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The first time Dan and Herbert ever had sex, Dan had consistently pleaded for Herbert to hurt him.
This came in the form of begging for his hair to be pulled tighter, his sides to be squeezed harder, and to be denied his orgasm for as long as he could possibly stand it. It confused Herbert initially. He had, much to his dismay, overheard Dan have sex many times. By all means, it was completely average. He may even slap a PG rating on it. However, when Dan got hot and heavy with Herbert, he would ask for rather extreme things. It started out relatively tame with the previously mentioned requests, but as their sex life evolved and developed, he would throw out things that Herbert had never even heard of or assume could be a part of sex.
It wasn’t a surprise or a secret of any kind that Herbert was low in experience when it came to sex. He had two men in Switzerland and decided that was enough. Then Dan came into his life with his warm, brown eyes and his ridiculously charming personality. Their relationship, once it started after they became involved with the war in Peru, was sans-sexuality for a good while. Herbert enjoyed this greatly because it left little room for distraction; Dan did not. When the topic was mentioned, Herbert would shy away from it and for good reason. He was transgender and did not feel entirely comfortable with having Dan, whom he was dangerously close with, experiment sexually with him. The men in Switzerland had been just that— men. They were nothing more than people who had served their purpose in giving Herbert momentary pleasure and disappeared shortly after.
Once they had comfortably settled into their relationship, no longer fearing that the other would flee at any moment, Herbert began to come around to the idea of having sex. When the passion did boil over, resulting in a sprint to Dan’s bedroom with shirts and belts flying everywhere and having to be picked up off the staircase in the morning, Herbert was utterly surprised at some of the things Dan had wanted to do. Though his sexual encounters could be described as vanilla to a seasoned homosexual man, even he knew that some of these things were out-there in terms of what most people did in bed.
Dan wanted to be hurt, badly. He wanted biting, scratching, slapping, anything that would leave a mark. The requests only multiplied as they settled into a comfortable sexual routine. Herbert denied these at first, feeling that it was far too much, and Dan backed off calmly, always willing to sacrifice his wants for Herbert’s comfort. However, the more he heard Dan talk about these fantasies, the more he thought about them. Eventually, he agreed to a few of the tamer things Dan asked of him, and he was given a rush. Seeing Dan rear back in pain, adrenaline sparkling in his eyes, gave Herbert a funny feeling that went from his core to his unmentionables.
Since then, Dan made even more requests and Herbert became even more eager to fulfill them. Soon, their sex life had become much like their lab work. Herbert was the master, the controller, and Dan was the dutiful assistant, doing everything in his power to please him. Unlike the lab, however, when Dan disobeyed a command— even when he didn’t— he’d earn a physical punishment that made him hungry for more.
Herbert thought it was a funny thing. At work, many of his colleagues had commented (to Dan, not him, they were afraid to socialize with him, much to Herbert’s delight) that he seemed like such a nag and Dan had to be crazy to let him talk to him the way he did. Dan would always respond with a small chuckle and some vague statement about how oh, he’s not so bad. If only they knew how ‘crazy’ Dan really was.
He was surprised at just how much he actually enjoyed sex when it was with Dan. With others, it was simply a means to an end. With Dan, it was not only highly pleasurable in a way that nobody else could replicate, but he also enjoyed everything that came after it just as much as he enjoyed the sex itself. A shower would be shared, and Dan would be as sweet and languid as syrup, melting over Herbert when they laid down, muttering incoherently about all the things he loved about him. Herbert couldn’t help it, he was becoming soft when it came to Dan. He no longer felt like insulting him for the things he used to or making him do the tough work around the lab. He pulled the occasional, morbid prank, sure, but they were never nearly as mean-spirited as they had been in the past.
The irony of him being so soft on the one he was so cruel to in bed was not lost on him.
One early afternoon in the lab, the two found themselves chatting about nothing in particular while Herbert jotted down a few diagrams in his notebook. “They act like I don’t work here,” he said, sketching an eyeball, “rather, I’m just a mysterious entity that lurks around.”
Dan clicked his pen absentmindedly. “I don’t know why they come to me for their complaints about you. Do you know how many times I’ve shut down the idea that you’re a bad friend or a shitty roommate only because they don’t like you?”
