any of this. Not looking to be tied up. Not the right man for the job.

“–gay,” he says. 

John’s lower lip shifts, like he was dragging his tongue along the inside thoughtfully. “Hey, that’s fine. None of this has to be, like, horny. It’s just teachin’ knots, to make sure nobody loses a limb from loss of circulation.” 

Gale folds his arms across his chest. Forces his shoulders to loosen, and shoves his hands in his pockets instead. He glances at the ropes again. They’re nylon, braided tight and clean. The one in John’s hand is a soft blue, lighter even than a robin’s egg. 

“I’ll keep it to your arms,” John adds.

Gale had come here as a favor to Marge, to stop her from fretting the way he knew she would. But it was also a way to prove to himself that he simply could, that he wasn’t too small for the city he’d moved to. Porn had never done much for him. Too scripted, uninteresting, Gale never able to simply settle and sit with the feeling of arousal. Quick attention in the shower, a late night relaxation, a way of squashing nerves the night before a presentation, before meeting with his advisor who always smelled of cigarettes and cheap sandalwood shampoo but had the professional contacts Gale needed. 

He glances back toward the audience. Marge is looking at him with that worry on her face again, and something sparks indignant in his belly. 

“Fine,” he says, turning back to John, “how do you need me?” 

“Sittin’ pretty for now,” John says, then whistles again. It’s worse this close, and Gale nearly snaps straight again this time. Plenty of other people do, heads turning around. By the twinkle in John’s eye, Gale can tell he’s perfectly aware of the effect it’s had. 

“Alright, what I am going to do first is walk you through a basic knot.” John speaks to the room, though he’s looking at Gale, as if making sure he’s paying attention. “I will demonstrate how to tie it, and how to release it, and then each person will replicate on their partner. Each of you have a pair of skin-safe shears at your seat in case anything goes wrong. But don’t worry,” John’s eyes shine again, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Gale clenches his jaw, gum caught between his molars, flooding his mouth with mint.  

“May I?” John asks, holding a hand out, palm up and unthreatening and it takes Gale far too many thudding heartbeats to realize John is requesting his own hand. “Non dominant to start.”

John’s fingers are shockingly light as they wrap around Gale’s offered left hand. Despite their size, his fingers are graceful, a few pitted scars on the knuckles like they’d met a wall or two in their day. Their touch feels like barely anything as John turns over Gale’s wrist, explosing the pale underside.

And loops a strip of nylon around it.

Gale sucks in a breath. 

“Gonna start off by showing you a few basic knots,” John says. “Believe it or not, most of ropework bondage comes from the tension of the rope itself, not the strength of the knot. The tighter you tie that sucker, the harder it is to untie and the longer it takes you to get your partner free, the higher risk there is for serious injury.” 

John’s voice is calm, a quiet authority to it. He means what he says, and isn’t about to take any questions on it. Gale watches the flex of his jaw as he talks, the fine hairs on his arm hyperaware of the scrape of nylon against his skin.

The first knot tightens around Gale’s wrist. He exhales slowly. Watches the way it digs in just slightly, skin bulging out on either side, white and then refilling with blood as John releases it with a quick, easy tug. He walks them through several knots, a few Gale recognizes, almost calls them by the names he knows them as, but he’s focused on the pressure and release of the rope, trying to sort through how he feels. When John unties him and steps away for a moment, Gale settles back against the table, mindful of the stack of papers by his hand, and chomps his gum. His body feels awake and buzzing, skin hyperaware of his surroundings. 

It feels strangely bereft, without the scratch of the rope. 

While John works the room, Gale takes his time to look around. Rosie and Marge’s heads are bent together, shoulders shaking with their giggles, as Marge adjusts the knot around Rosie’s forearm. There’s another couple kissing in the corner, chaste playful touches, teeth to teeth with the occasional lips pushed between. Gale averts his eyes, then closes them, lifting his head up towards the slight warmth of the light and rubs the back of his neck. Inhales until he feels the ache in his ribs and then breathes out. Opens his eyes. Finds John at the back of the room, talking another couple through how to do a perfect knot. Every now and then, he glances up at the stage.

Gale catches the blue flash of it every time, and nods his head back, rubbing his wrist lightly.  

By the time John starts back towards the front of the room, Gale’s heartrate has settled to something less aching against his sternum. The faint red marks on his wrist are long gone and he drops both hands to his sides. John hops back up onto the stage, shaking the floor slightly, and this time everybody is already looking forward, leery of another whistle for attention. John grins smugly, his ears shifting up his head slightly with the broadness. Gale sucks the inside of his cheek rather than giving in to his own amusement. 

“You’re gonna want to keep practicing those,” John says, shoulder brushing Gale’s slightly, far enough away that it feels an unintentional, accidental touch. Gale doesn’t shift away, only so not to call attention to the touch in the first place. “Like knitting,” John continues, “if you’re in front of the TV, or have a couple minutes, tie and untie some of the knots. The more you do it the better you get, the faster. Say, Buck, would you mind passing out those papers for me?” 

It takes a moment for Gale to realize John is talking to him, a moment more to register the request. John has turned his head to look at him, eyebrows raised, mouth quirked to one side. 

There’s a challenge there, Gale can see it. 

His spine stiffens, subtly enough that nobody notices. Except maybe John, because his smile widens just a bit more.

It’s the oldest tactic of schoolyard bullying. Knock something over, pick it up, do this thing for me, won’t you? We’re friends, aren’t we? Play the game and feign ignorance, knowing he’s being laughed at, refuse and face the social humiliation of attention. Gale never faced much attention– Sheridan was too small a school, even combined with the surrounding podunk towns– but enough to know that there were ways he was supposed to move through the world, attitudes he needed to adopt and men he needed to model himself after. That there were rules of engagement when it came to making friends, especially with other boys. John’s challenge is juvenile, and lighthearted, and Gale has the urge to snatch the papers up, edges crumpling between his fingers, corners biting into his palm, slicing the skin. 

He picks them up gently, and a faint flush blooms at the tips of John’s ears. He winks at Gale. 

John continues to teach his lesson as Gale walks around the room, passing out papers and listening less to the sound of John’s words and more so the timbre of it. A little bit grating, barking, a voice meant to be heard across the room, across the bar, roughened by whiskey and late nights and singing at the top of one’s lungs. Gale knows that sort of voice well. 

Marge squeezes his arm with a wink when he passes by, Rosie fiddling with a lopsided knot around his wrist, tongue poking out between his teeth.

There’s a few left over by the time everyone has received a copy, and Gale gives the contents a cursory glance as he, unsure whether he’s still needed as class guinea pig, bypasses his still empty chair and parks himself against the table beside John again. John tosses him another smile, mid-sentence about a list of different basic ties. Things for hands, and arms, and torsos. All of which, Gale realizes, are printed on the handout, with photo examples of bodies twisted and framed by greyscale ropes. Gale looks at the first, and then the second, examining the way the woman’s body bends and arches, arms bound up behind her, figure broken into shapes and lines by the nylon. 

There’s an elegance to it, if one looks closer. 

Gale looks up, finds John’s eyes on him again. 

“If you’ve all had a chance to look over the paper, I thought I’d demonstrate some of these a little bit for you, if Buck here is alright with it.” 

This might not be Gale’s choice of events for the night, but he had been raised to see things through to the end, he’d never let himself be seen as a quitter, regardless of what he might be quitting. There are no eyes here that would judge, but Gale still feels watched by something bigger and more judgemental than just the eyes in the room all the same. Heat under his collar and a twisting in his stomach. It was the feeling that he’s agreeing to something wrong as he nods, raises the same wrist again. 

John clucks his tongue. “Need a verbal answer, Buck.” His eyes are bright, like he’s laughing at Gale. 

Gale sets his jaw, mint flooding his mouth. 

He could say no. Pass on the job of guinea pig and return to his seat for the rest of the class. Watch Marge and Rosie giggle and flirt their way through more knots and ties, flush high on their cheeks, making the sort of eye contact that was all heat, all assumption that nobody else could see how they were looking at each other. Until they remembered Gale was on their other side, that is, and set aside their moment to make sure he was included. 

He at Marge and Rosie, just to see them doing exactly that. Looks back at John.

“Go for it, Bucky.”

John grins at him, bright and quick, like Gale’s agreed to a night out on the town, like he’s done him some sort of favor. His touch is gentle on Gale’s wrist again, the way his long fingers wrap around it firm, skin dry and soft.

“Both, please,” he says. 

Gale gives him his other wrist, and John holds both in one hand, a little tighter to keep  them in place. Even overlapping both barely fit, but the restraint is shocking all the same– Gale doesn’t know the last time someone held him like this, restrained him like this. 

“You got a favorite color, Buck?”

He’s talking quietly enough again that it’s meant just for Gale, though this time everyone is watching. Gale’s ears heat. 

There’s still a handful of colors left on the table. John, or whoever had set up, overprepared. Gale looks over them slowly, wondering if John can take the measure of his heartrate where his thumb presses on the inner curve of Gale’s top wrist. There’s a red, a soft blue, a bright, neon green that almost glows in the light, and a more natural-fiber-colored one, shot through with the occasional streaks of more vivid hue. It’s the least obvious, least decorative one there, the type of color they threw in just to get rid of, or to make sure they had enough. 

“Far left,” he says, nodding towards it. 

“Utilitarian,” John says without missing a beat, picking the nylon up and slipping the end out of the knot with one practiced hand. It unravels quickly, the opposite end smacking their feet, and Gale would take a step back to make room for it only John’s still got his wrists in hand. His shirt pulls flat across his chest, the tattoo still a formless shape that Gale can’t make out– and it would be odd to stare.

“This isn’t my thing,” Gale says. “Wouldn’t wanna take any of your nice rope.”

John laughs, a soft chuckle that burns warm like whiskey. “Hands out,” he says, “palms together.” 

The stage creaks as Gale shifts. Puts his hands in position, callouses from childhood, young adulthood, catching together. John’s hands slide up his wrists, holding them together down to his elbow as he shifts to Gale’s side, facing out to the audience, Gale sideways to the viewers. It leaves him staring at the wall, or John out of his periphery, and he alternates between doing both. White-washed walls hung with a bulletin board advertising salsa classes, and the way John had missed a spot shaving. It irks Gale, who is always methodical in searching for every rough spot before leaving for the day.

He twitches when John drapes the folded end of the rope over one wrist, the two halves side by side. The color isn’t flattering against his skin, pale on his fading tan. The first knot goes between his pressed-together wrists, tight but not overly so. Enough that Gale feels the pressure of it, but not enough to pinch or chafe. The next loop goes around his thumbs, down between his wrist, up over his index fingers, through his palms. It’s a little more scratchy against the delicate skin on the inside of his thumbs, a soft rasp that sends the hairs on Gale’s arms rising. John’s fingers trace over the lines of the rope, checking the tightness of them, the lay of them against Gale’s skin. 

“Your partner should still be able to move their fingers, and their wrists should have some space if they tug,” John says, and Gale resists the urge to try.

John demonstrates how easy it is to loosen the knot, tugging on a loop he’d left free but tucked away. Gale immediately feels the tension fall away from his skin, blood rushing back in to plump up the flesh. It all tingles, like Gale’s lost sensation from the ties– but there’s no pain to it.

He exhales again, pushing his gum to the center of his mouth as John ties him again, demonstrating a second set from the paper. John’s hands go further this time, mouth moving, words coming out as he goes, walking through the loops he’s slowly traveling up Gale’s arm in regular, segmented intervals.

The knots themselves are all simple, things Gale had grown up knowing, from camping or riding or hunting– usually some combination of all three. Wasn’t even the first time he’d had rope around his body, in tease, or joke, or playing. But it had never been done like this, with quiet focus, a slow touch, John’s hands squeezing Gale slightly, as if marking all the bone, sinew, muscle of him. It’s the first time it had ever felt like this. Maybe it was in the execution, the mindset. The location. Or maybe the key factor was John. The presence of him, weighty and welcomingly obtrusive The way his eyes traced over the ropes, fingers following, a tug on a section here or there. 

It’s almost academic. A scientist checking that his experiment will run smoothly, a craftsman making sure his work is up to par. But Gale wonders if maybe there is something a little indulgent about it, too. Not tease, or joke, or play, but something not unlike all three.

“Doin’ alright?” John asks him quietly.

“Fine, Bucky.”

John smiles at him, cosseting, wide, an errant curl bobbing against his forehead. Gale bites down on his gum, passing it between his molars a few times, and John makes a noise in the back of his throat.

 “Woah, hey,” he says, “can’t have you chewin’ gum with your hands tied.” 

Gale pauses mid-chew, staring at John, who scratches the back of his head and grimaces apologetically. “Woulda said something if I’d noticed sooner, sorry– it’s kind of a choking hazard.” 

He holds a hand up, palm out and cupped slightly, and wiggles his fingers forward. Wiggles them again, more insistent, when Gale simply stares at him, floored. There’s heat creeping up from the soles of his feet, stealing up his spine and racing towards his cheeks even as he tries to fight it back. His pulse hammers, and if Gale dared to spare a glance down he thinks he might see the physical pump of it in the veins framed by the rope. He inhales, feels the press of his bindings.

Untie me, please.  

Gale leans forward, pushing the gum around his mouth for a second, until he can pillow it on his tongue, and spits it out onto John’s waiting palm. 

For a minute, a string of saliva holds fast to it, connecting the seam of his lips and the chewed up wad. It glistens bright under the light before breaking, leaving a puddle on John’s skin. He feels the wet smack of the other end against his chin, little more than a faint thread but noticeable, at least, to Gale. 

Noticeable too to John, it seems, who looks at Gale’s chin for a second before he smiles, pulling his hand away. For a minute Gale thinks John’s going to pop it between his own lips for safe-keeping, but he folds it between the corners of a spare handout and Gale blinks. 

Inherent eroticism is good reason for whatever arousal Gale is feeling. There, faint and sweet and peppery, at the back of his throat. 

The gum was beginning to lose its flavor anyway.  

Gale feels the wet smear of his own saliva as John pats the side of his cheek, a light, friendly tap, before he steps out to face the crowd again. Gale listens for as long as it takes for him to become once again aware of his pulse in his ears, throbbing slow and deep, like the beat of ocean waves. It drowns out John’s voice until it’s nothing but a baritone hum in the periphery of his hearing. Now he does look down to see if his pulse is a visible beat against his skin, and again takes in the gentle truss of his limbs. Gentle, until he tries to tug them apart, and feels the firm resistance. Somehow, it still feels like John’s touch– that confident restraint to every line. 

