by Lina Langley
Breathing heavily, Max kissed him back on the mouth until they were both almost completely out of breath, until he was sure that Eli could feel his erection through the strangling fabric of his performance pants, which he had foolishly not changed out of. He wanted more than just kissing, so he traced his fingers down Eli’s jaw and toward his chest. Eli was wearing a button-up shirt but Max didn’t want to undo his buttons quite yet. He was sure that the moment he saw Eli’s bare skin, he would hardly be able to contain himself. Still, as if on their own accord, his hands continued to move down so that they were on Eli’s crotch. He was wearing jeans, so the outline of his cock was mostly hidden, but he could still feel that he was quite hard with his fingertips. Max moaned when he felt Eli’s cock and Eli groaned. Max’s hand moved to the top of his jeans and he started to undo Eli’s belt as Eli moaned under him. “Do you want me to do this?”
Eli nodded.
“Tell me you want it,” Max said, sticking a fingertip down Eli’s jeans and behind the waistband of his underwear. He could feel hair under his fingertips. He could hardly stop himself from undoing his belt and opening his zipper, but he needed to wait until he got confirmation from Eli that this was okay. He could tell that his body was responding to it, but he needed more than that.
“I want it,” Eli replied. “I want you. So much.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Eli said between moans. “Yes, I want you so much.”
Max didn’t need to hear anything else. He undid Eli’s belt and undid his zipper, his hands grazing against Eli’s cock when he did so. He straightened up on the bed as he took off his jeans completely, sliding them slowly down his legs. He hit a snag with his shoes, which Eli laughed at. He kicked them off his feet without Max prompting him, earning him a giggle from Max.
Eli looked down at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Did you want to be the one taking those off?”
Max shook his head, smiling. He looked up at Eli’s legs, which were beautiful, lean and muscular. Max grabbed his ankle and started to touch the inside of his legs, kissing him softly as he moved up the length of his leg with a soft touch, his lips pressed against him as he kissed up his legs until he reached his crotch. He was panting on Eli’s skin and he could see the hair on his legs react. He could also hear Eli panting and moaning, his muscles tensing as Max continued kissing him.
Max took a second to look up at his face and their gazes locked. Eli’s eyes were huge and shining. Max smiled at him. Eli smiled back, then threw his head back and groaned. Max took his time to trace his fingers up the inside of Eli’s trembling legs, kissing his skin until Eli could hear his elaborate breathing, which every now and then turned into a quiet moan. Max smiled as he finally got to the bit between his legs, closer to his crotch, where his hair got darker. His cock grazed Max’s cheek and Max took a deep shuddering breath. He didn’t want to spend too much time staring at Eli’s cock, but it was gorgeous, and it seemed to grow bigger under his touch even though Max was barely touching him. He sped up as he circled Eli’s cock and gripped the base of it a little tightly before he brought his mouth to the tip of Eli’s cock. He had a beautiful dick, long and slightly curved, uncut, mouth-watering. Eli groaned when Max wrapped his lips around the head of his cock, which was wet with precum. He loved the way he tasted. He loved the way that his hips moved under his touch, he loved the way that he hardened even more when his tongue started to work itself around the head of his cock, moving back and forth as he panted and heard Eli moan. Eli moved his hand so that it was sitting on Max’s head and slowly, softly, moved it back after a few minutes of vigorous cock sucking.
“Stop,” he said, his eyes glassy and glimmering with wetness.
“Okay,” Max replied immediately. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, I’m just—I’m going to come.”
Max licked his lips. “Don’t you want to come?” He asked, tracing his finger from Eli’s tight balls up his cock and then stroked the most sensitive part of it, which was wet with spit, with the tip of his finger.
“Oh, yes,” Eli replied. “But not without you. You should get to come too.”
Max licked his lips. “I’m sure you’d be happy to return the favor later.”
“Definitely,” Eli said. “If I thought I was going to last the night.”
Max raised his eyebrows.
“My deepest fear is that I’m so tired that the moment I come inside your gorgeous mouth, I’m going to collapse from exhaustion,” Eli said.
Max smiled into his leg. “That’s your deepest fear?”
“My deepest fear right now,” Eli said. “Think about it.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“When will I see you again? This is our only chance to do this,” Eli replied. “I intend to do it right. I intend to taste you, too.”
Max groaned, throwing his head back. “If you keep talking like that, you’re going to make me come without ever even touching me.”
“That would be a tragedy,” Eli said. “I want to see you.”
“And you will,” Max replied, still lightly stroking Eli’s cock. It was still hard but not as hard as it had been only a few seconds ago. “You definitely will.”
“Do you promise?” Eli said, gasping when Max’s fingers encircled his hard dick again.
“Yes,” Max said. “I promise. Do you want me to suck you off?”
Eli hesitated. It was only for a second, but Max could tell that he was hesitating, and the entire interaction was so intense that he didn’t mind also taking a breather. He kissed his cock again, this time, not sucking on it, but kissing it with his lips, barely tasting it. It took him a considerably amount of strength not to give into his desires to suck him off to completion right then and there. But Max hadn’t heard Eli say that he wanted to suck him off and he didn’t want Eli to do anything that he didn’t want to do.
