quigonejinn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quigonejinn) wrote2008-08-09 12:56 am
quigonejinn) wrote2008-08-09 12:56 am
Entry tags:
And then he'll set you free.
Appropriately enough, written while listening to Rope by Idaho. You're warned.
Thursday.
...
Every Thursday, in fact. Regular as clockwork.
...
Almost.
One Thursday, he isn't there. A woman meets you at the door -- she's tall, redheaded, and wearing a grey business suit. The four inch heels make her taller than you, and she seems a little nervous. She looks like she's all business with her hair pulled back like that, but the heels, the silk camisole, and the way she flushes on the sight of you.
"Hey," you say.
"Hi, um. He's out this week, but, um," she says. And without another word, she hands over the envelope. It feels a little thicker than usual, not that you'd really complain if it wasn't. Or was even missing. The guy pays you four times the going rate.
She shifts, uncomfortable, while you count it.
"There's extra this week. Is it because -- " you say, looking at her now. Blue eyes. Freckles over the nose and cheekbones, more on her chest above camisole and between the lapels of her suit, and you look past her for a second, inside of the house with those polished floors and the windows out onto the Pacific.
"Oh God. No, no."
In fact, she almost trips over her strappy heels backing away from you, but it's probably not personal. She looks like the kind of girl who'd be freaked out by the idea; when it popped into your head, yeah, the side corollary was how he would've convinced her to do it. You were already starting to try and work around the awkwardness.
"I work for him," she says, a little unnecessarily.
Sometimes, you get hired to fuck their wives or girlfriends, but they're usually there. Maybe this guy likes to watch by camera? Or maybe he's inside waiting? You scan the room behind her for another moment, but no, it's empty and bare, and she wants you gone, so apparently not.
She doesn't know whether to say Bye or not before she closes the door. You put your sunglasses on and go back down the driveway to your car.
...
He called to make the first appointment, and then, Jeanine, the booker, called you. She explained that he was a long-time customer. Before this, only girls. Always outcall. A good variety, a mix of things, and none of them ever complained about anything. He liked cuddling, and he always asked for kissers, though he'd settle for ones who didn't if a kisser wasn't available because he tended to call the afternoon-of for that evening. That was the only thing she minded about him.
"Nice guy, all things considered," Jeanine says. "One time, Monica came back with a five hundred dollar tip for me from him."
You're in the car, sitting in the parking lot in a Starbucks in Culver City, and it's a clear morning. You watch a minivan pull up and a woman in sandal heels come out and walk through the doors. She looks like she's just dropped her kids off at school.
"Did he see me on the website?"
"Nope. Called up and asked me if we carried guys, too. I told him that we did."
"Anything specific?"
"No, he just wanted somebody around his age. Nobody older. Definitely nobody older. And he's about mid-thirties."
You frown. That -- you don't like walking into a place without expectations like that. And it's an odd kind of thing to ask in this town. You don't like odd. You are definitely not a fan of odd.
"How much is he paying?"
Jeanine tells you, giving you the figure both before the agency cut and after, and you let your breath out. Slowly.
"Jesus," you say, and tell her that you'll take it.
...
The first time, you blow him. It takes him thirty-five minutes to get off; your jaw hurts like hell, and he doesn't get into it. At all. By the time you've straightened up from the crick your neck, he is handing you an envelope with three hours at the agreed rate for forty-five minutes of being there, so no, you don't expect him to be a repeat. You pocket the money and figure a fifty-dollar tip to Jeanine for getting you the one-time hookup.
By the time you get home, though, Jeanine has called to say that he wants you again. Same time. Same day next week.
...
The second time, you kiss him. He goes along with it. Seems fine with it, but doesn't get into it. He fucks you on the big bed in what passes for his bedroom: he sits down on the edge of it, and you lie over his lap, naked, while he preps you, and then you get on your hands and knees, and he fucks you.
He still isn't that into it. Or you.
"He called just now," Jeanine says twenty minutes later, just when you're getting into the lane for the 101 southbound. "Same bat time, same bat channel."