He exhales slowly. Pushes outwards again– caught. His heart thumps. 

A slew of images flicker through his mind, technicolor bright but silent like an old film– dust-crusted belts, dusty hemp rope pulled through calloused hands. A calf, trussed in the middle of an open-air rodeo, chest heaving, dust puffing against its nostrils as one liquid eye blinks up at the night sky. Slowly, it gives in to its binds. Gale passes air through his lungs with slow, quiet measure. Nearly starts when John puts a hand on the back of his neck, but he knows it’s John, somehow, the moment that heavy weight lands on the top of his spine, squeezing and then massaging. A gentle pinch, quiet, as if to say I’m still right here . It’s reassuring, though it shouldn’t be. Gale had never forgotten where John was in relation to his own body. 

The touch is shockingly welcome. Proprietary with his body the way Gale allowed few people to be, let alone another man. 

All the rules feel different tonight.

John keeps a hand anchoring Gale’s neck the entire rest of the class, Gale watching the minutes pass by on a decades-old clock on the back wall like slow, sticky sap. It feels like it passes with a handful of blinks, a handful more breaths, his body relaxing until it aches and then goes soft like fog over the mountains. 

He only knows the class is dismissed because the scrape of chairs cuts through the thump of his heart. Because John’s eyes are on his again, or at the very least he’s in Gale’s direct line of sight, between him and the crowd, both hands warm on Gale’s skin. 

“Feeling a little tired, huh?” John asks conversationally, but voice so smooth, quiet, gentle, it feels like some sort of double-speak.

John’s hands are warm like a hot water bottle, shoved under his blankets during winter to add extra warmth in the drafty farmhouse. Warm like a hand on the back of the neck, firm, commanding. 

“Fine, Bucky,” he says. 

John glances at him again. When he loosens the first knot Gale makes a quiet, unintended noise in the back of his throat. It must be mistaken for some sort of protest because John pauses, hands going from around the ropes to around Gale’s wrists again. For a moment, his eyes seem extra bright. Then he’s tugging them back towards the table.

“You wanna have a seat for me for a second, Buck?”

Gale doesn’t need to sit. He sits. 

“I’m fine, Bucky,” he says over the murmur of the class mingling, a few beginning to trickle out to the promised drinks. Marge tosses a glance over the crowd at him and he shakes his head slightly. He gets an inexplicable wink in return, and then she’s tugging Rosie out of the room by a wrist. 

“You are,” John agrees, something about his voice shockingly warm as he once again puts a hand on the back of Gale’s neck. Strokes his thumb under his ear in a quiet soothe, and Gale doesn’t know if it’s the strange, easy demeanor still, or the way John seems so casual about it, but Gale lets him. “I’m going to untie you now, alright?”

Giving one quiet, small nod, Gale watches John’s face as he loosens, then unwraps the binds, going slow and pressing on the marks as if to check for any tenderness. There’s a strange calm to his face, a quiet contentment that he wears like a heavy jacket. 

The room has quieted now, most of the crowd seeping out into the wider building. Gale can hear the low murmur of their voices through the wall. In here it’s quiet, and with each loop unwrapping, Gale feels like he can breathe a little easier. Nothing hurts, but he feels sore all the same. Inside him, in some part that was always buzzing, there is silence instead. 

John sets the limp rope off to the side, and pours them both a cup of water, splashing a little on the table. The dark surface goes darker where the circles spread.  He holds a cup out toward Gale.

It takes a minute for Gale to remember his hands are free to take it. Cool down his throat, soothing in a different way to John’s touch. 

It’s different with just the two of them, or so it feels to Gale. The air less charged– and yet, somehow, moreso. 

“I appreciate you being a good sport,” John says conversationally, shuffling papers, body in constant, necessary motion. Like a shark. He had the same toothy grin. “Even if it’s not your thing,” he goes on, “most people won’t approach it with an open mind.”

“I called it a pervert class,” Gale rasps.

It gets a chuckle from John, rather than any offense, air puffing from his mouth in a quick rush. 

“Well,” he says, “yes.” 

Easy humor. John reminds Gale of a well-broken draft horse, big and weighty and able to throw that weight around when it felt like it. Weight that was, instead, mostly used to lean harder and harder against whoever was closest until it sent them stumbling. 

“Have more water,” John says, so friendly it’s easy to forget it’s an order. 

Gale drinks. 

“You get off on this,” he says. “On tying people up.”

“S’why I teach it.” 

“Did this–” Gale starts, tongue feeling strange, water pooling on it, not quite swallowed all the way in the last gulp. “Did tying me up turn you on?”

That pulls a pause from the other man, busy rewrapping the nylon rope over the tanned line of his forearm, over palm, under elbow, repeat, again and again. He can’t set it down, but he does lower his arms slightly, and give Gale a long look before reaching his free hand into a back pocket. Shuffles for a few seconds, one-handed and clumsy, before drawing it out with a slim card pinched between two fingers. He holds it out to Gale, who takes it, the cardstock firm and unbending even under the pressure of his fingers. 

Dark matte on the front, cream on the back, dark metallic gold lettering that said Bucky , and underneath a cell phone number. And a website. 

“Discreet.”

John shrugs, smiling without an ounce of chagrin. “There’s a bunch of my work on my website, but otherwise I try to keep things simple in case it ends up in front of a kid or something.” 

“Your work,” Gale echoes, “as in–”

“Tying people up. Other stuff. Listen–” John finishes wrapping the rope, drops it on the pile of others and claps the invisible dust off his hands before coming to sit beside Gale, their hips bumping, the table creaking slightly under their combined weights. “Shoot me a text if you’ve got questions. You seem pretty tired right now.”

Gale isn’t tired, he wants to say. He feels wide awake, present. It’s a sense of quiet– not exhaustion. He doesn’t know how to articulate what it is, and certainly not to a stranger like John. “You get a lot of volunteers tired after these classes?” he asks.

Another quick grin, Gale seemingly going for gold on jokes he doesn’t realize he’s telling tonight.

“Yeah, happens now and again.”

Gale tells himself he’s not going to look. 

Whatever he felt was easily chalked up to nerves, discomfort, a childhood dislike of being looked at. And then suddenly to be up on stage with rope around his wrists and a class of people who were learning all this so they could fuck was turning the dial all the way to the left on his own self-conciousness. John might not have even liked men– he might have felt just as strange tying one up as Gale felt about being tied up. And anyway, Gale doesn’t care either way who John chose to spend his time with outside of class. 

But that quiet, calm feeling stays with him for most of the evening, into the night.

He sleeps hard, and wakes in the early morning, before the sun is even up. Pre-dawn light turns his entire apartment blue as he makes the customary shuffle from bed to sofa– one of the only pieces of furniture assembled in the apartment so far besides his bed– and sits with his phone on his chest, staring at the business card he had left on the kitchen counter the previous evening. 

Gale takes the blanket with him to fetch the card, turning it over in his hands as he settles back down in the warmed divot left behind by his body. Reaches for his laptop charging away on the opposite armrest. The cardstock is still dark, smooth under his hands, slightly oily from fingers rubbing over it– hidden away in his pocket where neither Marge or Rosie could see. He’d had no interest in answering their questions, had no answers to give. 

He’d told himself he was going to throw it out with the moving boxes stacked by the door. 

What questions could he possibly have?

John’s website is the same charcoal gray as his business card, soft and soothing, like ash after a fire. There’s a button Gale has to click agreeing that he’s eighteen or older, and he does, squeezing his nails into his palm and then forcing himself to relax. 

The photos load in one at a time, left to right, above links for a shop, a personal bookings link, and a portfolio. 

More rope, higher quality than the ones given out in class, Gale can tell that straight away. John sitting cross-legged, grinning towards off camera, as a woman with her ponytail tied to the complicated weave of rope binding her arms behind her also laughs. She’s as statuesque as John, blonde and elegant-looking. They’re both suited by the black and white filter over the photo. The photo linking to his portfolio is more tame, John in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over the hills of his biceps, hands clasped in front of him and hair a touch longer than it is now. He’s laughing again, staring a bit above the camera again, mouth open like he was in the middle of saying something. Gale wonders if it’s the blonde woman behind the camera, if she’s who he’s talking to. John’s jeans are ripped at the knees, Gale can see another hint of a tattoo on the left one, the bottom edge of lettering curving around the surprisingly bony jut of his kneecap. 

At the very bottom there’s a blurb about John, a lot of words Gale understands, a lot he doesn’t. A list of qualifications, names of people he’s studied under, workshops he’s led, events he’s hosted. Another picture of John, hair longer than any of the others, younger and leaner, leaning against a heavy vintage bike and looking out over an open flat road in some middle-America desert. 

Gale scrolls back up.

Clicks the portfolio link. 

Again the photos load in one at a time– carefully curated with a blurb at the top about where to contact the models featured, a link to the consent form they all sign, a second link to an application to be one. Gale exhales slowly, stomach knotting itself more than the ropes on the blonde woman’s arms. Nausea. Or at least what he thinks is nausea, with the saliva flooding his mouth. 

Most of the models are women, but the split between them and men is not as wide as Gale might have expected. Bound and suspended and trussed up like livestock. Only no rancher had ever put so much thought into the way a rope curves across a back, or winds up an arm, or the way the knots themselves can make their own patterns. Art in a way, human sculpture without the final step of a marble bust. Some of them are on the ground, some suspended fully in the air. None of them feature John, but the woman shows up several times, credited only as Paulina . 

The gallery is short, concise, each photo series carefully curated, Gale can tell. A digital library of John’s best work. One photo is of a young man, blindfolded and gagged and in ropes. Gale recognizes the prayer hands John had tied his arms in– only in reverse, the man’s arms tied behind him, raised up towards the ceiling by a rope. More ropes mark his torso, his thighs, folded as he kneels with his face towards the ground. They even wrap around his toes and over the bottoms of his feet, lacing up like sandals. He is entirely nude, and sports a soft, contented smile. 

Gale stares so long that the computer screen threatens to go dark

It’s eight o’clock, and ignoring that he’s somehow sunk an hour and a half scrolling through this website, he figures that’s still far too early to send a stranger a text. Even if it is a stranger he’d shared– whatever it was that he’d shared with John. Something. Nothing. Trust, maybe. Gale wonders if those calves ever learned to trust their ropers.

He puts his phone down, switches his tab to an email of instructions of how to get into the University observatory, where to pick up his ID and clearances. 

He waits, with more impatience than he cared to admit, until a more respectable noontime.

G. Cleven (12:01 p.m.): What sort of questions do people even have after?

G. Cleven (12:20 p.m.): This is Gale, by the way.

G. Cleven (12:26 p.m.): Buck. 

No answer. Gale is too pragmatic to be stung. But he keeps his phone nearby as he sets about unpacking the apartment a bit more, setting up bookshelves and a desk and putting his clothes into the dresser. Skips around the box labeled photos and tchotchkes in Marge’s curling handwriting. By mid-afternoon, his stomach is growling and he’s heading down to a nearby deli for a sandwich that he eats sitting at a table out front and watching the city buses drive by. And it’s there, wiping the last bits of mayo from his fingers with a napkin, that his phone lights up. 

Gale doesn’t reach for it right away– is very methodical about the way he gathers up his trash, throws it out, and begins his walk back home before unlocking his phone. 

There’s only two unread texts in his inbox, one from his mother asking if he wants her to send him some of his father’s things– he doesn’t, and even more so doesn’t want to tell her. And the second from John, already saved to his contacts, nothing more than a simple question.

John Egan (3:17 p.m.): Want to grab coffee and talk about it?

“I’m not gay,” Gale repeats, using a wooden stirrer to agitate the surface of his straight black coffee. He had no idea why they’d bothered to give him one with his order– habit maybe. But it was nice to have something to do. 

John pauses mid-swig of his coffee– how he isn’t scalding his mouth Gale doesn’t know– and gives Gale a crooked grin. “Sure,” he agrees easily, unoffended. “Being tied up doesn’t make you gay, man.”

Gale’s skin heats and he gestures between them, at the coffee. “I mean this– this isn’t like–”

“I wasn’t asking you on a date,” John reassures him.

“Good,” Gale says, covering his discomfort with a sip of his own coffee. Burns his mouth but refuses to wince. 

“How are you feeling?” John asks him, a question Gale finds odd but harmless. 

Still, he gives it a moment’s thought. Reaches into the breast pocket of his button down and pulls out his tin of toothpicks. John’s eyes follow the toothpick Gale places between his lips but says nothing. Attracted to Gale, he’s not so stupid as to not notice that now, when his mind wasn’t blaring a hundred different sirens at the feeling of restraints. Somehow, Gale doesn’t mind as much as he thought he might. John isn’t doing anything about it. 

He’s dressed different, too– or maybe just regular for John. Different than the persona Gale thinks would be into tying people up. A worn baseball cap, the rim fuzzy where it’s rubbed down to the plastic, a faded shirt for some local burger joint in Wisconsin. Loose jeans that hung low on his hips. Really just that man in the desert photo. Same to how he dressed in class but different too in his mannerisms. Less instructor, less commanding. Still a confidence and easy-going to him but more like they were friends in this moment. 

“A little hot,” he admits.

John grins in amusement, then drops it just as quickly, fixing him with a more considering stare. “And how did you feel immediately after?”

Something in Gale shrinks in on himself. Another part bristles. The third, more logical part, says it’s an entirely innocent question. At least int he way that Gale knows John is leading the conversation somewhere subtly. Gale has the sense that John would tell him his motivations if directly asked. 

“Tired,” he plays along. “I slept really well, better than I have in weeks.” He woke that morning feeling more relaxed than he has in years. But that part feels too personal.

A flush is settling over John’s ears, an expression not on his face but gathering in his eyes, the way the pupils dilate slightly. If Gale didn’t know that he hadn’t said anything untoward, he would have thought John was flustered.

“I’m glad to hear that,” John says quietly. Gale stares at him for a moment, but his sentiment seems sincere. He takes another swig of his coffee and then sets it down, crossing one ankle over a knee, hand grasping at the ankle to anchor his bulk in position. “You ever felt anything like that before?”

Gale shrugs, shakes his head. Chews his toothpick until he feels the end beginning to fray. Wonders if John’s scrutiny is real or imagined.