Herbert quirked an eyebrow, not looking up from his sketch. “Oh, you no longer tell people I’m a shitty roommate? How flattering.”
The clicking ceased and Herbert held back a smile because he knew his joke had struck something within Dan. “C’mon, Herbert, you know I never told anybody that!”
“Right, right, you only told them that I’m cracked. Oh, and that I stalk the house like a feral cat. And that you felt like your apartment had become haunted due to my presence.”
Sensing that Herbert wasn’t being very serious about the whole matter, Dan rolled his eyes. “Like you don’t wear that like a badge of honor,” he said. Herbert smirked and shook his head, returning his attention to the rib cage he was now starting on. Dan came around to Herbert’s chair and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Sorry if this hurts your pride, but I think you make quite a nice roommate these days,” he said in a low, gravelly voice.
“Is that because ‘these days’ I allow you to fuck me when you’ve been good?” Herbert asked. Dan snaked his arms around his middle and rested his head on his shoulder.
“Mm hm. That’s it and nothing else.”
Herbert put his pen down. “Has anybody told you how exceptionally bad you are at lying?”
“Only the police.” That made Herbert cackle. Dan could rouse anybody into laughter, it was one of many things that drew him closer to him in the first place. Dan began to mouth at his neck, and Herbert let out an audible sigh. It came as no surprise whatsoever when Dan mumbled, “should we take this to the bedroom, Dr. West?”
He only called Herbert Dr. West whenever he was looking to get into his pants. At home, he was Herbert, at work, he wasn’t even addressed by name (by Dan at least), but under the sheets, he was Dr. West. “So early, Dan? You haven’t even gotten the chance to distract me by rubbing your erection against my thigh,” he said dryly. Dan huffed a quiet laugh into his shoulder.
“I can’t help it. You drive me crazy. Besides, those medical diagrams can wait. You’ll still remember how to draw the muscular system after we make love, I promise.” That was just one of the many things about Dan’s silly way of talking. He would do everything in his power to use precise wording. Instead of ‘penis’ it was ‘cock’. Instead of ‘ejaculate’ it was ‘cum’. And instead of ‘having sex’ it was ‘making love’. Herbert could never quite wrap his head around his refusal to technical terms.
The sketches were not an immediate concern of his, but they were busywork that he would have liked to have done by the time he needed them next session. Dan was enticing, however, and Herbert found himself putting down his notebook all the same. When he stood, he could already see the excitement behind Dan’s friendly beam. “Promise to get me some parts from pathology tomorrow and I’ll make sure you look halfway to your own autopsy,” Herbert said, shouldering off his lab coat. He didn’t need to look up to know Dan was nodding.
Herbert laid back on the comfortable bedding that surrounded him. Dan’s bed was warm and always smelled of fresh linen. The mattress was so soft that he nearly sunk into it. Herbert’s own bed was the exact opposite. On the one occasion Dan had slept there, he commented on its similarity to the cots they shared in Peru. His bedsheets were thin and pilled, and his mattress was harder than a rock. It didn’t really matter to him, he hardly slept by his own will. When sleep did beckon him, he took Dan’s bed in the master bedroom, annoying him with the way he sprawled out across it and took up space.
Dan was standing at the foot of the bed, looking rather nervous in his red boxer shorts. Herbert beckoned him forth with a finger, and he didn’t think twice before crawling onto the bed. “Red is a good color on you, Danny,” Herbert commented, snapping the elastic against his hip. “You wear it often, I’ve noticed. Red boxers, red sweaters,” he gave Dan a violently lustful look, “red blood.”
The boxers were gone as soon as Herbert snapped his fingers, flung to the side like trash. To Dan, they were in that moment. Herbert’s briefs were the next to go which Dan took his sweet time drawing off, all but drooling as he watched the fabric struggle to cling to the wetness. Herbert was a marvel of modern medicine, and he used that to his advantage. Dan would never get enough of his body. He wanted to frame it like art, pin him up like a butterfly. “You’re beautiful,” Dan said because he couldn’t say anything else. Herbert smirked wickedly.
“You’ve told me,” he said. “I’ve been growing my nails out. Viscera gets stuck in them, but I believe it will be worth it. Lay down for me.”
