Erotic short. An archivist with a messy life finds himself intensively managed by his sexy, older boss.
Erotic short, 10k, cis M/M. Magical archivists in Camelot with the most mundane of delicious emotional and sexual issues. Featuring age difference, orgasm denial, oral, desperation, crying, a bit of mild humour and nastiness, delicious emotional manipulation, and a heavy dose of mind-reading.
Note warnings for references to trauma, addictive behaviour, implications of disordered eating + ED, body image and self esteem issues, manipulative behaviour, and past teenage sexual abuse, including an implied risk of incestuous abuse.
He was sweating as he ran up the back stairs three at a time, his bag held under one arm and his coat under the other, his knees and thighs throbbing from the exertion. His throat ached and tasted sweet-sour with acid by the time he made it up to the twelfth floor and tapped his card, slipping into the corridor.
Good, no one was here, and even as he came past the little staffroom with the kitchenette, no one was there. Fuck, he was lucky. Everyone was obviously in the stacks or in their offices, so as Aidan dipped into his own —
He stopped stock still in the doorway, staring. There was no keeping the dismay off his face, his eyes wide, as he stared at Doctor Llewelyn, who was sitting behind Aidan’s desk. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but all that happened was that he almost gagged, so he closed his mouth again and swallowed hard.
“Good morning, Mr Thornton,” said Doctor Llewelyn in cool tones, not looking up from his tablet as he marked items off with a stylus. “Might I trouble you for the time?”
“Doctor Llewelyn, I’m so sorry I’m late, it’s just, um, you know the lift is broken — ”
“The lift is broken,” agreed Llewelyn. “It ordinarily takes two minutes to come up in the elevator — am I to understand it took you, what, fourteen minutes to ascend the stairs? That doesn’t precisely reckon with the sweat bucketing off you.”
“I missed my bus.”
“You missed three buses,” Llewelyn said immediately. “At least.”
Aidan’s eyes were tearing up, and he couldn’t quite stand to look at Llewelyn directly as he tried not to show any feeling, as he tried to stay calm. His whole body was trembling now that he’d stopped running, and he felt dizzy and abruptly extremely cold, his body throbbing.
“Doctor Llewelyn, I’m sorry,” said Aidan again, and he could hear the tremble in his voice even as he tried not to sniffle, tried to ignore the burning wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes. “I just, I — ”
“This is the third time you’ve been late to work this month,” said Llewelyn. “Did you know that?”
Aidan’s eyes burned harder.
“I just, it’s — ”
“You keep saying just,” said Llewelyn, and for the first time he looked up from his tablet, looking at Aidan over the rimless edge of his spectacles, his grey eyes looking very, very cold. Doctor Llewelyn was an attractive man with his cool eyes and his well-defined lips, his carefully groomed beard and moustache; he had high cheekbones and a heavy brow and thick, dark hair with streaks of grey through it. He was the sort of man that, outside of work, Aidan would normally fucking throw himself at. “Just what, exactly? Tell me clearly and cleanly, Mr Thornton, without filler words or bluster.”
Aidan took in a shaky breath, which was a mistake, because as soon as his lungs were filled he broke and let out a sob. The tears were dropping heavily onto his cheeks as he clutched his bag and his coat to his chest, shaking in his place, and as he stood there Doctor Llewelyn stared up at him impassively, waiting for him to stop, which just made him cry harder.
He would have been better put together if he wasn’t so fucking hungover, but it was too late for that now, too late to fix it, too late to stop fucking crying.
“You were a gymnast as a child, weren’t you?” asked Llewelyn mildly. He didn’t raise his voice to be heard over Aidan’s desperate sobbing, didn’t flinch, didn’t even change his tone, and Aidan heaved in a gasp but didn’t try to reply. “One would think you would be better composed than this. How old were you when you retired?”
“Eighteen.”
“That control has fled you rather quickly, hasn’t it?” asked Llewelyn as he stood to his feet, and Aidan ducked his head when Llewelyn walked closer, expecting him to leave, but he didn’t — he stepped past him just to shut the door, so they were together in Aidan’s little office together.
When his hands touched Aidan’s body, Aidan jumped, but then shuddered out a breath as Llewelyn firmly pushed him into the room, bringing him to sit down behind the desk. His hands were heavy on Aidan’s shoulders, his fingers very cold. Llewelyn was a tall man, slim and graceful, and at the moment, Aidan felt impossibly small.
“There’s really no need to blubber like a child, young man,” said Llewelyn, and Aidan shuddered, pressing his knees as hard together as he could manage, trying to squirm slightly away from Llewelyn’s hands, but that just made him grip tighter, his fingers digging into Aidan’s shoulders. “Breathe. In, one, two, three, four… Hold. Exhale, out, two, three, four.”
He had to do as he said, couldn’t even imagine trying to disobey, trying to do otherwise, his head throbbing, his body aching.
“Tell me precisely,” said Llewelyn. “And tell me now.”
“I’m sor — ”
“I did not ask for your apology,” Llewelyn interrupted him. “I asked for an explanation.”
“My flatmates are kicking me out,” said Aidan miserably. “They ambushed me this morning and were just, you know, saying that they wanted me gone and I had to leave, and then they were having a go this morning and kept dragging me into it and I missed the bus. I’m sorry.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Thornton,” said Llewelyn, “but is that or is that not the third place of residence you’ll be leaving this year?”
Aidan stared down at his knees.
“Are you immediately homeless?”
“From tonight.”
“Mm.”
“But it won’t distract me at work, and I can stay late, and I’ll find… somewhere else.”
“You will stay late,” said Llewelyn coolly. “Until six, if you please. For now, we’ll go and collect your things. I presume it will all fit in the back of my car?”
“… Sir?”
“I live alone in a three-bedroom house, Mr Thornton,” said Llewelyn, “and I am unspeakably tired of these regular domestic disputes of yours, not to mention your frequent tardiness. You can take my spare bedroom, you can stop weeping like a boy a quarter of your age, and following the immediate necessities, you can actually get some work done.”
Aidan stared up at the older man, not comprehending, but Llewelyn wasn’t even looking at him as he picked up his tablet again and went toward the door.
“But,” he said, “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” said Llewelyn, and stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. “I’ll be back for you in ten minutes.”