“Did you like it?” John asks softly.

The hairs on the back of Gale’s neck stand on end and he resists the urge to look around, like someone might be listening in on their conversation. There’s nothing about it to even overhear. Does Gale like being well-rested? Does he like being relaxed? Simple questions with an easy answer. His mouth feels dry and coffee will help exactly not at all. 

“What is it that I’m supposed to be liking?” 

John’s mouth quirks at the question being turned back on him, but takes no issue with it. Swipes his hat off his head and drags a hand through his curls before tugging it back more securely over his forehead. “Some people,” John says, the drag to his words showing he was choosing them carefully, “get into this trance-like space when they’re tied up, or submitting to someone else. It’s like, horny meditative state. People can feel drowsy, or extra vulnerable, or really floaty and happy.” 

“And you’re thinking that’s what I was feeling,” Gale says with perfect modulation.

John is watching him carefully again, fingers wrapped loosely around the rim of his cup, gaze not so much penetrating as it is enveloping. Like he’s looking at all of Gale, not just through him. “I think only you get to decide what you were feeling.”

The coffee shop isn’t vacant, or really all that quiet. But in the space between them, Gale feels like he would be able to hear a pin drop. Feels like he’s playing chess. 

“If I was feeling that way,” he starts slowly, “what does that mean?” 

John doesn’t break eye contact, “Doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.” He works his jaw for a moment, wobbles his head thoughtfully. “People mostly call it subspace.”

It’s a word Gale has heard before, because he’s a grown adult who exists in the world. But he’d never given a lick of thought to what it must feel like. If it was something he was capable of feeling. Pleasure had never been high on Gale’s personal Maslow Hierarchy. And it causes everal feelings to go to war inside him. Shame, confusion, a strange, off-kilter internal sensation like being kicked by a horse. All of this was new and unexpected and a violation of the careful societal lines he had been grown up taguht to adhere to. There were tbings a man could be; a drunkard and a gambler and bad with money and perhaps not too kind to his family. None of these detracted from what it meant to be a tough, capable person. Gale understands the root of the word. 

Submissive. 

It was a word for dogs and the sort of women old men boasted about liking. Gale balks at the insinuation. 

His inner turmoil apparently shows on Gale’s face, because John speaks with extra emphasis. “It’s just a word, Buck. Just a word for a way some people have learned they can feel good.”

“It’s about giving up control.” 

“For people who like that.”

Gale sets his teeth “Do you like giving up control?” 

John tilts his head, put on the spot and amused by it. He nods in acquiescence to Gale’s point. But not admitting defeat. “But you did.”

Gale considers throwing his coffee in John’s face. Considers throwing it in his own face. Sets the cup down altogether and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. Settles into a long stare at John. “I’m not–”

“Christ, forget about who you want touching your dick for a second, man. Didn’t anyone ever talk to you about, like, the difference between sexuality and pleasure?” 

“My family was Baptist.” 

John’s mouth thins, hands on the table, hands spread in emphasis of his statement. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh underneath the irritation. “Look,” his voice is suddenly his teaching voice again, slower and modulated, “there’s stuff that turns you on. And there’s stuff that just feels good physically or psychologically. And sometimes they intersect. Like you can have a massage without being horny, but then sometimes massages are a lead in to sex. Right?” 

Gale shifts in his seat. Resists glancing around again. 

“It’s the same with bondage. There’s parts of it that just feel good, that give your brain that floaty feeling that has nothing to do with what’s going on below the belt. It can, but it doesn’t have to. So if you like being tied up, Buck, it can just mean you like being tied up. That’s all.” 

“And what– if it did? Turn me on?”

“Then that’s fine, too. You think I’m gonna be the guy to judge you?” 

Gale slips his fingers back around his cardboard coffee cup, just for something for his hands to do. The sides are beginning to buckle just slightly. “But it turns you on.” 

“It does,” John says easily.

Tapping his fingers against the cardboard, Gale stalls by draining the rest of his coffee before the cup collapses entirely. It’s a good excuse for a stall as well. Especially now, as the shop is beginning to welcome the lunch rush, getting a little more noisy, a little more crowded. Somebody bumps the back of John’s chair and he scoots a little closer into the table, the edge denting into stomach as he rests his elbows on the table, hands clasped together. He has that same look in his eye, a fiercely intelligent scrutiny that sees Gale all over.  

“Would you want to do it again?” John asks him finally. 

“Again?” Gale asks, and however incredulous he feels his voice comes out… less so. 

“Sure,” John says. “That’s kind of my financial bread and butter. Doing that to people. And, I mean, it doesn’t have to be me– I could get you set up with a friend of mine if you’d like. A woman.”

“No, you,” Gale says quickly, mortified. John blinks at him and Gale finds himself scrambling to explain, “I don’t–I mean you already have. And we know each other. Like you said it doesn’t have to be anything–” 

Strange.

It’s a borrowed phrase, someone else's words on his tongue– or a whole town or church of someones.  

John is too polite to poke at Gale’s faux pas. “Like I said, it’s what I do when I’m not running group classes.”

“People really pay you for it?”

“We’ll say first session’s free.” John throws him a wink, fingers squeezing and relaxing as he scoots a bit closer as another customer brushes by. He’s got a few acne scars pockmarking his cheeks, and a silvery slash of skin through his brow, spidering out slightly like an impact. “If it’s not for you, we can part ways as happy strangers.” 

Gale works his jaw. Works the toothpick, spinning the empty coffee cup between his fingers, and stares at the table rather than how close John is to him. He doesn’t want the other man picking up on the thoughts behind his eyes. He thinks about all the ropes he’d grown up with and all the men who held them with dirty, callous-mittened hands. He thinks about condoms and sex and how pleasure was just as discouraged. The difference between the two? There had never been one.

John had the same callouses, scrubbed clean and carefully manicured.

“If we do– what does that entail?” he asks carefully. 

“I have a consent checklist,” John says, like he was prepared for the question. “Just getting on paper what you’re okay with, what you’re not okay with. What I would want to do, and what you do. Just like any other contract– figuring out what we both want. I want to have a guideline to follow, especially when you’re down.”

“Down.” 

John takes it for the inquiry that it is. “That floaty feeling you had. Sometimes it can be even more intense, especially if we do more intense stuff. When you’re like that you can be pretty suggestible, so having a preset list of rules means when you’re in a state where you can’t necessarily consent– or maybe ask for something you might not otherwise– I know where the line is.” 

Thump , goes Gale’s heart again. The coffee turns faintly in his stomach, the sensation equal parts pleasant and nauseating. 

“It’s a hell of a lot of trust my models put in me,” John says. “I don’t take it lightly.” 

Evening turns Gale’s apartment a soft purple, the lights over his stove a soft orange, the lamp in the corner a more, irritating, buttery yellow. 

He’s straightened the bookshelf three times. Unpacked a box of photos that he arranges around his textbooks and keepsakes. Texted Marge to confirm their plans for Tuesday night. Didn’t text her about why he couldn’t do tonight, Saturday night. 

Ignores a call from his mother.

Ignores another call from his mother.

Goes back to the fucking bookshelf. 

Four days since his coffee with John, five since he’d been confronted with something like a revelation. Enough time to double confirm with John, who had gently checked the next day through text if this was really something Gale wanted to do. Enough time for Gale to go over the checklist John had sent him– call me if you have questions, but I like to let people do this on their own so they don’t feel any pressure from me.

Bondage, yes, obviously. The whole point of the matter. That was an easy check of what Gale was okay with, or at least open to figuring out if he was okay with. The rest were an agonizing decision each time, punctuated with definition searches and blog post readings and the occasional photo. It took Gale most of the afternoon, hunched over his laptop, gum popping between his jaws until it went tough like a rubber boot from overuse. 

He’d checked off nonsexual touching with shaky fingers. Okay’d things like kneeling, blindfolding, sensory play– after another quick search– and the contradiction of both praise and humiliation.

Not going to do nearly close to all of this, but like I said. It gives me and you a clear set of rules.

There was a lot he stayed away from, shied away from after looking up, unsure of the emotions he felt with his research, but unwilling to explore them. It was all already nearly at the limit of what he could handle.

Some of it was so shockingly frank Gale’s hand hovered over the checkbox for several heartbeats.

Hand jobs, oral, penetrative sex, orgasms, cumplay.  

No to all, of course. He’d sent it back off to John, who hearted the pdf attachment and then asked where Gale wanted to do the whole shebang. His words. 

Gale’s apartment was an easy choice, a safety net. It might be a new space but it was Gale’s space. Familiar. There would be some level of control here, instead of whatever set-up John might have in his own home. Gale was trying not to imagine– the contrast of John to what he did was already enough to have him second-guessing his vague assumptions. Or perhaps not, some of the photos on John’s website had been exactly what Gale would picture.

He’s trying not to think about it. Wonders what that contract with the blonde woman looked like. If she checked off everything on the list with boundless enthusiasm, if John fucked her after those photos. Gale knows he won’t compare to the other people John has worked with– there wouldn’t be much to this that would interest him, surely. A few knots, maybe some talking. It would likely amount to more for Gale than it would a seasoned practitioner like John. And he’s not unaware that some part of this is a charity for John. The free session, the hand-holding, the over-emphasis on not making Gale feel pressured . Gale oscillates between being rankled by the notion, grateful for John’s easy-goingness, and wondering what he’s getting into. Wondering what his father would think, tucked up freshly into his grave.

A knock at his door. 

Gale walks to the door and stands there for a heartbeat or two, flexing his hand. Then he opens it. 

John is wearing an old Bugs Bunny t-shirt, arm flexed where he holds a backpack over his shoulder. His hair is freshly wet from a shower and he stands there, other hand in the pocket of his jeans, grinning like he’s come to ask Gale if his parents would let him come outside and play.

Man next door, because there isn’t much left of him that’s boyish aside from that smile. 

“Traffic sucks out this way,” John says, inviting himself right in, toeing his shoes off besides Gale’s own pair of boots. 

“Seems bad everywhere.”

“Ah, that’s just ‘cause you’re new to city living.” John cranes his head around, body swinging with it. 

Gale eyes the backpack, dark fabric with straps dangling, drifting behind John as he looks at the furniture and boxes scattered about. “What makes you think I’m new?”

“You don’t have a city area code.”

“Maybe I’m still on the family plan,” Gale says, shutting the door and following John into the center of the room where he’s surveying the empty space with hands on his hips.

“So tell me I’m wrong.” 

Smiling, lowering his face to hide it, Gale shakes his head, then follows John’s gaze to where the coffee table is shoved against the far wall. “Figured you’d want a decent empty space.”

John’s hand on the back of Gale’s neck again. The touch is so unexpected, so proprietary, scruffing and shaking him in a slow back and forth, warm in a way that nearly makes Gale flinch. He does stiffen, heart skipping a beat, but John is undeterred, ending the caress with a pat to the shoulder, approval evident enough to make Gale’s ears burn.

“‘Preciate the thinking ahead, Buck.” He drops the backpack against the sofa, pressing down on the center rug with one foot, seemingly testing its softness. “Listen, what’re you feeling? Wanna small talk it first? Or maybe not, you seem kind of a cut-to-the-chase guy to me.” 

Gale, who was staring at the backpack again, tears his eyes away. Meets John’s cold, dark blue irises and tilts his head. “Don’t want to steal too much of your time.”

John’s eyes twinkle. “You kiddin’ me? I’ve been looking forward to this all week.” He bends over, unzipping the bag with a quick rip that echoes, if not through the entire room, then at least in Gale’s ears. “You know how often it is that I get to pop someone’s rope cherry?”

“Jesus, John.” Gale’s face flashes hot again and John snickers, straightening with his phone in hand, rescued from the mysterious depths of the backpack. 

“Okay, so I guess first question is, some people who do this will do names, titles– whatever.” he squints at his phone, thumb scrolling and then tapping. “I didn’t have it on the form ‘cause it’s so preferential, but, something like Sir, or–” 

“No ‘Sir’,” Gale says quickly. Catches his tongue between his molars as John flicks his eyes up from the phone. 

“We don’t have to do titles at all, if you don’t want.” 

“But isn’t it in the spirit of things?”

Phone lowering slightly, John shoots him a crooked smile, like he found Gale strange but liked it. “This is like, about what you want out of it, man. But if you want, you could call me Bucky– since you already do.”  

Gale swallows his response. Nods. 

“Other things, uh, respecting the spirit of the scene; you can be a brat if you want, I don’t mind questions, but if you’re insulting me I’m gonna put a pause on things. Not that you seem the type to give me any lip.” 

Gale tries to decide how that makes him feel, whether he should stand up for himself and his ability to be insulting. Thinks at this point there’s so much buzzing up inside him it would be easiest to simply go along wherever John is leading him. “Sure, Bucky.” 

John’s mouth curves slightly, locked on his phone screen. “Safe words. You can come up with your own, if you want. I’ve got ‘deuce’ if you don’t have one– something you wouldn’t normally say in a scene.”

“Calf,” Gale says. 

Looking up now, John gives Gale another crooked smile, and repeats the word to himself a few times under his breath, nodding. “Okay, and then, finally, do you want to know what I’m going to do to you? Or would you rather just see it as it comes?”

What I’m going to do to you.

Gale’s mouth tastes like static, no matter how many times he forces himself to swallow. He’d spit out his gum before John’s arrival this time, not wanting to be caught out again. But now he misses something to do with his jaw that isn’t speaking or chewing the inside of his cheek to bits. A large part of him wants to be bold, to tell John to throw the book at him, or at the very least the checklist. Images slideshow through Gale’s inner eye, a mix of photos from John’s website and things he’d seen online. Blissful faces and raw rope marks and bodies occasionally streaked with fluid. John’s hand carefully tracing down the rawboned side of some male model, hand huge against delicate ribs. The bag is between them small and dark and filled with whatever creativity John is capable of.

Gale’s nature wins out. “Tell me.” 

John tucks his phone back into his pocket, crossing his arms across his chest and looking Gale up and down again. “I’m going to have you kneel and I’m going to tie you up,” he says, reaching on finger to poke at the meat of Gale’s bicep, the center of his chest, “here– and here. Maybe your legs, too, if you feel comfortable going down to just your underwear. I don’t like tying over jeans or sweatpants. I was going to blindfold you, and then just let you see how you feel. Simple.” 

