“So I pissed in myownswim lane?”
Nikolas laughed, and it wasn’t cynical or defensive or any of his other deflections he produced to fit into the world’s norms.He mirrored Ben’s position, their faces close on the ruined sheets.He leant even closer still and gently bit Ben’s bottom lip then sucked the bite, easing the lip into his mouth, their tongues coming together, stubble scratching on stubble and creating delicious friction of need.At the same time they rolled, pressing their bodies together as they kissed.Their eyes were wide open, watching the other’s reactions.Ben was hard again, and their cocks were doing a similar dance below, rubbing, joining, playing.They left them alone, hands too busy elsewhere, and let the kissing and the hot connection bring them off one last time.When the last drops of pleasure had been wrung out, almost as one they fell asleep, tangled and illuminated by the overhead sun.
* * *
Debauched wasn’t a word Ben had ever applied to himself before.He was in the army—squared away, disciplined, even in his private life.Waking up some time in the afternoon in Nikolas Mikkelsen’s bed—huh,hisbed—his first thought was that such depravity could only exist in fiction.The place was filthy.He had slices of cold toast stuck to him with congealed butter.There was a spilt pot of tea with loose leaves in a huge flood of cold brown over the sheet (at least, he hoped it was tea) and he was covered in sweat, blood and other substances he, again, hoped had something to do with tea or toast, but suspected didn’t.
He poked his equally guilty partner.Nikolas grunted and turned over.Ben could see he was getting nothing there for a while yet.He crawled across the bed and discovered the vodka bottle and glasses as he knelt on them, pressing them into the mattress, and then tipped onto the floor.He reckoned once, just once, in the mess in Fallingbostel after an RTR initiation he’d woken up in a worse state.But that hadn’t included sex.At least, he hoped it hadn’t; he didn’t actually remember.
He rose unsteadily to his feet and discovered Nikolas’s shower—huh,hisshower—and not for the first time stood in awe at the wealth and luxury of this house.It was one vast wet room with showerheads that blasted down with incredible pressure, and in one corner stood a huge hot tub, Scandinavian style, with a door to a sauna.The far side of the bathroom led to the gym.His gym!It was so un-English he laughed as the water cascaded over him.
Arms slid around his waist.“Hello, Benjamin.”
“You were unconscious.”
“Never.I was assessing my surroundings.”
Ben slicked drops off his face.“How about assessing me for a while?”
Nikolas hitched in his breath and slid his hands lower, cupping Ben’s cheeks, parting them so the stream ran into his cleft, tickling, teasing him.Ben moaned and leant back a little in Nikolas’s embrace.Nikolas increased the tease with one finger, Ben came back up sharply with a hiss of pain, but Nikolas persevered until he could see the very obvious evidence of Ben’s considerable pleasure.He eased his finger out and Ben opened his eyes.Nikolas laid his palm over Ben’s lips to quell his imminent complaint and ran some soap into his hands.It smelt of coconut and vanilla, something Ben would never have risked in the showers in the mess.Nikolas began with Ben’s short, dark hair, soaping him from head to foot—he actually knelt under the stream of hot water and washed Ben’s feet, still a little muddy from his night time excursion to the stable.When he was done, he rose, slicking the suds off as he went.
Ben knew what this man was doing.Nikolas was trying to find the familiar in the unfamiliar.To Ben this was all new anyway.He could only imagine how it must be for Nikolas to have nine years of intimate knowledge of personality blown away and be left with the shell that remained.He seemed satisfied with the shell though and finally stood with Ben soaped, rinsed, and squeaky clean in front of him.Erect, too.Roaming hands over his slick body had kept Ben’s interest high.
Nikolas returned to his knees and took Ben’s long, blood-swollen erection into his mouth.Ben slid his fingers into the water-darkened strands of blond hair, and for the first time in his life, according to his curtailed knowledge of those years, he was sucked off by a man in a shower.Although his whole body was aching from Nikolas’s challenging idea of fun in bed, it was also thrumming with need, these sensations so hard to separate that when he came into Nikolas’s mouth it was relief from exhaustion as much as intense excitement, and he sagged, Nikolas just catching him in time, holding him and then pressing their lips together for a kiss.
He mouthed Ben’s cum back to him.
Ben snatched away, slipping on the wet floor.
“What the fuck!That’s disgusting!”
* * *
Ben began to spit theatrically.
Nikolas laughed unconcerned—Ben Rider-Mikkelsen liked the taste of spunk well enough; he’d just forgotten—and started to make a mental list of other things Ben had subjected him to over the yearshedidn’t like.Revengewasbest served cold.Bored with Ben’s theatrics, he snagged him closer and handed him the shampoo, bending his head like an imperious monarch demanding service.Ben huffed but did as commanded, rubbing and twisting the long strands into ridiculous shapes.He’d obviously never washed another man’s hair for him before and was treating it like a novel experience.He paused in his ministrations and felt more carefully.
“A raised scar?”
Nikolas nodded, uninterested in discussing more scars.Ben narrowed his eyes.
“No, this one…was important.”
Nikolas tipped his head to one side, watching the straining expression.He put a hand up to Ben’s cheek.
“Don’t force it, Ben.Let it come naturally.”
“You don’t know what it’s like!Everything is familiar and really, really good now, but I don’t know why.I know this scar…terrified me, but I don’t knowwhy.”
Nikolas began to rinse his own hair, twisting and turning under the water.“You once found a little blue tin.When you held it, you remembered being in a kitchen, someone cooking, the smell of the bread, eating it, the taste of the unfamiliar stuff on the bread—marmite, which you hated, still hate—all of that from one blue tin.But you’d lived in that same kitchen for weeks and hadn’t remembered it at all.”
“Where is it—the tin?Do I still have it?”
Nikolas stepped away from the water and handed Ben a towel, taking one for himself and tying it around his waist.He went around the other side of a partition made from coloured glass bricks, and Ben followed him to a granite counter upon which sat two graceful bowls and elegant curving taps to fill them.Nikolas began to brush his teeth, perched on the counter, still watching Ben.
Eventually, he nodded.
When they were dressed, he produced it—the little blue tin, burnt and misshapen as it was.