He wanted this night to be enjoyable for the both of them, not just for him. So he kept kissing him, stopping up to kiss his nipples, which elicited a sound from Eli’s mouth that was something like a cross between a moan and a sigh.
His face was finally level with Eli’s after a lot of tenderly kissing him, and his cock was still at full mast, but now they were only tenderly kissing on the lips, their mouths barely open. Max was almost sure that Eli could taste himself and the throat of that made his heart beat more quickly with anticipation, but he wasn’t going to make them speed up.
“Are you sure that you’re okay?” Max said, pulling away from Eli’s face, though it almost hurt him to be away from him. It was ridiculous, but he kept staring at Eli’s face when he spoke, his mouth watering.
“I’m fine,” Eli said, shaking his head. “I’m trying not to let my relationship bleed into my one-night stand.”
Max’s muscles tensed up. He had never considered that Eli might be in a relationship with someone, especially when he had gone to his room. But he had been quick to judge him. If he was in a relationship, then Max wasn’t interested. He opened his mouth to tell Eli that but Eli shook his head and laughed. “Wait,” he said. “I see how that came out. I don’t mean my current relationship, my last relationship.”
“Oh.”
Eli smiled, closing his eyes. “I’m single as they come,” he said. “No open relationship, nothing like that. Just really single.”
Max licked his lips. “You’ll have to forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”
“You shouldn’t,” Eli said, shaking his head. “Find it hard to believe, I mean.”
Max stared at him and Eli sighed.
“I ruined it, didn’t I?”
Max furrowed his brow. “Ruined what?”
“The moment,” Eli said. “I’m an expert at that.”
“Not really,” Max replied, looking into his eyes. Eli seemed upset and Max wanted to help him. He wasn’t wearing a ring, his phone hadn’t been checked all night, he had no reason not to trust him. “Tell me about your last relati
onship.”
“Then I’ll really ruin the moment.”
“It’s okay,” Max said, grabbing Eli’s hand and squeezing it. “We could both clearly do with a breather.”
“It just took me aback that you asked me how I was doing,” Eli said. “My ex was very… see something you like, take something you like.”
Max’s eyes widened, his mouth suddenly dry. As gorgeous as Eli was, this would certainly explain some hesitation on his part. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” Eli said, shaking his head. “No, it wasn’t like that. I can see how that sounded.”
Max waited for him to say something else, their fingers still interlaced. Eli’s skin was soft and warm against his and their hands felt like they fit together, even though the night didn’t feel like it was going anywhere anymore. Max didn’t mind, he didn’t think. He liked Eli’s voice. He wanted to hear his story, even if it meant that later on, he would have to take care of himself, over and over—and over—again.
“Okay,” Max said and licked his lips when Eli didn’t say anything.
“I swear, he wasn’t,” Eli said. “He was just… I don’t know, really assertive, and I’m not. Plus, often, I felt like I owed him.”
Max tucked a strand of hair behind Eli’s ear. “It’s okay. You can tell me about him.”
“No, I know,” Eli said. “It’s just such a stupid problem.”
“It doesn’t seem that stupid if you two broke up.”
Eli sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t want to upset you by talking about my stupid break-up.”
“I’m probably going to think much worse things if you don’t.”
Eli nodded. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m sorry I brought him up. We only broke up a few months ago and it still feels like it’s such a big part of my life.”
“I get that.”
“You do?”
“Same boyfriend for five years,” Max said. “Before I got signed. Then things… well, they got complicated.”
“Because you started putting your career ahead of him?” Eli said quietly.
Max nodded. “Yes, kind of. But it wasn’t just that. My new profession had… fans. They were kind of merciless in pursuing me and my boyfriend couldn’t take it.”
Eli watched him. “Did you ever… I mean, you’re with me.”
Max shook his head. “No,” he said. “I mean, I would be lying to you if I said that it never crossed my mind. Everything was so new. People were just… they were throwing themselves at me. And part of me was so flattered that anyone thought me worthy of their attention. Some of them told me that they wanted to sleep with me because I was talented. As if there was an easier way to get into my pants.”
Eli chuckled quietly. “But you didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t do it,” Max said. “I had the opportunity, sometimes the drive. I was a shy, quiet kid back in school. I never expected people to be throwing themselves at me.”
Eli smiled, shaking his head.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Eli said. “I kind of find it hard to believe that you were ever a shy kid.”
“Well, I was,” Max replied, smiling back at him. “I still am. What do you think all the make-up and the costumes are for? It’s not because I feel super comfortable on stage.”
Eli cocked his head. His finger was tracing lines up and down Max’s side, his touch soft enough to simply be there. He still felt it, though, and every time that his fingertip felt like it was close to Max’s own skin, it sent a shiver down his spine.
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Eli said. “You look so comfortable in your own skin.”
Max smiled. “Years of practice,” Max said. “It helps that I look so good in skin tight clothes.”
Eli chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, for sure. But it wasn’t always like this?”
“No,” Max said. “And I knew how to deal with him, but Dean didn’t. And I couldn’t blame him, right? Because who knows how to deal with this.”
