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When Alex first left Austin and the rest of his family to move to New York on his own and pursue a last minute decision degree in PoliSci while living in someone’s attic, Nora had exasperatedly informed him that he had a bit of an impulsive streak.
It’s not technically an attic, to be fair. It’s a really fucking nice brownstone in the suburbs on the other side of campus and Alex lives on the top floor, which actually feels more like a penthouse than anything else. It’s right next to all the good eating spots and the food trucks he likes on his walks to class, with a built in running trail he can use in the early mornings to combat his before-coffee stress.
It also comes with a roommate that owns the place. And a dog. Enter Henry and David Fox. The very first friends Alex made when he moved here.
Henry’s quiet, and considerate, and really the most perfect housemate anyone could ask for. He can’t cook for shit but he orders in when Alex has particularly stressful days and he never makes Alex apologize when he accidentally rants to him about something that happened at campus for an hour straight and, slowly but surely, Alex has come to consider Henry as his best friend. That means that he gets another set of privileges, evidently. That he gets to know things.
There are, predominantly, two main issues with this.
Firstly, Alex is chronically curious, and the more he finds out, the more he wants to know. Secondly, he’d figured that maybe Henry would be into things like cardigans and crosswords, a minimalist librarian-style yearning sort of vibe, cups of tea and cozy nights by the fire, like a modern day, generationally-wealthy-but-aware-of-it Jane Austen, nose consistently buried in a book or his writing. The steady to Alex’s impulsive.
Alex had missed the mark a little on that one.
He’s right about some of it—Henry does have a cozy home and dog, and lives a relatively mundane day-to-day where he works at a shelter downtown with his philanthropist best friend, and he does wear a lot of cardigans.
But Henry also apparently has layers, and when his aforementioned friend, Percy, crashes one of their living room movie night dinners with a bottle of champagne and a gusto to rival even Alex’s, things begin to get interesting.
Long story short, Alex’s roommate is kind of a slut (his own words, not Alex’s). Which. Good for him.
He learns that it takes precisely two shots of vodka to get Henry talking, like, really talking, his cheeks flushed and body loose and a big, easy grin on his face as he leans into Alex’s shoulder.
When Alex tells his sister and Nora about how it’s going so far, he leaves out that that smile may or may not have led to a minor and then full blown sexuality crisis and subsequent, aesthetically understated hey i’m bi text in the following days. Luckily, they don’t seem to put two and two together.
And so Alex earns yet another new friend, and Henry and Percy take him around to all of their favorite spots in the city that you wouldn’t really know about if you hadn’t spent years weeding out the good versus the bad. It’s good food, good drinks, good music, good people , and if he pretends to be a little drunker than he is each time they go out so Henry will come home with him instead of anyone else, Alex only feels moderately guilty about it in the harsh light of morning as they’re having sickeningly domestic breakfast together.
Mostly just satisfied, though, when he comes downstairs to see Henry burning toast in one of Alex’s aprons.
It’s become a routine at this point. Start off the weekend with a bang, spent the rest of it sleeping in and laying around on Henry’s couch and watching shit TV, then prepare for another busy week of textbooks and exams and whatever Henry does at the shelter. Alex loves routines, despite Nora’s insistence that he has an affinity for poor impulse control.
And yet he immediately says yes when Pez warns him that the club they’re going to tonight is a little different than the others they’ve been to, and shrugs off Henry’s concern when he pulls Alex aside yet again, all pink cheeked and furrowed brow, to double check before they go. Alex should have caught on around that point, probably.
He hadn’t.
They’re at a sex club. A kink club, more specifically.
A kink club where people know Henry and are actively waving at him or coming up to chat with him and he’s introducing Alex to them. One of them is wearing a collar when he says hello. Henry doesn’t even flinch. Alex is going to need several drinks, and also to sit down.
“We can leave at any point, of course,” Henry’s telling him, shoving a water, not a vodka, into his hands and ushering him into a semi-private booth along the back wall. “If you get the slightest bit uncomfortable, we can—”
“Henry, I’m fine,” Alex swears. Then he sort of chokes on his water though, which makes Henry’s mouth do a little swoopy thing that Alex likes and makes it all infinitely worse.
Percy had left them almost immediately, noticing a group of people he recognized and darting off to say hello, telling Alex and Henry to do everything he would do and more in his absence. Alex isn’t even entirely sure what that would encompass.
So he sits there and sips his water and feels like he’s definitely being a major party pooper, his brain moving too fast to conjure up any sort of meaningful conversation at the moment. Henry is sitting up straight beside him, angled toward his body while he glances out over the crowd and rests an arm behind Alex’s shoulders along the back of the booth, and Alex jumps a little when somebody moans from one of the dark corners of the rooms, glad that it wasn’t accidentally him.
“You’re uncomfortable,” Henry frowns.
“I’m not,” Alex insists. “I’m just—taking it all in.”
