Archive of Our Own

Grant was hopelessly lost in Stockholm, as would’ve been no surprise to anybody who knew him well. God would’ve overspent to have given him a good sense of direction. A parent’s prize on many levels—an all-American lacrosse player who could do t-tests by hand, manage an elusive A in General Equilibrium Theory, and pay the perfect flattering compliment to a girl—he had few failings, the sudden growth of a backbone and a miserable talent for reading maps aside. It was a good thing his father could not possibly know he was so turned about, because he’d surely deliver a sermonic “I told you so” soliloquy to the beat of “if only you would listen.”

See Grant had, in his father’s words, ‘completely lost it.’ He had graduated college in May and somewhere between all the good luck celebrations and congratulatory dinners, he had an epiphany. He had a job starting end of July, one even the most miserly parent could be proud of, he’d worked internships all his college summers, gone to Portsmouth with his family for every Christmas, and Lacrosse training for every spring break. He’d done his due diligence.

When he announced his decision to travel by himself for a few weeks his father had predictably offered the home in St. Barthes and the lodge in the Adirondacks. When he was unable to sway Grant, he launched into a long cautionary tale about how haring off to frozen Scandinavia by himself could only lead in unhappiness, possible STDs, and considerable loss of personal fortune. But KLM had been doing a special promotional deal to Stockholm and Grant had bought the tickets even before he really knew he wanted to go. He had refused to change them in the longest battle of wills heretofore experienced in the Hillman household. His father was not even slightly impressed with Grant’s rebellion.

Staring at a completely dead Blackberry, Grant was not terribly impressed with his rebellion either. He was impressed at how unfavorably this day was shaping up. He let out a string of expletives, shoved the phone back into his pocket and wandered aimlessly down another street. The sky was starting to darken from pink into the deepening blue of night and he despaired of his ability to hail a cab in this neighborhood.

He clutched his face and groaned. “I’m so screwed.”

A tall man in a leather jacket leaning up against the side of a building, puffing on a cigarette, raised a quizzical eyebrow. While incredibly attractive, he was, at face value, less of a parent’s prize and more of a disconcerting nightmare. This was Micke and he had the power to completely turn Grant’s day around.

He said something incomprehensible to Grant in Swedish and Grant stared. Micke flicked a hand through spiked hair and raised his brows higher. He too was impressed...with Grant’s cluelessness.

“Jag har…” Grant started and then gave up. “I only speak English.”

“Orå dig inte. You’re lost?” Micke said, coming away from the wall.

“Befuddled even,” Grant replied. When Micke, unfamiliar with the word, only blinked at him, Grant sighed. “Yeah, I’m lost. I’m trying to get back to the Hotel Skeppsholmen.”

Micke, while not unkind, couldn’t help laughing. He brought a long-fingered hand up to his mouth like he could pop it back in. “You—” he laughed again, “—you need to take a boat from Slussen to get back to the Island.”

He chattered out a list of rights and lefts and ‘keep going straight until you sees’ that flew in one of Grant’s (slightly large, but not troublingly so) ears and out the other. Grant stared at him blankly. He tried to line it up in a map on his head like his mother always said worked for her and began to despair a second time.

Micke shot him a look and then shook his head. He tossed the cigarette down onto the pavement and crushed it with his heel. “Come on, I’ll take you.”

They walked in silence, Grant following just at Micke’s shoulder, but trying not to intrude too far into his space.

“So, what brings you to Stockholm?” Micke asked perfunctorily, throwing an amused glance back at him.

“Vacation,” Grant replied with a smile that many a co-ed at Grant’s alma mater, that quaint little place known as Harvard, had described as dazzling.

Micke, aware of the effect of the smile or not, nodded. “Ah, cool.” He paused and said somewhat tentatively, “I would not come to Stockholm for vacation.”

“Where would you go?” Grant asked, matching his stride.

“South of France, Ibiza, Greek Isle’s…somewhere I’m not freezing my balls off,” he replied with a laugh.

“Been there already, I don’t mind the cold,” he said, “I’m Grant, by the way, and thanks for this.”

“Grant? Micke,” he said and offered his hand. “Not a problem, I am free.”

They made their way down several small side streets. Grant tried mostly in vain to track the signs, but he gave up when no sudden insight into Stockholm’s topographical makeup seemed forthcoming. Micke received a phone call as they crossed a busy street filled with cars that Grant couldn’t help but think looked like brightly colored toys.

Micke answered with a grimace and moved a few steps away to argue with somebody on the other end. The call was from his friend Simon, who had unfairly never quite forgiven him for lying and setting him up with the girl he’d been sickeningly domestically happy with for the past two years, and occasionally tried to inflict awful couples dinner upon Micke who insisted most vociferously that he was a Casanova and not interested in any couples dinner. Simon, a dyed in the wool romantic, couldn’t understand.

“Jävla idiot.” Micke hung up and looked quite capable of hurling his cellphone into traffic.

“Is…everything all right?” Grant said, cocking his head. Comforting people, whether they wanted it or not, was an impulse he had never learned to tamp down.

Micke seemed surprised. “Yes, of course.” He paused, his eyes really focusing on Grant for the first time. “Do you want to get a beer?”

Grant paused. His father’s son would’ve said no.

*

“Amstel for you, Kopparbergs for me,” Micke said, sliding into their booth with two bottles of beer.

“Thank you,” Grant replied, taking a long sip.

“So you’re from America,” Micke said. “New York, LA, Chicago?”

Grant tilted his bottle on the table. “Washington DC.”

“Oh yes? Near the White House?”

Grant laughed. “Close. Georgetown.”

“I have never been to America. I would like to see New York.” Actually Micke desperately wished to go to Vegas, but he correctly suspected Grant was a chi chi intellectual and would not understand the appeal.

“Yeah, it’s pretty special.” The conversation ground to a halt. Grant started peeling the label off his bottle. He remembered reading somewhere that it was a sign of sexual frustration and stopped immediately. Micke never noticed.

Grant had a steadily creeping awareness that Micke found him a curiosity, a bug under the magnifying glass. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to change that. He wanted to ask Micke why he had been upset earlier—what about that phone conversation made him invite a total stranger to have a drink with him? Not that Grant had any illusions that he looked anything other than harmless. He surmised that Micke wasn’t even that much taller than him, but he seemed to take up space.

A woman walked by their booth in a criminally short skirt, tanned legs on display and fabric pulling tight over her ass—Micke’s type to a t. Grant wondered absently how her skin got so dark in this climate. Micke followed her with his eyes, taking a distracted gulp from his beer. “That is a woman,” he said.

Grant pressed his lips together to restrain a smile. “I wouldn’t know.” He was rather more fascinated that the woman was so cold-blooded she managed a tight mini in such cold weather. He couldn’t restrain a shiver that Micke misinterpreted as a fear of the gentle sex.

Micke straightened up and pinned him with his bright blue gaze. “What?” He was scandalized. He glanced back and forth between Grant and the woman. Grant, who had known Micke for all of fifteen minutes, had no idea how to decipher the expression on his face.

He cleared his throat. “I’m gay.”

“Gay?” Micke replied speculatively. “Really? You don’t look…”

Grant crumpled up the label and said firmly, “Yup. Gay.”

“So you’ve—“ he broke off to make a jerking off motion with his hand, “—with men.”

“Yes, I sleep with men.” Grant wondered at his life—going to Stockholm by himself and winding up explaining his sexuality in a bar. It was sad that he could tell a random Swedish man and not his parents, but there it was.

“You’re crazy, fucking crazy,” Micke replied, shaking his head. He suddenly clued in to Grant’s discomfort. His face smoothed out of its incredulity and he raised a hand. “Nothing against gays, but how could you not want that?” He waved the arm at the woman, who was leaning up against the bar, hip tilted out as she spoke to the bartender.

Micke was sprawled on the other side of the booth, t-shirt pulling tight across his chest, staring at him evenly. Grant took in the skeptical quirk of Micke’s mouth and his blond lash-fringed eyes.

Frankly, confronted with the specimen of Micke, Grant found it very easy not to want the bronzed blonde, but given Micke’s seemingly overwhelmingly straight bent simply said, “Just not wired that way.”

Micke considered that for a moment and then smiled. He said, “Another beer?”

Grant accepted, rapidly learning alcohol was Micke’s response to most things that puzzled him.

Somewhere after the fifth round Micke decided that he was going to take Grant around. He plugged his mobile number in to Grant’s phone and told him very seriously to call him when he woke up the next morning. “You can’t find your way around Stockholm for shit,” he said with a grin. “Possibly you should be embarrassed.”

“Oh shut up,” Grant said, listing to the side into the booth.

“I also am cutting you off for the night. Soon you’ll get sloppy and start making passes at all the girly boys in here.”

Grant smiled at him, leaning his head back against the booth. “Why? Is that what you do?”

“I don’t have to make passes.”

“Oh no?”

Micke shrugged. “I won Swedish survivor, they make passes at me.”

“You’re screwing with me.” Grant tried to straighten up, but his hands slipped over the vinyl. Micke noticed and his grin widened. He was not ‘screwing’ with Grant. He had won the whole competition, but the victory was soured by his girlfriend leaving him for the host. Four years later and he had to yet to recover, much to his friends’ continuing consternation.

“Is it so surprising?”

Grant laughed. “You have more product in your hair than a Jersey hooker.”

Micke snorted. “But I know which way is north.”

Grant put a hand over his chest. “Touché.”

“Anyway, I’ll find you a taxi and tomorrow I’ll make sure you see the real Stockholm.” He nodded, already compiling a list of places. Grant wondered if he should be worried, but he was throwing himself into this, finding friends in new places, doing all those things he never thought he would.

Grant accepted the hand Micke proffered to yank him out of the booth. “Sounds good.”

*

Grant had already been to the Nationalmuseum and the Moderna Museet. The day before when they’d been discussing tourist attractions, he’d found out that Micke had a surprising love of Calder. Although, perhaps not so surprising the more Grant got to know him. He’d asked Grant what he thought about the Four Elements installation and Grant had only been able to shrug. He was not overly fond of art and could readily admit he knew nothing about it. Micke had smiled at him. “No more art galleries.”

They went to Djurgården for the Nordic museum and then the Vasa Museum. Micke was predictably horrible in museums. He made fun of the other tourists, fidgeted and breezed through exhibits. He found tremendous joy in the gift shop and the smorgasbord of kitsch they sold at greatly exaggerated prices. Grant felt a bit like he was trailing after a hyperactive teenager. But then Micke would surprise him with some tidbit of information he just randomly had lying around.

“The building is based off of Fredriksborg palace,” he said, “Danish architecture was very in the fashion at the turn of the 20th century.”

“Huh,” Grant said, snapping a picture of the building while Micke shook his head in mock disgust. He did not understand Grant’s need to take pictures of everything.

Grant was beginning to think that Micke was the most learned baggage handler on the planet. Micke wasn’t, but he made a fair showing.

Micke flatly refused to go to the biological museum. “It’s just meters and meters of stuffed animals,” he shuddered theatrically. Grant shrugged. He hadn’t had any pressing desire to go. After lunch at a chip shop, Micke decided Grant had to go to Junibacken.