Aidan stared after him, frozen in his seat.
He experienced the odd sensation of the rug having been pulled out from under him, and for once it felt like it had happened in reverse.
* * *
Aidan Thornton was an implacable mess of a human being.
Everett had known this, naturally, as soon as he’d laid eyes on him, although that had been on one of his most reserved and well-collected days. He’d sat in the chair across from Everett, managing almost entirely to conceal the tremble of his limbs, and he’d kept his expression neutral, his gaze forward-facing.
His CV had really been quite impressive — so many years of gymnastic training was always a sign of particular discipline, even before one took into account his university transcripts, the preservation techniques he was credited with developing during the first half of his PhD, which was as yet uncompleted.
Everett had looked at the young man thoughtfully, quite delighted with the appearance he had cultivated for himself, one of control and focused awareness. It hadn’t shown in his face, but Everett had been able to feel the tremendous radiation of the thoughts bubbling just under his skin — memories of his most recent NA meeting, the furious argument he’d had with his new room mates only three days after moving in and how they were already regretting moving him in, thoughts of how the label on his shirt was itching, how the bruises on his arse from his most recent hook-up still ached.
It really was as though he’d been tailor-made to Everett’s preferences, and he’d gone through the interview knowing full well he’d hire him.
He hadn’t even particularly strategized in any one direction — he’d simply known that, sooner or later, Thornton’s particular variety of personality problems would come to a head, and here it was.
The first flat he’d stormed out of in a little huff about two or three weeks after starting the new job, but he’d had somewhere lined up already with a friend from one of his addiction meetings. It did not take a particular genius to know how poorly that would end, although to the young man’s credit, his relapse had not been long-lasting, and he hadn’t gotten anybody killed or grievously injured via overdose or delusion.
This third had been a subtler series of cracks — a house-share with three other young professionals, two of them academics here at the university, the third a bar manager. On the surface, Aidan Thornton was a dream roommate — calm and collected, neat, organised, a sensible man with a 9-to-5 job, several degrees.
Of course, he wasn’t remotely calm or collected. He went on emotional tirades in the flat group chat because someone didn’t entirely clean a dish, because someone had left their shoes in the hall, because no one ever shared the chores, because no one was up at three in the morning to let him in when he came home after an ill-advised Thursday night out.
He couldn’t take criticism, either — if someone so much as said a poor word to him at home, he all but spiralled, which was really quite funny, because at work, even someone screaming at his face produced next to no reaction at all.
Well.
That wasn’t precisely true, of course: if the someone in question was Everett, he was just as likely to get the tears, but Everett was a handsome middle-aged man with a stern demeanour upon whose personal approval the young man hung a lot of his life. That was tailor-made for Everett too.
It really was interesting when he was in the room with him and he got flickers of the rich internal life that spiralled and orbited about his everyday insecurities — whispers of the past, the distant grandfather who only ever showed him affection once he was drunk, and precisely how intimate that affection was; the roving gaze of his gymnastics coach and all the hurried encounters with him in his car once he turned sixteen; hanging off his professors’ words and never so much as glancing at a boy his own age when he frequented the gay bars of Camelot.
And the young man was in debt, naturally — he often attempted to brush aside his PhD being incomplete, mildly saying he wished to accomplish more in the broader working sphere before he returned to academia, but what Everett knew was that his debt had made it somewhat difficult to sustain himself on the little stipend he received from the university.
This was a rather well-paying job, despite the reasonable working hours, and the plan was still to return to his PhD at some point, Everett supposed, once he’d paid off his debts — or, as the narrative he constructed went, until he felt refreshed and ready to return to the trials and tribulations of academia.
This was all well and good. Everett entirely supported the idea.
But there was no reason he couldn’t benefit from the various cracks in the young man’s psyche and demeanour, for the time being. No reason at all he couldn’t… partake.
He’d be quite the unruly beast, Everett expected. After the first few weeks of relaxation and apparent innocence, he knew there’d come resistance, brattiness and resistance, but Everett was well-primed to break that out of him.
Really, this would be beneficial for the both of them. Everett was doing the young man quite the favour, quite the little kindness.
As he would discover.
* * *
Doctor Llewelyn’s house was fucking terrifying.
As soon as Aidan crossed the threshold he froze, standing with his feet on the welcome mat, and stared at Doctor Llewelyn’s living room, at the thick, cream-coloured carpets and the white sofas and chairs, the polished brown leathers, the sparkling-clean shine of all the glass and metal surfaces. The place was sleek and modern, no clutter, and Aidan swallowed as he stood there with his box of clothes and books in his arms.
He’d barely fit everything in the back of Doctor Llewelyn’s car, although part of that was because whenever he’d tried to bring stuff back loose to put into the boot or on the back seats, the old man would pull yet another flattened cardboard box out of the boot and make him use it.
“Shoes off,” ordered Llewelyn, and Aidan put the box on the nearest side table, then winced as he almost knocked off Llewelyn’s fancy little white rotary telephone, which Aidan was pretty sure cost more than he would. “You can put them back on when you fetch the rest of your things in a minute — in the meantime, I’ll show you to your room.”
“You keep your phone by the door, huh?”
“The phone’s been there since I had it installed in ’22,” said Doctor Llewelyn as he hung up his coat and his scarf. He’d already eased off his shoes and put them into the perfect gap that showed between his other formal shoes — four pairs in a row, brown, black, dark blue, and a two-tone black-and-white pair that Aidan had never seen him wear before. “I see no reason to move it further into the house, I hardly spend my evenings whiling away the time with the phone in my lap. There’s another phone connection for the internet modem in my office, if that’s what you’re worried about — you won’t wither away for lack of a wi-fi connection.”
Aidan’s head was still stuck on ’22.
He did not mean this year, obviously.
He meant a hundred years ago. 1922. A century back.
Something in Aidan’s gut felt weak and tender and a little bit fluttery — he knew that Doctor Llewelyn was old, knew that he’d been the head of the Camelot Archives since something insane like 1912 when they’d built the “new” archival building, and that before that he’d been a lecturer in the History department.
Aidan had never taken any of the modules he guest-lectured in, but he’d listened to Doctor Llewelyn do one-off lectures for some of the societies or sometimes for special events.