“Simple,” Gale repeats, voice carefully modulated despite how he’s starting to feel a little dizzy– a little weightless. The first few seconds of being bucked off a horse before gravity came back for you. 

“If there’s anything you’re not comfortable with, we can cut it.” 

“Only one way to find out.” 

John has Gale stand in the center of the room, stripped down to mid-thigh briefs and a light t-shirt. Gale isn’t shy about his body, has been more naked than this around men before. But he’d have threatened to fight any man who stared at him with such scrutiny as John did now, hands on the meat of his hips and head tilted slightly. Gale stares back, rubbing his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip and trying to keep his breathing steady. 

He’s got a length of rope tucked up under one armpit and Gale can’t stop focusing on the color– a soft cornflower blue. Can’t stop wondering if it’s too soft, too gentle. If it’s some humiliation ritual, or an attempt to get a rise out of Gale. Some sort of test to see if he will balk early, duck out before they can really get going. It’s the soft blue of baby blankets and cloud-filled skies and Gale’s own eyes when he looks in the mirror. He understands that dressing well often means dressing good, but he’s given it no more thought beyond what feels comfortable, what other men wear that gets approval. What Marge compliments on him. Did John pick the color on a whim? Is it to poke fun at Gale’s ‘ prettiness ’? It wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. But maybe it was simply the first rope John picked. Maybe he just likes the color. 

John touches him. A hand gliding along his shoulder, poking and squeezing as if testing the muscle and bone beneath. Across his chest, the same assessing touch that saved it from feeling too intimate, kept Gale’s mouth shut. 

“Kinda bony,” John says and Gale’s throat burns with a childhood hurt, “but you’ve got some good muscle too. You’re going to let me know if you feel anything pinching, tingling, or painful. Pressure is fine but any cold, numb, or burning feelings? You’re going to say something.” 

It’s an abrupt tone shift from the casual way John had addressed him just minutes before. Voice no less calm or measured– more so, if anything– but the way he spoke had changed. It wasn’t a request John was giving, wasn’t a command of what Gale should do. Not even an expectation. It was certainty. 

Gale knows his part. “Okay, Bucky.” 

He doesn’t expect John to start with his chest, but he does. Pulls several thick loops of rope around the upper part of Gale’s chest, right through the center of his pecs, and then just below the curve of them. Loose, until John loops around each of Gale’s upper biceps and then crosses back over Gale’s chest in an X pattern. He can feel it as John commands him to take as deep a breath as he can, exhale it slowly as John tests the tension. His hands end up folded against each other behind his back, a comfortable strain at his shoulders. He can’t see what John is doing now, but he can feel it. 

Can feel as John ties his wrists at intervals, each one threaded back into the central position where the ropes across Gale’s back rest, cinching him tighter and tighter to his own body. Down over his fingers again, gentle between the webbing as Gale unconsciously flexes them, sucking in another deep breath. 

“You like that part?” John asks quietly. 

Gale’s mind goes blank and he stops moving his fingers. John’s got one warm hand on his wrist, paused there in the midst of his work, callouses scraping against the soft skin there, below Gale’s palm. It’s almost close to the rasp of the rope, but warmer. “It’s–” 

His tongue feels soft, loose, like a late-night conversation. He shuts his mouth again and shakes his head.

“Sensitive,” John finishes for him, squeezing his wrist and then letting go. “Skin between your fingers is thin, lotta nerves. Good spot for sensory play like this.”

Gale doesn’t answer. John doesn’t seem to expect him to, tugging on the ropes behind his back a few more times before stepping back, coming back around Gale’s front and testing the tensions one more time. It gives Gale the chance to watch his face again, the serious set to his soft mouth, the frown of concentration hovering about it, brows low and furrowed until there’s a cavern right between them. There’s something classically midwestern about his handsomeness, a quiet familiarity in the way his body is broad and the skin of his cheeks is rough and the hair peeking up above his shirt has the same curl to it as on his head. But his voice is all East Coast brashness. 

John catches Gale’s face in his hand, the space between thumb and forefinger cradling his chin, pressing slightly into the soft skin on either side of his mouth. Gale wonders if John can feel the beat of his heart against that same sensitive flesh. If he can feel it pick up as Gale balks at the touch. Again proprietary, again well over the bounds of how Gale is supposed to allow a man to touch him. 

He’s not supposed to allow a man to tie him up, either.

There’s a glimmer in John’s eyes, a faint challenge, something like excitement. “Gonna help you kneel now, okay, Buck?”

“Okay.”

John’s grip tightens slightly, pressing against his teeth through the skin of his cheek. “Okay, what?” 

Yes.

Yes, what, Gale?

Yes, Sir.

Gale pushes against the restraint of the ropes, locking himself inside his own body, in this room. Looks John right in the eye. “Okay, Bucky.”

He gets a slow grin in return, teeth wet and straight. Gale wonders briefly what John would be like if he did push back. If John would bring Gale to heel with physical force, or with sheer good nature.

It’s unnerving, going down to his knees without the counterbalance of his arms. Has to take it slow, a little unsteady, John’s hand on his elbow guiding him down and adding extra support as Gale figures out how to fold his legs beneath him without falling flat on his face. But he thinks even if he started to topple, John would catch him easily. Then they’re both kneeling on the carpet, John in front of him, knees poking out through the rips in his jeans. Gale can read the script there now, blue and a little patchy in a few spaces.

Why Knot . 

Gale almost smiles. Would smile. If his heart wasn’t beating in the same slow, rolling boom as a thunderstorm across the prairie and his head wasn’t beginning to fill with cold, soft snow. 

John taps the bony jut of Galee’s knee with one finger. “Up.”

“Jesus,” Gale breathes, not quite sure why. But he pulls the knee up towards his chest with some maneuvering, John’s hand back on his elbow to keep him steady. A shock, the way John touches his ankle, a shock, the way his fingers wrap fully around it, and then another looped knot tied there, pinching the fair hair of his ankle slightly until they break away. It’s an ignorable pain, barely registering because Gale is too focused on the way John skims up his calf, pressing it into his thigh and wrapping another double loop around both. 

The hair on his legs stands on end, goosebump peaks standing out humiliatingly clear. They scratch like sandpaper against John’s palm and Gale shouldn’t be letting John touch him like this. Knows there’s something John is getting out of this that Gale is not– obvious for the way the other man’s cheeks and ears are a little rosy. But even though his touch is slow, and careful, there’s nothing entirely voracious about it. Slow, because John didn’t want to rush. Careful, because he cared about the details. And warm, because he needed a lot of energy to move that big body around. Gale’s hyperawareness comes from himself, from the fact that he’s never been touched like this before. From the fact that he can’t really remember the last time anyone has touched him skin to skin. 

His chest feels tight for a minute, until Gale remembers to breathe.

John loops three times around his leg, then knots down each one, and up the other side, then back down again in a back and through weave until it leaves a clean, braided pattern behind on each side of Gale’s leg, right over the crease. A little tighter, a little more restrictive than the one around his arms.

Gale forgets to breathe again, struggles for a few minutes until John rubs his knuckles lightly against his sternum. Takes a quiet, gasping breath. Then another.

“I think we’ll keep it like this for now,” John says quietly as he helps Gale bring his knee back down. “How you feeling, Buck?” 

Snow fills his mouth now, freezing his tongue numb, filling his throat with cool pressure. He hums. Watches a small smile play across John’s face.

“Close your eyes,” John orders him. 

Gale feels the soft stroke of a thumb over each, one then the other, delicate skin hypersensitive. It explodes like fireworks over his skin. 

He inhales slowly, testing the ropes again with the spread of his ribcage, ropes digging in but never biting sharp.

“Keep them closed.” 

A creak, a shift in the air pressure around Gale, as John stands, pausing to check Gale’s obedience. And then he turns–

And pauses again.

Gale presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, barely feeling it, and then cracks his eyes open so slightly he can still see where his lashes tangle together. Watches John crouch over the backpack, reaching inside and pulling out a laptop, a strip of skin between his waistband and shirt revealing itself. Not tattooed. 

John takes the laptop and settles on the couch that is, Gale realizes, close enough to where John had him kneel for his knee to brush Gale’s shoulder. He closes his eyes, and moments later feels the heavy weight of John’s gaze on him, hair prickling on the back of his neck. Then John’s hand is on his shoulder again, the back of his neck, a silent check-in to show John is still there. 

“You can rest your head on my knee if you’d like,” John says. 

One of the first sentences not a command since John had first put the rope around Gale’s wrist. Choice is harder than blind obedience, he suddenly, shockingly, finds. Did he want? Did he want to feel the tough texture of denim under his cheek, rough as the ropes around the rest of his body? Right above that tattoo, right over the heavy vein throbbing through John’s body, carrying blood directly from his heart? Did he want to put his head on John’s leg like a faithful servant, a devoted dog? Did the dog place his head there because he enjoyed it, or did he simply seek the approval from his master?

Decision paralysis isn’t something Gale is accustomed to. Not when the stakes are this low, this high. This is a different sort of choice to any he’d ever had to make. 

John’s hand is still heavy on his neck and Gale lets that make the decision for him, slowly letting John guide his head down to rest on the outer curve of his thigh. Plenty of room, even with the laptop Gale assumes he has balanced on the other knee, but he still feels a tickle of leg hair against his lips where they come right up to the edge of the tear in John’s jeans.

He wants to lick his lips, but doesn’t dare. 

A long pause, then John is brushing gentle fingers through Gale’s hair. He goes stiff, sick indignation shooting down his spine and he opens his mouth to tell John to keep his hands to himself. Then stops himself.

John has paused, too– waiting, it seems, for whatever reaction Gale was gearing up to have. 

When Gale says nothing else, the touch resumes, lighter, slower, a gentling stroke like Gale is some sort of spooked animal.

His exhale blows back against his own face, a warm puff of air smelling faintly of mint gum and John’s skin. For a moment, he’s convinced there are eyes on him that aren’t John’s. A ghost in the corner, or peeking through the ceiling, or perhaps staring right through the brick and soundproofing of the apartment to the events unfolding inside. Someone is going to find out. Someone is going to know that Gale is engaging in this thing that’s not natural or normal or regular.

“Bet the ropes feel pretty tight, huh?” John breaks through his thoughts. A little bit of a rasp to it, like a voice over the radio. Not friendly but calm, assured. Gale is grappling with his own internal morals, but to John this is just another Saturday evening. John’s fingers rasp through his hair again.

“Bet they feel real tight,” John repeats, in the same low, soothing tone. “You can feel them when you breathe, I bet. Pushin’ back.”

Gale can. Firm against his ribcage, his sternum. Around under his arms, a solid mass that pushes against his inner biceps. Every breath tests the knots, pulls them firmer around his arms all the way down to his hands, like his whole body is breathing in. Exhale, and they all go lax, but never enough to sag, or remove the pressure of them. He nods.

“You like that, don’t you?” 

He’s facing away from John, so he allows himself to squeeze his eyes shut tighter, jaw clenching, body wanting to curl away from the request rather than to admit any level of self-pleasure– only the ropes hold his posture perfect. Was his lack of protest not enough? The way he bent for John, knelt for him, laid his head on his knee like an ancient faithful to their king. 

Praise. Humiliation.

John stops petting him. 

It’s enough to pull Gale from his conflict and he takes a shuddering breath in– ropes tightening. “I do.”

“I do, what?” 

Gale opens his eyes, because the smell of pall malls and gin is so strong in his nostrils for a moment he can hardly believe it could be just a memory. But he’s in his apartment, with its multitude of boxes yet to be unpacked and the cracks in between the floorboards he was beginning to know the texture of, and here it smells only of his own cologne, and John’s, and the faint smell of take-out from the restaurant down the street. For the first time, he wonders if he should have been a little embarrassed to have John see his space like this. 

But it is, he can see, just them. He takes another breath. 

“I do like it, Bucky.” 

He does. He does like it. He’s an object, constantly in motion, suddenly forced to be still, forced to sit present with himself. There isn’t anything he can think about besides the feel of the ropes on his body and the floor beneath his knees and John’s thigh, flexing and relaxing with the natural rhythms of an at rest body. It wasn’t his job to entertain, or watch out, or be the passive observer, not to Marge and her new beau or his mother and her increasing calls to her holistic therapist who Gale’s never seen present a single credential besides a well of charisma. No wheeze of an oxygen concentrator, Gale with his ear always half-perked for its rasp as he lay in bed at night– the only other time he came close to being totally still.

He still listens for it here, only to be met with silence. It’s the best part about living here. It’s one of the worst parts. 

The confirmation arouses John. Gale doesn’t know how he can tell, but he does. He can sense it, even though John doesn’t hesitate in his slow petting, maintaining the same casual, calm pace.

Maybe that’s the dominating thing in the room– not the newly hatched ghost of his father. That this is something that John gets sexual gratification from, is aroused by, incorporates it into his sex life like most people incorporate a bottle of lube. But they’ve agreed to keep the touches platonic, if not egregiously affectionate, and nothing about John has shifted a bit. But Gale knows, somehow. 

He can’t find fault with a thought crime. And John had offered to connect him with a woman.

“Why do you like it?” 

Gale’s eyes are heavy, some weight slipping off his shoulders with his verbal admittance. Wholly in it now, his body feels molded against John’s knee, anchored to the hand on his head. It takes a few seconds longer than it should for him to register the question, formulate a response. 

“It relaxes me.”

“Why?”

The question hits like a boot to the head, Gale’s heart making a bid for freedom through his throat. It can’t escape, held in by the ropes, and so he has nothing to do but sit with the answer that, even as a kid, Gale would have felt it too childish to say. It feels like an embrace . 

John’s hand settles on Gale’s neck, fingers against the rapid-flutter pulse. Holds it there for a couple rapid heartbeats. “Okay,” he says quietly. “You don’t have to answer that, Buck.” 

Still, it takes a few moments for Gale’s heart to pump at a regular pace again. John doesn’t take his fingers from Gale’s neck until he feels it, too. Back to his hair, brushing it off his forehead, behind his ear, down to the nape of his neck, and then back again in a slow pattern that Gale eventually finds himself matching with his lungs. 

It goes on long past the point Gale considers counting the seconds. At some point, John must open his laptop, because Gale can hear the quiet click of keys, on occasion John’s hand leaving his hair to type something with both hands.

But Gale keeps the pace with his breath. He knows what’s expected of him.