"Jesus," you say. Plenty of guys, usually married, like to have their hired male ass on the side. The general idea is that they're gay and are trying fuck themselves into being able to pretend that they're straight. He's the first straight guy you've ever had trying to fuck himself gay.
"Jesus," Jeanine says, agreeing with you.
...
And yeah, you recognize him. He's been famous since he was four. Just because he doesn't have any magazine covers of himself in the parts of his house that you've seen doesn't mean you don't recognize him.
One time, you're watching the Nightline with your roommate, just sitting and hanging out, and you realize they're doing a feature on his on his suit.
...
By time number seven, you finally discover something that he actually displays a little enthusiasm for: he likes being fucked in the ass when he's kneeling.
All fours is out for some reason, but he's comfortable being bent over things, and so you do him out on the couch in the living room. It's a weird, springy material. Kind of like foam, but not really, and you keep one foot on the floor while you do him over the back of it. He looks out the windows at the Pacific Ocean, his arms folded and hands tucked under his chin, and at one point, he tries to twist around to face you, but you turn his face back towards the ocean. Hard. Maybe a little rougher than warranted -- you're starting to read between lines that he doesn't see himself, and you move your hand to the back of his neck.
You shove into him hard, and in the reflection of the window, he licks his lips.
You press harder, fuck him harder. He gets this smile on his face. He eyes drift closed. He starts letting his hips drift couchward each time you push into him. The harder you push, the happier his reflection looks.
His hips go flush against the back of the back of the couch, and buried all the way in him, both of your hands on his hips now, you drag him in a slow circle over the couch, and he tilts his head back.
"God," he says, eyes still closed, and for the first time, pushes back against you.
...
Another Thursday, you show up, and he's not there.
The red-headed woman is at the door again, but there's someone else there, too. It makes her almost cripplingly nervous, and she tries to block your view of inside, but you catch a glimpse of a blue uniform with colored bits of metal across the chest. A black guy, military, and he's moving towards the door and you and the woman in big, ground-eating strides.
"Pepper, who is it? Tony, I swear to God, if that's you, I'm going to beat your ass black and -- "
Pepper basically slams the door behind her and in the guy's face, then shoves the envelope at you. She's dressed almost the same as the first time you saw her, except the mascara under her eyes is a little smeared, as if she's been crying.
So yeah, she shoves the money at you and looks profoundly grateful when you leave without saying another word.
You pull the car out of the driveway; she's opened the door back up.
The guy is on the front, asking her what the fu -- sorry, what just happened.
...
You pay off your car. You put some -- all right, a lot of -- money away for a rainy day, take your roommate out for a nice fucking dinner to pay him back for all the times he bailed you out when you were still driving the Oldsmobile clunker, then buy Jeanine silver earrings from Tiffany's.
...
The first time you see him all the way naked, yeah, you're a little weirded out.
...
The first time you fuck him when he's wearing one of those shirts with the hole cut out in the middle, yeah, you're a little weirded out.
...
It's a weird topography. You have to revise the idea of him being a straight guy trying to fuck himself gay. He's clearly taken it up the ass from cock plenty of times before, given lots of blowjobs and handjobs, and sometimes, it's even pretty clear that he knows what he wants, but he won't tell you. He won't articulate it and wants you to work for it.
Other times, you can tell he surprises himself. He shocks himself with he likes something. He loses himself is the best way you can put it, and the first time it happens, he's bent over the back of the couch in the living room again. Again, he looks out at the ocean; his legs are spread, and you've just started rimming him. Wet and messy, with lots of noise because he likes noise, and he surprises both of you by moaning.
Instead of just going back and doing what you had been doing the way you normally would, though, you actually pull back, stand up, and lean over him. You touch one finger to his wet ass.
"Don't moan," you say, right in his ear.
He doesn't say anything.
So you put two fingers in his ass, which is more than he's ready for at the moment. He squeezes down, and right as he's getting ready to moan again, you clamp your other hand down over his mouth.
"What did I say?"