“You must’ve read Pippi Långstrump,” he said, talking and chewing at the same time.

“What?”

Micke waved a hand and rolled his eyes. “Pippi…Pippi…Pippi Longstocking.”

“Oh, the one with the braids,” Grant replied. “I think my sister read those.”

“Junibacken is cool, you’ll like it, all about Astrid Lindgren.”

“It’s a children’s museum!”

“It’s the best!”

They ended up going mostly because Micke was the most persistent person Grant had ever met. He considered telling him to run for office. He’d win on sheer will alone, but he correctly suspected that Micke wouldn’t take it as the compliment it was meant from a politician’s offspring.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering when you’re going to ask to go to the amusement park,” Grant replied as they exited the museum.

“Grönan?” Micke asked incredulously. He made a disgusted noise. Ever since Micke’s girlfriend had found herself in flagrante delicto with the host of Swedish survivor in Micke’s bed, Micke had been turned off of the places he associated with first dates and summer love. “I have better things to do with my time.”

“Like go to a children’s museum?” Grant teased.

“An awesome children’s museum,” Micke answered. “We’ll find you some girly boy to ride the tunnel of love with.”

It sounded horribly dirty when he said it. Grant guessed that was the intention. He laughed. “You keep saying girly boys. That’s really not my type.”

Micke looked him over. It was clear to his untrained eye that Grant was athletic and if the word had been in his vernacular, extremely preppy. “Well, you’re not the girly boy.”

Grant shook his head. How could this be the same person who liked modern art and classical architecture? Micke didn’t make any sense. “You really don’t understand the gender politics of gay relationships.”

Micke made a noise of assent. While it was true he didn't know many gay men, or lesbians as it happened, something that he mourned when he bothered to think about it, he was not completely illiterate in political correctness. “I am needling you.” He quirked a brow. “You’re easy to tease.”

Grant gave him a dry look. “Thanks.”

Micke laughed and looped his arm around Grant’s neck. “We’ll go have dinner, we’ll go to the pub, we’ll find you a nice boy—” he waggled his brows, “—not a girly one, and tomorrow we’ll go to Gamla stan, the old town.”

Grant rolled his eyes but couldn’t help a smile.

*

Much to Grant’s relief, Micke reneged on his promise to find Grant a not-girly boy in favor of sleep before his 4 to 12 shift. Grant made it perfectly clear that Micke was by no means required to take him to the old town after that, but Micke waved him off.

He said in a rare moment of seriousness, “I’m enjoying myself,” and gave Grant a fond look when he ducked his head. As he launched into an explanation of where to meet Grant’s eyes abruptly glazed over. Micke paused to let out a disbelieving chuckle. “Ah forget it. I’ll meet you in the lobby of your hotel at half past one.”

Grant shrugged. “Sorry.”

The next day when Grant went downstairs to meet him, Micke was already there chatting up the brunette hotel receptionist that had checked Grant into his room.

He saw Grant walk out of the elevator bank and felt something strange swoop in his chest, he wasn’t sure…but no, it didn’t matter anyway.

“You ready?” he asked, completely ignoring the receptionist, who affected a stung expression.

Grant bit his lip, feeling slightly guilty about the way Micke had discarded her attention, and then hoisted up his fancy digital camera. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Micke shook his head. “You are determined to embarrass me.”

Grant had heard this same pronouncement before many times, although always out of the mouth of his father. He didn’t know why it didn’t bother him this time, possibly because he knew Micke was impervious to embarrassment even as he complained bitterly.

They went to the royal palace first. King Carl XVI was in residence so the only part accessible to the public was King Gustaf’s antique museum. If Grant’s mother were accompanying him they’d all be forced to go see it, but because Grant was blissfully free of his family, he could ask Micke, “What’s next?” after taking a slew of pictures, including one of Micke in front of the eastern façade.

“Så jävla typiskt!” Micke swore as he trotted off to be in the picture.

“Smile, sweetheart!” Grant called out as he snapped a bunch of pictures of Micke glaring at him and making faces.

Grant loved the Riksdag, which Micke wanted to pass up, proclaiming an overwhelming apathy for government, but Grant insisted. “I went to Junibacken for you!”

“And you loved it.” Micke answered, already walking them towards the Riksdag even as Grant continued to argue about how important government was. “All I hear is bleh, bleh, bleh.”

Grant burst out laughing. “It’s blah, blah, blah!”

Micke shrugged and stopped them on the Stallbron leading up to the Riksdag right on the water. “Here we are!”

“Oh,” Grant breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

Micke scrutinized Grant while he was occupied trying to capture the building and its reflection on the preternaturally still water. It hadn't taken him long to realize Grant wasn’t terribly forthcoming about himself. He’d studied economics at Harvard. He played a bunch of sports Micke hadn’t even known existed until he’d asked Grant how he felt about football and found Grant staring blankly back at him. Micke was determined to get him to at least one game before he left.

He cleared his throat. “I need a coffee.”

Grant nodded and took one last picture. “I could go for a little something.”

“Cool,” Micke said.

They found a café near the Storkyrkan, which Micke explained was an important feature of Sweden’s brick gothic architecture. Micke ordered Kroppkakor for them both and a black coffee. Grant tripped over the pronunciation on the menu but successfully ordered a mint tea. He had no idea how much he charmed the young waitress, but Micke, a little charmed himself, did. Aware at this point that Grant would not appreciate him pointing this out, he refrained from saying anything.

Grant was more astonished by the tea and it’s yellowish green color. “I feel like I’m eating an actual mint plant.” He opened the pot up and peered at the loose leaf resting in a tinfoil tea strainer just under the water. “I’d never believed what people said about loose leaf before, but this is excellent.”

Micke forked pancake into his mouth. “So what’d you do last night after I left you?”

Grant shrugged. “Went to the hotel gym.”

“Är det sant? Nej,” he shook his head. “I don’t even know why I am surprised.”

Grant shrugged. “I spent the week before my graduation in an unbroken alcoholic haze. Consider this a prolonged period of detoxing.” It wasn't his finest moment, but Grant had doubled the number of partners he’d slept with in that week alone.

“That I would have to see to believe,” Micke replied.

When they left, Micke lit up a cigarette and moved downwind. He didn’t even bother to offer one to Grant after the first time Grant had held up a hand as if to ward the cigarette pack off.

“Explain Swedish politics to me,” Grant said as they walked down Trångsund to the Stortorget Square.

“Always with hard questions,” Micke said. “Jag vet inte! Politicians bore me.”

“Just explain how the Social Democratic party has 112 seats, but it’s part of the opposition.”

Micke took a drag off his cigarette and then said, “Simple. Parliament has 349 seats, Sossarna, the social democrats, didn’t have anywhere near the majority, and a coalition government lead by the Moderaterna was formed.”

“Who do you vote for?”

Micke gestured with his hand. “I don’t, my friends get upset at me, but I have no interest in government.” Simon hadn’t spoken to him or Mario for a week during the elections to express his disgust with their apathy. Micke hadn’t felt any more inclined to vote after the silent treatment had ended.

Grant kept silent. Micke obviously didn’t like the subject and he struggled with how to regain their earlier levity. “I went on a date with the president’s daughter once.”

“What?” Micke turned to look at him. “But you’re gay.”

“Yes, I was very foolish. The date went horribly. The secret service jumped on our table and arrested my friends.” He cringed visibly. “Not one of my best memories.”

“It still embarrasses you?” Micke didn’t press for more details upon seeing the pained look on Grant’s face, but he nevertheless wondered with a kind of impressed awe what the hell Grant could’ve gotten up to on that date that required secret service intervention. The truth would’ve disappointed him.

“Yeah, it wasn’t good. She went to high school with me. I was grateful when she took off to Europe after that.” There was a certain irony in the fact that Grant himself had finally dropped it all to come to Europe too, albeit several years later.

“Well, look at you, hot shot,” Micke told him and couldn’t help a laugh. Grant ducked his head and Micke felt a very strong desire to reach out and touch him. He groaned when Grant pulled out his camera and started taking pictures again.

*

After a dinner of Mediterranean food they went to one of Micke’s favorite clubs. Micke didn’t explain that the reason it was his favorite was that he’d never failed to go home with someone after attending. It was like a good luck charm. He hoped some of it would rub off on Grant, because he didn’t know any gay clubs well. He wouldn’t be surprised if Simon, with all his university friends, did and made a mental note to ask him at a later date. It did not rub off on Grant. Or perhaps it would be more apt to say Grant was not letting it rub off on him. He nursed a beer by himself amicably in a round booth just off the dance floor. Micke stood a head and shoulders taller than everyone else there, so even when Micke left him to grind with a series of blonde girls he could still see him floating across the dance floor.

After a couple of songs Micke came back to him, sweaty and flushed, his hair sticking up in spikes. “You aren’t dancing,” he said, cocking his head. He had to shout to be heard over the pounding techno.

Grant shrugged. “It’s not my thing.”

Micke laughed. He was always laughing. “You are the worst gay I have ever met.”

Grant had probably had a little too much to drink or he never would’ve said, “How can I be bad at being gay? I suck cock, I fuck men.” He couldn’t interpret the expression on Micke’s face. He wondered what he was thinking. If he was thinking.

Micke was indeed thinking. He thought, bizarrely, that he would, hands down, fuck Grant. It confused and very vaguely worried him. He had on occasion, after very drunken late nights with Mario and Simon, admitted that he would have sex with Steve McQueen, but Grant was a directionally challenged American tourist and completely devoid of the badass that had made the Steve McQueen thing make sense. After a moment's contemplation, Micke made a considering noise and dropped into the other side of the booth. “Why?”

“Why?” Grant replied incredulously.

“Yes, why!”

“You want me to explain being gay?”

Micke stared at him with glassy eyes. He slumped further down. “Yes, explain.”

“I can’t explain,” Grant shook his head furiously. Unaware of Micke’s internal dialogue, Grant struggled to understand what exactly Micke was asking. Micke watched him, infuriatingly nonplussed. Grant hardened his face into a frown. The decision he came to would’ve struck any outside observer as exceedingly stupid, but Grant was due a few. “I can show you.”

“Indeed?” Micke looked terribly amused. He was actually a little bit nervous. Grant narrowed his eyes. He placed his hand just above Micke’s knee, pushing it slowly up his thigh, thumb digging just slightly into the muscle. Micke looked down at it distractedly as Grant stopped just short of his dick.

“It’s like this,” he said softly, aware of the fact that he should pull his hand away right that minute. What did every gay boy learn? Not to mess with straight guys. Grant had learned it in his first week of undergrad. But Micke still looked so unimpressed. Grant didn’t know why he thought this was a good idea; he could feel himself regretting it already. But he didn’t stop. His thumb dipped into the space between Micke’s thighs, sliding dangerously close to Micke’s balls. Micke made a small sound in the back of his throat and widened his legs. Grant slid in between, knee braced on the seat. He pushed Micke back with a spread-fingered palm. Micke raised a lazy hand to peer at his watch.

Grant tsked. “Don’t pretend to be an asshole.”