The Renfrew Strike had been in 1909, and it had blown his mind a little when he’d been eighteen and watching Doctor Llewelyn give a lecture about the impacts it had on the economy and workers’ rights, especially for fae and demonic workers, and Doctor Llewelyn had talked about being a sixteen-year-old and seeing everything unfold in real time.
Guy was nearly a hundred and fifty fucking years old.
Aidan trailed after him, through the fancy living room, looking through doorways and seeing the equally fancy dining room, a fucking salon. Everything was beautifully and impeccably decorated, and in the stairwell there were various framed photographs and sketches on the walls.
“Are these sketches yours?” he asked.
“Mm, no,” said Llewelyn. “A friend of mine, Vincent, he was an illustrator, a painter. He liked very much to party, to socialise, and he’d often wind down in the evening by sketching everything he liked most from memory.”
“Oh, so these are just sketches of people in general?”
“No,” said Llewelyn, glancing at him and then looking to a handful of sketches displayed together, men laughing together, two men sharing a pipe, a big, butch woman with a little man in her lap, turning around to give her a bouquet of flowers. He couldn’t read the dates on the sketches on the far wall, but on the closest ones, he could: 1920, 1917, 1929, 1932. “No, Mr Thornton, these were all my friends, when I was a young man. My mundie friends, in any case — virtually all of them died during the wars, a fair few in one, and all the rest with the other.”
“You had a lot of mundie friends?”
“I attended school with mundies — my parents were both mundane, and while I started using magic actively as a young teenager, I didn’t really embrace magical society until during the first war.”
“What, you wanted to get out of the draft?” asked Aidan, half-smiling, and Llewelyn looked back at him with his expression blankly severe.
“Yes,” he said bluntly, eyes steely like he was daring Aidan to say something, and Aidan swallowed, following him down the corridor.
The guest room wasn’t as frighteningly white as the living room — it was decorated in shades of blue, and there was a big wardrobe, a big chest of drawers, two sets of cubby-style shelves against one wall.
“There’s no desk in here, I’m afraid,” said Doctor Llewelyn, moving forward and sliding open the window. “But you’re of course welcome to utilise desk space in the library or downstairs — it’s not an ensuite, but you will in effect have your own bathroom, it’s through the door across the hall. Are you still smoking?”
“No,” lied Aidan.
Doctor Llewelyn slowly turned away from the top drawer of the chest, which he’d just opened, and looked at Aidan very sternly.
Aidan tried to tell his cock not to get so hard over that, and mumbled, “I’m — Less. I’m using patches, mostly. I do smoke, uh, sometimes, but I try not to. I swear.”
“If you find yourself succumbing to weakness,” said Doctor Llewelyn coolly, “you do not indulge it in this bedroom, nor elsewhere in the house. You might smoke downstairs on the back balcony — I’ll have Fairway set out ashtrays for you, one beside the sliding door for the back balcony, and the other on the side table. If you plan to huddle yourself in your overcoat and smoke in that fierce and rather sad way you do in winter, however, I would ask that you do so in the back garden rather than on the doorstep in view of my neighbours.”
Fuck.
Why would that make his dick hard?
“Yes, sir,” mumbled Aidan, and set the box down on the bed. Fairway? What the fuck was Fairway?
“I’ll be in my office if you have need of me,” said Llewelyn. “It’s here, on the first floor, down at the end on the lefthand side.”
“Okay,” said Aidan, and he stared after Llewelyn as he left.
A Fairway, it turned out, was a fucking butler.
He wasn’t dressed up in a penguin suit, was instead wearing a pressed shirt and trousers, and when Aidan came downstairs he’d already brought in all of the boxes from Doctor Llewelyn’s fancy car, had stacked them all up ready. He was a short man, plump and squarely built, with a very neatly-trimmed beard and blond hair. His eyes were a pastel pink colour, and there were markings down each side of his neck, the colouring in them too shiny for them to be tattoos — it was part of his skin.
“Mr Thornton,” he said coolly. His accent sounded close to Welsh, but it wasn’t, exactly — Aidan didn’t know the different fae accents well enough to tell them apart.
“Mr Fairway,” he said awkwardly, and Fairway gave a crisp nod of his head. “Uh, you don’t have to help me with this stuff, I can take it all upstairs.”
“Very well,” said Fairway. “Do you have any specialist dietary requirements, Mr Thornton? Vegetarianism, veganism, any particular allergies or additional needs?”
“Um, no,” said Aidan.
“Chemical allergies, particularly to cleaning supplies, fabric softeners, detergents?”
“No?”
“Is that a question or an answer, Mr Thornton?”
“Um, an answer. No.”
“Are there any particular items or products you are in immediate need of? Food items, supplements, specific products for your hair, teeth, bathing needs?”
“Oh, I can, uh, I can just use whatever,” said Aidan. “It’s no problem.”
Fairway stared at him for a long moment, and then gave a neat incline of his head and walked away. Aidan stood frozen for a second, and then started picking up his boxes.
* * *
Dinner in Doctor Llewelyn’s house was at nine o’clock sharp, and it was weird sitting down at the two places at a big, eight-person table across from Doctor Llewelyn, eating a fucking salad and then some slow-roasted pork, and they didn’t eat with Fairway, because Fairway was Llewelyn’s fucking staff, and Llewelyn was a hundred-and-something years old.
He ate the salad, but he wasn’t used to multiple courses for a meal, and he had nearly three-quarters of his plate finished when he set his knife and fork down and took a sip of his wine.
(It was perfectly paired with the dinner, and Fairway had described the vintage and the wine’s notes after he’d uncorked it.)
“The potatoes aren’t to your liking, Mr Thornton?”
“Uh, no, they’re good,” said Aidan.
“The pork?”
“It’s good, no, it’s really, um — Fairway’s obviously a really great cook — ”
“Fairway didn’t cook this,” said Doctor Llewelyn. “Christina did.”
“Jesus, how many fucking servants do you have?”
Llewelyn’s knife and fork paused over his plate, and he blinked slowly before his eyes came to rest on Aidan’s face, staring at him so coldly that Aidan had to resist the urge to squirm in his seat.
“I mean,” he mumbled. “Is it — Just Fairway and Christina?”
