author's notes: who knew i still had this in me. haha.

.

When The Lights Are Dim (& Your Hands Are Shaking)

part three

.

"Hey, killer."

They're always the same, the same two words that tumble from Sebastian's lips as he stalks into his apartment, all confidence and zero shame, piercing green eyes drilling holes in him as if he's trying to discern his inner workings, the springs and coils that make him tick like he's a clockwork man waiting to be fixed.

Maybe he is, he can't tell anymore, can't justify Sebastian's being here in any sane manner nor can he ignore the exciteful anticipation that crawls between his shoulder blades every time Sebastian answers his call – he's even come to like the nickname, killer. Whatever it means it implies some sort of connection to Sebastian, even if that's not the intent behind it – for all he knows it's what he calls all his clients, or the ones whose names he can't remember. But it's become special to him all the same.

"What's wrong?" comes Sebastian's next question when his initial greeting remains unanswered.

Not for the first time he turns his back on Sebastian, waits for the taller man to draw closer, to place his hands atop his shoulders and massage at the pinpoint anxiety knitting them into a tight mess. Last time his answer came hesitant but clear, he wasn't this person, didn't pay for sex or even needed the physicality if there was a real connection to be had. Now he can't say it, how he's been forced to become that man, how sexual release chases everything away, the pain and heartache, stress and shame, guilt and–

– just, absolutely everything.

"It's okay if you're not up for this." Sebastian's lips rest against the back of his neck, breath warm and welcome to his skin, the added pressure of a few touches enough to ground him. He'd be content to have Sebastian close, to have him hold him all night long, wire his fingers through his curls, skim soothing palms down his back.

Isn't that what people say about escorts? That they're hired for their companionship, for creating the semblance of a bond their clients look for in other people, but can't seem to find? Except he hasn't looked, he hasn't even so much as tried, he can't stand the thought of opening up to anyone new only to be reminded how his last love got ripped away so mercilessly – it hurts too much to think about, the mere possibility of a new heartbreak, so he simply satisfies his carnal desires with Sebastian.

But today–

Today marks one year. One year without Simon, one year of love gone and his inability to break free from the disconcerting thought that he'll never find it again. Sebastian erases those thoughts, so maybe now he needs it more than ever, tiptoe the line between pleasure and pain, let Sebastian take control under his meticulous supervision.

Yet he stands paralyzed, not by shame this time around, but by guilt.

Simon's gone, nothing can change that, but what would he think? Would he want him to move on? Would he accept that his boyfriend could find love with another man, when their love had been far from over? Or would he be more likely to forgive him for this transgression, his undisclosed desires paid for, his Friday nights spent with a man who doesn't love him at all ...

He turns around, skin buzzing, allowing Sebastian to smooth his hands down his chest until they rest on his abdomen, the taller man undoubtedly noticing how erratic his breathing has become. But if he wonders Sebastian doesn't show it, simply waits for him to speak.

He licks his lips and lays a hand on top of Sebastian's, mustering the courage to ask, to beg more of Sebastian than he ever has. "You do anything I ask, right?"

A smile pulls Sebastian's lips askew. "To a certain degree."

His heart thuds dully in his chest, like a hollow echo in a dried out desert cave – he's terrified, more than he's ever been, that this will somehow prove disrespectful towards his previous relationship. But he longs to be numb, to be stripped bare and driven insane by a body that's gotten to know his, another night with a boy who sells his body for sex, simple, pure, no strings attached.

"Pretend you're my boyfriend," he chokes out, tears stinging the corners of his eyes but shoulders no longer weighted by that stunning sense of shame.

And Sebastian slips into it no questions asked, a hand reaches for his face and a thumb rubs circles into his jaw, eyes molten with the promise that he won't be judged for this. "The sweet loving boyfriend who comes home after a long day of work."

"Yes," he breathes, and closes his eyes, imagines another man in Sebastian's stead, and what follows matches the promise made: a sweet loving kiss placed to his lips, a new scenario in a familiar setting. He returns the kiss readily, lips pushing against Sebastian's lazy but certain, with no need for it to go further just yet.

"How was your day, baby?" Sebastian whispers, the deep cadence of his voice circling down his spine.

"So long." He shivers, Sebastian's lips trailing down his neck, fingers deftly unmaking the uncertainty, pulling it apart and leaving it in broken pieces on the floor. "Too long."

"You wanna talk about it?"

"I wanna forget." He pulls Sebastian closer and locks his arms around the small of his back, their bodies pressed together and his desperate need for this becomes equally frightening. "Make me forget."