And there’s something nice in that– in the simplicity of the task. Kneel. Exist. Feel the ropes right around his body keeping him from drifting too far away. Astrophysics is complicated. The family home back in Wyoming with its crooked shutters and the barn cat who refused to die no matter how many hard winters pass and his father’s toolbelt still by the door– all of that was complicated. This is the easiest thing Gale’s done in a long time.  

Gale loses himself in it.

Forty minutes is what John had promised, an hour if Gale took it well– his phrasing. It feels much longer, much shorter, Gale wonders if he’s taking it well by the time John lets out a punctuating exhale and Gale hears the click of a laptop shutting.

He opens his eyes. 

He hadn’t realized he’d ever shut them.

“Okay,” John says in the softest voice he’d employed yet. “Got all my emails done, finally. Thank you, Buck.” 

The thanks feels unnecessary, unexpected, and without merit. Gale has done nothing to contribute to whatever John needed to do for his work, except maybe give him an hour to sit still and focus. John didn’t seem like the sort of person to enjoy sitting still for very long very often.

His tongue isn’t quite online, so he hums vaguely, lifting his heavy head and blinking a few times. When John brushes the hair off his forehead with a heavy palm, Gale can’t help but lean into it, exhaling heavily and closing his eyes again for a moment. 

“We’re done?” he finally asks, swallowing a few times, dragging his tongue across his teeth until he remembers how to work it. 

John’s hand on his chin again, fingers squeezing as he maneuvers out from under Gale. “Yeah, Buck, we’re all done.” 

Capacity to feel disappointed diminished by the soft, snowy slowness of his brain, Gale nods again. Watches John with hooded eyes as he kneels in front of Gale, hands once again going to the bare skin of his thigh, the joint of his ankle where the knot begins and ends. He takes it slow, using gentle hands to rub the sensation back into the ridged marks in Gale’s skin. Gale can’t help but enjoy the sight of them, textured pressure marks cutting through smooth skin. John must like the feel of them, the way he brushes a thumb over each one as he goes, leaving the growing pile of rope in a coil beside him.

He reaches the top of Gale’s thigh and Gale realizes that there’s a little extra plump to his groin, the blood pooling in some half-attempt effort to get hard. Has been that way for some time, and he looks up to John’s face, heart skipping a beat so suddenly it feels like tripping up the stairs. It stings. It’s impossible for John to miss, but he doesn’t react to Gale’s rebelling body. Finishes untying Gale’s leg and takes a moment to wrap the coil of rope neatly around his palm and elbow, slipping it off and knotting it when he’s done. His hands leaving Gale’s body makes his heart skip a beat again.

“If I don’t do it right away I’ll never do it,” John explains cheerfully, before standing and walking around to the back of Gale, leaving him blinking dumbly at the empty floor and trying to remember how to draw a breath.

Trying to force his body to return to his senses. 

“I’m actually super disorganized, and kinda lazy,” John goes on as his fingers deftly work through the myriad of knots at Gale’s back. He’d counted them by feel. “My mom used to say she was going to discover a whole new species of intelligent life growing in my room. So if I don’t do a clean up task as soon as it’s called for, it’s not happening– can you take a breath for me?” 

Gale blinks, then inhales. 

John rubs his shoulder in approval. “Ribs feel okay? Nothing sore or pinchy?” 

There was a faint ache in Gale’s chest. But more so like unused, or well-used muscles. Only skin deep. “No, Bucky.”

“Good.” 

His chest presses briefly to Gale’s back when he leans over to unwrap the ropes from around the front of his chest, loose now after the knots were undone. Unexpectedly warm, but not hot. Gale focuses on that rather than the faint itch in his spine, the urge to squeeze his thighs together, just a bit. Gale takes another breath as they come away fully, and exhales out, a little more awake. Still no less relaxed.

Some awareness comes back, as John works his way down Gale’s arms, over his fingers. That he was undressed and kneeling on the floor while his arms were bound behind him. That he had allowed what was, for all intents and purposes, more of a stranger than an acquaintance do this to him. And even then, the sour cocktail of panic and shame that he knows should accompany that realization can’t break through the barrier of the silence in his head. One by one, John folds Gale’s hands into Gale’s own lap, then rubs an open palm down Gale’s spine, fingers catching once or twice on the fabric of his tshirt.

Again, Gale has the understanding that John finds him attractive. Again, whatever touch John gave him was entirely devoid of anything but friendly affection, if overly familiar.  

He feels it long after John’s hand pulls away and he stands, knees clicking. Offers out a hand to help Gale to stand, bracing him at the elbow as he wobbles.

“Slow– gonna sit you on the couch, right here.” 

Gale settles into the warm spot left behind by John’s vacancy. To his left sits John’s closed laptop. It’s covered in stickers– weed brands and bike shops and a few bands. In the left corner is a sticker for Kinkabu Studios, emblazoned with a camera and laurel leaves. 

“Where do you keep your cups?” John asks, wandering over into the kitchenette.

Again, Gale’s mind and lips two steps behind, “Um– still packed. I’ve been using the mug on the drying rack.” 

John inspects the mug for a moment, turning it this way and that before rinsing it out in the sink and filling it again with fresh water. When he brings it over, he doesn’t hold it out in offering to Gale, but instead raises it right to Gale’s lips, other hand cupping the back of his head. Out stubborns the way Gale freezes at the care given to him. And tilts it with perfect practice as he finally drinks. When he pulls it away– mostly empty save for a few mouthfuls– he uses a thumb to wipe Gale’s bottom lip dry. 

His eyes are bright again, intent and focused with laser intensity. Whatever this all is to John, the caretaking is part of it, too. 

A granola bar is produced from the depths of John’s backpack, unwrapped halfway so the wrapper serves to keep his hand clean, and offered to Gale. This he gets to hold himself, take bites at his own pace, the granola sweet with the occasional bit of dried fruit to add extra texture and flavor. It settles in Gale’s stomach. 

“Could do this myself, you know,” he says, voice sounding gravelly, like he’d just woken up from a nap. 

“Sure,” John hums, squatting by Gale’s knee to put the ropes back in his bag. It’s a strange reversal of their previous positions, and for some reason Gale feels the urge to join him on the floor. “But it’s also responsibility on my part that I make sure you’re in good standing when I walk out that door. Not hungry or thirsty or fuzzy in the head.” 

“Fuzzy in the head,” Gale repeats. 

“Yeah.” John gestures at the center of Gale’s forehead. “Don’t you feel it? You look it.”

Gale frowns at him, unsure what fuzzy-headed looks like. Unsure what he looks like, in this moment, that’s giving it away. He glances at his reflection in the refrigerator door, but it’s too warped to make out any real detail. What he feels like is his business.

“It’s what we want,” John goes on, reaching for the laptop, half across Gale’s lap, comfortable with his body even when it isn’t trussed up for him. “What I was telling you about, remember?” 

Gale nods.

“I’ll hang around until you’re feeling, like, eighty-ninety percent, and then jet. We can debrief tomorrow, or whenever you’re free next.” 

“And set up the next time?” Gale asks despite himself. 

John pauses in profile, and Gale can see half of his smile creeping across his face before he resumes tucking the laptop away. “Sure. If you want, after you’ve had some time to sleep on it.” 

Gale takes a bite of his granola, ears turning red. 

John checks in sometime around ten p.m. that night, two hours after he’d left. Checks that Gale is feeling alright still, isn’t sore still. Wishes him a good night after Gale’s confirmation. Gale stares at his phone so long wondering if he should ask about his body’s reaction, about the way John ignored it, that the screen goes dim and then black. When Gale does close his eyes, he falls asleep nearly instantly, body wrung out and relaxed like he’d had a long day’s work. 

He dreams about an empty rodeo stadium, the lights bright and the dust still drifting around as if everyone had just left. He’s laying on the ground, staring up at the stars above.

Chapter Text

Aftercare happens after a BDSM session is complete. This is the time when both partners check on one another to make sure that they're okay, get back into their "normal selves," and also just show each other appreciation for the experiences they share.

PART TWO 

“This place has amazing pastries,” Marge says, ducking under Gale’s arm holding the door open for her. The top of her head barely brushes his elbow. There’s a bruise high up on her neck in the shape of Rosie’s mouth. “You’ve gotta try one of their fruit tarts.” 

“Aren’t we going to dinner?” Gale asks dryly, the door tinkling shut behind them as they step into the small shop. It’s clearly close to closing time for them, most of the chairs up on tables, but there are still a few customers waiting patiently at the register. 

“Rosie’s running late,” Marge explains with an eye roll. “The firm is working him like a dog ‘cause he’s got no ability to turn down a request.” 

Gale glances at the love bite on her neck again and hums. 

The tarts are good. Gale savors his as they lean on the brick exterior to the left of the door, having quickly left after they paid to let the employees finish up. It’s the end of summer, the sun beginning to set around seven-thirty now, and he and Marge watch people enjoying the last golden bits of sun as they eat. 

“So what had you busy on Saturday night, huh?” Marge asks him, licking a flake of pastry from her upper lip, catching it with a hand when it starts to fall. 

Gale’s pause is minimal, a hesitation between one bite and the next. Marge has known him long enough that he knows she catches it. 

“You got friends I don’t know about?” she asks slyly, pale brows rising. 

“Maybe I do,” he answers lightly, licking his finger and picking the crumbs from his napkin before folding it carefully, wiping his hands. “Whole bunch of them, maybe.” 

Marge laughs. “And what’s their name?” 

Gale’s cheeks go hot and Marge makes a triumphant noise. 

“It wasn’t–” He catches himself, and rubs at his burning skin, as if that might dissipate the heat. Shakes. 

It doesn’t matter that Marge had gone to the same class as him, had met John same as he did, has, for all intents and purposes, more of a vested interest in this than Gale himself does. It feels like something Gale wants to protect– to keep quiet. Like there might be something about it Marge would mock him for, or be shocked by. He doesn’t want to be underestimated by her any more than he wants to be laughed at. 

“It wasn’t anything– serious.” 

There’s a sudden sparkle in Marge’s eye. “Gale Cleven, are you telling me you had a hook up?” 

His cheeks go hotter, burning now, and he starts walking down the street– uncaring if he’s heading in the direction they need to go for the restaurant. “Jesus, Marge, come on. Just ‘cause we went to that class together doesn’t mean I want to talk about those sort of– things.” 

Marge gives an undignified snort, jogging to catch up with him. “Things,” she mutters. “Alright, as long as you had fun with them, and weren’t just moping around in your apartment without me.”

Gale sets his jaw. “She was very nice.” 

Marge glances at him, and then knocks their shoulders together once again– moreso her shoulder against his bicep– and he drapes his arm around her shoulders in a hug as they walk.

 Two days pass before John checks in. Two days where Gale’s spine feels loose and lax in a way he had forgotten it could be, two days where he sleeps without his ears open for the sound of a breathing machine. Two days where he thinks about texting John first, apologizing for the fact that he’d gotten hard over a few knots and a little bit of silence. 

He hadn’t meant to.

John sends him a photo of a tomato display, their round bodies taut, red, tight with ripeness. 

John Egan (10:24 a.m.): These look ripe to you?

G. Cleven (10:25 a.m): Yes.

G. Cleven (10:25 a.m): Is this what we’re doing now? 

John Egan (10:26 a.m.): This being?

G. Cleven (10:27 a.m): Using fruit to see whether I’m freaking out or not.

G. Cleven (10:27 a.m): I’m not.

The lights click on in the lecture hall and Gale looks up from the phone on his lap. It’s an introductory meeting, welcoming all the candidates. He has a packet the size of a small textbook and a map carefully labeled, and a salad half eaten, all shoved to the side once the lights had been dimmed. His phone is dim enough that the light wasn’t a bother to anyone. 

John Egan (10:28 a.m.): Ok so you’re not. How are you feeling then?

G. Cleven (10:30 a.m): Fine. 

Gale sets his teeth to the inside of his cheek.

G. Cleven (10:32 a.m): Relaxed. 

John Egan (10:40 a.m.): I like to hear that.

Gale inhales, shoulders straightening, and though nobody is particularly close to him he glances around. What about it does John like to hear? A job well done, a customer satisfied? Does he enjoy that he had a profound effect on someone? Does it settle him? Arouse him? Had John gone home and touched himself to the idea of making a straight man kneel for him? Making him bear such a gentle touch for him. 

Gale drags a hand over his lower lip, glancing around again and resisting the urge to bounce his leg. His mother had raised him not to fidget. 

He calls John as soon as they’re dismissed. An hour free for lunch before Gale is meant to report to the observatory tour to be given a walk-through of the place he will be locked up inside for the next few years. He counts the rings of the phone while leant up against his car, arm crossed over his chest and fingers drumming against his ribs.

John sounds entirely unsurprised by the call, answering on the third ring and speaking without pause.

“Good call on the tomatoes, Buck. They’re gonna go great in a salad later. What’s up?”

“Did it turn you on?” 

Silence. 

Gale would cringe– take his words back, swallow them down deep in his stomach where they could never be spoken again, tucked somewhere between his kidneys and his spine. Only they’re out now, and Gale doesn’t take anything back. So, instead, he leans there, popping his knuckles with one hand and staring at the dots of students walking around campus, small like ants. He hears the sound of a car door opening, then an engine and a click, John’s voice coming out different as he connects, presumably, with his car’s speaker phone. Gale imagines him in some sleek machine, warm and comfortable and big enough to carry John’s size without making him look cramped. 

“Would it scare you if it did?”

Yes.

“No.”

He has no reason for it to scare him. 

John exhales, loud enough even the phone speaker picks it up. “Yeah, Buck. It did. But I didn’t– if at any point I made you feel–”

“It didn’t,” Gale interrupts quickly, glancing up as footsteps pass by. “No, John you were fine. Good. You didn’t do anything–” he glances up again, pitches his voice lower. “You followed the contract.”

“You can tell me if I didn’t.”

“No.” Gale pinches the bridge of his nose, screwing his face up for a moment as he tries to pin down the words he wants to say, tries to figure out how to string them together in a way that is able to come out. “At the end. When I got– when I reacted–”

John waits.

“We don’t talk about this,” Gale finishes, feeling small, impotent. Crushed by childhood conditioning and expectations. 

“I do,” John says easily.

He does. That’s the part, the biggest part. Out of all of it, that is the part that sets John apart from everyone else. He isn’t the exception to the rules of acceptability, but so far outside them that they no longer matter. Not an impartial subject, but in fact so partial it becomes the entire point of him. John is safe. 