“It is,” said Llewelyn. “I will ask you again, Mr Thornton — is there something the matter with your meal?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I expect you to finish it. I am not in the habit of encouraging food wastage in this house, and if portion size is of such concern for you I will advise your plate ought be less generous in future.”
“Doctor Llewelyn, I — ”
“Eat,” ordered Llewelyn, his voice crisp.
Aidan’s hands hovered for a second over his plate, and then he picked up his knife and fork again.
He went back upstairs with an uncomfortably full stomach and a half-hard cock, and wondered how the fuck he was supposed to survive this.
* * *
He thought it would make a difference at work. He didn’t know why, exactly, what sort of difference he expected it to make, but most of the time work was the same — Doctor Llewelyn was typically in work about an hour before everyone else, so he still got the bus, and once they were there, they didn’t talk any more than usual. Doctor Llewelyn gave him orders and instructions, came down on him hard when he felt that his work was sloppy or disordered, occasionally delivered a crisp, “Good work,” when Aidan had caught something or got something done ahead of schedule, and Aidan tried to pretend it didn’t turn him on.
At five, he’d get the bus back and Fairway would let him in when he knocked — he did not have his own key, and was not going to be given his own key. On days when neither Fairway nor Christina were present to let him in, he just had to wait for when Doctor Llewelyn was going home.
Most nights he didn’t stay late at the Archives in any case, and went home at seven o’clock at the latest, but it still meant that twice — now three times — over the course of six months, Aidan found himself sitting back in the staffroom, laptop open, but not actually doing anything or watching anything, just kind of staring at the screen.
When Doctor Llewelyn came inside, he jumped up and grabbed the kettle for him, and Llewelyn arched an eyebrow, but didn’t at all seem displeased as he handed him his mug and let Aidan make his tea — black, one sugar.
“Are you sure you don’t want me working right now?”
“Do you have need of the overtime?”
“What? No, I just mean, um, since I’m here — ”
“You can work if you want to, so long as you log the OT appropriately. In lieu of additional pay, I can arrange for the hours to contribute to your holidays.”
“I don’t actually want to — It’s just, you know. ’Cause I’m here. And they’re both… off?”
“I believe they’re visiting their parents.”
“You know, I can just, um, take the key and go back — ”
“You cannot, in fact,” said Llewelyn in pleasant tones, and took the tea from him, taking a sip. “Very good, Mr Thornton.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled, swallowing. “I mean, would you rather I left?”
“I don’t really care,” said Doctor Llewelyn, and walked out of the room.
Aidan stared after him helplessly, then dropped back into his seat. He felt hot all over, couldn’t stop bouncing his leg as he rested in his place — he had a habit of wanking off as soon as he got home, just to fucking get out the tension of the day, just to reset his fucking brain, and it was frustrating now, wishing he could be laid back in his comfortable guest bed with his hand down his pants rather than here on ice.
By the time Doctor Llewelyn was ready to go, he was a throbbing mess, had made the mistake of thinking about it and then couldn’t stop thinking about it, because he was trying to smoke less and he was trying to drink less and he was eleven months sober and it wasn’t as though he could bring anybody home when he was living in his boss’ house so he wasn’t fucking anybody either.
He hadn’t even gone to a bar and met someone in the past six months because Fairway stopped opening the door at eleven.
“I can, um,” he said, “I’ve been looking for other places, somewhere to rent — ”
“Why?” asked Doctor Llewelyn. His hands were on the wheel of his car at a perfect ten and two, his gaze on the traffic — he didn’t even glance at Aidan in the mirror or out of the corner of his eye.
“Uh, because, you know, I get that this is — That it’s temporary, and I can just…”
“I don’t recall advising you it was temporary. You can remain in my household for as long at it pleases you, Mr Thornton — it’s all the same to me.”
“But I’m not even paying you rent.”
“My house is paid for, Mr Thornton, and you do not significantly add weight to its running costs. Perhaps if you ate more healthily, I might change my mind.”
“I eat healthily,” muttered Aidan, crossing his arms over his chest and looking out of the other window. “I’m fucking gaining weight living in your house.”
“Good,” said Doctor Llewelyn. “It reflects poorly on a man’s kitchen to be in possession of emaciated houseguests.”
“I am not emaciated.”
“You’re less so now, I grant you.”
Aidan laughed, indignant and infuriated, but when he looked at Doctor Llewelyn’s face it was still completely neutral, and he put his hands down against his crotch, pressing the heel of his hand against his cock to try to convince it to calm the fuck down.
“It was once the custom for home-owners of any significant wealth to host guests throughout the year, Mr Thornton. In the same way that land-owners were held to some level of responsibility for their renters and the workers of their land, it was considered rather the point of men with wealth to make the benefits of that wealth available to those with less, not to hoard it.”
“Are you gonna quote Benjamin Disraeli at me again?”
Doctor Llewelyn, coming to a stop at the light, glanced across at him, genuinely seeming a little surprised. “Do I do that often?”
“Pretty often. Few times a year.”
“Hm,” said Llewelyn, and looked forward again. “Very well, I shall spare you the man’s words of wisdom for now. In any case, to demand rent from you, young man, would be tantamount to declaring I cannot afford to host you.”
“What, would that wound your pride?”
“I suppose. As much as any other public personal debasement might wound my pride.”
“No one thinks like that anymore.”
“No one your age. My friends are rather closer to mine than to yours.”
That was true. The friends that Doctor Llewelyn occasionally invited over to dinner were mostly other people from the university — there was Doctor Aderyn, a big fae professor who shed his antlers every year, and while Aidan had never had any lectures from him, everyone knew him by sight on campus; Doctor Llewelyn was friendly with some of the older members of the staff too. A handful of the historians and classicists he spent time with were fucking old, too, some of them centuries old.
The youngest person Doctor Llewelyn invited to dinner that wasn’t Aidan was probably Indistinguishable King, and he had to be at least fifty, but it was hard to tell with necromancers.
“Shouldn’t I be doing something, though?” asked Aidan. “I mean, isn’t the point of having guests, too, that it’s like, I bring value or whatever? That I’m entertaining, or it’s fucking, um… Like, you put me up now, and then you get to say, oh, yes, I’m good friends with him, he’s done great work, I hosted him, blah blah blah.”