He looks up at you over the hand on his mouth, and you see two expressions go over his eyes: first, for just a second, surprise. Then, like a wave rolling in over sand, lust that would be a little scary if he weren't paying you an absurd amount of money to make him feel that way. His shoulders bend a little, but the lust is still in his eyes, and when he sucks your fingers into his mouth, straight down until almost where they meet your palm, then makes eye-contact again, you think he's actually going to come right then and there.
He hangs on, though, and you wipe your fingers on his ass.
After you're done rimming him good and proper and he comes all over his one-of-a-kind couch, you put a condom on and fuck him good and hard. He likes that. Afterwards, he rolls over on the couch, face flushed and loose-limbed and sweaty, and he laughs. Half his body is bruised from the superhero suit; one of his knees won't really bend right, so he's doped up on codeine, and you saw him on CNN, flying over tsunami wreckage, looking for survivors.
...
Occasionally, his skin smells like some kind of rubber. You assume it has something to do with the suit; it leaves black marks on his wrists and ankles.
"I wash, but it doesn't come out," he says, and after you pull out, he rolls over to run his hand, lazily, over his cock.
...
The rule about you leaving after both of you get off doesn't change, but he doesn't always meet you at the door now. Sometimes, he's sitting on the couch, a glass of Scotch in his hand. Sometimes, he asks you if you want some Scotch. Or anything else.
One time, the two of you just end up rolling around the couch, making out. He comes from rubbing against your stomach, then jerks you off.
One time, the two of you go into his bedroom. He doesn't have a headboard in the room that tries to look like a bedroom, so you lash his hands to the bed frame. You blindfold him with the tie he'd been wearing when you came in, and then you pop a Viagra and wash it down with a little of his Scotch. He jerks up against the rope when he hears you put the glass back on the bedside table, and then, you climb into the bed and fuck him until he howls. And keep fucking him until he comes all over his stomach and chest, and before he catches his breath, you slide up his torso, straddling that light in his chest.
"Oh God," he says. The blindfold is still over his eyes, and he tests the rope holding him to the bedframe.
You pull the condom off. He hears it snap, says Oh God again. You rub your dick, wet from the inside of the condom, all over his mouth and face; he licks his lips, and then, still blindfolded, he takes your dick in his mouth.
In fact, he blows you so sweet and long and good that you can almost forget that you're only gay for pay.
...
Once, he's in the mood for something else. Jeanine calls and says that this Thursday, he wants you to meet him at 2AM. That's right. 2AM. And he's paying ten fucking grand, and he drives you over to his industrial campus in his Audi R8 with the engine under clear glass in the back, and this time, he fucks you over the railing in front of his arc reactor. And then he sits in his desk, gets you pretty close to drunk, then watches you fingerfuck yourself on his glass desk. He unbuttons his shirt; the only light in the room is the one shining from his chest.
...
The money is addictive, and the sex is pretty close to incredible.
Still, you tell yourself, it's going to stop eventually.
...
The money is addictive, and the sex is pretty close to incredible, but you know it has to stop sometime.
...
Here's how it stops: Tony likes not being able to breathe, and he also has a thing for water. You figure that a great way to combine this would be to do something in the Jacuzzi, which has privacy screening around it, and since he's started taking a certain kind of pleasure in watching you walk around naked or mostly naked, you decide to swim a couple laps back and forth in the main pool. Strictly showing, no touching.
He likes that idea, and he unbuttons his shirt and gets a glass of Scotch and sits on the side and watches you swim. You used to swim in high school, so you're pretty good, and you check when you get to the end with him. Yeah, he's getting hard in his pants. You figure he's about ready to go, so you swim back over to him, tread water for a moment in the deep end while looking up at him. He has this lazy, lazy sort of smile on his face, and when he reaches down, you think he's going to put his fingers in your mouth for you to suck.
Instead, he grabs you by the hair and holds you under water. You're already short of breath from swimming because high school was a long time ago; he lets you surface for just long enough to open your mouth and suck in half a breath, then shoves you under, and you're still trying to tread water, and --
...
After you leave the house, you put a call into Jeanine, telling her that you're not going to see him anymore. Something in your voice keeps her from asking for details, and she hangs up to call him; ten minutes later, she calls you and says that, no, he wants to see you one more time. No sex, he promises. He just wants to say goodbye and sorry.