“Wha—” Grant cut him off with a kiss, letting Micke feel every inch of his height and every pound he weighed. Micke made a soft sound and his mouth opened up under Grant’s. Grant dipped his tongue just inside, flicking it against Micke’s before pulling back.

“That’s what it’s like,” Grant said. He couldn’t stop his thumb from rubbing along the seam of Micke’s jeans. Micke looked up at him a little dazed, eyes dominated by pupil and chest rising with shallow breaths. Grant sighed. “Don’t beat yourself up if you’re turned on, it’s just…stimulation.”

He moved to get off, but Micke caught his hips at the last moment. “Do you want me?” he asked.

Grant laughed albeit bitterly. “I’ve known you for two days and I know everyone wants you.”

“So you do want me?” Micke repeated, blinking at him. “Tell me, I want to kiss you again, is that just stimulation?”

Grant shook his head. “I don’t—” Micke whispered, “Come back to my flat with me.”

*

Micke was what Emily Post might call a rake. He’d had anal sex before with women, and more blowjobs than a college football team. Grant was certain that there was no way he could impress or shock him. But he wondered—backing Micke into his own apartment, pushing off his jacket and unbuckling his belt, every move he made registering surprise on Micke’s face –if nobody had ever bothered to really touch him. He would never have know that Grant had impressed Micke a thousand times since they’d met. This encounter, stumbling over Micke’s furniture and fumbling with each other’s clothes, was no different.

“This is a really bad idea,” Grant said, hands pausing on his fly. Perhaps this was taking rebellion a little too far. It wasn’t really rebellion anymore, a better word would be imprudence.

Micke paused to consider and then stripped until he was standing, feet apart, entirely naked in front of Grant.

“I really hope this is not just part of your quest for continuous validation.” Grant swallowed, unable to tear his eyes away from him.

Micke snorted. “I don’t know what that means.” A lie.

“Just...if you horribly regret this in the morning? Try not to kill me, because I’m pretty sure you’d win in a physical fight.”

He sighed and gave in to his bad decision, thrusting Micke back onto his bed. There was a purple lava lamp on the nightstand that made him smile despite himself.

“Pushy,” Micke replied, pillowing his head on his arms.

“You said you wanted to see what it was like,” he said firmly, and walked up the bed on his knees to straddle Micke’s thighs. His fingers bit into Micke’s bicep over the tribal ink he should’ve realized Micke would have.

“I was eighteen,” Micke said answering his unasked question.

Grant couldn’t help brushing his fingers over it. “It…suits you,” he told him, bending down to kiss him. Micke leaned up on his elbows to deepen it and slid a hand to Grant’s ass.

“This is...really impressive,” Micke said, giving one cheek a firm squeeze, after pulling back.

“I--thank you. Nobody’s ever told me I had an impressive ass before.”

“You think too much,” Micke said. He found it endearing, especially the way Grant’s eyes lowered and his teeth caught on his lower lip while he said it.

As Grant could’ve expected, Micke was mouthy and loud. Telling Grant the usual things about his plush mouth and ass. But whenever Grant hit a particularly sensitive spot there was a pronounced break in his filthy monologue. Micke’s ears were especially sensitive, and he shivered and cursed in Swedish every time Grant nipped and licked at the lobe.

Perversely, he wondered how Micke would react if he told him he looked beautiful like this, lashes against his cheekbones, high flush on his face. That sort of maudlin compliment was reserved for not drunken fucks with ridiculous straight men going through sexuality crisis. An eternal shame.

Grant didn’t touch Micke’s cock at first. He ignored it altogether until Micke was grinding helplessly up into him as Grant mouthed his way across his chest. If Micke tried to touch him Grant pinned his hands to the mattress. Micke strained against his grip, eagerly desperate for more.

Finally, just before Micke rebelled, Grant closed his lips around the tip of Micke’s cock. Grant’s mouth flooded with the first burst of pre-come and Micke groaned, fingers drawing rents in his sheets. Grant smiled, pulling off to draw his tongue down along the vein until he was at the base. Micke threw an arm across his eyes, thighs clenched with the effort of keeping his hips still. He had to remind himself to breathe. Grant gave up going slow and went for it, taking Micke as far into his mouth as he could manage and rolling his balls at the same time.

Micke graciously warned him that he was about to come with a string of Swedish swearwords and then said, “Sorry, I’m going to—” he made a strangled noise when Grant swallowed. Micke’s eyes widened in surprise, before rolling up into the back of his head.

Afterwards Grant jerked himself off while Micke ran his hands up and down Grant’s thighs. His jeans were still on, belt clinking softly with the motion of his arm. He couldn’t stop himself from thumbing Micke’s mouth. He came with Micke smirking up at him.

*

“What are you thinking?” Grant asked, desperately worried that Micke, who had been silent, was going to flip out and unaware of how much it showed on his face.

“I’m hungry,” Micke replied truthfully. “I’m going to make a sandwich.” He rolled out of bed, completely unselfconscious about his nudity. Grant watched him walk out of the room and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. He decided he didn’t care what was going through Micke’s head and went to take a shower in the tiny linoleum floored bathroom.

Micke pushed the curtain back ten minutes later, a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and a beer in the other. “This is what you look like naked.”

Grant, who was under the spray, eyes closed, merely grunted an assent. Inside, he was smiling. This was not the behavior of a sexually confused and angry-about-it straight boy, he assessed. Micke took another bite of the sandwich and then left it on the lip of the bathroom sink. The temperature of the water was cooler than he liked it, but he stepped in behind Grant.

“Switch places?” Grant offered, finally opening his eyes.

In the days they'd spent together Micke hadn't noticed before how green they were. Now, they seemed almost unnatural. He pushed past Grant, acknowledging the tingling shock as their bodies brushed together. It was only to be expected after good sex he assured himself. He braced his palms against the wall and ducked his head under the spigot.

Grant watched water sluice down over Micke’s spine and had to swallow. Micke’s muscles tensed in sharp relief as he sensed Grant’s perusal.

“May I?” Grant asked with hand raised, not wishing to startle him.

“Please,” Micke answered, head bowed between his shoulder blades. Grant brushed his hands over the muscles as they trembled and relaxed. He pressed his mouth to Micke’s C7 vertebrae, one that was just slightly out of alignment from a childhood accident, lapping up water and the taste of Micke’s skin. Micke moved restlessly when Grant passed a palm over one of Micke’s nipples.

“You’re a—what’s the word in English—a tease,” he said, voice rough.

Grant bit gently into knotted muscle at Micke’s shoulder and said, “What I am is an idiot.”

“We have that word in Swedish also and that’s not what I would’ve said.”

“How drunk are you?”

Micke turned in the circle of his arms and laughed. “Are you worrying that you have taken advantage of me? It is perhaps the other way around...”

“I think maybe we should discuss this...”

“You like cock, I like sex, I have a cock, and you have sex with me. What do Americans say? Everybody wins.”

“God, that makes it sound like some mercantile transaction.”

Micke laughed and rinsed himself under the spray. With a small wave, he stepped out of the shower. Grant’s disquiet didn't make sense to him. He'd wanted to work whatever he was feeling for Grant out of his system and now he had, they could move on and he could go back to showing Grant Stockholm. Raising his voice to be heard, he said, “Come to bed when you’re done."

“You want me to stay? In your bed?” Grant asked incredulously on the other side of the shower curtain, yelling over the sound of the spray.

"You’ll end up in Stora Essingen if you try to find your way back now and I’m not leaving.”

“In your bed!”

“I’ve shared with Mario before.”

“Did Mario have your dick in his mouth?”

“No, but it means we don’t have to go top to tail, it’s gay no matter what.”

“Thank you, Freud, for that splendid analysis.”

“It’s just sex,” Micke yelled back, settling himself on the bed. He lay down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling. With a growing sense of unease he looked down his body at his penis, pretty sure he had not worked Grant out of his system at all. He shut his eyes and blew out a breath.

Micke, long scarred by his perfidious ex-girlfriend, did not know or recognize the signs that he was falling in love. Perhaps a happy turn of events, because sex with a man, and rather informal, frustrated and fast sex was something completely different than falling for a man.

Grant himself was too busy drowning himself in the shower and being irrationally jealous of Mario, a man he’d never met with a laughably incongruous name, to realize any escalating feelings in his heart.

*

Micke awoke the next morning, the sky only just starting to lighten, wrapped around Grant, nose tucked into his shoulder and hand carelessly placed low on his ribs. He remembered keeping a careful distance between them in the bed as he fell asleep. It was a distance that that Grant had been perfectly content to observe, and yet somehow in the night, for reasons that he was not quite willing to face Micke had crossed that distance. He didn’t move, even though he had to be in to work in an hour and he had that stupid double dating dinner with Simon and Mario later.

Grant shifted against him, making him suddenly aware of his morning wood wedged between Grant’s thighs. The sudden change of Grant’s breathing told him it was too late to extricate himself.

“Mmm, who knew you were a cuddler,” Grant said, voice thick with sleep.

“The bed is small,” Micke replied defensively.

Grant made an incredulous noise and moved deliberately back against him. Micke blew out a breath, fingers tightening on Grant’s side.

“I thought we weren’t doing this anymore?” Grant asked, amused, thighs tight around Micke’s dick.

Micke swore in lieu of answering, pumping his hips, sliding between Grant’s cheeks. “What do they call this?”

“Intercrural sex, outercourse, femoral sex, frottage...” he listed, choking off a moan when Micke scraped his teeth over the knob at the top of his spine. Grant tensed his quadriceps, and Micke’s hips stuttered to a halt.

Micke struggled to speak. “What do you get from it?”

“In terms of direct stimulation?” Grant asked, looking down at his rock-hard, neglected penis leaking all over Micke’s sheets. “Not much, but that’s not always important.”

“Skitsnack!” Micke rolled over Grant so that he was on top, elbows braced on either side of Grant’s head. “That’s a woman thing to say.”

He thrust again, cocks sliding together this time and Grant’s eyelids fluttered. Overwhelmed, he turned his face into Micke’s forearm to hide the way his mouth was stretching around a moan. Micke thrust again, dick sliding next to his own, trapped between their bodies.

“Ahah,” Micke said, staring down at him, unable to keep from smiling.

Grant’s pale skin was flushed all the way down to his chest, eyes screwed shut, lower lip caught between his teeth. He clutched Micke’s bicep, hand closing right over the tattoo, as if he needed help hanging on. Micke looked down at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never happened.

Grant’s nipples were the same color as his mouth. He bent his head, closing his teeth around one, enjoying Grant’s sudden intake of breath, the way he screwed up against Micke almost unconsciously.

“Oh, fuck,” Grant said. Only the second time Micke had ever heard him swear. Micke’s cockhead struck his balls and all he could think about was Micke inside him, fucking him just like this, slow and deliberate, all the strength of his broad back behind it. Wanted to feel himself stretching, taking him deeper. Micke thrust one more time and Grant came, body wrung taut, cursing even more.