“That’s precisely what I’ll say to dinner guests twenty years hence,” said Llewelyn. “Yes, Aidan Thornton, I hosted him, blah blah blah.”
Aidan’s cheeks burned pink, and he pressed his hands down against his thighs at the way Llewelyn said it, so coolly, so evenly and in such a disaffected way.
“There has to be something I can do for you,” said Aidan, and Doctor Llewelyn pulled into the drive, the gates having opened up for them, and after he turned off the ignition, he turned slightly in his seat to look at Aidan, his lips shifted slightly into a small smirk.
“Oh?” he asked quietly. “What manner of service, precisely, would you like to offer me, Mr Thornton?”
For a long few moments their eyes were locked and Aidan couldn’t breathe, his mouth dry, as Doctor Llewelyn stared at him, unblinking, cool. There wasn’t really anything implied in the way he said it, Aidan was just fucking horny, but there was something about the sibilance on the s, something about being in the car right across from him, and then Doctor Llewelyn leaned over him and Aidan tensed, his thighs spreading a little wider, but all the older man did was open up the dashboard and pull out a wipe to run over the dash, which he did once or twice a week, just to keep dust from building up.
Aidan swallowed, watching him run the wipe over the surfaces in the car, over the radio he never seemed to use, over the buttons for the heater and everything, over the dash display.
“Do you — ” he started, and then bit the inside of his lip.
“Do I?” asked Llewelyn, his hand on the car door.
“You’re not married,” said Aidan.
“It’s no wonder you’re such a competent archivist, young man, your eye for detail is unrivalled.”
“Do you like men?” he blurted out.
“Do I like men?” Doctor Llewelyn repeated slowly. “What is your hope here, Mr Thornton, that you show your gratitude for your lodgings by offering me some manner of sexual favour?”
“I,” mumbled Aidan, “um — Sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? Not answering a simple yes or no question? Was that your hope or not?”
“You’re angry.”
“I’m not angry, young man, you have never yet had the dubious pleasure of seeing me angry. I am growing impatient, however. Answer the question.”
Aidan swallowed hard, and then nodded hard. “I mean, you’re — attractive. You know that you’re… That you’re attractive. Hot.”
“Your desire for this is not, then, based on a sense of gratitude or servility, but based on your attraction to me.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t see what you’re sorry for,” said Llewelyn bluntly, opening the car door and stepping out. “Had it been based on the former, I would have told you no.”
Aidan stared after him as he shut the car door, then scrambled to chase after him into the house.
* * *
Oh, but it was so easy.
Thornton made himself easy, made himself so entirely accessible, laid open his heart and his psyche just as easily as he would lay open his legs, just as soon as Everett asked him to. It was remarkable, what a pleasure that was, and one he had not experienced with this level of satisfaction or complexity in quite some time.
It had been years since he’d hosted a houseguest for so long at a time — not irregularly he had friends drop in from elsewhere and stay for a few weeks while they were teaching special courses at the university or attending some event or other, but someone like Aidan Thornton, a young man… No, He hadn’t had this in quite some time.
Six months was rather longer than he’d expected he’d take to crack. Now and then he’d hear the floorboards creaking in the corridor where he was lingering outside of Everett’s office or his bedroom, and he’d wonder if he’d get the shy little knock, the meaningful idling in the door once given permission to enter, but the young man had resisted his instincts in that regard, or perhaps had simply been too ashamed to indulge them.
There had been plentiful other indulgences, of course, and so many other small moments.
When he’d first begun to stay, Everett had regularly said he’d ask the kitchen to reduce his portion sizes whenever the young man showed some size of struggling with the plate he was allotted, but of course, he’d never done so, and never would — now, six months on, Thornton ate a perfectly sensible portion at dinner and could even be relied upon to eat breakfast when he kept coming downstairs to find it was already made for him, and manners dictated he could not forego it entirely, with the house rules following up that he had to finish whatever was set in front of him.
Lunch was not yet a battlefield Everett had come to, but he had faith in himself to win out there as well.
As far as he’d been able to put together from the young man’s shameful recollections and sparing thought to his diet, not to mention his own admissions, his meals in the past broadly consisted of various snack foods and ready-made things — sandwiches and microwave meals and noodle pots being his everyday fare in between crisps or biscuits or sweets, with the occasional day or two a week where he bought a takeaway he actually liked the taste of and buried himself in until he felt a little ill.
Thornton was currently eating two square meals a day and a passably acceptable lunch — before Everett had taken him onboard, he’d scarcely been managing one scattered across the day’s hours, and as far went nutrition, it amounted to very little.
He was indeed gaining weight, and had filled out quite nicely — he had always been rather uncomfortably thin, and now he was merely on the slim slide. He was healthier in other aspects, too: his skin had cleared somewhat, and whether that was as a result of eating more because his meals were being prepared for him, bathing more because he no longer had to share a bathroom with others and was under scrutiny if he didn’t, or simply that he was under less stress, Everett didn’t know, but he would gladly take credit for it regardless; he was better-rested, and his productivity at work had rather improved; he hadn’t relapsed, and although he was drinking throughout the week, he’d been drunk only a few times.
There were other areas, of course, wherein he indulged himself — twice, Everett had verbally intervened when he witnessed him picking at the skin around his nails, which seemed to him to be an old habit that tended to irregular resurgence; constantly, the young man masturbated to the point of quiet agony.
It wasn’t even just that he had an unfortunate habit of rubbing himself raw in the course of a weekend where he had little else to entertain himself, not having work to do and not having ketamine or whatever else to dull his brain on — Everett had noticed him limping once or twice after a long shower or a day locked in his room, and although he hadn’t been out to sleep with anybody, thoughts of sex were never far from his mind.
Thoughts of sex with Everett, particularly, were at the forefront.
He thought constantly of sucking Everett’s cock, particularly of Everett grabbing him by the hair and forcing it down his throat, Everett keeping him beneath his desk and out of the way; he thought of Everett bending him over that desk and ploughing into him, thought of Everett tying him up, suspending him, turning him into his perfect pet, his perfect assistant.
Sex had quite the tremendous hold on the young man’s mind, and Everett was rather pleased to take that hold in his own hand.