Gale is alone again, save for someone smoking on the other side of the parking lot– too far away to hear anything. “In the end, when I got hard–”

The silence from the other end of the phone feels a thousand pounds heavy. He knows John is listening intently. 

“–I’m sorry,” he finally settles for. “If that made things strange for you– or confused you.”

More silence. The sound of a turn indicator clicking, wheels on asphalt for a second. Then John speaks. “Nah, Buck. No. It didn’t make anything strange or confusing for me, are you kidding? We were playing with sensory shit, I was messing around with touch and pressure in that whole area. It’s no different than your hair standing on end. Your body reacted to a sensation the way it thought was appropriate.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Gale says firmly. 

“Not a thing, man. If it happens again I can just ignore it again.” Another pause, then a slight exhale, like John is laughing at himself. Gale pictures the full width of his smile. “If you want there to be an again, I mean.”

Gale scuffs his foot across the pavement, reaching into his pocket for a stick of gum., He crushes it between his molars. “Said I did.” 

“Oh, say it slow.” 

Startled into a smile, Gale chuckles. Shakes his head. “No, Bucky. But I– I should pay you this time. I saw your rates.”

“Yeah, how much do grad students make?” 

“I’m not a leech.” 

“How about this,” John drawls, and Gale pictures him driving one-handed, body lounging, window half-rolled so the wind teases the edges of his curls, “I’m down a practice model right now, and I’ve got some things I’ve been percolating. You let me workshop ties with you during our sessions, and I don’t charge you a dime ‘cause you’re a glorified mannequin.” 

“You get a lot of girls with that pick up line?” Gale asks dryly, scuffing at the asphalt again. 

“Nah, doll, just takes a smile and a few knots.” 

Gale sucks the inside of his cheek. Imagines again, for a second, the rope marks on his arms that had stayed stubbornly visible on his skin long after John left. “You’re conceited, John Egan.” 

“So that’s a yes, huh?” 

Gale smiles again.

Again, John visits Gale Saturday night. Again, he has Gale kneel and puts him in a tie that ends with his cheek on John’s knee, prostrate like a worshipper. It’s calm, meditative. Not that different from the first tie, but a little more refined, laid a little smoother on the lines of Gale’s body. Holds him just as tight and grounded and present as John strokes Gale’s hair, traces the slope of his nose with a light finger, picking away at his emails. 

It’s like waking from a dream.

“Would you let me have you shirtless?” John asks next week, looking up at Gale from across the table, brows raised. He’s got a pencil between his teeth in such a clearly affected gesture that the theatricality of it circles right back around to being endearing. 

Gale glances around, but the coffee shop patio is deserted once again. He clasps his hands over his stomach and looks John in the eye right back. “Sure.” 

John’s mouth quirks. “You sayin’ that ‘cause you think I’m gonna second guess you?”

Craning his neck to see the scribbled checklist, series of notes, self-comments, all written in shockingly delicate handwriting, Gale raises his eyebrows. “I said sure.”

John makes a note with an exaggerated stop at the end. Too far away for Gale to read the contents, but he can tell they’re yet not at the bottom of the list. John speaks without looking up. “Still feeling fine on the touching– platonic only, praise, humiliation, blindfolds, etc?” 

He pronounced the etc. childishly. Like et-kuh. 

“Still fine.” Gale swallows past his fuzzy tongue. 

“How about pet names?” 

“Fine,” Gale repeats, worrying his thumbnail into the back of his hand, cheeks heating. 

“And if you get hard again–” 

Gale’s spine stiffens. 

“–we’ll ignore it.” John stares at him for a long moment. “Unless you–”

“No,” Gale says quickly, shaking his head to make sure the refusal comes across clear. “No it’s– No.” 

John makes another note. “Anything you didn’t like?”

“No,” Gale says, again. Then, begrudgingly, “You know what you’re doing.” 

John’s mouth quirks. He looks genuinely pleased, gaze flickering over Gale, eyes like the shadowed parts of a summer creek. Dark and blue and cool. Lighter brown here and there, soft hazel sun rays. His skin is tan this late in the summer, but Gale can see a paler line around his throat where a chain rested, like he never took it off. Like he might lose some of that bronze come winter. If Gale is around that long to see. 

“Is there anything you want to do?” John asks finally. “This is a two-way street, Buck. You can suggest things too.” 

“I make a habit of not wanting things,” Gale jokes. But he thinks his delivery might be a bit too dry, or his face too serious, tone too steady, because John just fixes him with another long look. Gale taps at the plate from his long-eaten pastry, nail tickling faintly against the ceramic. Stops himself from fidgeting by taking the time to fit a stick of gum between his lips. John watches the action. 

“You wanted this,” he says, gesturing between himself and Gale.

Gale glances around again– once again. Again and again he looks, every time feeling like there are eyes peering over his shoulder, judgement ready to be meted out for their transgressions– the crime of wanting something other than the regular. John looks as at ease as Gale doesn’t feel, watching Gale still with an uncomfortable discernment, and Gale wishes he didn’t find him so unfathomably easy to talk to. It would be easier to not explore any of this, if John was just a little less likeable.

There’s too many reasons as to why Gale refuses to respond. He’d rather not think about them. “Do you have any other questions for me?” he asks instead.

John’s eyes glitter with that same predator interest, like Gale’s said something intriguing, or he can sense that he’s touched a nerve and there’s a part of him that wants to press further, press harder. Gale wonders what he’s like with his other clients, the other people he’s tied up. If he is as restrained with them, or if he held back for Gale, cognizant of his skittishness.

Gale doesn’t want kid gloves. He doesn’t want to be coddled. 

“Yeah,” John says. “Saturday again?” 

“I’ve got a call with my mother at seven, but we should be done by seven-thirty.” 

It’s obvious, the way John files that information away. A twitch of his cheek, a purse of his soft lips, lashes short but thick and tangling together when he looks down with a casual nod.

On Thursday, John asks Gale to send him photos of the apartment, which Gale takes with careful attention to the boxes still scattered about. He almost sends them through before hesitating and bothering to ask why. 

John Egan (2:30 p.m.): Just checking on your progress : ) 

John Egan (2:57 p.m.): How would you feel about setting up in your bedroom this time?

It gives Gale pause, looking around the bare bones room. Bed and sheets and dresser and a closet with empty hangers and boxes of clothes he hasn’t put away yet because he’s been living in the same four economic outfits except for a few Marge had instructed him to wear to dinners. The striped shirt he’d first met John in draped over a chair because it was indeed nice like Marge had said. Bookshelf empty, a few frames stacked and ready to be hung when he has the time, the energy found in spurts between the coursework slowly being piled on. There isn’t much here to be possessive, protective, or self-conscious of– beyond the fact there isn’t much at all to the room. It’s a place to sleep, a place to lie awake at night and think until his mind is too sore to think any more. To lay there and touch the bruise of ropes on his body, pressing down slow and firm like he might bring them back fresh. To remember John’s touch and John’s voice and the sound of his breathing– healthy and unassisted. 

But change is something to be leery of.

G. Cleven (3:10 p.m.): That’s fine.

John sends him the definition link for enthusiastic consent and Gale finds himself smiling, alone in his room. 

And on Saturday, at seven thirty-two, nearly on the dot, the buzzer for the door sounds, announcing John’s arrival.

“I gotta go, Mama,” Gale rasps, his fingertips already beginning to static with anticipation, stomach twisting around itself. “I know–” he says, heading for the front of the apartment, “I know, Mama, I promise I’ll get to it. But I’ve got to go, really, I’ll talk to you. Maybe come visit. Next week?” 

He doesn’t want to promise that, doesn’t want to find the time to drive the hours-long drive out to that fading house to help her clean out another room of his dad’s things. Medical equipment, half-finished projects, family heirlooms that he and his mother had never known the story behind but were forbidden to touch. Ghosts in a ghost house. 

But the offer mollifies her, gets him off the phone in time to open the door for John, who is leaning against the frame idly scrolling through his phone. His hair and collar are damp again from a recent shower, cologne and shampoo and clean human skin all a perfume that wafts in with the draft of the door opening. He has a scrape on the outside of his forearm, raw and scabby. Road rash, Gale is more than certain, and he itches at it idly before he throws an arm around Gale’s shoulder in a hugged greeting. Pulls away before Gale can process, react, decide whether to hug John back or not. If it’s weirder to hug him than it is to rest, half asleep, on his knee.  

He smells clean up close, too. 

“Wasn’t interrupting, was I?” John asks, glancing at the phone in Gale’s hand and shouldering the now familiar backpack as he steps into Gale’s space, looking around curiously. It’s always a little different when John comes, new things unpacked or arranged around differently as Gale learns the space. Gale has been learning the space, unpacking new things and arranging them in new ways. It’s always a little differrent when John comes. The TV is new, as is the record player in the corner, and he has a functioning kitchen now, as long as he isn’t too ambitious with his cooking expertise. 

Gale doesn’t know why he’s being so slow to settle into the space. The urge to unpack comes about in fits and starts. At odd hours, like late at night when Gale can’t sleep, and in moments of frustration trying to find a needed object. In the aftermath of his searching, the open guts of the boxes make him twitchy, and he’s forced to find homes for everything. 

There’s a few more pictures on the wall between the kitchen and the living area, mostly of him and Marge through the years, gangly and awkward and smiling. John makes no effort to be subtle in his examination of them, grinning at their awkward prom photo and the inches between their bodies as they posed for photos. He raps a knuckle against the glass lightly, hardly enough to even shift the frame. 

“Nice tie.”

Gale frowns. “No, you weren’t interrupting,” he says a moment late, dropping his phone on the counter and setting it to silent– it felt too obvious setting it to do not disturb, especially now that Marge knows something is up. 

But not even remotely what she expected or assumed. He doesn’t think she’s going to show up, banging on the door demanding to meet his mystery lover, but he doesn’t want to give her any extra reason to pry.

“All good with your mom?” John asks, the careful note in his voice perhaps imagined as he ambles further into the room, kicking his shoes off by the shoe mat. His socks are white, unable to hide the bony knuckles of his toes, his heavy weight divoting the carpet around them. 

“Yeah,” Gale says. “Yeah she’s–” he waves vaguely, up towards the ceiling, over his shoulder, like the old superstition of throwing salt over it to ward off evil.

“My mom keeps mailing me her homemade health food stuff no matter how many times I tell her it arrives rotten,” John says, not setting the bag down, but leaning against the counter, crossing an arm across his chest in a way that folds his body exactly no amount smaller than it already was. “I think last time she suggested it was my bad energies making the food spoil instead of, you know, the August heat.”

Humor relaxes Gale’s shoulders, and he tries not to let the amusement show on his mouth, but he can feel his lips twitch. Or, perhaps, it’s just the way John smiles back that shows that he’s failed. 

“Wow,” he says flatly and John grins even wider, reaching out to tap a finger under Gale’s chin. 

“You still good to do this in the bedroom?”

Gale’s mouth goes dry and he glances into the room over John’s shoulder. Door cracked, boxes everywhere and his bed carefully made with military precision. 

For a minute, Gale is struck with the fact that John is all but a stranger, who’s going to have Gale helpless, at his mercy, in Gale’s own home. And then he remembers John’s hands on his skin, and the softness of his voice, and the careful way his fingers followed the natural flow of Gale’s hair when he ran them through it. 

“Said I was, didn’t I?” 

John’s grin turns crooked. “Firstly, consent can be withdrawn at any moment, Buck.” He’s got a finger held up between them, counting off like a stern instructor. “Second, the more you push and throw your ballsy little weight around doing shit that makes you uncomfortable, the more I’m going to want to push and make you uncomfortable. Whatever you’re getting out of this, that shit gets me off.” 

Gale thinks about smacking John’s finger away, just to see what buttons it’ll push. Has the restraint not to glance down, not to wonder what reaction he may have already started. That’s not what this is about, not what Gale wants out of this. And he still doesn’t understand what John is getting out of the arrangement when it’s so clear this is normally something sensual, sexual, for him. It sends Gale reeling, just a bit, for John to tell him flat and to his face that anything Gale did is arousing to him. John hadn’t hidden it, but he’d never said it so directly, either. 

“We’re still fine for the bedroom,” Gale says firmly, pulse fluttering, feeling giddy like he’s just been bucked off a horse and stuck the landing. 

John’s eyes glitter. “Shirt off then, doll.” 

If this were a regular moment, a romance, like he was pretending to Marge, this would be the point where they kissed. And there’s tension there, a tightness to the air, a lack of breathability that makes Gale’s lungs ache, but it’s not what they’re here for and the tension is the anticipation for the ropes, the curiosity for what John has planned. It’s clear that whatever happens this evening will be a ramp up, a challenge. What they’re doing is different, and Gale has the distinct understanding that it’ll be harder. There’s something calculating in John’s eyes. Something mischievous. 

Gale tugs his shirt over his head as he walks into the bedroom, an easy few steps because his apartment isn’t really all that big. 

He can feel John at his back, a warm presence and shift of air, and after a quick approval, John sets the backpack on the desk by the door and looks around again curiously. Gale stands there for a moment, shirtless, silly, goosebumps on his skin because he likes the apartment a little chilled to sleep. 

John gives him a slow once over, and Gale tenses up until he realizes that the attention is all clinical, eyes contemplative, thoughtful, a plan forming behind them that Gale can, at the very least, see the vague shape of. John is planning his angle of attack. 

Then he sets the backpack on the bed and Gale has to fight his shoulders to stop them from slumping in relief. The bedroom is one thing, it isn’t much of a haven for him yet, too new and strange. But the idea of conducting any of this on the bed is–

Well. 

That’s something altogether different. 

“I’m going to push you today,” John says conversationally, the tendons of his forearm flexing as he draws out the rope again– pink this time. Gale is more fixated on that than the words being spoken to him. “Training wheels are coming off, Buck.” 

“That’s fine,” Gale says. 

The buzzing is already starting in his head and he embraces it with some level of eagerness, breaths deep and steady but a little quicker than at rest. He knows he will feel each one with more intensity once the ropes wrap around his body. 

John fixes him with another look, eyes bright like Gale has challenged him. And maybe he has, his flippancy, the cool neutrality of a fine like blood in the water for a man as intense as John is. 

“‘That’s fine, Bucky’,” he corrects Gale, stepping forward and taking Gale’s chin between thumb and forefinger, squeezing until Gale feels it in his bones. Feels the bruise of it long after John drops his grip down to Gale’s waist, right above the elastic of his briefs peeking above his jeans and gives his torso a squeeze. 

