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Black hadn't bothered to clean the motor oil off his fingers properly again today. It had left a fresh mark on the arm of Sean's already-filthy couch, as always when they'd just come from the workshop. Sean was long past minding - he quite liked the marks he left. Proof he was here.
They'd both been up here quite a while already, and they'd been drinking and watching TV. Sean was just drunk enough to fixate on that fresh mark, on all the marks, and to think deeply - in the way that only late-night, intoxicated thoughts can be deep - about how these marks were like the marks that Black had left on Sean's soul. He was getting emotional, in an irrational way. Sappy. This brand of cheap beer always did that to him.
It was just them today. Sean couldn't help but stare at Black's mouth as he put a cigarette between his lips - always the chain smoker - and lit it, eyes intense in the flickering light of the TV. God, he was so sexy. And he didn't even know it. Probably didn't even care.
After all, that was Black all over.
"That motherfucker," Black said, in response to a news story where Tawi, one of the worst examples of corruption in Thai politics, was smiling and delivering a press conference to an entirely-too-polite throng of journalists. Black's eyes flashed in anger, and it made Sean's heart skip a beat. "Motherfucker."
"Motherfucker," Sean echoed, agreeing. That wasn't even the half of it, with what he'd done to people. What he'd done to Sean. Still, Sean didn't look at the TV. He was transfixed instead by Black. He couldn't look away.
"They're all so afraid. Look at this! Journalists are meant to keep scum like this accountable, and what do they do? They run a news story like this to spin this whole shitshow like he only deserves a slap on the wrist. He probably bought them off. Thinks he's untouchable. And I can't even say he'll get what's coming to him one day, because he won't, and he knows it. Look at that fucking… that fucking, fucking smug face. He fucking knows it."
Sean's heart always beat faster when Black got like this, but not in a good way. Black had lit a fire in him - he'd lit a fire in all of them - but sometimes he was genuinely afraid of Black, too. As the months and years went on, he just got more and more obsessed, the injustices he saw eating away at him piece by piece, frustrated by a system that didn't function in the interests of the people, that threw people under the grinding wheels of capitalism for profit and control. And it wasn't like he was wrong, about any of it, but he never wanted to switch off. Just burned, and burned more, brighter and brighter. The glimpses Sean used to see, those humanising glimpses, were so rare now. He was just… ablaze. All of him. All the time.
"Hey," Sean found himself slurring. "Why don't you change over to something else? I know how much he pisses you off."
Black swung his head to face him, and Sean almost blacked out under the power in that stare.
"Never look away," Black said, tone low and seething. "Never. That's how they win. You hear me?"
Sean swallowed, looking down at his lips - chapped, but full and so, so tempting. They twisted into a disbelieving smirk.
"You been staring at me again?" he asked, and Sean flushed. It wasn't the first time Black had noticed, but it was the first time they'd been so close when he said it. He looked away, embarrassed, and Black let out an ironic laugh, looking at him.
"You took 'don't look away' the wrong way, you know."
"Yeah. Sorry. It's just late and I'm fucking drunk." Sean looked at his mostly-empty beer bottle for a moment to emphasise his excuse, then drained the last of its contents. He let it drop to the floor, to join the rest of the empty bottles from that night with a clink.
"We're both fucking drunk." Sean didn't quite register what was going on at first, senses dulled by alcohol, but all of a sudden Black's hand was on his leg, tracing up and down and lighting up all of Sean's nerve endings in its wake.
Sean just gaped stupidly at it, unable to articulate what he was feeling. How much he wanted it. Fuck.
"You OK with this?" asked Black.
Sean just nodded, mutely.
Black rose up, slowly and deliberately pushing Sean onto his back against the arm of the couch, crowding him with just… all that he was. Sean ached to kiss those lips, so close yet so untouchable. One hand still held onto that lit cigarette, dangerously close to dropping ash on the skin of Sean's neck. Black's other hand left Sean's thigh and instead came to his chest, rubbing across it and then cupping experimentally where, if Sean were a woman, he'd have boobs. Sean couldn't breathe properly. He was terrified that anything he could do would break the moment, utterly wrecked and confused by what was going on. There was silence for a few seconds, with only Sean's heavy breathing filling the air.
"I said, is this OK?" Black repeated.
Sean felt so overwhelmed. He couldn't give a coherent answer.
"Please," is what fell from his lips instead. "Please…"
"Well, since you said please…" Black's hand trailed down Sean's chest, down his lower stomach and straight over his waistband without hesitation, without stopping, until he was cupping Sean in his jeans. Sean was hard already, straining painfully against the fabric. Black gave a testing rub over the bulge, and Sean moaned.