Still unconvinced, Henry shifts slightly to sit beside him more, their knees pressed together under the cover of the small table in front of them. It’s grounding, enough that Alex can move his eyes off his own legs and actually process what’s going on around them.
He hasn’t seen anyone yet that’s outright nude—Henry says that isn’t allowed out on the main floor (Alex briefly wonders where it is allowed)—but there are some people in various states of undress, looking generally disheveled and visibly pleased about it. There’s more leather than Alex thought there would be but not enough to mimic some of the dramatized stuff he’s seen about these places on television or online.
Most of the room is dark enough to obscure both he and Henry and the rest of the outer edges of the room from being directly illuminated, which Alex can only assume was decidedly purposeful . But there in the middle of everything there’s a square-shaped platform, a studded, thinly padded bench of some sort in the center of it, a single light hanging above. More people seem to gather around it as the minutest tick by, and Alex’s curiosity festers.
He turns to Henry.
“So. You come here often?”
A laugh bubbles past Henry’s lips, half-nervous and half something Alex can’t place as he shifts in his seat. “A few times, yes.”
“It seemed like more than just a few,” Alex hedges. He’s not bitter about the other people from earlier. He’s not.
“Alright, well,” Henry huffs, giving him a small smile, “a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”
Alex raises a brow. “You’re a gentleman, then?”
Pausing for a moment, Henry tilts his head, eases Alex’s half full water glass from his grip and steals a long sip for himself before putting it back in place, licking his lips when he’s done.
“If that’s what I need to be.”
Well. Fuck.
Before he can come up with some sort of clever retort that makes it seem like he wasn’t as affected by that as he was, the lights dim further and the neutral music track lowers on the speakers, the light in the center of the room brightening.
“We don’t have to stay for this,” Henry whispers, already pulling away before the two people that have found their way onto the small stage have even settled yet.
“What are they doing?” Alex asks.
“It’s a demonstration,” Henry says carefully. “A show, of sorts. I believe tonight is impact play.”
The two men on stage step into the light and introduce themselves, teasing each other lightly with big smiles on their faces. Alex doesn’t know if they’re a couple or just friends but they obviously have good chemistry right off the bat, touching each other casually and comfortably as they set up and talk to the crowd.
One of them adjusts the angle of the bench and then bends to lock the wheels as the other begins undressing himself and folding his clothing, setting it on a stool off to the side. Alex glances down the guy’s body briefly, feels guilty about it, then realizes that everyone else is doing it too. That he’s kind of supposed to.
So he looks again without shame this time, appreciating the understated, faint lines of his abs and hips that delve into thick thighs, his considerable bulge hidden underneath a pair of incredibly tight black briefs that make his ass look round and soft, swaying with his movements.
He makes his way over to the bench just as the other guy stands up again and they pause for a second in the middle to exchange a chaste kiss before there’s a hand pressed to the smaller ones shoulders, turning him and bending him over the bench in a practiced, effortless sort of routine. The guy gets comfortable over the piece of furniture and spreads his legs a little, his back arched and ass up, while the other straps on a pair of intense looking gloves, and oh, oh.
Henry meant spanking.
“I want to stay.”
Alex hears him take a short breath in through his nose beside him, but he relaxes again the slightest bit, no longer trying to pull them away from the booth. He can feel Henry’s eyes on him but he can’t turn away from the stage, and he hopes his propensity to watch proves that he’s serious about it.
The man with the gloves steps forward and traces a fingertip down the other man’s spine, visibly delighting in the shover that comes afterward before he rests his hand fully against the guy’s backside, rubbing and gripping handfuls of the skin but not spanking him yet.
“You can ask me questions,” Henry murmurs, breath hot on the side of Alex’s neck. “If you have them.”
He’s going to regret that, probably.
For now, Alex watches attentively as the gloves seem to reacquaint themselves with his partner’s body, almost like a massage. He moves up over his back and his hips, down onto his thighs and in between, not asking permission and yet, seemingly, not having to. Alex wonders how much of it was talked out and planned and how much is a surprise—thinks that, if it were him, he’d want to not know what to expect.
He shuts down that train of thought immediately.
Henry’s arm relaxes a bit more behind Alex’s neck as they both watch, but Alex feels like it’s having the opposite effect on him. The longer they draw it out the more Alex feels anticipation build in his gut, his senses honing in on every touch as he waits for it, inadvertently holding his breath.
The gloved hand moves up and down, sideways and over, featherlight and firm all at once, as soothing as it is exciting. Alex can feel goosebumps rise on his own skin, even half the room away.
He can feel himself fidgeting the longer it takes, but Henry doesn’t make a move to still him. The guy bent over the bench seems to be just as restless though obviously trying not to be, and for a split second, Alex can see part of himself up there, in the same position. He crosses his legs to keep his knee from bouncing under the table, sits on one of his hands when he doesn’t know what to do with it, bites his lip as he watches the glove slide upward from the inside of the man’s knee, up, up, up—
Then, before Alex can even comprehend it, the glove lifts and flies through the air again, soundless until it meets the man’s ass over his briefs.