“Christ, you’re slim,” John muses quietly, hands not quite big enough to meet in the middle until he slides them forward, thumbs pressing just below Gale’s bellybutton. 

Gale tries not to let it mean anything, the touch perfunctory, firm, not quite as tight as the ropes but enough to feel the press of John’s ropework callouses every time he breathes. There’s goosebumps on his skin that he tries not to take notice of, telling himself it’s just the temperature of the room. But John’s hands are warm. They stroke over the muscles of Gale’s stomach affectionately.

Touch. Praise. Agreed upon previously, and even though Gale knows he’s got the word to stop it all if it’s too much, it isn’t too much. It’s just a lot. 

“Might have some extra rope left over,” John teases and Gale is suddenly viscerally aware that John has to tilt his head down, just a touch, to speak to him. 

“How do you want me, Bucky?” Gale says. 

John blinks, his ears going a little flush, and Gale is beginning to notice his tells of when Gale has excited him. 

“Here is fine.”

His knuckles brush Gale’s stomach as he flicks the button of Gale’s jeans, and Gale makes a half aborted noise, tensing. John doesn’t pull away but he does pause, mouth flat of all humor, eyes dark, watching and waiting; not like he’s stopping for permission but rather like he’s waiting for Gale to get with the program. 

Here is the start of the challenge.

Gale swallows. Adjusts the way his jaw sits behind his lips and then takes a steadying breath.

The sound of his zipper is loud in the quiet room and he fights the urge to close his eyes. Closes them anyway when John kneels to tug his jeans down his hips. 

“Step out,” John says, tapping Gale’s knee like he’s a child. 

Gale does. Does the same for the other leg when John prompts him. Feels the tickle of his own leg hair against John’s skin as he braces himself against one thigh to stand back up. He’s so focused on worrying about whether he’s going to get hard again that he barely notices John setting the ropes up until the first loop goes around his waist. He makes another noise and John looks up. 

“Too tight?”

“No, Bucky.” 

John’s palm cups his face in a gentle pat, and then he gets back to work. 

This, aside from the times where Gale sinks right to the bottom of the snowdrifts in his mind, is the most meditative moment. The ropes going around him, constricting his body tighter, holding him together and inside himself. John’s hands on him, pressing and pushing and tugging gently, manipulating him like a living art piece. Nothing but the two of them breathing in the silence of the room, John offering an occasional check-in on if things are too tight, too uncomfortable. 

“No, Bucky,” or, “Maybe a little higher up, Bucky.” 

He ends up with a latticework up his chest, framing the muscles around his ribs, the divots beneath his pectorals, the round curves of his shoulders with the way his arms get bound behind him; that same braided pattern, more familiar, looped between his fingers, holding them in reverse prayer. It’s a cage around his entire upper body, pressing tight when he inhales deeply per John’s instructions, exhaling until it goes only just slightly loose. He closes his eyes and does it again, on his own, just to feel it, and hears John exhale slowly, too. 

A warm palm on the back of his neck, squeezing and rubbing until Gale lets his head fall forward.

“Feels good?”

He nods. “Feels good, Bucky, thank you.” 

The huff of a smile. “Look at those manners, huh? My pleasure, Buck.” 

Gale shivers. Fights back against the urge to fold fully into the warmth of John’s body, even as he cups Gale’s chin again, lifting Gale’s head up until he knows he’s supposed to open his eyes to meet John’s.

He’s looking down his nose at Gale, eyes hungry, dark, tracing over the lines cut into Gale’s body, and he doesn’t have a mirror in here to see it himself but he can feel it. John is still holding the end of the rope, all but a leash between them, physical connection like an umbilical cord and Gale swears, for a moment, he can feel John’s pulse traveling from the skin of his palm all the way around Gale wherever those ropes rest. He tries to breathe in tune with it. 

John has a scar across the bridge of his nose, like it had once been broken. Adding to the long-healed eyebrow wound, the pits on his knuckles, a body that has been put through a life without regard for safety nets. The nose scar is still slightly pink, like it’s the newest of the batch. On someone else, it might make them look rough, but for John it just blends in with the rest of him; especially when he smiles and all the silver lines disappear. 

John leans forward and presses their foreheads together, hand sliding around to the back of Gale’s neck to hold them in light contact. Gale can feel the puff of air from John’s long elegant nose against his lips, feel the sweaty point of contact where John’s skin touches his own. His fingers twitch slightly against the back of Gale’s neck, like they’re struggling to remain still, even at rest. 

It’s an intimate touch, but an acceptable one. John’s lips are far enough away they make no contact with Gale’s when he speaks.

“I’ve got a task for you today, Buck.” His voice is low, slow, warm like the fuzz of whiskey and yellow lights. 

His fingers scratch up Gale’s neck and then grip tight at the hair at the back of Gale’s head, down by the root, and pull until Gale is looking up at him again. The hold would hurt, his weight carried by the strands and the tightness of John’s fist, but he does it so slow that it merely aches like a well-stretched muscle. Just enough to make Gale swallow back a sound, just enough to send warmth rushing down his spine, sparing a little bit for his cheeks on its way down. 

“You know what I want you to do?” John asks him.

Gale knows what John is doing. He’s not stupid. He feels small for a moment, anyway. “No, Bucky.” 

“That’s alright, Buck,” John says, like Gale needs to be forgiven. “I’ll tell you anyways, I’m good like that.” 

Gale isn’t sure if he’s meant to agree, if John wants ego fluffing. Normally he would balk at the notion, but he thinks maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. John has been good to him, understanding of how strange this all is, how strange Gale is. He wonders if John ties up other men who have no interest in fucking about it after. He isn’t sure which answer he wants, what answer he would feel better about. To know he’s the only, and therefore the exceptional; or that there is nothing novel about this at all to John. 

John continues speaking anyway. 

“Kinda noticed you’ve been here a while and still are livin’ out of boxes. Which, personally, I know I function pretty horrible with clutter– I dunno about you. But you kinda strike me as the sorta guy who likes things tidy. Tell me I’m wrong.” 

Wordless, Gale shakes his head. John grins again, jostling Gale in approval. Gale–

–is already hard.

Not really, not fully. A small bit, probably unnoticeable to anyone besides himself, only there in the itch and the ache and the way his briefs sit a little different around his groin. 

“Of course I’m right,” John says conversationally. “Look at you: buttoned up and pretty. Nice cologne, you got your iron unpacked but not your shirts. You like things the way I do; clean and in order. So how come you’re sittin’ around with all these boxes?”

The ropes stop moving for a second, as Gale stops breathing. “I don’t know, Bucky.” 

Maybe he does, maybe he would, if he wanted to think about it. 

Normally Gale is, sometimes to his own shame, a good liar. But he’s trussed and tied and off his game, and so there’s a faint wobble to his voice that gives away his own lack of sincerity. John’s eyes are heavy, the blue gone grey in the yellow overhead light, the sun setting outside. His soft lips purse, almost too plush and wide to be handsome, if the rest of him wasn’t also as wide. 

“Well,” he says, “you’re going to do some unpacking today.” 

With a drop that Gale feels in his stomach, John releases Gale, fingers sliding out of his hair. Still aching from the tight grip, the absence leaves Gale to carry his weight on his own in a way that feels more like a loss than freedom. As he watches, John steps out of his space, walking over to one of the boxes. 

He doesn’t pause, doesn’t look over at Gale.  He simply opens the flaps as if to start digging around inside.

Gale makes an aborted noise of protest, half stepping forward.] Inside is just clothes, of course, but Gale isn’t the sort to just allow anyone to rifle through his things. As John rests one heavy palm on a stack of shirts, Gale flushes with irritation, indignation, discomfort– all held inside him by the ropes, the pressure building as John meets his eyes and grins, like he knows he’s pushing a button. 

He pulls open the top dresser drawers, where there are only a few scant articles of clothing: things that have already gone through the worn and washed cycle.

“Come on,” John says. “Socks and underwear on top, right?” 

There’s floodlights in Gale’s mind. Illuminating the heavy dust drifting around metal pens. Aluminum bleachers. An announcer’s voice too garbled to be understood unless you know the accent. 

“Buck,” John prompts. Pushing. 

The gates open.

Gale steps forward, up to the box, up until his bound shoulder brushes the center of John’s chest, and stares down at the contents. There’s a buzzing in his ears, in his whole body, face hot and tight, and he feels a little bit of nausea, dancing around the edges of himself. Not like he’s going to vomit, but like he wants to. Like he wants to want to. His hands are bound, posture kept ramrod straight enough to be respectable. He has to bend at the waist to reach down, smelling cheap cardboard and his own laundry detergent, and he thinks John also dabs his cologne around his torso because the smell is strong, again, down here. 

All of this, Gale realizes, is complete insanity. 

It takes a few tries, Gale learning how much he has to commit to what he’s doing. Grip not tight enough, not across enough surface area– but he emerges from the box after a few moments, a pair of clean and bundled together socks clenched between his teeth.

The cotton dries his mouth almost instantly, velcroeing fuzzily to his tongue, pressing strangely against the corners of his mouth, and he feels a bit like vomiting again, a bit like shaking to pieces. A lot like there’s someone about to open the door again, catch him doing something wrong again. The ropes hold it all together, hold him all together, and when he meets John’s eyes expecting amusement or scorn or maybe even disappointed neutrality, he instead finds them bright and hungry and approving. 

“Look at you,” John says, reaching around the sock to brush a thumb across the stretched hinge of Gale’s jaw. “Go on, go put it away, Buck.” 

Gale goes. 

It’s near silent in the room, nothing but the creak of floorboards under Gale’s feet and his own shaky breaths in his ears as he approaches the dresser, bends over again, and drops the pair of socks onto the small pile already there in the top drawer. 

Then he turns, goes back, and retrieves a second pair of socks– black this time, softer than the first, a little newer. Brings them to the dresser. 

“Atta boy,” John says quietly. 

Gale, face turned away from John, to the wall where it can’t be seen, closes his eyes hard until they ache. 

John watches him put away a few more articles of clothing with his teeth, hovering nearby as if Gale would need further assistance or instruction. There’s something to that– the careful watching, the stern expectation– and Gale’s been in a battle with his body this entire time. He knows there’s no way to hide himself, nearly naked like this, and he’d felt weird making sure his underwear was clean, new, looked nice on his hips, but now it’s a relief. He focuses on nothing but his task, on the ropes holding him down and together, staving off anything further. 

John watches until he’s satisfied, until Gale has put away a few more pairs of socks, a shirt or two, the larger fabric flopping against his chest awkwardly, and settles on the bed to observe. 

Despite previous habit, he doesn’t pull out his laptop, but instead sits cross-legged at the foot of Gale’s bed, one large hand anchoring a large, bony ankle close, and watches the process with that same intense approval. 

In some way, Gale is grateful. The tether of John’s eyes holds him the same as the ropes do, like John still holds the other end tucked somewhere in the back knots. Keeps him on task as he ferries clothes from the boxes to the dresser. 

His palms are sweating. 

Heartbeat loud in his own ears, breathing too, through his nose even when his mouth isn’t occupied, and now and again John speaks to praise his obedience.

The approval hits like a slap, a kick to the chest. Gale wants to spit the shirt out and tell John to quit it, the words insincere except for the way John really sounds like he means it when he says Gale is doing a good job at such a simple task. Simple for what it is. Impossible for the way it’s become a humiliation ritual, a struggle, using his mouth like an animal, bending in a way that feels exposed, exhibitionist, putting on a show for an audience of one. He knows John is looking. 

He doesn’t do anything about it, doesn’t adjust his movements or change his stance because there’s nothing to be done. His arms are bound, his chest and stomach beginning to rub pleasantly raw against the ropes. There’s sweat around his temples now, too, and his heart won’t stop beating like hoofs in red clay dust. Muffled, soft. But intense like thunder. The ropes keep him breathing, pushing back in when he exhales, loosening when he’s fully emptied his lungs so he fills them again, and it’s still the only noise in the room except for his own footsteps and John’s quiet voice. 

“Do you think you can open the next box?” 

Gale pauses, halfway back to the stack, flexing his jaw a few times and then tugs against his restraints, just to see if he could slip free. 

“No, Bucky.”

John’s eyebrows rise. “No?”

Gale’s face flushes. 

He shakes his head. 

John drops both feet to the ground, leaning back on his hands. “Well, what do we do when we need help?”

There’s a ringing in Gale’s ears, and he stares at John feeling stupid. Humiliated that John’s made him feel stupid. Humiliated that he feels that way at all, because it’s John who has put him in this situation in the first place. He knows this is all a game of chess, knows the game is meant for him to lose. Somehow he’s shocked he’s losing anyways. 

He’s going to get hard again.

No rhyme or reason to that part.

“I can’t open the box myself,” Gale says, and then, under more of John’s expectant silence, clenches his fingers behind him as far as they will go. By the way John’s eyes drop to the flex of his arms and a faint smirk crosses his face, Gale knows the gesture was seen. 

“I need help, Bucky,” he says. 

The smirk becomes a full grin, wide and sweet and shocking every time. Gale doesn’t think he’s ever seen a face so well suited to a smile.

John stands, body swaying easily with its own weight, a swagger if he was a little more obnoxious about it, and ambles around Gale to put aside the now-empty cardboard box. He rips the tape from the bottom one easily, barely any resistance to it, the movement quick and fluid. Balls it up and tosses it with perfect baseball precision into the wastebasket by the door. Opens the flaps for Gale as well, bending them so they stay open, and then pats the bundle of clothes inside like a welcome mat, gesturing Gale over.

He has to kneel to reach this one.

It’s lower to the floor, low enough that Gale would topple over trying to bend and reach, and with no arms to catch himself it would be a bloody nose or a bitten tongue or a broken jaw. Even kneeling without the counterbalance of his arms is a struggle he would have to take slow. He balks at the idea at first, standing looking down at the box and trying to convince himself to just do it, that he’s in this deep, gone this far, knows this is his way out even if he doesn’t want to take it. He just wants to not feel like the world is crashing down. 

“I did tell you I was going to push you,” John reminds him, arms crossed over his chest. He looks so calm, so relaxed, like this is all a normal occurrence. And for John it is, it is normal. It’s all regular. All of this is regular and Gale is the freak, because he’s the one finding it strange, unusual, wrong. 