"Only if the redhead is there," you say.
Jeanine calls you back says, yeah, he's willing to do that, and you show up again next Thursday. The redhead -- you've since remembered that her name is Pepper. Or Salt. Or. Rosemary. Something like that. She's sitting on the couch with her knees pressed together and a slightly anxious expression on her face.
"So," he says and hands you an envelope about twice as thick as any he's ever given you before. It's not easy to read the expression in his eyes, and you know he's trying to say that he's sorry, that he apologizes, except he doesn't have the words.
"So," you say and fold your fingers around the envelope.
"One last question," you say.
Pepper tenses. He's still pre-occupied by trying to work up an apology.
"Yeah?"
...
"One last question," you say.
"Yeah?" Tony puts his hands in his pockets.
...
He holds you under until you're almost blacking out, but then he lets just the top half of your face out of water. He shakes you; you're fighting the hand in your hair. Your ears are out of the water and over the churning, you swear, swear you hear him say a name that starts with O and ends with an ugly twist of his mouth.
And then he shoves you under one more time. You can't hold on anymore.
You black out.
You wake on your back on the patio with Pepper trying to perform CPR on you.
...
"Who was it?"
And he looks like you've just hit him the stomach.
"Somebody I thought I knew," he says finally.
You think about it for a second, then nod. Pepper has her face turned away; she can't look at either of you right now, and you turn.
And you go, and you never come back.
This has been brewing in my head for a while, but things that really clicked it into place yesterday were![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
th_esaurus posting TONY/OBADIAH BREATHPLAY OMFG OMFG and talking to jamaillith and one of us or maybe it was dafnap I CANNOT REMEMBER IT ALL BLURS -- he wants to prove to himself that it's cock or kink that he misses, not Obadiah.
And yeah, thanks todafnap for beign AROUND at ridic hours. And talking about the line from the movie that's the title and how much we love the hard edge that Tony shows at points.
Written while listening to, yeah, Rope by Idaho. The only human-sung lyric in the whole song? I'm not gonna to kick out any chairs from under you, so yeah, this story was kind of destined to be kind of messed and abouut not being able to breathe.
Thursday.
...
Every Thursday, in fact. Regular as clockwork.
...
Almost.
One Thursday, he isn't there. A woman meets you at the door -- she's tall, redheaded, and wearing a grey business suit. The four inch heels make her taller than you, and she seems a little nervous. She looks like she's all business with her hair pulled back like that, but the heels, the silk camisole, and the way she flushes on the sight of you.
"Hey," you say.
"Hi, um. He's out this week, but, um," she says. And without another word, she hands over the envelope. It feels a little thicker than usual, not that you'd really complain if it wasn't. Or was even missing. The guy pays you four times the going rate.
She shifts, uncomfortable, while you count it.
"There's extra this week. Is it because -- " you say, looking at her now. Blue eyes. Freckles over the nose and cheekbones, more on her chest above camisole and between the lapels of her suit, and you look past her for a second, inside of the house with those polished floors and the windows out onto the Pacific.
"Oh God. No, no."
In fact, she almost trips over her strappy heels backing away from you, but it's probably not personal. She looks like the kind of girl who'd be freaked out by the idea; when it popped into your head, yeah, the side corollary was how he would've convinced her to do it. You were already starting to try and work around the awkwardness.
"I work for him," she says, a little unnecessarily.
Sometimes, you get hired to fuck their wives or girlfriends, but they're usually there. Maybe this guy likes to watch by camera? Or maybe he's inside waiting? You scan the room behind her for another moment, but no, it's empty and bare, and she wants you gone, so apparently not.
She doesn't know whether to say Bye or not before she closes the door. You put your sunglasses on and go back down the driveway to your car.
...
He called to make the first appointment, and then, Jeanine, the booker, called you. She explained that he was a long-time customer. Before this, only girls. Always outcall. A good variety, a mix of things, and none of them ever complained about anything. He liked cuddling, and he always asked for kissers, though he'd settle for ones who didn't if a kisser wasn't available because he tended to call the afternoon-of for that evening. That was the only thing she minded about him.