“Right.”
Max licked his lips. “But he started pulling away. And I want to say that I didn’t notice until it was too late, that it simply fizzled out. But I can’t, because that’s not what happened.”
“What did happen?”
“I noticed,” Max said, shrugging. “We could have talked about, but I don’t know, it just… I didn’t want to. I thought that he felt like I was a complication in his life. And honestly, he wouldn’t have been wrong. My career is a complication. Dean had expected something easier but I wasn’t going to give him that.”
“And you weren’t ready to give up on your dreams for him,” Eli said quietly.
“Exactly,” Max said. “See, you get it. And now I ruined the mood by talking in detail about my ex-boyfriend.”
“You didn’t ruin anything,” Eli replied, shaking his head. “I like this. It makes you more…”
“What?”
Eli closed his eyes slightly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Human?”
Max smiled. “What was I before?”
“Rock god.”
Max narrowed his eyes.
“Okay, rock demigod.”
“I guess I’ll take that,” Max said. “Okay, it’s your turn. I totally embarrassed myself by opening up, so now you have to.”
“Do I absolutely have to?”
“No, you don’t absolutely have to,” Max replied. “I would just like it if you did. Since this is how we got on the topic of my ex and all.”
Eli nodded. His hand stopped to rest on Max’s waist and he took a deep breath before he spoke. Max liked this, the way they were facing each other on the bed, the way that everything felt right then. It was like coffee. It felt right, familiar. Domestic, that was the word. There was something so domestic about this. Max couldn’t help but love it. He didn’t think that was what most one-night stands were like, but then again, he hadn’t really had many. Or any, really. But Eli didn’t need to know that. All that he had to know was what Max had to tell him.
“I’m also a creative,” Eli said after a little while. “I don’t want to compare our professions because they’re extremely different, but when I first got into it, my ex was extremely supportive.”
“Right,” Max said.
“He was successful when we started,” Eli said. “He asked me out after college. He got an engineering job almost right out, actually, he got it offered before he graduated. He was brilliant. Good for nine-to-five stuff. I told him, I don’t think I can keep up with you.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was sure that I was talking about myself,” Eli replied, taking a deep breath. “At the time, I thought he was making fun of me. But he wasn’t. He meant it and it took me a few years to understand exactly how much work goes into a creative career.”
Max shook his head, exhaling heavily through his nose. “It’s a lot of work.”
“It’s so much fucking work,” Eli replied. “And Max, Peter didn’t get it. He just didn’t understand it at all. He would wake up to me in the middle of the night, hear me typing away and come up to me and tell me to go to bed. We didn’t have any obligations. We didn’t even have cats. I was doing what he told me I should do.”
“What do you mean?”
Eli closed his eyes. “I was making a little money as a writer,” he said.
“I liked it a lot. It was fun. I wasn’t making much, but it was enough with what Peter was bringing in. But he started talking about it as if it was…”
“What?”
Eli shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied. “As if it was a hobby or something. And it wasn’t a hobby.”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
Eli sighed. “It was my career,” Eli said. “So I doubled down. I know that I could have probably just talked to him but I was so angry at the way he wanted me to be… I don’t know, his wife or something. I’m not anyone’s wife.”
“I understand,” Max said. He meant every
word. He completely understood what Eli was saying because he had felt the same way when he was with Dean. Not exactly the same, Dean had mostly supported him, he had always understood that it was something that would take over Max’s life. “Really. It sounds very difficult.”
Eli nodded. “Then I started to find success,” he said. “It wasn’t huge success, but I knew people, and my work started to get produced around town.”
“Right.”
“And suddenly, we were going to premieres and people recognized me,” Eli said. “People started to make web series of my work. I started to get requests to appear in different shows and people started to talk to me about commissions. Everyone kept asking me when I was moving to New York City.”
Max smiled. “You didn’t want to move?”
“I did, kind of,” Eli said. “It was important to me that my career move along. Peter didn’t think that my career was that important. Then I got a phone call from this guy, and he wanted to do an off-Broadway production of my play.”
“What was it called?”
“My first play was called The Luck of Androids. It was about this android chauffeur who falls in love with the woman he’s driving. It was ridiculous, super stupid. People thought it was hilarious.”
“You’re a comedy writer?” Max said, raising his eyebrows. “
“Apparently,” Eli replied. “And mostly unintentionally.”
“That’s kind of amazing,” Max said. He licked his lips, then looked down and kissed him on the mouth. “You’re kind of amazing.”
“Thank you,” Eli said. “Though I don’t know if I am amazing.”
“You’re definitely full of surprises, at least.”
“That I won’t argue with,” Eli replied. He pressed his lips against Max’s again and they kissed for a bit, until they were both slightly out of breath. “But yeah. I wanted to move. He didn’t want to. I told him I would live in NYC by myself for a few months, just while the production was happening.”
“Right,” Max said.
“He said he would join me after a while.”
“Did he?”
Eli nodded. “Yes,” he said. “But he never stayed. I think that was the hardest part of all, knowing that he was going to come and be with me but not staying with me.”