And still he enjoys it.

Gale kneels slowly, body leaning as he goes down onto one knee, then the other, abdominals aching slightly as he works not to lose his balance. Looks down at the clothes, much more accessible now, and once again bends to reach with his mouth, teeth, tongue.

He pauses, mouth open and eyes shut, body shaking visibly now, breath coming uneven, despite the embrace of the rope.

He can’t.

Long seconds pass. Gale can count them by the staccato of his heart and the pace of his breaths, even as they shake. Then a creak of floorboards as John crouches, his voice coming close to Gale’s ear, tone a little quieter, more gentle than it was previous. Even though it’s just them, his words are pitched even more soft, more private.

“You remember your safeword?”

“Yes, Bucky,” he rasps. 

“Do you need to use it?”

Gale shakes his head. 

A faint rustle, the weight of John leaning over Gale, his arm brushing against Gale’s cheek as he reaches into the box. Gale keeps his eyes shut, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his face, down over his collarbone where it’s wicked away by the rope. 

John holds the folded jeans up to Gale’s mouth.

And Gale thinks of the gum he spit into John’s palm. He thinks of a bit held to a horse’s mouth in quiet offer. Trust me. Accept me. Be subservient to me of your own free will. 

“This is a nice pair,” John says quietly.

Gale has never broken a horse himself. Knows how to ride and how to handle a rough steed, but he’s never started fresh, taught a horse how to be and what it was for. Has seen it plenty, has watched the rough-skinned cowboys spit and curse and cover themselves with dust trying to convince skeptical two-year-olds that the saddle on their back is an acceptable weight and the halter around their head ignorable. Even when done with gentleness, there were a few tantrums here and there, times where a horse simply had to learn to get over itself. But even then, rarely did they reach right out and take the bit from their handler’s palm. 

Maybe if they knew better they wouldn’t fight. Knew their freedom was something that had been slowly bred out of them. But they were young enough to still cling to it in some small way before human intervention. 

Gale isn’t sure if he’s smarter than a horse, or simply less strong-willed.

He opens his mouth and takes the pants, having to bite down to accommodate for the weight of them, cheeks so hot the air feels cool against them. His eyes burn and he blinks several times until the feeling vanishes. The ringing in his ears fuzzes out into static as he stands, slowly, stomach aching with how he has to clench every muscle so as not to lose his balance. John is looking at him, eyes so bright and hot, face flushed so blotchy and handsome, that it makes Gale dizzy for a moment. 

The approval, the excitement, the hunger there is so apparent that Gale can only stare. 

John nods towards the dresser, brow raised, lips pursed. “Right over there, Buck.”   

Gale’s heartbeat in his ears hits like thunder as he walks over to the dresser, to the drawer that John opens for him because that is truly beyond his capabilities and his mouth is too full to ask for help. Places them inside, where the jeans sit, denim wet in the shape of his mouth, soaked through with the indentations, the print of his tongue. 

He breathes, forehead pressed against the dresser for a moment, wood slippery against his sweaty forehead, body about to shake apart if it weren’t for the binds tying him. He is hard, fully and inexplicably, and it itches at him awkwardly as he stands again, walking back to the box. Kneeling again, wood floor unforgiving against his knees, body bending in half to reach into the box. Another pair of pants. Another journey across the room. 

There’s not a thought in his head left to be had, nothing but that image of the calf’s eye, black and liquid and reflecting perfectly the stars above. 

By the time he’s finished unpacking, he’s panting, sweating, sore like he’s been beat up or dragged behind a truck or thrown by a horse– his knees, thighs, abdominal muscles. 

John has moved back to the bed, sitting politely at the foot of it, hands clasped between the wide spread of his knees, elbows on his thighs, gaze like a leash following Gale around the room. Tethering him now in the center as he stands there, waiting for the next part. With a creak of the mattress, unused to a frame larger than Gale’s own, John stands again, tugging on the waistline of his jeans, adjusting them around his hips, the dip of them just visible before he sets himself fully to rights. And the way he touches Gale when he draws close enough to is entirely proprietary, squeezing across his jaw in a way that’s becoming familiar, swiping a bead of sweat up into his temples with a thumb. Petting around to the back where John scritches the damp strands there. Gives him an approving pat, gentler than Gale might have expected. 

His hand is so big the heel sits on one side of Gale’s spine and the fingertips tickle the opposite ear. John squeezes lightly until Gale registers the cue and looks up. 

“You’re going to do one more thing for me, Buck.” 

The bottom falls out from Gale’s stomach. The quiet hope that this challenge was over, that he was done and could rest and could perhaps, maybe, just lay his head on John’s thigh again for a few moments slipping away. The disappointment is electric, sways him, until he thinks he might weep. 

He nods. 

John’s hand feels like a lead weight on the back of Gale’s neck. A leash. A brand. A collar. His palm is dry and rough, his fingers long. “You’re going to repeat after me. Say ‘thank you, Bucky’.”

Gale’s mouth is unwilling to work for several moments, low and croaking when the words do come out. “Thank you, Bucky.” 

“‘My room looks much better now, Bucky’.”

Some part of Gale wants to smile. Might have, if his head wasn’t so full of snow and static. “My room looks much better now, Bucky.” 

“‘I enjoyed that, Bucky’.”

“I– enjoyed that, Bucky.”

Silence. Gale’s head has somehow found its way to the firm support of John’s broad shoulder, t-shirt fabric rough under his cheek. Then he feels John tilt his head, leaning in close.

“Do you mean it,” John asks quietly in his ear, “or are you just trying to be good for me?”

There’s no way John doesn’t feel the jump in Gale’s pulse, the stutter in his breath. They’re too close for him to not. “I don’t know, Bucky.”

Now John’s exhale is shaky. “Thank you for your honesty, Buck.” His fingers squeeze Gale’s neck again, jostle him a bit– just gently, like the sway of a cradle. “Go sit on the bed.” 

A flash of childish fear, phrase steeped in memory, but Gale goes, sets himself down gingerly, muscles warm, tense from overuse. John follows, hand stroking over Gale’s shoulder and down one arm like inspecting a prize horse. And then begins untying him. 

Gale’s head drops on its stem, hair brushing against John’s shirt as he works over his body in reverse, freeing his arms and then his torso. The same gentle massage over the marks pressed into his skin. Deeper grooves this time, the ropes tighter or Gale’s time spent in them longer or simply the monumentality of everything making them feel deep as caverns, every ridge pressed with pink perfection into the alternating pale and golden-tan of Gale’s skin. John’s hands are steady and intimate, and he once again ignores the reaction of Gale’s body. By this point Gale is beyond caring, doesn’t even feel the urge to do anything about it, really, body wrung out and used up and thoughts as sore as his physical form. He starts when John’s fingers grasp the waistband of his underwear, but it’s only to adjust them higher on his hips where they’d been shoved down by the ropes. His hands trace up Gale’s ribs, over the divots and crevices left by the ropes, squeezing at his shoulderblades, the top of his spine, his forearm. 

There’s still the thin t-shirt between Gale and John, but he feels the other man’s heartbeat all the same, thudding in a steady drum against his chest. 

John is talking, a soft low ramble, tone clear he isn’t much concerned with whether Gale is paying attention. 

“–skin marks up like a dream, this nice pink color, you don’t even know what a dream you are. No idea how good you are, Christ. You worked so hard for me, doll.” 

Gale’s next swallow is oddly wet. 

He lifts his head and somehow manages to hum out that he’s thirsty, maybe more a lift of his hand towards his throat and a thought. John reads him easily and sits him further back onto the bed, like he’s worried Gale might topple over, and then vanishes for several moments where Gale tries to figure out why his heart is pounding. Impossible to focus on anything else until he hears John whistle low and familiar from the other room, drawing closer along with his footsteps. 

Once again, John holds the glass for him, hand on the back of his neck to cup his head, pouring slow and steady as Gale, this time, opens his mouth obediently. 

Drinks his fill. 

One he’s done John thumbs away a trickle that’s escaped. Sets the empty glass on the dresser. Turns back to Gale with hands on the broad span of his hips. 

“Did you set out the clothes I’d asked you to?”

“Yes, Bucky,” Gale says. 

John’s mouth curves into a smile, and then he turns towards the nightstand, where Gale had been instructed to set a comfortable shirt and pair of loose pants. Had done so last night, gut squirming in a way he could not place, fingers smoothing out any wrinkles he could find. Now he gets dressed in them– first the shirt over his head and arms through the sleeves, then pants up over his hips, John tugging the hem of his shirt free after. Nothing exciting, a pair of dark grey sweatpants with a long-broken elastic waistband and a worn t-shirt with a local rodeo logo on the front. Then he’s sat back down and a palm cups his cheek. He watches John stare at him, then hum softly. 

“Ground control to Major Cleven, huh? Lie back for me, Buck.” 

Gale does, because his eyes want to close, and he’s still in that strange space between conscious thought and the empty rodeo, lying in the dust with his arms spread. He feels the pillow under his head, soft and familiar, and then a dip in the mattress behind him. Arms around his chest, crossing until he’s pulled back against John, his nose tangled in Gale’s hair so he can feel every breath. No space between them, save for where Gale notes John keeps his hips carefully away. 

“This okay?” John asks softly. “I also accept an elbow as lack of consent.” 

The point of John’s nose is firm cartilage against the back of Gale’s skull, the smell of him a shockingly subtle addition to the aroma of his bed. 

“It’s okay,” he says, listening to the thud of John’s heartbeat once again. 

John exhales heavily, a settling sort of noise, like this is something he needs, too. 

There’s a small, distant part of Gale, trapped behind glass, under heavy pristine snow, that balks at the attention and affection. That says it isn’t regular for two men to hold each other like this, that it isn’t something he in particular needs. He’d cuddled with his mother when he was young and afraid of monsters and his father was late out enough at the tracks to not be there to comment on it. Nothing serious, nothing terrible– just that Gale was far too old to be running from nightmares to his mother like that. But it was nice, when it did happen. Her hands had been soft in his hair, and her body bigger and warmer against his.

John is bigger, and warmer. He doesn’t pet Gale’s hair, but they lay there together for a long while, long enough that Gale knows that he’s dozed off, only because he doesn’t remember closing his eyes when he opens them. 

He shifts, and John moves automatically, releasing his hold on Gale and sitting up beside him, stretching out until his shirt shows a little hint of where his stomach rolls over the hem of his jeans. Flat when he was standing, but soft now with the fold of his body. 

Groaning at the full height of his stretch, John drops his hands into his lap and twists his shoulders. “Back with us now, Major?” 

“Yeah.” Gale’s voice sounds like rocks. He clears his throat a few times and rubs his face. 

John smiles.

When Gale stands, John does too, coming around the bed to meet him at the foot. For a moment they both look at the empty boxes in the corner, and Gale swallows, feeling a strange weakness in his emotional front once again. John’s expression is calm, contemplative, his eyes lowered and hazy like he’s recalling the recent sight of Gale kneeling in front of them. 

“I want to do another debrief,” John says as they walk into the living room. “Tomorrow, if you’ve got time.” 

“I’ve got class tomorrow.” 

“Dinner? Not–” John adds as Gale hesitates, “–a date. Just dinner.” 

Keeping a tight hold on his embarrassment– and his relief– Gale nods. 

John stands in the center of Gale’s living room, stance casual, barefoot still with his backpack over one shoulder. It isn’t quite zipped yet, a faint peek of nylon rope poking out, and Gale is struck with the sudden unwillingness to have John leave just yet. 

“Do you want coffee before you go?” Gale asks, despite the sun being entirely set. “There’s roof access at the top of the stairwell– it’s nice up there. If you want some coffee.” 

It’s coherent enough, at the very least, for John to seemingly understand. He glances at the dark window and then his watch and then shrugs, dropping his backpack down onto the couch. 

“Sure, why the hell not.” 

The old woman across the hall had shown Gale the space a few weeks ago. He’d taken to helping her carry her groceries up while the elevator had been broken, and in thanks she’d told him how to shimmy the lock open– showing surprising strength, and the little sitting space with a few plants and old worn outdoor chairs. Someone had dragged up a few plastic bean bags at some point, and so long as it hasn’t rained recently they’re quite pleasant to sit on. The apartment building itself is one of the tallest around, and it affords them an unobstructed view of the city skyline and the stars above.

Gale takes a chair and John, predictably, takes one of the beanbags, flopping his body down easily and somehow not spilling a single drop of his steaming coffee. 

He takes a loud slurp and sighs, “Christ, you gotta be the only other guy in the world who adds a normal amount of sugar and creamer.”

“None?”

“Bingo, champ,” John winks. 

Gale smiles, letting his head fall back over the edge of the chair so it lolls into empty space, gravity dragging at the back of his skull until his neck aches faintly. He holds his coffee against his stomach where it spreads warmth out through his whole torso. John takes another too-loud sip and Gale presses his lips against a laugh. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches John drop his head back too, following Gale’s gaze up into the heavens.

He whistles, low. 

“It’s better out of the city,” Gale explains quietly. “Out in Wyoming where there’s no light pollution it’s like an entirely different sky.” 

“Wyoming,” John sounds it out like a foreign word. “That where you’re from?” 

“Ah-huh.” Gale lifts his head, lifts his coffee, meets them together halfway and then drops both back down as he swallows. “Casper. Second biggest city in the state.” 

“Never heard of it.” 

Gale smiles again. “We lived outside the main city. In the farmland out there. A lot of it used to be my great grandfather’s, my grandfather’s. Big post-war boom money, old rodeo money– that sort of thing. By the time I came along it was just the farmhouse, a couple fields, and a paddock with some horses. By high school, it was just the house. But man, the sky.” 

“And that’s what you’re going to school for.”

“Bingo, champ,” Gale echoes, smiling for a third, wider time when he hears John’s puffed laughter. “I like the stars,” he adds, the simplicity sounding silly, especially when John scoffs. “Eventually I’d maybe get into quantum mechanics– the study of light itself. Maybe. Depends on how far I want to take it.” 

“Christ, and I thought my UCLA degree was pedigree. The physics department there is in the same building as astronomy, and those guys were nuts.” 

“How’d a smart boy like you end up tying up freaks for a living?” 

John laughs, big and booming and echoing over the rooftops. Gale’s silent chuckle bounces the coffee thermos on his lap and he hides it by taking another sip. 

“Well, doll, I’m a freak, too, for starters.”