Dan, ever obedient to his master, did as he was told. Herbert crawled overtop of him and dug his fingernails into his shoulders. He was hoping to draw blood tonight, and he knew Dan was hoping the same. Slowly, he dragged his nails parallel to each other down Dan’s torso, leaving him groaning in both pain and arousal as he often did while having sex with Herbert. As they continued on their inflamed, red trail, Herbert moved them closer together, eventually ending it with both hands posed as if to cup his twitching cock. The contact was not made. Scarlet beads of blood began to form just under the exposed skin. Dan hissed at the wonderful sting. On a different night, Herbert would have taken the time to drag his tongue over the wounds and taste the coppery liquid, but he was feeling rather impatient tonight, and Dan was looking delectable. “Switch positions,” said Herbert, lazily smearing blood across Dan’s pelvis. At Dan’s dismayed whine, he chuckled. “Don’t worry, Cain, I have plenty more planned for you.”
This pacified him, and he got up and over Herbert with no further protest. Dan dipped a finger into Herbert’s hole, suppressing a smile upon feeling how wet he was. Inflicting pain on Dan was a method of getting Herbert soaked that had a 500% success rate. No other man got him drenched quite like Dan did, this was admitted by Herbert himself, so he took great pride in it.
Herbert’s hands twisted themselves in Dan’s chestnut brown locks like weeds taking root in a garden. Dan took this as permission to slide himself inside, a task that Herbert was always greatly embarrassed by and could only be soothed by pulling Dan’s hair. This was done to no chagrin of Dan’s, feeling himself become impossibly harder by the sharp tugs. Herbert was tight, his insides fluttering around any small intrusion. If allowed to, Dan would immediately take an opportunity for Herbert to cockwarm him, but he knew the other would never agree to such a thing, likely finding it demeaning as well as humiliating. “Can I move?” Dan panted.
Herbert hummed. “I wanted to try something,” he said vaguely.
“Go ahead,” said Dan, feeling rather impatient with Herbert’s walls squeezing around him. Herbert began to mouth and kiss at the crook of Dan’s neck which was familiar territory to each of them. The v-necked scrubs that Dan had to wear for work ensured that he received love bites and hickies less often than Herbert who only wore scrubs for surgeries. This did not mean that the taller doctor hadn’t felt the wonderful sensation of Herbert suckling on his tender flesh. Dan closed his eyes and reveled in the sensation, expecting a hickey to be branded into his skin, when sharp teeth clamped down on his shoulder. He gasped and shuddered when the area was licked like a dog tending to its wounds. His cock responded to the pain with a jump, though it felt like only a twitch buried inside of Herbert. Again teeth sank into his skin, and instead of opening his mouth to remove them, Herbert jerked his head away, tearing skin. Dan moaned shamelessly.
It felt like citrus was being rubbed into the wound as Herbert yet again let his tongue rove over it. His arousal was beginning to ache just as much as the bite marks on his neck. He opened his mouth, possibly just to whine pathetically, but Herbert soothed his worries. “You can move now, Dan.” The taller man hid his head in Herbert’s neck, fucking into him at a desperate pace. Herbert dug his nails as far down on Dan’s back as he could reach, poised to claw him like a deranged animal. If Dan thought he had escaped a mangy pet attacking his back during sex with Rufus’ death, he was sorely mistaken. He had merely traded it in.
A particularly hard thrust was carried out to Herbert, nearly hitting his cervix, and he warned Dan by pulling his head up by his hair and smacking him across the face. “Don’t make me get out the scalpel,” he warned. Dan could have died and went to heaven. Though it was only used once, they kept a scalpel in their bedroom for the purpose of Herbert threatening Dan with it. The one time it made itself useful was when Herbert dragged the blade lightly across Dan’s throat during foreplay. That had been a night to remember. Still, no matter how badly Dan wanted Herbert to pierce his supple flesh with it, he slowed down his pace and kissed his stubbly cheek in apology.