"You must have got hard just from looking at me," Black said, continuing his attentions. "You like the look of me that much?"
Sean buried his face in his arm, embarrassed, only looking at Black from under it.
"Yeah," he admitted in a weak voice. Black made him so weak. "Ah, shit. You make me feel so… so good."
Black glanced over at the TV as the segment on Tawi renewed, a political commentator who was also being far too moderate giving her limp opinion of the situation, and his eyes clouded with hate. He looked back at Sean, and Sean looked back at him, almost trembling, grateful for every moment of Black's attention he could get, wishing Black would just switch the TV off already. Black pulled off his shirt and returned to giving Sean's cock some attention, almost angrily.
"Then look at me," Black commanded. "You want this?"
"I want this," Sean echoed, still overwhelmed.
"Would you let me fuck you?"
Sean almost short-circuited.
"Yes," he said in a rush, as if the offer would disappear if he wasn't quick enough. "Yes."
And so Black pulled at Sean and removed his clothes, the layers that lay between them and his goal. For all Black seemed small, he was strong, stronger than Sean, and he manipulated Sean's larger body easily. Sean wouldn't have fought him anyway, still not able to really believe or process what was happening, but still thanking all the gods in existence that he got this chance to just let Black touch him, to see him like this. Even just once. He reached up a shaky hand to touch Black's chest, and Black batted his hand away before taking another drag of his cigarette.
"Where's the lube and condoms?" he asked, straight to the point.
"Huh?" Sean responded.
"Lube. Condoms. Where are they?"
The cogs turned slowly in Sean's lust-addled brain, and it took him a few seconds to answer.
"Uh. Tool cabinet. Bottom drawer."
"Good." Black left to go and look, unashamed and beautiful in his nakedness, and Sean curled around himself at the sudden loss of contact, feeling exposed and abandoned. He started to pump himself, trying not to think about it too much. About how much he wanted Black to kiss him. He brought his other hand to his mouth, sucking at his fingers instead, a poor substitute.
Would Black let Sean kiss him? Black probably wouldn't, Sean knew that logically. But there was a little flicker of hope in his chest even so, because he'd never thought Black would do this either.
When Black returned, those lips were wrapped round the cigarette again. No possibility of kissing him with that burning end in the way, however much Sean wanted to. He licked his own lips, staring.
Black's gaze skittered off to the side again, as the commentator wrapped up her speech with some particularly unrealistic claims about accountability. He didn't even look as he opened the lid of the jar, and scooped some out with his fingers. What was happening on TV was too much. Sean could feel Black's attention slipping away.
"Please," Sean begged, no dignity left. "I need you."
Mercifully, that brought Black's attention back to him.
"You need me, huh, Sean?" He lifted one of Sean's legs to expose that hidden place, and used his lube-slick fingers to start to touch there. "What do you need?"
Sean was gasping with want, asshole fluttering, desperate for Black's fingers, trying to clench onto them.
"That," he forced out. "More. Please."
And one of Black's slender fingers pushed inside him for the first time.
"Yeah," Sean gasped, "yeah, that. Shit."
The finger moved and swirled, loosening Sean up slowly.
Too slowly.
That fucking cigarette was still between Black's lips. The fucking news was still on, and Black was still listening to it, distracted, angry. The slow pace was letting his attention wander. Sean needed to demand more, and fast.
"What?" Sean found himself blurting out in frustration, taunting to get his way, to try and get Black to concentrate. He moved his hips on Black's fingers. "Is that really the best you can do? I said more. I'm not a girl."
Black responded by almost bending him in half and shoving in an extra finger, causing a humiliating cry of pain from Sean.
"I've done this with women before," Black said. "I heard men were more delicate, though. Did I hear wrong?"
"I liked that," Sean lied. "I like it rough."
"I never want to hurt you," Black said, and glanced sideways at the screen. "That fucking man has done enough of that."
Black's attention was creeping again. Tawi was back onscreen, talking again, the PR spin clear in his practiced phrasing, couching the ugly truth in cosy white lies.
Black was hurting badly, Sean could see that. His unflinching sense of right and wrong was something so central to him that to see someone like that get away with his corruption burned out the core of him. It was something Sean loved about him. It was something he hated, too.
"Fuck me, Black," Sean purred, trying desperately to keep his attention. He knew it was pathetic, but he had no choice. "Forget about him. Look at me. Make me feel it."
Black's expression was twisted in pain, hate practically choking him. That fierce, burning expression was back, and Sean felt the two, then three fingers inside him work him open roughly. His muscles began to protest. He tried to breathe through it.
"They're going to forget about it," Black said all of a sudden, horror in his tone, "about fucking all of it. Sweep it under the rug like it never happened. They're going to look away, and he's going to keep going."