Micke continued thrusting, watching as Grant’s breathing evened and his eyelids fluttered back open. Grant looked up at him, expression dreamy, fingertips just grazing Micke’s hips, holding on. Micke thought this is what I want him to look like, stretched around my cock. Grant’s mouth started to widen into a quiet smile and Micke shut his eyes. His orgasm hit like a sock to the gut.

*

Micke left Grant alone in his apartment to go to work. “Just go back to sleep,” he said, looking down at the way Grant eyelids drooped, trying and failing to blink away tiredness. He showered quickly, grabbed an orange on his way out the door and then stopped, staring back at his bedroom door. He blew out a breath and left.

He called Grant at his own home number during his lunch break. “What are you doing?”

“Rearranging your apartment,” Grant replied. He smiled at the television screen where Micke’s old survivor tapes were playing. He couldn’t understand a word of it, but from the expressions of all the other people on the island Micke was scandalizing them just like always.

“What?” Micke replied, eyes going wide. His coworkers turned to look at him.

Grant snorted with laughter. “Just kidding, I’m watching TV.” Micke said something on the television that made everybody groan and roll their eyes, but a few seconds later he got a fire started without dry wood while everybody else just stood around uselessly emoting. One girl was even tearing her hair out. Grant guessed she hadn’t lasted long.

“Practicing your Swedish?”

“Javohl,” he replied distractedly when Micke whipped his shirt off onscreen and started scaling a nearly sheer cliff without a harness or hooks or anything. He was covered in sweat and grime and Grant was uncomfortably aroused.

“That’s German.”

“Oops.”

Micke bit his lips around a smile. Grant was painfully adorable. He looked up and found all of his coworkers still staring at him. He glared, turning his back on them. “I was thinking about something.”

“Yes?”

“My friends have a dinner tonight.”

Grant fiddled with the telephone cord, eyes on Micke’s brilliant 42 inch HD form grunting and heaving his way up the rockface. “Are you asking me to attend or telling me to get lost?”

“It’s a love thing, a couple thing, I hate it...” Micke trailed off.

“And you want to take me?”

Micke sighed. “Yes.”

Grant turned the television set off. Survivor Micke could wait for another day. “Then I’d like to go.”

*

Grant successfully took a taxi back to his hotel so that he could change into clothes that didn’t smell like sex and sweat, and then managed to locate the bar Micke agreed to meet at only after Grant had sworn up, down, left, and right that he would not get lost.

He’d plumbed a sage colored button-down and a pair of gray slacks out of the bottom of his suitcase. His eyes looked very green and his mouth very red, and when Micke finally saw him at the bar, two pints sitting at the ready, he said, “You look really...American.”

Grant, guileless enough to take him at face value, had finished the look off with his beat up boat shoes. He looked down his body and shrugged with a laugh. “I guess I do.”

He sat down beside Micke at the bar and said, “So what do I need to know?”

“I’ve known Simon and Mario since I was small.” He shrugged. “Simon is smart and Mario is clean.”

“Mario is clean? Simon is smart? It’s like the Power Rangers. The Smart one. The Pretty one. The Clean one.”

“I would...not call them pretty,” Micke said.

“Yes, because that’s obviously you.”

Micke made a face.

“Still pretty,” Grant said, taking a long sip of his beer.

“You’re gay, you think all men are pretty.”

Grant burst out laughing. “Man, if only that were true.”

A Katy Perry song came over the sound system in the bar and Micke started singing along.

Mouth open, Grant stared at him. “I think you make a better homosexual than me.”

“ ‘Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is!’” Micke sang. “Katy Perry is läcker! Sexy.”

Grant groaned.

Micke finished off his beer and looked at the clock, deciding he was the proper amount of late.
“Alright, fancy,” he said, flicking the collar on Grant’s shirt, “let’s go.”

Micke’s friend Simon was known to the world at large as an unadulterated twerp, except perhaps to his girlfriend Mia, his other best friend Mario, and to Micke himself. Grant, being especially well-versed in assholes, sussed it out in record time, possibly aided by the fact that Simon took a near instant and completely irrational dislike of him. He talked down to both Micke and the famous top-to-tail Mario, and he made a sour face when Grant explained he’d just graduated college and Micke had found him wandering lost on the streets. He said something sharp in Swedish to Micke that made Mario’s girlfriend, Sanna, and Mia drop their eyes to the table.

Micke only snorted and cuffed him. “Jubelidiot,” he said.

Grant got a feeling that Simon was somehow jealous of him, but discarded it as absurd. He shouldn’t have. Simon was most definitely jealous. Micke had always been focused on him, even with the addition of Mario who had a great deal of emotional distance, it had always been the two of them. Now it wasn’t and Simon did not have to like it.

Micke was merely glad that the presence of Grant had turned the tables enough that Simon wasn’t going on and on about philosophy or all the fun and cute things he did with Mia or how they were planning their wedding next fall, or how he should quit being such a consummate philanderer.

The dinner was an uncomfortable affair, Micke couldn't figure out where it went wrong, and Grant kept scrambling to say something, anything, that wasn't going to result in a sneer or a chuffed exhalation from Simon.

"You didn't think to learn a little Swedish before you came?" Mia said with a laugh when she heard how Micke found Grant, hopelessly lost.

"It was all so last minute, and my phrasebook is useless because I can't figure out the pronunciation of anything."

Simon rolled his eyes. "Americans always think they do not have to know anything but English, because people will always speak it with them."

Micke glared at Simon and then said, "Everybody does know English, you even said it's the language of academia now."

Grant cleared his throat, trying to prevent an argument. "I actually agree with you, Simon, to an extent. The other half of it is that if Americans learn a language it's often Spanish, which doesn't help us much when we travel in Europe, unless we're in Spain."

"Do you speak Spanish then?" Micke asked, surprised.

"I do, I started taking it in school when I was seven, and I spent a summer working in Mexico and another in Argentina."

"What were you doing there?" Mario asked, glad to divert the conversation away from Simon's puzzling jibes at Grant and Micke.

"The first summer I was helping set up computer labs in schools that didn't have any resources and the second I was working for an NGO as an analyst."

"Ah, Mother Theresa," Mario replied and everybody laughed.

"I have to admit that part of it was that it looks good on a resume."

"I have never had that thought in my life," Micke said.

"We are all aware," Mia said, but it was good-natured.

"Stupid," Mario said, "if you just worked a little harder…"

"Yah, okay, and be horribly bored all the time? Rotting my eyes out of my head reading books? I've made my studies--the moans of a woman, how to compliment them to get them to take off their panties, how to convince them that sex changes nothing."

Grant noticed that both Sanna and Mia colored, he filed that away for later. Mario threw his napkin at Micke. "You're nasty."

"Not everybody can be as learned as me. Just wait until I tell you some of the interesting things I've been trying…" he said, pushing his tongue into his cheek. Grant choked into his drink, but nobody noticed, they were too busy making gagging noises and telling Micke to stop, stop, please, reverting back to Swedish in their horror. They left soon after that.

"I need to get drunk," Grant said faintly.

"No, no, then this won't work properly," Micke said, pulling Grant into the shadows and reaching down to cup Grant's dick.

"Right, right, wouldn't want to interrupt your 'studies!'"

Micke cackled and Grant rolled his eyes, but his heart was constricting in his chest. He was brimming with hysterical happiness, and unused to the feeling, he didn't know why.

"You've slept with Sanna and Mia," Grant said suddenly.

Micke, in a surprise turn of events, blushed, something that had probably happened on only three other occasions in his entire life, and none of them past the age of adolescence. "Before they were with Mario and Simon," he clarified.

"How did that happen?"

"They were nice and I thought they'd all get along together, so I set them up."

"Jesus, you're a yenta!"

"A what?"

"A matchmaker!"

"Oh that, of course. I'll find you a good Swedish boy, before you leave. You are realizing that we are better at everything now."

Grant paused, stricken.

Micke looked at him, puzzled. "What is it?"

Grant swallowed around the lump in his throat. It was a horrible feeling to realize he was going to take exactly what was on offer, even though it wasn't fair, and it wasn't enough. "Your place or my hotel?"

"My place is closer," Micke said slowly, aware something was wrong, but completely unsure what it was. He searched Grant's face, but Grant smiled at him. He was just being greedy, nothing could come of this, he knew it. And so he smiled, because what else was there to do about it.

"Well then," he said softly. "Your place it is."

*

"I want to fuck you," Micke said, wrapping himself around Grant when they're through his door. He kissed Grant's shoulder and nosed along the nape of his neck.

Grant leaned back against him, letting Micke accept his weight. "You know how it works?"

Micke snorted. "I know how it works. I have let women, what's the word…finger, yes, finger me."

"Of course you have, why did I ever ask?" Grant replied dryly.

"Will you let me?" Micke asked, pushing his pelvis against Grant's hips.

"Mmm, let me think about it," Grant said, breaking free of Micke's arms and walking backwards towards the bedroom. He kicked his loafers off and discarded his shirt over a chair. Micke watched him with unreadable eyes. It'd been a long time since Grant bottomed for anyone. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but at the same time he already knew he was going to say yes. The button on his trousers was a struggle, because of a sudden attack of nerves. However, he didn't let any of that inner turmoil show. He pushed his pants down and Micke raised his brows. Grant conjured a grin and turned around to push off his boxer briefs.

"I didn't forget that you have a dick, you know," Micke said.

Grant froze. "What?"

"What you did just there, turning around like that. I'm not imagining you're a woman," Micke said, trailing fingers over Grant's sacrum and up the groove of his spine. "Nobody could ever look at you and imagine a woman."

Grant laughed without mirth. "You'd be amazed at the people who try."

"American men are stupid." Micke said. "But I am not. Let me fuck you."

Grant laughed, glancing coyly over his shoulder. Micke was so close behind him it was easy to reach up and brush their mouths together. "Did you honestly think I was going to say no?"

"No," Micke replied, succinct. "But sometimes people need persuading."

"You are so full of yourself," Grant replied. Micke opened his mouth to take advantage of the opening Grant gave him and Grant rolled his eyes. "Don't you dare."

Grant found himself on the bed, legs splayed. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, staring Micke down as he pushed off his jacket in a calculated move. Micke grinned at him, drawing his zipper down slowly, revealing the outline of his hardening cock.

Grant snorted. “You’re a slut, a hand to god shameless slut,” he said, reaching forward with suddenly nimble fingers to push Micke’s jeans off. As his partners and one night stands had been of a more conservative bent, unabashed turpitude was not a quality he was used to. But Micke knew what he looked like, and he knew Grant knew what he looked like. He supposed, as he surged up to kiss his smiling mouth, there was no point in pretending otherwise. The hard lines in Micke’s abdomen begged to be touched and he ran soft fingers over them, drawing the shirt with it.

“Hand to god?” Micke asked, pretending at perplexity. He groaned when Grant nipped him.

“I’m going to need prep,” Grant said against the side of his throat. “I haven’t...” he didn’t finish the statement. He was reminded again of how long it had been and how he’d not altogether enjoyed it those times either.

Micke reached over him for the bedstand, pulling out a string of condoms, and a tube of lube. He dropped them on Grant’s stomach expectantly. Grant couldn’t read the text on the tube, but when he cracked open the cap, he couldn’t stop laughing.