"Nice guy, all things considered," Jeanine says. "One time, Monica came back with a five hundred dollar tip for me from him."
You're in the car, sitting in the parking lot in a Starbucks in Culver City, and it's a clear morning. You watch a minivan pull up and a woman in sandal heels come out and walk through the doors. She looks like she's just dropped her kids off at school.
"Did he see me on the website?"
"Nope. Called up and asked me if we carried guys, too. I told him that we did."
"Anything specific?"
"No, he just wanted somebody around his age. Nobody older. Definitely nobody older. And he's about mid-thirties."
You frown. That -- you don't like walking into a place without expectations like that. And it's an odd kind of thing to ask in this town. You don't like odd. You are definitely not a fan of odd.
"How much is he paying?"
Jeanine tells you, giving you the figure both before the agency cut and after, and you let your breath out. Slowly.
"Jesus," you say, and tell her that you'll take it.
...
The first time, you blow him. It takes him thirty-five minutes to get off; your jaw hurts like hell, and he doesn't get into it. At all. By the time you've straightened up from the crick your neck, he is handing you an envelope with three hours at the agreed rate for forty-five minutes of being there, so no, you don't expect him to be a repeat. You pocket the money and figure a fifty-dollar tip to Jeanine for getting you the one-time hookup.
By the time you get home, though, Jeanine has called to say that he wants you again. Same time. Same day next week.
...
The second time, you kiss him. He goes along with it. Seems fine with it, but doesn't get into it. He fucks you on the big bed in what passes for his bedroom: he sits down on the edge of it, and you lie over his lap, naked, while he preps you, and then you get on your hands and knees, and he fucks you.
He still isn't that into it. Or you.
"He called just now," Jeanine says twenty minutes later, just when you're getting into the lane for the 101 southbound. "Same bat time, same bat channel."
"Jesus," you say. Plenty of guys, usually married, like to have their hired male ass on the side. The general idea is that they're gay and are trying fuck themselves into being able to pretend that they're straight. He's the first straight guy you've ever had trying to fuck himself gay.
"Jesus," Jeanine says, agreeing with you.
...
And yeah, you recognize him. He's been famous since he was four. Just because he doesn't have any magazine covers of himself in the parts of his house that you've seen doesn't mean you don't recognize him.
One time, you're watching the Nightline with your roommate, just sitting and hanging out, and you realize they're doing a feature on his on his suit.
...
By time number seven, you finally discover something that he actually displays a little enthusiasm for: he likes being fucked in the ass when he's kneeling.
All fours is out for some reason, but he's comfortable being bent over things, and so you do him out on the couch in the living room. It's a weird, springy material. Kind of like foam, but not really, and you keep one foot on the floor while you do him over the back of it. He looks out the windows at the Pacific Ocean, his arms folded and hands tucked under his chin, and at one point, he tries to twist around to face you, but you turn his face back towards the ocean. Hard. Maybe a little rougher than warranted -- you're starting to read between lines that he doesn't see himself, and you move your hand to the back of his neck.
You shove into him hard, and in the reflection of the window, he licks his lips.
You press harder, fuck him harder. He gets this smile on his face. He eyes drift closed. He starts letting his hips drift couchward each time you push into him. The harder you push, the happier his reflection looks.
His hips go flush against the back of the back of the couch, and buried all the way in him, both of your hands on his hips now, you drag him in a slow circle over the couch, and he tilts his head back.
"God," he says, eyes still closed, and for the first time, pushes back against you.
...
Another Thursday, you show up, and he's not there.
The red-headed woman is at the door again, but there's someone else there, too. It makes her almost cripplingly nervous, and she tries to block your view of inside, but you catch a glimpse of a blue uniform with colored bits of metal across the chest. A black guy, military, and he's moving towards the door and you and the woman in big, ground-eating strides.
"Pepper, who is it? Tony, I swear to God, if that's you, I'm going to beat your ass black and -- "
Pepper basically slams the door behind her and in the guy's face, then shoves the envelope at you. She's dressed almost the same as the first time you saw her, except the mascara under her eyes is a little smeared, as if she's been crying.