He observed Thornton with interest as the young man set his shoes and coat aside himself, and he waited patiently for him to finish, having Thornton move ahead of him as he herded him up the stairs, down the corridor.
He glanced back at Everett, tilting toward the bedroom, and Everett clucked his tongue, nodding to the other door. Thornton’s cheeks had taken on a slight dusky pink as he turned into Everett’s office instead, and moved inside.
“Strip,” he instructed crisply, and said nothing else as he went to his desk and opened the middle drawer that he ordinarily kept empty, placing the ephemera he kept on his desk — the additional keyboard and mouse, his stapler and holepunch, his stationery organiser — and placed them inside before he unplugged his secondary monitor and put it on the shelf behind him.
Looking back to Thornton, he saw that the young man had stripped out of his clothes so quickly one might think he was being timed, and he’d clumsily folded his clothes too, the better to court Everett’s approval.
He did rather like to see that.
“Come,” he said quietly. “Up on the desk, if you would, as close to the edge as you feel comfortable, facing me.”
Thornton moved closer, and Everett rather delighted at the thoughts that bubbled to the forefront of his mind like cream off the top of a bucket of milk, foaming and perfectly sweet — he was eager, his skin alight with want, and there was already sweat glistening on his skin here and there, in amongst the light hair that dusted his chest, his belly, formed a pleasant texture over his thighs, his calves.
“Lovely,” said Everett softly as Thornton rested his palms on the top of the desk and hoisted himself up, settling his arse down on the wood and then spreading his thighs apart. He was studying Everett’s face as he moved slowly, testing to see he was performing correctly and oh, oh, but there was that desperate need for approval, that burning terror that Everett would come over suddenly disgusted how he had him stripped naked, that he’d call him revolting, a whore, pathetic, cast him out now.
Here were a few flickers of past experience: first, his grandfather, drunk on whiskey and calling him a faggot-in-training as his hand rested on the boy’s lower back, his arse, saying he shouldn’t carry on with that gymnastics business, that the only thing he’d make flexible was his arse — he was only a boy at the time and it terrified him, excited him, hurt him, made him ache, made his young cock almost hard even though he barely understood why. How he’d sobbed when his grandfather’s uncommon affection had turned to his temper instead, temper and disgust, telling him to leave him be. What a balancing act it must have been for the boy, so unused to being touched at all outside of his gymnastics training, completely starved of warm or affectionate touch, even if it came in this form, with this threat inherent.
There, at the same time, recollections of different men involved in his training as a gymnast — doctors, trainers, fellow gymnasts, teachers whose gazes lingered a little too long, and at the forefront the teacher who’d liked him best, the one who’d bring him into his car and make use of his acrobatic abilities to bend him in knots, fuck him into the dashboard, against the wheel, in the back with his back arching and his head tipped back, his legs spread as widely as they could in his shitty little Renault Twingo.
Would Everett be gentle? Would he touch him roughly, the rough way some people would be with him? Would he be cruel, use too much force, too little prep? Would the neutral look on Everett’s face turn to one of disgust, distaste?
There was a little burn of self-hatred in there, one Everett didn’t care for as he took the boy’s body in — that gymnast’s learned loathing for his body, that nasty little voice that came to a head now with worries as to his being fat, huge, gargantuan —
“Still too thin,” Everett pronounced experimentally, and he watched the twist and change of his expression, the press together of his lips, the slight widening of his eyes, cheeks twitching. He didn’t disagree out loud, even as various thoughts came to mind, recollections of being told before that he was getting too fat, too big, that he’d be ugly, wrong.
Everett put his hands on the young man’s knees, slid his palm up his muscled thighs and up to his waist, his belly. He squeezed his waist at first, sliding his thumbs over the slight swell of his belly, then moved up and touched the plushness of his chest, the softness of his pecs on each side and the hair dusting around each nipple, a little thicker over his sternum.
Thornton shivered.
No, not Thornton.
Everett supposed he could think of him as Aidan now, couldn’t he?
“Too cold?” asked Everett mildly, not moving his hands away as he slid them curiously over Aidan’s chest, sliding the pads of his thumbs over each of the young man’s nipples, and Aidan put his hands on top of his, curved them about his wrists, but he didn’t pull or tug hard enough to actually change Everett’s movements, didn’t even try.
“You’re, ah,” grunted Aidan. “Are you going to fuck me?”
“If this were payment for my hospitality, I don’t know that it would be your right to ask,” murmured Everett as he experimentally tugged on each of Aidan’s nipples, then rolled each of them between his thumb and forefinger. This didn’t evoke an extreme response — his cock was hard and curved up toward his belly, rested on his thigh, and it was a rather nice cock, too, slim with a delicate curve, uncircumcised with a thick head to it, but it didn’t jerk at the gentle touches to his nipples.
When Everett squeezed harder, actually pinched, Aidan let out a sharp, breathless noise, and Everett smiled at the slight bob of his cock, already growing harder.
“You like your nipples touched, young man?”
“Hard, yeah,” said Aidan. “Like — Like that.”
“Like that,” repeated Everett, pleased, and tugged down hard now, twisting his nipples and smiling to himself at the way Aidan’s face crumpled, his brow furrowing, his whole face stiff and strained. “Could you come from this?”
“No,” whimpered Aidan. “No, I can’t — Not unless I’m getting fucked.”
… Really?
“I beg your pardon?” asked Everett, looking up at Aidan’s face which was flushed now, very red indeed. That particular phrasing evoked old fantasies of sex with his professors, or indeed recalled encounters with them.
“I can’t,” said Aidan again. “I can’t, um, orgasm. Without something in my arse. I need it, I need the… the fullness, the stimulation.”
Here were a few spectacular glimpses of the context: long nights with the gymnastics coach, plugs and dildos worn during private training sessions, sharp words hissed in the young man’s ears, nights where he sobbed his eyes out being edged and denied again and again, trained so… dedicatedly.
Everett would have to send a thank-you note to the inspired abuser of his new favourite toy. It was one thing to enjoy the scars and traumatic memories a young man came with, but when they came pre-trained, and with such useful lessons learned? How could he do anything but thrill at the possibilities on the horizon?
“What a curious idiosyncrasy,” said Everett, and wrapped one hand now around Aidan’s cock.