“Of course, you would have flavored lube,” he said, wondering when this whole thing was going to stop being ridiculous.

Micke raised a brow and didn’t bother to tell him that he was mocking an extremely expensive lubricant. He figured Grant would figure it out on his own and then he’d be demanding Micke tell him where he got it. Distracted by Grant pushing the condoms aside and carefully pouring out a healthy dollop of the viscous liquid onto his fingers, he abandoned that train of thought altogether.

Grant lay back on the bed, pushing one careful lubed-up finger into his hole. Micke settled next to him, leaning down to press open-mouthed kisses to his chest. He felt rather than saw the tension in Grant, whose face had gone impassively serene. Micke swallowed, suddenly bowled over by what exactly Grant had offered him.

“It’ll be good,” he whispered into Grant’s shoulder, hand skating down Grant’s abs and encircling his heavy cock.

Grant shuddered and arched, pushed another finger inside, easing it in until it met the first knuckle of his hand. He choked in surprise when Micke reached between their bodies, pushing a finger inside him.

"Alright?" he asked.

Grant moaned, arching into his hand. Their fingers slid together inside him. Micke smirked down at him, absurdly pleased with how Grant looked, sweat rising on his skin and face gone slack. He bent his head and took his mouth again.

Finally Grant pushed him away with a hand on his shoulder and said between shuddering breaths, “Okay…okay.”

“Okay?” Micke asked, curling his finger experimentally to press mercilessly upon Grant’s prostate.

Grant hissed and drew his eyebrows down. “Do you want to fuck me or not?”

“Mmhm,” Micke replied, lazily refusing to rise to the bait. He kissed Grant again, slowly, languorously, lingering over his lower lip, as he slipped his finger from Grant’s body.

Grant was burning inside, perhaps a little due to embarrassment, but undeniably from arousal, and for inexplicable reasons, he was annoyed by it.

“Enough,” he said, tearing his mouth away, drawing his own fingers out and struggling out from under Micke. He grabbed one of Micke’s pillows and pulled it down to place it under his hips, turning over and glancing back at a nonplussed Micke. “It’ll be easier like this…”

Micke raised his brows. He didn’t know why Grant was suddenly acting so abrupt--if he felt some shame in anal sex, or if he was nervous because it had been a while. Familiar with Grant's idiosyncrasies, he figured it was better not to ask.

“…but I guess…I guess you already know that,” Grant was saying, with eyes cast down, carefully not looking as Micke rolled the condom on.

Micke drew a hand down Grant’s spine, lingering in the small of his back. “You may trust me to know what I’m doing.” His rather rudimentary lessons in anatomy aside, he was quite convinced this couldn’t be that different from taking a woman this way.

He didn’t tell Grant to relax, because experience told him that would only make it worse. So he pushed Grant’s thigh up the bed and carefully fit himself at the opening, drawing his cock over it teasingly. Grant shivered and pillowed his head on crossed arms, like he was bracing himself for physical therapy rather than sex.

Micke leaned over him, hand wrapped tight around his own cock as he just slightly pushed at the ringed muscle, holding it open with the head. “Haven’t we gotten this right so far?” he asked.

Grant was forced to concede, just opening his mouth to say as much when Micke bit at his shoulder and steadily pushed inside. He did it fast for all that it was careful, and Grant found himself surprised that he didn’t completely mind the sensation. He couldn’t help a hiccupping gasp when Micke drew out.

“Ah, like that, do you?” he said into Grant’s shoulder. Grant had nothing in reply, but he was beginning to suspect Micke’s jesting on being a student of sex was not really jesting at all. It was a bit like struggling through a math problem and then having a person take the paper from you and work through it perfectly in moments.

“Herre gud,” Micke mumbled, thrusting smoothly into Grant. He was finding it very difficult not to embarrass himself and slide into an erratic punishing rhythm. Grant felt so good, so tight, and those bitten off sounds he was making were perfect. He wanted it to last, and most of all, he wanted to prove himself right that Grant would enjoy it. He was immensely gratified when he pulled out only to have Grant push back at him.

Grant had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He was conscious of two things, the stretch in his ass and how tightly his arms were tensed under his forehead. Novel and unexpected, he was hard. He swallowed, dry throat clicking, trying to push into Micke’s flannel sheets to get some friction against his leaking dick. It was probably too much to hope for a reacharound, but Grant could take care of that if he could just…

He cried out when Micke gripped him by the hips and pulled him back, so that he was sitting in Micke’s lap, knees flat on the bed on the outside of Micke’s thighs, speared open over him. Micke was so deep inside he could barely breathe. He held Grant there, suspended, for a moment, nose running over the back of his neck in a reassuring caress. Surprised, he jerked when Micke’s hand slid deliberately over his stomach and wrapped around his cock.

“Oh—oh god,” Grant moaned and Micke couldn’t help but smile into his shoulder. He felt Grant’s full body shiver and had to catch his breath when he clenched around him. And then Grant surprised him, levering himself upwards and then back down, fucking himself on Micke’s dick.

Micke had to squeeze his eyes shut and fight not to come right then. “You—y—” he couldn’t help sliding into Swedish. It was too difficult to gather his thoughts together. He wrapped his hand around Grant’s throat, drawing his head back against his shoulder so that he had free reign to kiss and mouth along his neck. Grant’s swallowed moans were felt with his lips, but barely registered in his brain. Everything inside him was hollowed out and all that was left was a thirst to do this again and again, as many times as Grant would let him.

Nothing about this was like Grant had envisioned. With his head dropped back on Micke’s strong shoulder, he found himself reaching back for Micke’s hips. Micke’s thumb curled over and over around the head of his cock, pitilessly running the edge of his nail over the slit. He imagined this was the way Micke jerked himself off and it made him shudder and slam back against him. The fingers Micke had wrapped around his throat tightened, minutely, just enough for Grant to feel it, and then he was stroking Grant in earnest, hard efficient pulls that reduced him to an incoherent mess.

Grant came on a muttered exhale, head lolling on Micke’s shoulder. Micke rubbed his come-covered hand into Grant’s stomach, like he was trying to feel for his cock through the barrier of skin, flesh, and bone.

“Do it, finish yourself off,” Grant whispered.

“Grab the headboard,” Micke ordered, voice ragged.

Grant did as he said, head dropping between his shoulders as Micke raised to his knees and thrust into him. The hand on Grant’s throat slid down to his sternum, keeping Grant pulled back against him. Grant wasn’t, as a rule, loud in bed, he never really managed to forget himself enough for that, but suddenly he couldn’t stop the loud cries that were spilling unbidden past his lips.

Micke lost it when the sounds started coming out of Grant’s mouth with every thrust, harsh and uninhibited. He was probably too rough, but Grant, who still had a hand on his hip, didn’t use it to force him to back off. When Micke finally slammed home for the last time, Grant held him inside, that hand on his hip reminding him that he too was strong.

They remained like that for long moments, just breathing, Micke’s face tucked into Grant’s neck, until finally torpor set in and he had to drop away. Grant grunted as he pulled free, but for long moments he didn’t move, just breathed hard, hands still tight on the headboard.

Micke tied off the condom and tossed it aside. He collapsed back on the bed and stared up at him. Grant slowly sank down until he was sitting on his heels. Micke wisely refrained from asking him what he was thinking about, because Grant wouldn’t have known how to reply.

His brain was whirring through a million scattered ideas, none of them easy to articulate. He wished the sex weren’t so good. He wished Micke didn’t know how to touch him at all. He wished for once, things could’ve just been easy, and the hot Swedish man who gave him directions was somebody who he could actually fall into a relationship with, not this nebulous fuckbuddy arrangement that Grant nevertheless could not imagine giving up.

“I think I need a cigarette,” he finally croaked.

Micke snorted and threw himself down on the bed. “I know better than to give you one. Once the awesomeness from my orgasms wears off you’d kill me for it.”

Grant rolled his shoulders and then rolled off the bed, heading for the shower. Micke stretched in the bed languorously and then, after a moment, reached into his dresser to pull the pack of cigarettes out. He stared at it for a long moment before breathing out and tossing them at the wastebasket. He didn’t even look to see if they landed, because Grant walked out of the shower, toweling off his hair.

His body was an unblemished stretch of velvety pale skin. Nobody would ever find evidence of what they had done. It made Micke wonder briefly if they’d really done it, but then Grant winced as he bent to sit on the bed.

Micke rolled towards him. For some reason he felt like more was necessary. Grant looked at him in askance.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, lips hovering over Grant’s.

Grant flushed, he leaned up to close the whisper of space between them. “Yes.”

They kissed like that, long and slow. Micke ignored the low buzz of freshly building arousal, keeping his palms on Grant’s cheeks. It was tender, not absent of heat, but not consumed by it either. Micke shuddered, pulling away briefly, until Grant raised his head, nuzzling their noses together. Grant had never felt more present, more certain of himself—a piece of irony. He was undoubtedly in the most precarious and unscripted situation of his life. But caution to the wind, he easily could’ve spent hours like this.

Micke’s lips brushed across his one last time before he sank back to his pillow. “Should sleep. I have work in the morning.”

Grant yawned and nodded, turning over.

At some point in the night he started awake, only to find their fingers laced together between him. His hand had fallen asleep, but he didn't get go.

*

Grant headed back to his hotel room the next morning to check his email and to touch base with the people who he'd left behind in a whirlwind of split-second decisions. Micke had already been gone for a couple of hours when he woke up. He pointedly did not telephone his dad, choosing instead to call his brother, James, and tell him he was having an amazing time and he loved Stockholm. Both siblings had been raised to be circumspect and to never volunteer their opinion unless it was deemed absolutely necessary, so he had no way of knowing James was thinking that Grant was the happiest he’d ever heard him in years.

James hoped it meant when he started his job in September he’d stop feeling there was a right way to go about his life. There had been greater miracles.

Grant showered again and found himself lingering on that time with Micke in the shower, how the water had beaded on Micke’s eyelashes, how he’d smiled with one corner of his mouth as he took Grant's appearance in.

“Fuck,” he said, semi-amused, when he realized he’d gotten hard. He jerked off fast and utilitarian and then when that wasn’t enough went to the hotel gym to work out. Micke found him there running in a low slung pair of shorts, the treadmill display saying he was on his eighth kilometer.

“I telephoned your room, and when you did not answer, had to hope you were here, rather than getting turned about in the city.”

Grant laughed and slowed the treadmill to a stop. He mopped his forehead with a towel. “I’m not that bad.”

“You really are,” Micke replied.

Grant changed the subject. “Do we have plans tonight?”

“Yes, everybody’s going for karaoke tonight, you’re welcome to—that is—I would like you to come.”

“Don’t want to experience the hell of karaoke alone?” Grant teased as he stretched out his quads.

Micke laughed. “Ah no, I quite like karaoke.”

“Well then, I guess it would be a shame to deny you.”

“It’s always a shame to deny me.”

Grant didn’t even bother to reply. “Let me just shower. You can search through all my stuff while I’m not looking.”

“Mmm, should I expect to find anything interesting?” Micke asked, following him to the elevator bank.

Grant shrugged. “Not really, I’m very boring.”