"I missed you." Sebastian plays his part like no other – he has to force himself not to think about it too much, to not imagine other men with similar requests and Sebastian falling in line like a lap dog. Tonight Sebastian is his, a puppet with strings for him to pull, each action scripted to his needs.

"I missed you too," he whispers.

"Let me make love to you."

If Sebastian hadn't suggest it he never would've been brave enough to ask, but yes, yes, he'll let Sebastian make love to him, peel back every layer between his broken heart and his chance at repair, turn him into a real boy again who functions in a world still spinning too fast for him to keep up.

Sebastian finds his eyes, one hand cupped around his neck, soothing circles deep into his skin – he wants the fantasy for a blindfold, obscuring pain and heartache and people who might rightly judge him. In here he takes control of his own desire, with Sebastian his willing participant. Fingers wire through his like a swift and gentle promise and next thing he's being pulled towards the bedroom, where the fantasy will become flesh and sweat, hot hands and teeth clashing and come staining the sheets.

"Lie back," Sebastian commands, toeing off his shoes and removing his shirt, revealing his slender body with taut muscles and a storm of freckles, a butterfly tattoo over one of his hips; he unclasps his necklaces and takes off the leather band around his wrist, the ring around his middle finger dancing circles on the nightstand once he deposits it there. "I'm going to take good care of you."

He lies down on the bed, fully clothed save for his shoes, and watches Sebastian take supplies out of the drawer in the nightstand. He shifts nervously once Sebastian approaches the bed – he opens his legs so that Sebastian can lie down between them, but the taller hovers over him on all fours, unpredictable all over again, his heartbeat losing its rhythm.

Sebastian stares at him for a long time, enough for some of his anxiety to return, even though Sebastian's close enough for him to feel the heat from his body, and rather than anxiety his skin starts crawling, begging to be touched. Then, tentatively, another promise, a present to be unwrapped, Sebastian leans in and brushes his lips along his, deliberately settling his groin down against his.

All the urgency that informed Sebastian's movements the other nights has disappeared, every movement comes calculated and slow, deliberate; his groin ghosts over his, the barely-there friction allowing for an aching build-up that's almost loving. And then Sebastian kisses him, equally slow but lingering, a reverence to his kiss and touches he's been desperate for. His lips travel down, his kisses breathy caresses down his skin, buttons on his shirt undone with purpose.

Sebastian's breathing has picked up along with his, and as his lips linger right below his bellybutton it's as if the taller steels himself for what's to come, as if he has to steady his own nerves or keep his arousal in check to make this perfect for him – his mind reels at the thought; it's what a boyfriend might do, give his desire equal attention. The button on his pants pops, long fingers pulling the zipper down, skating the fabric down his hips. One layer. Then, he feels a kiss stamped to his hipbone, before his boxers suffer the same fate and are discarded to the floor. Two layers.

He leans up on his elbows, animated by a shameless desire to see Sebastian's lips red and swollen around his cock, but once he catches that gleam of green he realizes it might be something even deeper, not just carnal. Sebastian's hard and alluring edges have softened, his touches informed by an almost worship, and when he looks at him now, seated between his legs, he sees a boy, not a man.

"What's wrong?" Sebastian asks, reverently palming over one of his hipbones.

"You look– different." He swallows around the sudden fear that what he's doing is wrong, that it's illegal, that he's disrespecting himself and his past relationship with Simon, but Sebastian even moreso. He's paying Sebastian to pretend to be someone he's not. "Without all the–"

"Hey," Sebastian hushes so softly, so genuinely, and settles down over his body again, forcing him back on the mattress and printing kisses along his jawline. "I'm exactly where I need to be, you hear me?" he says, one hand twisting circles in his hair.

He closes his eyes to the deep-voiced confession, wraps his heart and entire existence around it. What he's doing isn't wrong, he means to become a real boy again and Sebastian's a way to bridge the gap. This isn't a mistake. He's exactly where he needs to be too.

Sebastian seemingly takes his silence as an answer, because before he knows it he's moved between his legs again and his tongue teases at the tip of his cock, precociously licking around the rim – he just about crawls out of his skin, Sebastian's lips nipping at his cock, never quite taking him in his mouth. He hears the distant pop of the bottle of lube, two fingers teasing at his hole.

"Sebastian," he breathes, the tip of the taller's finger thrusting inside, slightly deeper with each passing second. Fingers tangle into beautiful brown hair until he can't take it anymore and pulls at it hard, forcing Sebastian up again, who curls a single digit inside his ass. Their mouths find each other again in a mad game of push and pull, all tongues, some of the softness gone in favor of his ravage desire. "More," he begs, a second finger soon added to the game.