His change of speed did not deter Herbert from raking his fingernails up Dan’s back. The sharp sensation sent a thrill through Dan as he bucked his hips into Herbert. He canted his hips up hard, slamming into Herbert’s pleasure point and causing a loud, involuntary groan to fill the room. The smaller man tightened around him, but the constricting squeeze subsided and Dan deduced that the action had only sent him to the brink of an orgasm. “I warned you, you insolent bastard,” Herbert growled into his ear. Blindly, he pawed around the nightstand drawer for the scalpel. Dan’s body burned with arousal, wondering if Herbert was actually serious. His question— and his prayers— were answered when Herbert produced a clean, sterilized scalpel from the drawer and pressed the cold, flat blade to his chest. “Pull out and sit up.”
Dan obeyed, he always did. Herbert sat up too, a fiery glimmer in his eye. “Are you going to kill me?” whispered Dan in the dim lamplight.
Herbert chuckled and it was the sound of a cruel king playing with his subjects. “What’s the fun in that?”
Such a morbid joke might have sent Dan running for the hills when he first met Herbert, but these days it only sent his lust-addled brain into a frenzy. Herbert gripped the scalpel with a surgeon’s precision and images of him operating on patients, nimble fingers slicing and prodding, flashed helpfully through Dan’s mind. The sharp point made contact with the skin right below his collarbones on his sternum. Dan sucked in a breath before the thin metal sliced his skin as if he were nothing but deli meat. Several excruciating moments went by of Herbert carefully carving into his skin, and he was reminded of the quick and sloppy stitches the man had administered in Peru. That was the most painful moment of his life, but Dan was sure that if the blood had not been flowing out of his midsection, it would have been flowing to his cock. Herbert had a way of making pain taste so wonderful. It was the cause of Dan even requesting it in the first place.
The scalpel finished its trail and Herbert placed it back down on the nightstand. “Look in the mirror,” he urged. Dan turned to look, and it was marvelous. Herbert had cut a cursive HW into his chest. He was branded. The mark of the beast. Something like reverence must have came over his face because when he turned back to Herbert, he was acting the way that he did among their colleagues, like a god on the mortal plane. Laid out prettily on the pillows, hair unkempt and skin nearly unblemished, he might as well have been. Dan didn’t know what that made him; a follower or a fool. Either way, he knew that he wanted to be back between Herbert’s legs as soon as possible. Sensing his impatience, Herbert made a show out of looking like he was throwing Dan a bone by spreading his legs. That’s how he always acted towards sex, like he was humoring him. Maybe on some level, he was, but Dan knew how to have him crying his name by the end of the night. His reputation of girls never leaving his place without an orgasm wasn’t exclusive to women.
“Go on, then, Cain,” Herbert cooed. Dan didn’t need any more prompting.
Thighs were gripped, hair was pulled, lips of various kinds were parted, and Dan was able to nestle himself back inside Herbert. Women were easy to arouse for him, but there was something so blatantly erotic about getting to see that rare blissed-out look in Herbert’s hazel eyes that really got Dan going. He never shook. He never let his emotions slip. Seeing him in such ecstasy and knowing that he himself had caused it gave Dan an extra little spark when thrusting into him. He no longer heeded any warnings about pace or speed, as soon as he was fully sheathed inside of Herbert, he began to pound away. The burning scores across his back multiplied while Herbert did his best to not humiliate himself by demonstrating submission. “Oh, fuck,” Dan moaned gruffly into his ear. “I’m yours. Fucking brand me.”
Herbert, becoming undone due to Dan’s reckless pummeling, released a shuddery sigh into his ear that threatened to make him come on the spot. “If you ever leave me for another one of your women, I will dismember you and use you for parts to make a better assistant,” he whispered. Dan’s eyes rolled back and he stilled entirely inside of Herbert.
It was manipulative. It was a threat. It was serious. It was possibly the hottest thing Dan had heard in his entire life. “Promise?” Dan kissed his earlobe.
Herbert wrapped his nimble legs around his lower back. “Worship me and you’ll live lifetimes,” he said before digging his heels down to drive the other man into himself. So Dan worshiped. He worshiped every inch of Herbert’s glorious body, kissing whatever his lips could reach. The bespectacled god could not have looked more uninterested in the whole ordeal, but that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter, not while Dan was praying. His cock felt achingly rigid trapped within the tight walls. The whole bed was stained with sweat, and he got the feeling that they would be sleeping elsewhere tonight— if Herbert wanted to sleep at all.