Micke rolled his eyes where Grant couldn’t see. He not so privately disagreed, but since he knew Grant said it out of genuine misguidedness rather than because he was chasing after compliments, he let it go.

While Grant was showering, Micke located his laptop and went looking for his porn collection, positive that Grant had to have one. It took him several tries to find it and then several more to get through all of Grant's paranoid security protections. He nearly pissed himself with laughter when he did. It was painfully obvious to him, but he wondered if Grant realized he had a predilection for clean preppy young men being despoiled by muscle-bound badboys. If it meant he was the badboy, he was perfectly okay with that.

When Grant came out of the shower and found Micke leaning against his headboard, arms behind his head, looking far too innocent, he was instantly suspicious. And then he heard the moans coming from the laptop laid out at the foot of the bed.

He groaned.

Micke burst out laughing. “It seems like you have a type.”

Grant chucked his towel at Micke’s face. “You are a horrible human being.”

“Yes,” Micke agreed, amiably, watching him dress.

When Grant pulled up his trousers, face a dull but adorable red, Micke came up behind him, forestalling his hands. He nipped his shoulder. “I’ve been half hard all day,” he said into his skin. “Even your shitty gay porno couldn’t ruin it.”

Grant laughed. “Shitty, huh?”

Micke swept his palm cursorily over Grant’s dick and then buttoned him up. He looked back at the laptop and then at Grant, pitching his voice into a ridiculous parody of an American accent. “ ‘Oh, piledrive me harder, harder, you great big butch man, you.’”

“Dinner?” Grant asked, clearing his throat and searching for a shirt.

He couldn’t entirely hide his smile as he turned away and Micke pounced on him. “Ahah, see? See? You know it’s shit too.”

“Indian? Chinese? Thai?” Grant asked.

“Indian,” Micke told him after considering for a few moments. “Shanti in Söder is the best. It’s near the Vita Bergen and the Karaoke place.”

“Lead the way.”

“See that’s funny, because—”

“Quiet you!”

*

They ate dinner early and afterwards, uncomfortably full on curry, sat in the Vita Bergen. The sun set late in the summer and Grant loved the splash of color across the horizon. He said as much after an enduring silence Micke had only observed for Grant's sake.

“It’s easy to impress you,” Micke said, sprawling across a bench, long legs hanging over the edge. For all his feigned indifference, he too found himself irrepressibly content.

Grant meditated on that for a moment and shrugged. He wasn’t aware of just how easily pleased he was, but with a father who so rarely granted the slightest shred of affection or praise, he’d been trained to accept the littlest happinesses with alacrity.

“What are you going to sing at karaoke?” he asked, changing the subject. Micke shifted his legs and he sat down.

Micke laughed. “ABBA, obviously.”

“Right, obviously.”

“What about you?” Micke asked, leaning over the bench tracing something in the dirt.

“I was hoping to avoid singing,” he said distractedly, watching Micke’s finger as it ran over the ground.

“Oh no, no, you can’t not sing!”

“Watch me!” Grant replied, shaking his head at Micke’s improbably detailed drawing of a penis. Micke wrote something in Swedish above it with quick strokes. “What does it say?”

Micke snickered. “ ‘Grant Hillman loves my cock.’”

Grant leaned over him and wrote next to it in English ‘because it’s so small and adorable.’

Micke shoved at him. “I refuse to be goaded!”

*

They arrived a little late for Karaoke, a big group of people with drinks in hand was already assembled in a private room with a karaoke machine. A girl in a dress was singing a Swedish song that prompted cheering from the other onlookers. They shouted in greeting when they spotted Micke, handing him a book full of song titles and gesturing at them both to help themselves to beer.

Grant sat down on a sofa with his glass of beer and watched the rambunctious group as Swedish flew rapid-fire over his head. He recognized Mario, Simon, and Sanna. Mia didn’t appear to be in attendance. Micke flipped through the book and stopped every five seconds to put a song in. Even Grant could tell that his compatriots were protesting mightily, trying to grab the book back. Micke fended them off with one long arm, laughing uproariously.

Grant took a sip of beer and restrained a smile.

“You’re here,” Simon said, voice leaving no doubt that he wasn’t happy about it. Simon was, make no mistake, incensed. But he had rudimentary enough manners that he knew better than to show it in front of his friends.

Grant took it in stride, although his mood plummeted considerably. “I am indeed.”

He was saved from Simon’s impending sharp retort when Micke grabbed the microphone to sing David Bowie’s “Modern Love.”

They’d never had those conversations about the bands they enjoyed or the books they read or the movies they'd seen. All Grant knew was from the little snooping he'd managed to do in Micke's apartment. He hadn’t actually believed Micke's claims that he would sing ABBA, but he had expected bad 80s rock or some of the nonsensical trance songs played at his favored clubs.

“He loves Bowie,” Simon said, reproachfully.

“Oookay,” Grant replied.

“I am Ina! You are Micke’s sexy American friend!” A girl in a lace dress said, collapsing into the seat next to him. She made a face he didn’t witness at Simon. Simon got up, muttering darkly.

Grant laughed. “I’m flattered?”

She grinned and spread her palms out in front of her. “That is what Micke told us, ‘There is my sexy American friend.’”

“Of course he did,” Grant replied, making eye contact with Micke across the room and raising his brows. Micke ignored him and launched into Jose Gonzalez’s “Crosses” along with two girls. Somebody shouted at them to stop being so depressing in Swedish. Micke flicked him off. He didn’t have the best voice, not even out of their little group, but he made up for it with a firm knowledge of the song.

Ina shook her head. “He is very silly, yes?” Before Grant could answer, she said, “But lovable.”

After two Lady Gaga songs that the entire group sang together, Micke collapsed next to them. He gave Ina a quick kiss.

“When are you going to sing?” he asked Grant, brushing his hand over his sweaty forehead. He was flushed from dancing and smiling broadly.

Grant, being a red-blooded man as any, couldn’t help but think of the similarities between the way he looked now and the way he looked aroused. He coughed. “Well, hopefully never.”

“Not an option!” Micke leaned across Ina to shove his shoulder. It was becoming habitual.

“It’s true,” Ina told him. “Sing a song or pay for our drinks.”

“Hmm, that’s not so bad,” Grant said, extremely resistant to the practice of singing, especially in public.

“No, no,” Ina shook her head, “Everybody.”

“What?”

“Everybody’s drinks. It’s a rule,” she said firmly.

Grant looked around the room at the huge group of friends rapidly consuming beer and shots. He groaned. Micke chuckled and shoved the book at him. Grant hoped that the others had entered so many songs their reservation would expire before they could get to his choice.

Ina got up to sing a song and left them with a wave. Micke slid closer. “So what did you think I was going to sing?”

“Hmm?”

“Simon told me you were surprised I liked Bowie.”

Grant grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, I guess I assumed you would do some hair metal or I don’t know, that dude who did Sandstorm.”

“There aren’t any words to Sandstorm,” Micke pointed out.

“Like that would stop you.”

Micke laughed and started tooting out Sandstorm. He left off when the people around them started staring. “So what band do you like?”

“Like, my favorite?” Grant asked.

“Yes, your favorite.”

“I don’t know…Miles Davis, John Coltrane, maybe?”

Micke wrinkled his nose. “Jazz?”

Grant nodded.

“You look very youthful for a Grandpa,” Micke said.

“How can you say that? Miles Davis is great!”

“I will not have this conversation. I can feel it killing my brain,” he answered, shaking his head in mock sorrow. The screen flashed a song title and Micke perked up. “Ahah, this one is for me!”

When he launched into “Any Way You Want It,” keeping unmistakable eye contact with Grant for the duration, Grant put his face in his hands. Micke was one of those people who claimed to like ‘everything’ and consequently was not even slightly opposed to hair metal. If they’d had “Cherry Pie” in the book he would’ve done that too, just for the embarrassed look it was sure to earn him.

Several songs went by and the group got progressively drunker. Many of them came to speak with Grant and ask what he was doing in Sweden. To his eye they seemed to accept it as totally normal that Micke would know a random Harvard grad. Of course they did, they were well used to Micke having the most unpredictable and unanticipated friendships on the planet, like the postman who had drug connections, or the organizers of beauty pageants, or the fitness trainers who could get you into black tie events for free.

Unfortunately for Grant, the next song that came up was his own. “Go!” Ina cried, tugging him to his feet. “Show us what you’ve got, America.”

Micke pushed a shot in his hand and then gestured for him to get to the front of the room. He settled back down onto one of the sofas to watch the fireworks.

“On a scale of one to ten, how bad do you think he is?” Ina asked, switching back to Swedish.

Micke snorted. “Oh, ten, definitely. It’s going to be horrible,” he replied gleefully.

The first few bars of Paolo Nutini’s “Candy” played and Grant hurriedly slammed back the shot and started singing. He didn’t even need to look at the lyrics playing behind him. “ ‘I was perched outside in the pouring rain trying to make myself a sail that I’ll float to you, my darling, with the evening on my tail.’”

Everybody paused, shocked at the voice that came out of Grant’s mouth—a light soaring tenor that sounded like it had formal training. Although there had been none beyond the boys’ choir at St. Albans when he was in elementary school.

“ ‘I know you’ve got plenty to offer, baby, but I guess I’ve taken quite enough, well I’m a stain here on your bedsheet, you’re my diamond in the rough.’” He never looked at Micke once, but Micke felt very strongly that Grant was singing just for him alone. He swallowed.

“Wow,” Ina said softly, eyes rapt.

Micke nodded mutely.

“ ‘I’ll be there waiting for you, oh I’ll be there waiting for you.’”

Grant found Simon staring at him with an inscrutable expression on his face as he sang. He had to drop his eyes before his voice faltered. The final notes sounded and the room burst into applause. Grant flushed bright red and swept a dashing bow.

“Liar,” Micke teased, taking refuge in humor when Grant returned to him and Ina on the sofa.

“I never said I couldn’t sing, just that I didn’t like to,” Grant replied primly.

“Whatever, the liar has to get more beer,” Micke said, holding out an empty pitcher.

Grant grabbed the pitcher and gave him a sharp salute with it. He felt shaky, his system drowning in adrenaline. The response from Micke's friends was unforeseen. But then, Grant always underestimated his own impact. He’d been very surprised to find 'Candy' in the book, until he realized it had probably charted in Europe despite flying relatively under the radar in the US. His junior year, when it had come out and he was drowning in exams after the holiday break, he used to lie on his floor and listen to it, like he was reclaiming some of his sanity.

He went to the bar and managed to order a new pitcher in halting Swedish that Micke had taught him. The bartender smiled brilliantly at him. “Välstekt.” She shook off his efforts to pay her a tip.

Simon’s voice bit him in the back. “You’re fucking him.”

Grant turned around, nearly sloshing the pitcher all over the counter.

“Don’t make that face at me,” Simon said. “I know him the best out of anyone.”

Grant opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t any of Simon’s business, but Simon interrupted him a second time. “You have to know it’s his way. He thinks sex is a great experiment. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” He broke off with a disgusted noise. “Ever since that slyna cheated on him. And you, you’re taking advantage of that.”