So yeah, she shoves the money at you and looks profoundly grateful when you leave without saying another word.
You pull the car out of the driveway; she's opened the door back up.
The guy is on the front, asking her what the fu -- sorry, what just happened.
...
You pay off your car. You put some -- all right, a lot of -- money away for a rainy day, take your roommate out for a nice fucking dinner to pay him back for all the times he bailed you out when you were still driving the Oldsmobile clunker, then buy Jeanine silver earrings from Tiffany's.
...
The first time you see him all the way naked, yeah, you're a little weirded out.
...
The first time you fuck him when he's wearing one of those shirts with the hole cut out in the middle, yeah, you're a little weirded out.
...
It's a weird topography. You have to revise the idea of him being a straight guy trying to fuck himself gay. He's clearly taken it up the ass from cock plenty of times before, given lots of blowjobs and handjobs, and sometimes, it's even pretty clear that he knows what he wants, but he won't tell you. He won't articulate it and wants you to work for it.
Other times, you can tell he surprises himself. He shocks himself with he likes something. He loses himself is the best way you can put it, and the first time it happens, he's bent over the back of the couch in the living room again. Again, he looks out at the ocean; his legs are spread, and you've just started rimming him. Wet and messy, with lots of noise because he likes noise, and he surprises both of you by moaning.
Instead of just going back and doing what you had been doing the way you normally would, though, you actually pull back, stand up, and lean over him. You touch one finger to his wet ass.
"Don't moan," you say, right in his ear.
He doesn't say anything.
So you put two fingers in his ass, which is more than he's ready for at the moment. He squeezes down, and right as he's getting ready to moan again, you clamp your other hand down over his mouth.
"What did I say?"
He looks up at you over the hand on his mouth, and you see two expressions go over his eyes: first, for just a second, surprise. Then, like a wave rolling in over sand, lust that would be a little scary if he weren't paying you an absurd amount of money to make him feel that way. His shoulders bend a little, but the lust is still in his eyes, and when he sucks your fingers into his mouth, straight down until almost where they meet your palm, then makes eye-contact again, you think he's actually going to come right then and there.
He hangs on, though, and you wipe your fingers on his ass.
After you're done rimming him good and proper and he comes all over his one-of-a-kind couch, you put a condom on and fuck him good and hard. He likes that. Afterwards, he rolls over on the couch, face flushed and loose-limbed and sweaty, and he laughs. Half his body is bruised from the superhero suit; one of his knees won't really bend right, so he's doped up on codeine, and you saw him on CNN, flying over tsunami wreckage, looking for survivors.
...
Occasionally, his skin smells like some kind of rubber. You assume it has something to do with the suit; it leaves black marks on his wrists and ankles.
"I wash, but it doesn't come out," he says, and after you pull out, he rolls over to run his hand, lazily, over his cock.
...
The rule about you leaving after both of you get off doesn't change, but he doesn't always meet you at the door now. Sometimes, he's sitting on the couch, a glass of Scotch in his hand. Sometimes, he asks you if you want some Scotch. Or anything else.
One time, the two of you just end up rolling around the couch, making out. He comes from rubbing against your stomach, then jerks you off.
One time, the two of you go into his bedroom. He doesn't have a headboard in the room that tries to look like a bedroom, so you lash his hands to the bed frame. You blindfold him with the tie he'd been wearing when you came in, and then you pop a Viagra and wash it down with a little of his Scotch. He jerks up against the rope when he hears you put the glass back on the bedside table, and then, you climb into the bed and fuck him until he howls. And keep fucking him until he comes all over his stomach and chest, and before he catches his breath, you slide up his torso, straddling that light in his chest.
"Oh God," he says. The blindfold is still over his eyes, and he tests the rope holding him to the bedframe.
You pull the condom off. He hears it snap, says Oh God again. You rub your dick, wet from the inside of the condom, all over his mouth and face; he licks his lips, and then, still blindfolded, he takes your dick in his mouth.
In fact, he blows you so sweet and long and good that you can almost forget that you're only gay for pay.
...