They make out softly moaning to each other's lips, lazy, effortless, as if they've only ever known each other's mouths but aren't yet done exploring the intricacies of what those mouths might offer. His arms are locked around Sebastian's neck to keep him in place, one leg draped along Sebastian's hip so Sebastian can finger him open, but it's the give and take between their lips that occupies his thoughts – he never allowed room for this before, true intimacy he'd only felt in committed relationships, gentle loving care he never thought he'd find again, not after losing Simon. But here he is in a stranger's arms, safeguarded from the rest of the world, and while this is paid for, while this might even prove a mistake, he needed the confirmation that it wasn't lost to him.

"We can keep going like this," Sebastian whispers in between two kisses, the fingers curling deep inside him coaxing out a whimper. His body's getting away from him, a distant entity that'll let loose any moment now. "If you like."

And he whines a gasp against Sebastian's lips, kissing down his neck, fingers digging into the small of his back because yes, yes, what more could anyone ever want beyond this, what could they want more than this, a soft-edged boy holding all the pieces of his broken heart, trying to superglue them back together, and almost definitely succeeding.

"I want you to come for me, baby," Sebastian whispers in his ear and he knows he won't last much longer, they've been at this at a maddeningly slow pace, Sebastian's patience sheltering him from any guilt or shame that might've made him crumble at the seams. He reaches between their bodies, both their cocks hard and heavy, and grabs his fingers around them, holding them together in a tight grip as he moves his hand slowly up and down.

It's not like all the other times they've been together, when they fucked or sucked each other off, when Sebastian had him bent over the living room table and wet his hole with his tongue – his orgasm builds in infinitesimal small increments, he can feel the itch drawing closer with a Cheshire cat like grin, gently and purposeful, and when he reaches the point of precipice Sebastian's right there with him, their bodies shaking with orgasm, his cries muffled when Sebastian covers his lips with his own, Sebastian's fingers slowly easing out of him. They don't pull apart, they don't try to catch a breath, Sebastian cups the back of his head and flips him on his back, licking deep into his mouth until he loses sense of time and space.

He can't tell how many moments pass before Sebastian does ease back, quiets their mouths so that his heartbeat might find peace too. "Ten seconds," Sebastian says softly, before he gets up stark naked and heads into the bathroom, time he uses to toss aside dirty sheets, pulling the duvet up from the foot of the bed. Sebastian returns with a damp towel, which he gently draws down his stomach, cleaning off dried semen and sweat, all in the comfortable silence fallen over the room.

Soon Sebastian curls his long slender body around him underneath the sheets, warm and secure, his heart a rickety semblance of what it once was.

"Thank you," he says.

And Sebastian could answer with something as trite as the customer is king, but instead simply kisses his shoulder, like an actor playing his part, running through his lines, he the director orchestrating the whole thing. Yet right in that moment they're not those people, not actors, and Sebastian's not a puppet. Sebastian might just be the boy who's divined his inner workings, fixed the clockwork man running two half seconds slow.

Sebastian plants another kiss on his shoulder. "What are you working on?"

"Book launch." He huffs, reminded too quickly of the insane to-do list that'll still be waiting for him in the morning. The only good thing about this entire week was knowing it would eventually end up with him in Sebastian's arms – though he hadn't imagined it quite like this. He and Sebastian have never really talked. "The author's a pain in the ass."

Long fingers draw down his arm. "How come?"

"Just, you know–" He sighs, turning in Sebastian's arms. He refuses to go into work mode right now, work mode meant stressing over the next angry phone call, trying to please authors in a market downsizing in profits by the minute and his boss demanding results; he stopped liking his job quite a while ago. "–crazy demands, unrealistic expectations. I don't really wanna talk about it."

"Okay," Sebastian concedes immediately, rearranging the sheets around them. "You want me to stay."

He can't tell if it's a question or a foregone conclusion. Sebastian wasn't supposed to stay the first time, he hadn't planned on it because he hadn't known what to expect, but after a few rounds and about three orgasms his need for this boy's body superseded his need to honor Simon's memory by keeping his side of the bed empty. He'd needed a body close. Any body.

Now he needs Sebastian's.

"Yes," he says, entangling his legs with Sebastian's, the money he left on the living room table a distant memory. Sebastian kisses his forehead, a hand carding through his hair.

That's how he falls asleep.

.

.

to be continued

.