“What? Slyna?” Grant said, bemused by the tirade pouring past Simon’s lips. Suddenly everything Simon was saying caught up with him. It made him furious. Not for himself, because Simon could think whatever the hell he wanted of Grant, he was never going to see him again when this trip was over. Simon’s condescending dismissal of his friend’s rational powers infuriated him, even as he accepted that Micke was indeed conducting a grand experiment. He’d known that from the beginning. So what if Micke was messing around? If that’s how he made life work for him, then that was his choice. Grant thought all of this and more in a split second and then shoved all of his anger aside. He’d always been predisposed to be the bigger man.

“You know what we call a person like you back home?” he asked mildly. When Simon said nothing, Grant smiled humorlessly at him and answered his own question. “A bad friend.”

He picked up the pitcher and left to rejoin the party. He didn’t look back.

“Took you long enough,” Micke said when he got back.

Grant poured him a glass of beer and offered it to him by way of apology. Micke never had to know the truth about Simon, that he was an arrogant jackass who saw Micke as a pet rather than a person. Unaware that Micke had, in the past several days, exposed to Grant’s friendship, begun to suspect as much himself.

Micke took the glass from him, fingers deliberately brushing over Grant’s wrist as he drew it away. He was very aware of Simon’s eyes on them the entire time and for once he didn’t care.

*

They spent Grant’s remaining days in Stockholm hanging around the city. Micke woke up the morning after the karaoke party and found himself calling into work and asking for time off. He told Grant over smörgås and muesli, his best attempt at cooking.

“That’s great,” Grant said and had to hide his joyful grin in his coffee cup.

They went to all of the city’s churches where Micke cheerfully claimed agnosticism right in front of the priests. Grant was thankful they only looked amused rather than outraged.

It took Micke the better part of a day to convince Grant that he had to go to Långholmsbadet, his favorite beach within the city limits.

“You brought a bathing suit with you. You should use it!”

“I can’t. I burn.”

“I will put lots and lots of sunscreen on you,” Micke said, flicking his fingers at Grant. He brought it up so many times in cafes and bookstores and shops that finally Grant broke down.

When they arrived the weather was beautiful and clear with only a slight breeze. The ocean was a surprising rich blue. Grant knew it had something to do with sediment and mineral content and even the angle of the sun, but all he could think of was that it was the same color as Micke’s eyes.

They sprawled out in the sun, reading and watching the surf. Micke told him on the weekends it got crazy, tons and tons of people out enjoying the sun.

“And burning to a crisp,” he snorted as a man with a potbelly and tiny red trunks passed. His skin was the color of old leather. Grant winced and considered making a run for the shade.

Micke found Grant’s digital camera and started taking pictures of him whenever he made a face.

“I hate you,” Grant said, head pillowed on his arms. Micke steadily turned a light gold, while Grant frantically slathered on sunscreen every forty-five minutes. But he made no move to leave. It was peaceful, and it wasn't until their stomachs started growling that they decided to go.

“You know what I would like?” Grant asked, bent over brushing sand from his legs.

“Hmm?”

Grant raised his eyes. “I would like to go to Fredsgatan.”

Micke boggled at him. It was one of the most expensive restaurants in Stockholm. He didn’t even know how Grant knew about it, probably his chi chi friends back home or one of those stupid guidebooks he'd had stacked up in his hotel room.

“They have a tasting menu and I would like to treat you to dinner.”

Micke hesitated for a tense moment that made Grant wonder if he’d overstepped and then he laughed and whooped, “Success! I have myself an American sugar daddy.”

Grant shook his head. “I don’t think I could hope to meet anybody as absurd as you in three lifetimes.”

“That’s because I’m an original, baby.”

When Micke wasn’t paying attention, he sighed. Their time together was winding down and Grant didn’t want to leave. There was a confounding desire to reach out and catch Micke’s hand, but he hated such overt physical affection and he was pretty sure Micke would not appreciate PDA coming from another man.

“What is it?” Micke asked.

Grant summoned up a smile. “Just thinking I could beat you to the end of the block.”

“What, in a race?” Micke asked.

“Mmhm, Mr. Three Packs a Day.”

Micke went to protest that it was nowhere near that many but Grant was already running. “If he thinks I’m going after him, he’s out of his mind,” Micke said to himself jovially.

When Grant got to the end of the block and turned around, Micke waved jauntily.

*

It rained the next day, forcing them indoors. Micke's attention span was too short to remain still for long, and after the fifth gusty sigh, Grant suggested the movies. He looked up the show times on Google and boggled. “I had no idea you had your own film industry.”

Micke snorted. “Ingmar Bergman? Lasse Hallström? Of course we have our own film industry.”

Grant laughed and batted at Micke playfully. “Alright, alright, forgive me my ignorance.”

Micke was struck by how much he adored the way Grant had no trouble apologizing or admitting fault. He was one of the least prideful people Micke had ever met.

“What?” Grant asked. “You’re staring at me.”

Micke turned away. “Just imagining you sucking me off in the theater.”

“Yeah, maybe I would’ve done that when I was seventeen.” Although he wouldn’t have done it even then, because he’d still been desperately trying to muster up a few threads of attraction to women.

“All the more reason to do it on your excellent no-consequences Swedish vacation.”

Grant huffed, but a couple of hours later he found himself making out with Micke in the back row of an empty theater screening Columbiana.

“God this movie’s terrible,” Grant said between kisses. “I mean, really, really bad.”

“Var tyst,” Micke said softly, catching mouth again and kissing him until he wished the armrest weren’t in the way.

“Let’s just go back to your place and spend the day in bed,” Grant breathed, sliding his thumb over Micke’s cheekbone.

“Ja, ja, okej,” he said, turning his face to press a kiss to Grant’s palm.

Grant figured Micke had finally seized upon the fact that he was a complete slut for Micke speaking in Swedish.

*

“Why aren’t we facebook friends?” Micke asked that evening, lounging naked in the bed. They’d given up on Grant’s hotel completely, cancelling his reservation for the last few days so he could at least get some money back. And, as Micke pointed out, he was closer to the airport anyway.

“Always with the hard questions,” Grant said in a fair approximation of Micke’s voice, repeating back what Micke had said when he’d asked about politics. “I dunno, send me a request and maybe I’ll accept.”

Micke chuckled. “You probably do not have embarrassing pictures up.”

“Probably not,” Grant replied.

“Does it say you’re homosexual on facebook?”

“No, I’m not out to my father.”

“Why?” Micke asked guilelessly, tracing a finger down the vulnerable flesh of Grant’s forearm.

“He wouldn’t approve,” Grant replied simply, shivering from the touch.

Micke smiled, head bowed, but his voice was serious. “Is that why you are to work for a bank, rather than a hippie political action place where you will yell about dirty politicians all day long?”

Grant rolled off the bed, shoulders tense. He started puttering around with the few things of his that had made it into Micke’s bedroom, folding and refolding a shirt. “Mario showed me those pictures of you from the early 2000s,” he said, voice light, “That ‘Diva’ t-shirt? You are really more gay than I am, man.”

Micke stared at his back, aware that he’d struck a nerve. He let it go. “Quit being so heteronormative,” he said, knowing it would make Grant laugh.

Grant turned around. “You’re learning,” he said happily, an unfeigned bright expression on his face.

*

On Grant’s last night (after a day largely spent trying to hide how much it was going to hurt to leave tomorrow), Micke asked Grant to fuck him.

Grant, who’d been traveling down Micke’s bare torso, tonguing kisses over the ripple of muscles, nearly fell off the bed. Instead he nearly elbowed Micke in the side in his haste to see his face and ascertain if he was kidding.

“Oof,” Micke said and caught Grant’s arm.

“Why?” Grant asked with narrowed eyes.

Micke raised an incredulous brow. “Are you sure you are a man?”

“You tell me,” Grant replied, voice dry.

“You do not usually…” Micke broke off to make a motion with his hands, “usually on the bottom, yes?”

Grant swallowed. “No I—” he didn’t want to make it seem like he hadn’t been enjoying the sex that he had with Micke, because the sex he had with Micke was amazing. It was the best sex of his life and he despaired of having better.

Micke tightened his grip around Grant’s arm, forcing him to meet his eyes. Grant saw what he knew was in his own eyes reflected there. It almost hurt worse, because it wasn’t enough.

“Yes,” he said softly.

He rose to his knees to allow Micke to roll over.

He was careful and gentle and slow and thankful that Micke was adventurous when Grant dragged his tongue down the base of Micke’s spine between Micke’s cheeks, because Micke only released a soft huff of air rather than flipping out.

He swirled the point of his tongue around the tight scrunched muscle, hand on the small of Micke’s back to hold him to the sheets.

Micke breathed out, hands clenching the pillows. He knew his muscles were tight and tense under the warm weight of Grant’s palm. It didn't compare even slightly to a tongue on his dick, people who said otherwise were clearly lying, but it was still good, especially when Grant dragged his tongue even lower, thumb pressing firmly above his balls. Fuck, Christ, shit, but Grant knew what he was doing. He should’ve anticipated that, Grant sucked cock like he’d taken a class on the art of the blowjob.

“Blowjobs are a common currency in the world of gay men and this…” Grant trailed off and blew out a stream of air on the wet trail of saliva he’d left on Micke’s skin. He continued tonguing the skin around the opening and then sliding a finger across it, until Micke was nearly sensitized to the point of pain.

Micke’s entire back was trembling like he’d been lying in plank position for half an hour. “It’s okay to thrust into the sheets.”

Micke angled his head to look back at Grant. “It seemed ungentlemanly.”

Grant laughed and then swallowed. He was going to miss being able to laugh like this even through a heavy haze of insistent desire. Was that what being in love was? He dropped a kiss to Micke’s back and told him to hand him the lube.

Micke passed him the tube. He nearly choked on his tongue when Grant made him roll over, sucking his cock down and pushing one slicked finger inside him in the same breath. Grant knuckled his prostate and slurped wetly on the head of Micke’s dick. When he pushed the second finger in, Grant dropped his head to mouth at Micke’s balls, distracting him. He kept Micke on the edge, pressing unrelentingly on his prostate and lapping at the head of his stiff prick.

“Don’t string it out,” Micke ordered, voice hoarse. He’d propped himself on his elbows to watch Grant’s mouth sliding up and down on his cock. But Grant waited until he was dying for it, and then, just as he was about to come, he eased his third finger inside.

“Ah fuck,” he bit out, coming hard in spite of the persistent stretch in his ass.

“You might want to be on top,” Grant told him, spreading strong fingers inside him and being overly generous with the lube.

“Why? So it can be easy?” Micke asked.

“So it can be good,” Grant corrected firmly. Micke wondered if Grant knew how authoritative he got in bed. He surprised himself by not minding.

“Grant,” Micke replied, “I do not want you to treat me like a precious little princess. Shut up and screw me.”

He sat up and Grant fell back, Micke following him for a kiss.

“No, no, ass to mouth,” Grant protested warding Micke away with a hand.