Once, he's in the mood for something else. Jeanine calls and says that this Thursday, he wants you to meet him at 2AM. That's right. 2AM. And he's paying ten fucking grand, and he drives you over to his industrial campus in his Audi R8 with the engine under clear glass in the back, and this time, he fucks you over the railing in front of his arc reactor. And then he sits in his desk, gets you pretty close to drunk, then watches you fingerfuck yourself on his glass desk. He unbuttons his shirt; the only light in the room is the one shining from his chest.
...
The money is addictive, and the sex is pretty close to incredible.
Still, you tell yourself, it's going to stop eventually.
...
The money is addictive, and the sex is pretty close to incredible, but you know it has to stop sometime.
...
Here's how it stops: Tony likes not being able to breathe, and he also has a thing for water. You figure that a great way to combine this would be to do something in the Jacuzzi, which has privacy screening around it, and since he's started taking a certain kind of pleasure in watching you walk around naked or mostly naked, you decide to swim a couple laps back and forth in the main pool. Strictly showing, no touching.
He likes that idea, and he unbuttons his shirt and gets a glass of Scotch and sits on the side and watches you swim. You used to swim in high school, so you're pretty good, and you check when you get to the end with him. Yeah, he's getting hard in his pants. You figure he's about ready to go, so you swim back over to him, tread water for a moment in the deep end while looking up at him. He has this lazy, lazy sort of smile on his face, and when he reaches down, you think he's going to put his fingers in your mouth for you to suck.
Instead, he grabs you by the hair and holds you under water. You're already short of breath from swimming because high school was a long time ago; he lets you surface for just long enough to open your mouth and suck in half a breath, then shoves you under, and you're still trying to tread water, and --
...
After you leave the house, you put a call into Jeanine, telling her that you're not going to see him anymore. Something in your voice keeps her from asking for details, and she hangs up to call him; ten minutes later, she calls you and says that, no, he wants to see you one more time. No sex, he promises. He just wants to say goodbye and sorry.
"Only if the redhead is there," you say.
Jeanine calls you back says, yeah, he's willing to do that, and you show up again next Thursday. The redhead -- you've since remembered that her name is Pepper. Or Salt. Or. Rosemary. Something like that. She's sitting on the couch with her knees pressed together and a slightly anxious expression on her face.
"So," he says and hands you an envelope about twice as thick as any he's ever given you before. It's not easy to read the expression in his eyes, and you know he's trying to say that he's sorry, that he apologizes, except he doesn't have the words.
"So," you say and fold your fingers around the envelope.
"One last question," you say.
Pepper tenses. He's still pre-occupied by trying to work up an apology.
"Yeah?"
...
"One last question," you say.
"Yeah?" Tony puts his hands in his pockets.
...
He holds you under until you're almost blacking out, but then he lets just the top half of your face out of water. He shakes you; you're fighting the hand in your hair. Your ears are out of the water and over the churning, you swear, swear you hear him say a name that starts with O and ends with an ugly twist of his mouth.
And then he shoves you under one more time. You can't hold on anymore.
You black out.
You wake on your back on the patio with Pepper trying to perform CPR on you.
...
"Who was it?"
And he looks like you've just hit him the stomach.
"Somebody I thought I knew," he says finally.
You think about it for a second, then nod. Pepper has her face turned away; she can't look at either of you right now, and you turn.
And you go, and you never come back.
This has been brewing in my head for a while, but things that really clicked it into place yesterday were
th_esaurus posting TONY/OBADIAH BREATHPLAY OMFG OMFG and talking to jamaillith and one of us or maybe it was dafnap I CANNOT REMEMBER IT ALL BLURS -- he wants to prove to himself that it's cock or kink that he misses, not Obadiah. And yeah, thanks to
dafnap for beign AROUND at ridic hours. And talking about the line from the movie that's the title and how much we love the hard edge that Tony shows at points. Written while listening to, yeah, Rope by Idaho. The only human-sung lyric in the whole song? I'm not gonna to kick out any chairs from under you, so yeah, this story was kind of destined to be kind of messed and abouut not being able to breathe.