Aidan’s body stiffened, straining, his head tipping back and a strangled noise coming out of his mouth as his legs fell open, the insides of his knees pressing against the edges of the desk. He thrust up and into Everett’s hand, breathing heavily, his cheeks red.
“You really couldn’t come from this alone?” asked Everett softly, tapping his thumb against the base of Aidan’s cockhead and chuckling at the way he whined, fucked into Everett’s hand, wetness pearling at the hole of his cock. He was hard, cockhead glistening, as Everett eased b ack his foreskin, sighed softly at the wonderful pinkness of it even as he traced his thumb down one of the veins in his cock, then down the seam at its underside.
“Please,” whimpered Aidan, and Everett’s lips smiled rather without his permission.
Oh, but he was perfect.
“Lovely young man,” he said softly, and bowed his head.
* * *
Was this actually happening?
No. No, it couldn’t actually be happening — it was crazy to think that this was happening, that he was sitting on Everett Llewelyn’s actual desk with his legs spread and his clothes off — but it was hard not to think about the smooth, cool surface of the wood under his arse, the gentle warmth of the room.
There was always an element of risk with a new guy, with any new guy, especially the sort of men he liked — it used to be easy, in a way, used to be easy because Simon made the decisions, Simon coaxed him here and there, positioned him as he felt Aidan needed positioning and fuck him and it was wonderful. It was horrible, obviously — he was scared half the time, certain he might lose his place on the team or fuck up and just look shitty to somebody, that he might gain weight, get too tall, not get tall enough, that he might be too obviously gay, something.
Simon Yuri had been a real fucking cunt, in the scheme of things, obviously. Aidan hadn’t been the only one he’d groomed, hadn’t been the only one he fucked, and Aidan had spent a pretty long while either unpacking or desperately trying to (and failing) to repress everything about him, his impact, but for all the sex was immoral, sometimes painful, diabolical, terrible for his self-esteem, all of that, it was easy.
And Simon used to fuck him hard, had a comfortably big cock but not too big, used to make him strain his body in a way that went straight to his dick, set his brain on fire with lust and need and desperate, overwhelming want. It wasn’t like he did gymnastics or dance with a hard dick, but there was something about being bent into position or made to hold a position while he was being fucked that made every orgasm hit so much harder, maybe to do with the tension in his muscles and the relief of relaxing either, maybe something to do with blood flow, who the fuck was to say?
The point was, for all the damage he’d done, for all the weird fears and uncertainties instilled in him, Simon had fucked him well, and he couldn’t help but compare men to him, or to Doctor McKellen, or to Prof Kinter, the ones who’d fucked him the best, grabbed hold of his psyche and twisted it in just the right way and also actually fucked him right, touched him in the right way, made him hold himself in the right way.
Llewelyn twisted his psyche right, that was for sure, took the entirety of brain and all those neurological connections and twisted them in knots, made them overlap and made them spark and sizzle like crossed wires.
And now, Llewelyn was sitting comfortably in his chair and he was sliding his tongue, his tongue, around the head of his cock, the tip of his tongue tracing almost painfully gently over the soft flesh of his glans. He was trying to keep his legs spread, resisting the urge to close them and press Llewelyn in with his thighs like he would with just a hook-up.
There were things he could do with some men, and things he couldn’t with others, if he wanted to preserve his forthcoming fucking orgasms.
Llewelyn’s tongue circled his cockhead again, and then his lips closed around the head of his cock before he sucked on it like it was a fucking lollipop, and Aidan hissed at the intensity of the sensation, the concentrated heat of Llewelyn’s tongue just under his crown.
He didn’t let up, though, eased himself forward further and further, his mouth opening a little wider to take Aidan in and fuck, fuck, but he relaxed his throat and took Aidan down so goddamn easily, so that as Aidan tried desperately not to squirm in his place he felt the rough top of Everett’s mouth, felt the tight close of his throat.
He couldn’t help the desperate noises that were eking out of him, the way his knees shuddered and quaked, and he opened and closed his hands into fists at his sides to prevent himself from sinking them into Everett Llewelyn’s hair, which had once been blond and was turning gracefully to a steel grey, and which he’d never so much as seen with a strand out of place.
Llewelyn’s lips were closed around the base of Aidan’s cock, his nose right up to where Aidan’s pubes were trimmed neat and short, and it was unspeakably good, the tight, wet heat enfolding him on all sides, the slight pressure of Llewelyn’s warm outward breath through his nose, the shift and lave of his tongue as he pulled back then dropped his head again. He swallowed and the tightening of his muscles made Aidan strain and whine, his knees rising off the desk but not moving inward, not closing in.
Llewelyn pulled back from bobbing and began to suckle and mouth own the side of his cock, and Aidan gasped, moaned, put his fist up to his mouth and bit on the skin of his knuckle to keep from shouting, his hips jumping, and Llewelyn responded by grazing his teeth over the base of his cock, making him fucking yowl.
“Doctor Llewelyn,” he choked out, “Doctor, please — ”
“Now, my dear boy,” said Llewelyn in smooth, cool tones, clucking his tongue as he loosely gripped the base of Aidan’s cock, squeezing it in a way that sent pleasure radiating up his spine, made his thighs quiver. “I rather think you might dispense with the Doctor Llewelyn in a situation like this, hm? Such a mouthful.”
Aidan’s whole body shocked, and he stared down at Everett, at the slight lidding of his eyes, the barest moue of his lips. There was a crinkling around his eyes because he was smiling just slightly.
“I… Everett?” he hazarded.
Everett arched one eyebrow. “Sir will do,” he corrected briskly, and Aidan’s cock gave a sudden, unbearably strong jerk, his balls tightening up even though he knew he couldn’t get there, could feel that he wouldn’t be able to get there.
“Sir,” he whimpered. “Sir, please, I can’t come like this, I can’t — ”
“Young man, If I wanted you to come, you would do,” said Everett, his voice warm and sultry and with a tease through it that made Aidan feel like his head was about to explode. “It seems to me that you are delivered to my desk, customised as you are, entirely to my liking. I am a man who enjoys a certain command over my partners and their pleasure, Mr Thornton, and I am also a man who enjoys to work my mouth as much as suits me, not for the short period before the young man beneath me loses his composure. This is rather a match made in heaven, I feel.”