“I don’t care,” Micke replied, and caught his mouth in a deep kiss. He bit at Grant’s lips, trying to spur a reaction. “Don’t have it in you?” he said, whispered voice mocking. He wrapped a hand around Grant’s throat, palm over the place where his pulse beat.

Grant broke his hold, pushing Micke off of him and then slamming his shoulders to the bed. “Is that what you want, to make this a fight?”

Micke had to struggle against a grin. He strongly suspected Grant had never been selfish a day in his life. He’d given Micke everything he’d asked of him, and tonight, on the last night they would spend together, Micke was asking for Grant to take from him. It wasn’t about fairness or even reciprocity. He would’ve gladly plowed Grant through the mattress, but tonight called for something different. He didn’t know the whys and wherefores as he wasn’t much prone to introspection, but he fiercely wanted it that way. And maybe, just maybe, a part of him needed to know what it felt like.

Grant pinned his wrists to the bed and thrust teasingly between Micke’s parted thighs. He nibbled down the long line of Micke’s throat, teeth just this side of punishing. Micke arched and tested Grant’s hold.

“I say I get to prep you as long as I want,” Grant said, breathing into his skin, and pressing a finger inside, starting from scratch.

It was a long time before he decided Micke was ready, working off endless reserves of patience. Micke hid so much of himself behind bluster and outrageous statements, but here, naked in his bed, he was vulnerably open. It was honest.

“You’re going to make me beg,” Micke said, words tripping over themselves and face flushed and glowing with sweat.

“Yup, I’m going to make you beg,” Grant affirmed, mouth curling in the wicked smile Micke didn’t see often enough.

“Do it then, fuck me,” he moaned when Grant’s teeth scraped over a nipple. “Please,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“ ‘Please’ he says, saints above it must be a miracle,” Grant teased and picked himself up to grab a condom off the nightstand.

“You are not so great at this making me beg thing,” Micke replied, bracing himself, eyes firmly trained on the ceiling.

“Liar,” Grant said, voice sounding choked for the first time since they’d started. He searched Micke’s expression, looking for some kind of sign, finding none in the face of his impassivity. He pushed in carefully slicked with as much lube as he could manage.

Micke made a sound at the back of his throat and then abruptly choked it off. He sounded like he’d been kicked in the ribs. Grant didn’t pause, knowing that stopping and starting would only make it worse. When Micke breathed hard, Grant worried the flesh of his ear with his teeth knowing how that always got him. He felt like saying ‘thank you’ or some other such nonsense, but he doubted that would go over well.

“It’s not…not so bad,” Micke said, wincing a little as Grant thrust in and then out.

“Not so bad is not the same as good,” Grant pointed out.

“Chances are I am not going to grow too fond of this,” Micke said with remarkable sangfroid when his hands were white-knuckled against his sheets.

“What is it you say?” Grant asked softly. “Var tyst.”

He paused, deep inside, nearly trembling with the effort of staying still. There was an extra pillow somewhere on the bed and it took him a moment’s work to find it and shove it under Micke’s hips.

“What are you—” Micke broke off as the angle changed, Grant’s cockhead striking against his prostate.

Grant grinned against his shoulder. Micke was older than him and much more of a playboy, he might’ve seen and done things that could make him jaded with the sex act, but Grant knew what he was doing.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered. Micke took a second to obey and Grant whispered into his ear, “Wish you were on top, would be able to see all of you, fisting your cock and fucking yourself on my dick.”

Micke grunted and wrapped his hand around his dick, surprised when a few strokes brought it back to hardness. His fist bumped into Grant’s belly with every sliding stroke and Grant reached between them, catching his hand and slowing its movement.

“Like this,” he said, pacing it against the lazy rhythm of his thrusts into Micke’s body.

Micke shuddered. “Fuck…fuck…” he exhaled. He understood a little better why people agreed to do this. The expression of concentration on Grant’s face was the same one he wore when he was reading something particularly engaging, eyes lowered, lips slightly parted. Micke couldn’t have that. He wanted the wanton abandon he’d wrenched out of him.

“I think you are—” Micke broke off, shifting to teasingly dip a finger inside Grant’s rim. Grant made a noise like he’d been punched and drove in hard. He couldn’t help tipping his neck back in reaction, back bowed, even as he smiled wryly, “ah, more of a bottom then you had realized.”

Unexpectedly Grant shifted, getting his weight under him, so that Micke was splayed on the bed, hips lifted across his lap. It forced his spine right back into that involuntary arch. When Micke couldn’t do anything but breathe and cry out, Grant said, “And maybe so are you.”

The position was awkward and astonishingly perfect. A few more precise stabs against his prostate and he orgasmed, watching come drip translucent and cloudy over Grant’s knuckles. Transfixed, Micke didn’t even realize he was repeating Grant’s name over and over.

Grant groaned, needing to pause, eyes squeezed tight. He pulled his hand away from Micke’s cock, needing it desperately to prop himself up. It was sheer determination to make Micke come first that had got him through those last moments without losing it.

“Do it then, just the way you want it.”

“Can…never…shut you up for long,” Grant breathed, leaning forward again to blanket him with his body. It took one last thrust and bending his head to take Micke’s nipple between his teeth just hard enough that he sobbed and clenched down around Grant with all he had. Grant felt like the floor had dropped out.

It took a few seconds to collect himself afterwards, dazed and slow in the wake of coming so hard. Micke muttered in Swedish and twisted against him.

“Hey, hey, careful,” Grant said, pressing his palm flat over Micke’s sternum and resting his chin on it. He pulled out carefully and rolled off of him.

Micke looked like he wanted to say something, anything, but Grant shook his head. “Sleep.”

“Yes, mam,” he says, looking for all the world like he was going to fight it, but he didn’t. Just sighed and turned over. Grant watched him for long moments, hand hovering just above his skin, tracing his contours with only a thin whisper of space between his palm and Micke’s long limbs.

When Micke’s breathing evened out, Grant rolled out of Micke’s bed, casting about for something, anything to moor himself back to his body. First, he found his boxers and then Micke’s pack of cigarettes. After a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed them and a lighter.

He let himself onto the sterile little balcony off Micke’s living room, skin prickled with goosebumps from the cold. The lighter caught after a few stuttering attempts and he lit the cigarette and took a long inhale. The first drag was surprisingly smooth and Grant glanced down at the pack, wondering how expensive they were. Of course Micke would spend good money on his vices, he was that proud of them. He didn’t realize he was crying until a tear ran into his mouth, salty and bitter.

Micke, unseen, watched from the doorway of his bedroom. He leaned against the frame, face pressed into the wood and sighed.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Before Grant realized he was awake he slipped back to bed.

*

The changes start slow. Grant stays in the flat his family purchased for him in Tribeca for exactly three months, but he hates it and his neighbors. He misses the quiet charm of Stockholm and the madness of the people he met there. One morning he wakes up and decides to put it back on the market. If the place takes a loss, he doesn’t care, he’ll pay his dad back every penny, but he won’t stay here.

The sunny two bedroom in Prospect Heights comes next. He rooms with a guy he knows through mutual friends who’s working as a consultant for Thompson-Reuters and can be found perennially in his bike shorts and helmet.

After that it’s the job. It doesn’t take time to become clear he doesn’t have anything to talk about besides work and people at work and how much they hate work. He has friends in the city and he doesn’t see them anymore. His schedule has caused him to miss birthdays and openings and holiday dinners. He quits without another position lined up.

“Are you okay?” his roommate, Andrew, asks, “Do I have to worry about you growing a beard and running off to a commune?”

“What?” Grant asks, pouring over job listings.

“You’ve just been making a lot of life changes recently,” Andrew shrugs, “Hey, can you even grow a beard?”

“Of course I—” Grant pauses and laughs, “You know, I don’t know.”

He ends up working for a non-profit that specializes in giving at risk and undervalued children in the public school system the incentives they need to finish and get their diploma.

He tells himself he doesn’t love Micke every day and every night he goes to bed looking at what Micke is up to by stalking his facebook profile. They don’t talk. First Grant didn’t have time and then when he finally did it was too painful.

So he joins an ultimate Frisbee league and takes a bartending course and takes daytrips on the weekend. He stops answering the phone when his father calls. He’s without Micke, and he worries that he’ll never stop wondering what Micke would have to say about the little brunch places he frequents and the funny hearbreaking kids he works with, and yet, life is undeniably better. It isn’t a struggle to get up every day the way it had been since the age of thirteen.

He’s at work one day, in early fall, a year after his Stockholm trip. There’s nothing overtly momentous about the day when he wakes up. There’s a quick run and the muesli he got addicted to for breakfast. He has to stand the entire subway ride, like he does every day at rush hour. But today is a momentous day, Grant just doesn’t learn this until it’s mostly over. At ten minutes to five his colleague Cathy says there’s some guy who’s waiting outside the building to see him.

He walks outside to find a leather-jacketed Micke leaning against a bus stop sign and staring up at the skyscrapers.

Micke smiles and pulls away from the post. Grant doesn’t look any different, but his style of dress has changed, no longer so preppy, and he’s wearing a very expensive haircut. Micke solidly approves.

“You—you…how did you—” Grant babbles, famed eloquence lost.

“How did I find you?” Micke asks for him, stepping in close. Grant nods weakly and Micke pushes a lock of hair out of his eyes. “LinkedIn.”

Grant taps his teeth with his tongue and says, “Figures.”

“Mmm,” Micke replies and takes another step closer, bringing their bodies closer and forcing Grant to look up to meet his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I’m starting school at Parsons in a week to study industrial design.”

“What? But why?”

“Funny thing, I believe I was told you were here,” he says softly.

Grant groans and leans up to kiss him, arm winding around his neck. It’s hard and welcome, and far, far, far too R-rated for the public.
Micke pulls back and says, “Jag älskar dig,” sure that Grant won’t understand him as he presses a kiss above his left eyebrow.
“Mig också,” Grant replies and smiles when Micke starts. “You’re not the only one with surprises,” he says and kisses him again. Finally he breaks them apart, clinging hard to Micke’s front like he’s going to disappear.

“Want to get out of here?” Micke asks.

It takes Grant a second to answer, still too astonished with Micke’s presence. “Yeah, yeah, of course, just let me—let me grab my stuff.” He runs back into the building and comes out with his jacket and a bag slung over his shoulder.

“Where are you staying?” he asks, smiling huge when he sees Micke is still there.

“Chelsea, I’m staying on a friend’s couch,” Micke tells him with a shrug.

“Right,” Grant says and turns left and starts walking. “Well, obviously, until you get your stuff, you’re staying with me.”

Micke stares after him perplexed. “Where are you going?”

Grant stops and looks over his shoulder, blinking at him owlishly. “Chelsea.”

“That way is downtown not uptown,” Micke says and then bursts out laughing. “I don’t believe it! Your sense of direction can’t even handle a grid pattern! A grid pattern in your own city!”

“Quiet you. You’re very distracting,” Grant replies and allows Micke to tug him in the right direction.

“Yeah, okay,” Micke replies. “I’ll accept that.”

So, it turned out, a man named Micke Stendahl didn’t just have the power to change Grant’s day all those many months ago. He had the power to change everything. Even get Grant to stop wearing boat shoes.