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How are you this good. You have sold your soul to the devil. Afghfdghsdhg.
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also, Tony getting fucked on the same place where Obie tried to kill him. ANd liking it.
jesus. Pepper.
Tony's messed up brain. God.
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I once took prompts in another fandom and got a request to write something that was, and I pretty much quote, "close to canon."Or. "Based on canon." Something like. XD That was the moment that I realized just how far my brain wanders off standard without me noticing it. I'm glad the fic still works.
Although in my head, at least, Tony doesn't really try to kill the guy. He just. Figured he'd play a little of the game the guy is playing with him, a continuation of taking the guy out to work and doing him in front of the arc reactor and in the office, where Tony is a little more on top, and then it just gets totally out of hand.
Poor Pepper. Poor Pepper.
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Pepper better have gotten a raise. Or a weekend at a spa in fucking Sedona or something.
thing is, your brain wanders off, but it takes the characters with it. Which is why this stuff works.
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I am sorry, by the way, that writing is giving you trouble. Is there anything I can do?
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reading all this wrongness certainly helps my mood though.
and yeah. That icon. can't remember who did it, but the chin up thing. yeah.
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But for serious: how quickly Tony shifts from lazy, lazy sort of smile on his face and ugly twist of his mouth kills me. Jesus. And the implication that Pepper is in the house, nearby enough to get there in time for CPR, if not watching, then just there concerned enough to stick around just in case, man. MAN. The implication just breaks my heart.
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Well, that's how Obie rolled, you know. :>
And yeah. I like to think about how freaked out Pepper must be by this whole thing. Because yeah, she kinda knew Tony liked to pay for it on occasion, but this is a brand new level of messed.
OH GOD PEPPER AND ANDY PLAYING I HAVE NEVER OMFG.
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Like, he doesn't have a name, because it's not about him, it's about Tony fucking Stark losing his mind, just alittle. And Pepper! Oi, Pepper and her concern and the fact that she's so not okay but doesn't leave because she might have to perform CPR on one of Tony's moneyfucks, AS YOU DO.
Like, I can't quite wrap my mind around it, because it's too much and so good.
Like, my fanon of Tony just changed and became this.
Like, I thought it was bad when you cut away when he was in the pool, but then OH HO! No, no it's so much worse because Tony doesn't stop until he blacks out.
ok, I lied. I have words, obvs. SO GOOD.
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Er. Um. But yes, I'm glad you liked this. Particularly if you're not a slash reader generally because in him head, this is way more about Tony's fail than about the porn. Tony thinks that calling Obadiah by his last name is all the coping it's going to take? Uh, no. I bet he has issues closing his eyes in showers the first month or so after he gets back, and yeah, when he's finally getting over it, HELLO THERE, OBADIAH TELLING HIM TO BREATHE, BREATHE, BREATHE.
Seeing this comment from you made my day yesterday. :D
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Anyway: Why am I not reading fic about Tony's first shower back and flipping out? And "Breathe breathe breathe" -- did that happen in the movie, or is that from a story? I only saw it once, I feel like I miss half the things in fic! WOE.
So yeah, this is still greatness, and thank you for the compliment on my fic!!!
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Your pacing here is just perfect, too- I think that's what I'm enjoying most, reading through your stories- you consistently build up an insane amount of creepy tension with just tiny details. The reveal at the end of what Tony did in the pool was especially fantastic (and horrifying, and extra horrifying in that it felt like it could completely fit with the Tony of the movie.)
I hope you don't mind that I'm friending you.
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extra horrifying in that it felt like it could completely fit with the Tony of the movie.
Yeah. I. That's my beef, really, with a lot of Iron Man fic: the Tony just isn't messed up. He's kind of an asshole, but now that we've got the Dubai footage? Man, post-Afghanistan, post-Obie betrayal on the carpet, he's just fucked.
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...
The money is addictive, and the sex is pretty close to incredible.
Still, you tell yourself, it's going to stop eventually.
...
The money is addictive, and the sex is pretty close to incredible, but you know it has to stop sometime.
...
Here's how it stops:
followed by the result, and then the reveal. Great pacing.
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