Aidan stared down at him, feeling his heart jump in his chest, feeling his stomach give a gooey sort of flip, a lurch. His cock was so hard he couldn’t stand it, jerking in Everett’s hand and then jerking harder when Everett swallowed it down again, and Aidan moaned desperately.
How was it that this was so fucking hot? How was it that this was the hottest thing that had ever fucking happened to him, every inch of him fucking enflamed with want and heat, feeling so goddamn controlled?
Everett didn’t even need to position his limbs or make him twist — he just… And would he…?
Aidan was breathing heavily, was aware of the sweat on his skin, and he moved slowly, carefully, experimentally as he eased his thighs in, closer to the sides of Everett’s face, his cheeks.
Everett’s humming chuckle, lips wrapped around the head of his cock, made vibrations run up the fucking shaft of it, made the bundle of nerves at his frenum feel like they were being fucking rattled. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and his thighs moved the rest of the way of their own accord, tightened in, his feet hooking ankle-over-ankle on Everett’s back.
Everett just swallowed him down like it was nothing, and Aidan didn’t hold back his almost-scream this time as he arched into the other man’s mouth, one hand gripping the older man’s hair, but Everett didn’t even flinch, didn’t even hesitate, just kept sucking and mouthing at him and driving him fucking insane.
* * *
How long had it been? Thirty minutes, thirty-five?
Aidan was turned to quite the mess — he was so soaked with sweat he looked about ready to melt, his hair plastered against his head, and his eyes had long-since turned teary. His cheeks were red and there were similar red splotches up his chest, the sides of his handsome neck; his thighs were trembling with the strain and his stomach kept twitching; his cock constantly twitched and jerk under the attentions of Everett’s mouth, and his balls were drawn up as tight as a purse with the strings pulled taut.
The young man needed a bit more fruit in his diet for Everett’s taste, but he could attend to that deficiency easily enough — the bitterness to his come was mild and by no means overpowering, but the saltiness, that needed the slightest bit of rebalancing.
Otherwise —
He was sublime.
For some minutes he’d wrapped his legs around Everett’s head and pulled and tugged at his hair, had outright wailed when he’d realised that no matter how much he tightened his thighs nor how hard he pulled on Everett’s hair, he’d make no difference to Everett’s direction or his speed, that he couldn’t overpower Everett if he tried.
He’d been getting more and more desperate as the minutes ticked by, had begged, had sobbed openly and was now weeping with sheer desperation, but never for a moment had he asked to tap out, asked even for a break — it hadn’t even occurred to the young man to do so, and oh, but that helpless desperation to please, how it warmed the heart and, indeed, Everett’s libido.
Everett had rewarded the best of his obedience with a few gentle swipes of his fingers, had even begun to massage the tight pucker of his ring, played and pushed and tugged at it without actually pushing in, and he was drawing him to greater heights, twisting him tighter and tighter. The sobs had become louder before they’d softened to almost nothing, and his constantly working mind, full to the brim with such anxiety, had blackened to contain just the mindless buzz of the overwhelming pleasure, unable to catch hold of anything more substantial whilst Everett was between his legs.
Everett pulled back, delicately wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers, and Aidan, who’d fallen limply back on the desk like a rag doll, sat up on his elbows and regarded him blearily, his lips parting and showing where he’d bitten them bruised.
“Please,” he choked out, hoarse from begging, and then his eyes lit with fire, with a sort of seductive determination, and Everett felt a wonderful satisfaction at the speed and grace with which he swept himself forward and settled into Everett’s lap, wrapped his arms around his neck, spread his thighs.
It was rather nice, the way he ground himself down, the graceful movement of his hips. Everett expected he would have him dance for him, before the month was out, perhaps even encourage him to gymnastics again, to stretch, to perform…
“Are you — ” Aidan started, and then sniffled, sounded genuinely hurt as he said, “You’re not even hard.”
“No,” said Everett pleasantly.
He teared up so nicely, the water brimming in his eyes, and yet he still looked so determined as he said, “Lemme — Let me suck you, I can — ”
“Mmm, you might try to suck me as much as you like — I’ll need to take one of my little blue pills before it has any effect.”
The burgeoning strategies that were coming to the forefront of Aidan’s mind, desperate thoughts as to how to seduce Everett into wanting him, into being so wanting with lust himself that he lose patience with his strategy of denial, faded into the background, sank like so many other of the young man’s flights of fancy.
“Oh,” he whispered powerlessly. “You’re gonna kill me. My balls fucking hurt, they fucking ache, you know guys can die from blue balls?”
“If I felt like killing you, young man, you’d be dead.”
That produced a full-bodied shudder, and Everett smiled to himself before he thought to bestow a reward, and reached around him. Opening up the first drawer in his desk, he picked out a small bottle of pills, held it up for Aidan to see before he took his dose and sipped from his water bottle to wash it down.
“There,” said Everett softly. “Now, in about twenty-five to thirty minutes I’ll be ready to fuck this charming little arse of yours until you scream. In the meantime, I’ll keep your attention engaged, shall I?”
Aidan swallowed, staring down at him. “You’re evil,” he whispered.
“Perhaps I am,” Everett agreed, cupping his cheek at the same time as he slid his hand around his prick again. “I notice your cock softens none for the revelation.”
“How does your jaw not fucking ache?”
“A little pain can be a reward in itself,” said Everett quietly, and hoisted Aidan under his thighs, depositing him back on the table before he slid his palms up his thighs, feeling the wetness of them. “What say you I pay attention to these for a while, hm? Soothe this ache you’re complaining about?”
Everett cupped Aidan’s balls in his palm, feeling their weight as he gently squeezed them, pressed his thumb against one and the other.
“Fuck,” Aidan moaned.
“Over you go,” Everett instructed. “Belly over the desk, if you would, legs spread. There’s a good man, so obedient.”
“God, that’s hot,” Aidan hissed, and went over, knees apart, body collapsed against the desk surface. When Everett’s tongue swiped over the backs of his balls and then he sucked one into his fucking mouth, he muffled his moans into his forearms, and tried to remember how long a minute lasted, just as soon as he could remember how to count to twenty-five.
Leave a Reply