IN LEAVES NO STEP HAD TRODDEN BLACK

IN LEAVES NO STEP HAD TRODDEN BLACK

There’s an ungodly rendition of Tárrega’s Gran Vals stemming from the bathroom counter; his mobile, he realises, deliberately ignored within the double-breasted confines of his tuxedo jacket. An emerald-green cummerbund dangles accusingly below the overhead light fitting: a fate reminiscent of the silken boxers draped over the dresser mirror. His agent would be appalled at his lack of designer révérence, but Oliver’s pin-striped suit is likewise discarded on the Holiday Inn’s carpet, and Elio…

…well.

Elio couldn’t care less for wrinkled pocket squares when the other man’s clutching his sweat-slick waist like his life depends on it.

When the rhythmic creaks of the querulous mattress are all but smothered by his hiccupped moans.

When the searing heat gathered at the base of his spine is a sure-fire indicator he’s about to come untouched: the relentless drag of Oliver’s cock against his screaming prostate making his balls draw tight in preparation.

And perhaps he says some of that out loud, because Oliver surges upright with a shaky nod, a mottled flush extending from his hairline to his beautifully bare chest as he crushes their mouths together. Tongue delving rough and possessive: claiming him twice over.

It’s been weeks since the West Coast stretch of his album tour began. Since they found themselves in the same city, let alone the same bed. Elio needs him like he needs his next breath - juvenile as the thought may be - and starved of such contact by dint of their heavy schedules, a constant stream of inventive text messages and late night phone calls only served to fan the flames. 

The connection they forged that long-ago summer refuses to fade. Understandably so, when they’d both fallen irrevocably: hard and heedless; regardless of the pain. They were a part of each other, no doubt. Yet strived to be the best part, also. And here and now nothing remains to stand between them. Nothing else beyond magnolia-painted walls and generic prints of the Seattle skyline. 

Elio’s entire world hinges on the salty tang of Oliver’s collarbone - the scratchy stubble tickling his temple - the dizzying gallop of blood hurtling through his racetrack veins, and for all that he finds himself drowning in the full-spectrum intimacy, it in no way prevents him from craving more. 

It never does.

Never will.

That said, a musician’s lot is one of flexibility: adapting to the changing tides. Inspiration strikes on a dime, and flashing a rakish grin Elio reaches behind him, snagging the crisp, cotton Oxford he’d stripped from Oliver’s body not twenty minutes earlier; sighing in bone-deep contentment when the lingering scent of Sandalwood shampoo and Acqua Di Gio envelopes his arms and shoulders in a familiar, homely embrace.

Saccharine, maybe, but when Oliver shook his hand in the villa’s gravel driveway - straw hat, sunglasses, a frayed pair of espadrilles on his size fifteen feet - the quirks and insecurities he’d spent years repressing soon blossomed into being. 

Free. 

Accepted. 

Valued and explored. 

Half the pleasure is knowing what this does to you. Knowing you like seeing what it does to me, Oliver told him once - drunk on the build more so than the wine - so it’s no surprise when his amante simply smirks in return: brows knit in fond amusement as he straightens his star of David amidst the shapeless collar.

“Don’t think I’m complaining,” he murmurs, the raw, post-concert urgency of before notably absent. “But what happened to pants off, mon chéri: no clothes ‘til checkout?” 

He has a point. 

A damned good one, at that. 

Yet -

“I want to feel you surround me, even when you’re inside me,” Elio replies, leaning forward to kiss him for all the times he couldn’t. “I want to smell you on my skin, even when we’re apart...”

“Fuck…”

“You’re mine,” Elio says, wrapping the unbuttoned cuff around his sensitive glans. “And I’m yours,” he declares, turning it translucent with the sticky beads of excitement. 

Oliver’s eyes grow glassy as he clocks his intent, and keeping him pinned by cock and stare alike, Elio proceeds to pick up the pace; the onyx engagement band adorning his ring finger glinting handsomely in the gossamer strokes of moonlight.