"Yeah," Sean soothed, heart in his mouth as he could see Black slip more and more into his own head. He gulped, and summoned his courage enough to beg, just a little. "Focus on me. Just me. Please, Black. For me?"
It should have worked. It was about to work, but then Tawi laughed at his own joke, and the audience laughed with him, and Sean could see the way that burned through him, the way Black’s head filled with the sound until there was no space for anything left. Suddenly Black was pushing into him, splitting Sean open.
“Yeah,” Sean said weakly, nonsensically, knowing there was no bringing him back now.
Black was tense, like a coiled spring, just thrusting into Sean again and again, but even if he was looking in Sean’s direction his eyes had that faraway, blazing look, the fire consuming him as he channeled that anger into Sean, who could only moan and clutch at him.
“Black?” Sean asked, a tremor in his voice.
“You like that?” Black growled. Sean looked up at him and for a second, considered confessing to him. Telling him that this wasn’t what he wanted. But he looked up at the other man and saw that his ears were too full of the poison and lies from the TV, his eyes too full of the flickering of Tawi’s insincere whitened grin. He’d never get through to him. The most he could ask him to do was to stop.
He was too weak to ask for that.
“Yeah, I like it,” he said instead, which only caused Black to hammer into him harder. Sean’s muscles screamed at him and he almost whited out as Black roughly wrapped both arms under Sean’s knees to bend him in half and drive into him. He clenched his jaw and endured it.
“Black,” Sean said again, uselessly, tears in the corner of his eyes, trying not to sound fake. “Black. Yeah. I like it.”
Sean had gone limp, no longer erect, his body too preoccupied with what was being done to it. It still felt good, but it was really starting to hurt. Sean grit his teeth and just focused on the fact that it was Black, here. Black, who he’d been having fantasies about since they first met. Black, who gave his life purpose. Black, who would die to protect the rights of others. Black, who probably would die for the rights of others one day soon. A tragic hero. A martyr in the making, burning bright and alive all around him, here on this filthy couch.
I love him, he thought suddenly, silently, desperately, even though he knew it would never be reciprocated, never be enough. He reached up and touched Black’s cheek, and for a moment he saw the eyes snap back to attention. Like an ant under a magnifying glass, Sean was caught in that wonderful gaze.
“Black,” he whispered, and it was at that moment that Black’s jaw went slack and he came inside Sean. Black fell forward, and for a glorious moment, Sean was certain that Black was going to kiss him, but he simply collapsed, boneless, onto Sean’s shoulder.
Sean wanted to hold him against him. To comfort him, to protect him from all the horrors of the world. To show him that even if he had nothing else, he was loved. His fingers twitched, almost doing it, wanting so badly to cradle the smaller body against his, but being afraid to. His arm moved at last, but was interrupted by Black moving off him, pulling out of him, businesslike, and taking off and tying off the condom. As if it was simply a transaction that held no further meaning beyond sex.
Black picked up Sean’s discarded t-shirt and wordlessly threw it at him to put back on. He pulled his own clothes back on and was soon fully back to the state he’d been in before this all started, taking drags of his cigarette, looking at the TV.
Sean didn’t move quite as fast. He couldn’t bring himself to leave that moment behind, not just yet. His head swirled and his asshole throbbed in pain and his heart shook under the waves of loss and feeling… empty. Used. Discarded.
He had to fight to keep his face neutral. Black, for all his compassion for the weak, had little patience for weakness in his allies. And that was all Sean would ever be to him. So he had to play along, to keep up the illusion that he was worthy to be around Black, even as his heart quietly crumbled inside him. He had to be what Black wanted him to be. That was how he could get this close.
Black exterminated his cigarette butt in the ashtray. That was Sean’s cue to get a grip on himself, and pull all of his own clothes back on piece by piece, to try not to wince as he moved.
"I'm sorry," Black said, breaking the silence, taking a fresh cigarette out of the pack. "I won't do it again. You deserve better."
He lit it, face suddenly looking exhausted in the TV's sallow, flickering light. He took a drag like a sigh, then let it out.
Sean was still looking at him, at his plush lips, feeling where Black had been inside of him just a few minutes before. He could almost see Black replaying the news story in his head, that harsh glint in his eyes betraying the anger he felt. Like he’d already forgotten anything ever happened with Sean.
Sean almost jumped when that gaze snapped to him again, aflame with purpose. Like an avenging angel. Black was grinning.
"Let's burn the fucker's house down."
Sean would follow him anywhere, do anything for him, Black knew that. So he just nodded in agreement, and Black held out his hand for them to shake on it.
Sean took it.