Everything was just too much. Too hot, too hard, too humid, too good. Dan had, at one time, been a good, Christian boy who viewed sex as a very pure and holy rite of passage. Every time he fucked Herbert, it was as if he were an incubus plucking feathers from his angelic wings. It was exquisite. Herbert could always show Dan the beauty in all that was chaotic and harsh. Surely, the heat he was feeling now was comparable to the flames of hell that would lick at his skin should Herbert allow him to die. Gazing down at his nude form, writhing and trying to keep mewls in his throat, Dan knew that he never could.
Herbert’s legs had been removed from his back, and they now flailed about as he tried to maintain his breaking composure. Herbert didn’t always end up this way. Dan had seen him climax with nothing more than a fond smile on his face. That, to him, felt religious in its own right. When he was reduced to a squirming mess, Dan knew that it would be a night both of them would thoroughly regret in the morning, his favorite kind of night. He couldn’t wait to look Herbert in the eye the next morning. For now, he only watched as Herbert attempted to jerk his hips upwards in search of friction on his own cock.
A dutiful follower, Dan reached between his legs and rubbed the pad of his thumb over the head repeatedly. “Oh, Dan! Oh, Danny! Yes! Yes!” Herbert cried. He tossed his head this way and that, succumbing to the pleasurable sensation of Dan toying with his cock. “I am your god,” he wheezed. Those were the last words that passed his lips before a loud series of deep moans signaled his orgasm. Dan enjoyed the tightening and pulsing of Herbert’s insides around his throbbing cock.
Never had the two delved quite so deeply into the theological side of their sex life. Hints were sprinkled here and there of Dan speaking reverently of Herbert and his body, but outright saying it as he came was something else entirely. Dan needed more. He slammed his hips into Herbert’s pliant hole, lax from his euphoric state. Small gasps and whines crossed his mouth, but he was otherwise silent, allowing Dan to take what he wanted. Dan wanted to mark him to let everyone know who he belonged to, he wanted to beg Herbert to kill him if he ever left, he wanted to give up everything for the strange man he had already sacrificed so much for. He wanted all of that and more. Most of all, he wanted to come.
He wanted to spill himself inside of Herbert, to claim him as his own like some animal. Dan muttered unintelligible, lewd ramblings into Herbert’s ear that no doubt went unnoticed. Wet slapping filled the room. Dan nosed his neck, silently pleading with him to do something that would send him over the edge. Herbert complied, consciously or not, by running his fingers through his hair and managing, “You’re cracked, Dr. Cain.”
With a wordless cry, Dan bottomed out and came inside of Herbert. Thick, white ropes of cum shot out of him as he laid there, clutching Herbert like a lifeline. Complete and utter bliss.
The two laid there for a moment, Dan soaking in sweat and feeling rather regretful for all the pain he allowed himself to endure. Herbert was mindlessly petting him the way you would a house cat. Finally, after about a minute or so, Dan spoke up. “You wouldn’t really use me for parts, right?” he asked, finding the sentiment less arousing as it sounded a few minutes ago.
Herbert scoffed. “Why would I waste such a good body? Honestly, Dan, it’s like you don’t even know me.”
Dan sat up and gave Herbert a lopsided grin which he knew he found ridiculously charming from the way he refused to look at him. “I’d like to think I know my god pretty well,” he teased. Herbert groaned and pushed at his cheek. Dan chuckled and removed his hand to place a few kisses to his forehead.
“I believe I remember a certain somebody asking for me to brand them,” he replied. Dan looked down at the now scabbing cut on his chest.
“Looks like you already did. Mind helping me with all these cuts?” He asked, twisting around to try to get a better view of his back. Herbert was already pulling out the first aid kit.
“I meant it when I said you look pretty in red. Alcohol pad,” he said. Dan liked a small warning before Herbert cleaned his back with alcohol products due to the sting.
Dan smiled, though he knew Herbert couldn’t see it. “Wow, you were sincere about something? Color me shocked!”
Herbert shoved him gently. The two spent the rest of the night tending to each other before Herbert fell into an uncommonly peaceful sleep in the safety of Dan’s arms. Maybe he wasn’t a god, maybe he wasn’t the messiah, but he was Dan’s and that was what really mattered.