Shuddering in a breath as the guy on stage moans, Alex falls limp back against the booth again, his head over Henry’s arm. Something feels uncoiled now, and he’s barely righted himself again when the man switches up his strategy and spanks twice over the guy’s other side, lighter than the first one but just as thorough. Alex tilts his head.
“How does he know how hard to—you know,” he whispers to Henry, keeping his eyes ahead.
“It varies,” Henry replies, just as quietly. “Some people like the pain. Like it to be hard enough to hurt or to bruise them afterward. Others like the noise, the anticipation, or the thrill of submitting to someone else.”
“It’s not just a punishment, then?”
“Oh, no,” Henry exhales, “definitely not. In fact, it can be incredibly pleasurable. Most of the time, in my own experience, the release is more mental than it is anything that’s happening physically.”
Alex’s brow wrinkles, finally pulling his gaze away from the men to look at Henry. “How do you mean?”
With a small, familiar smile, Henry taps the back of Alex’s wrist with his finger. “May I show you? Just on your arm.” Shoving his arm out unceremoniously, Alex nods. Henry’s smile widens. “Verbal confirmation, please, Alex.”
“Yes. I trust you.”
Glancing down between them, Henry pulls his arm from behind Alex’s head so that he can cradle Alex’s wrist in his open palm with one of his hands, using the other to turn Alex’s arm facing upward in his grip. He takes his time rolling up the material of Alex’s long sleeved shirt, cuffing it just above his elbow so it’s out of the way.
The noise of the spanking becomes a distant echo for a minute as Alex watches Henry’s fingers smooth over the sensitive skin on his inner forearm, tracing a vein that runs all the way up and then back down, rubbing at the lines underneath his palm, drawing out whatever he’s about to do just like the man on stage had.
It feels fucking great, actually. Alex might not be commonly described as self-aware but he knows he’s a little touch starved lately; it’s harder to find people to hook up with in a brand new city and also when he’s harboring a super embarrassing, all consuming infatuation with his roommate.
It’s obvious that Henry knows what he’s doing though so Alex makes sure to pay attention, watching the slow turn of his knuckles as he grazes them along the length of Alex’s arm, mapping it out, exploring, drawing attention to sun spots and freckles that Alex forgets are even there.
It lulls him as he waits for the punchline, but there’s still that subtle build in his abdomen, the knowledge that something is about to happen. But there’s no way to predict it and he doesn’t want to know, and that little in between of it all is enough to make him feel giddy with it, enough to want more.
Henry’s fingers draw up further, into Alex’s open palm to trace over the lines of it and the insides of his knuckles. His own fingers flex in response, loosening where he hadn’t realized they’d tightened. It tickles with how soft he’s being but it’s so nice. Alex wonders if it’s something he could ask for back at home without it being weird.
He moves back down, swiping his thumb over Alex’s arm and grazing the inside of his elbow. He can’t tell if he’s breathing or not anymore. His eyes are locked in on Henry’s hand, the way it dips and presses and slips away again.
And then he raises it no more than a few inches above the skin and slaps Alex’s wrist, flat-fingered and without an ounce of pain, right over his pulse point.
Henry goes right back to stroking over the spot softly afterward, but Alex—Alex feels unraveled somehow. Like he’d felt after that first hit on stage, but more, deeper. He watches his own fist clench and then release again in a daze, narrowly bites down on a noise that tries to escape him when Henry pulls away and eases his sleeve back down.
“How was that?”
“Shit,” Alex breathes, then flushes. “I mean—no, yeah. That was—good. Really good. Thank you.”
Henry smiles at him again. “You don’t need to thank me, love.”
There’s literally nothing else Alex trusts himself to say at this point, so he turns back to the stage and lets the noise and light and motion fade back into his focus, taking in what he’d missed in the last couple of minutes.
The man bent over the bench is fully nude now, his bare ass on display and beginning to bloom with red handprints as he shudders after each hit and then asks for more, varied between his ass and his thighs evenly.
Alex had ridden a friend’s motorcycle once and worn gloves kind of similar, remembers how they’d dulled most of the sensation when he’d gripped the handle bars. He wonders how much more the marks would show up without them, if the sting of the slap would be sharper or not.
“Have you done it before?”
“I have,” Henry nods. “Both ways.”
Alex nearly swallows his own tongue at the barrage of images that bombard his brain, then shakes them away. He has permission to watch these people in front of him, not to fantasize about his best friend.
“Which one did you like better?”
In his peripherals, he can see Henry’s lips purse, can just barely hear the soft hum he gives over the next slap. “The sting of the ache the following day is wonderful, but if I had to choose, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of marking someone up with my hand. With a paddle. With a crop. There are so many options. That kind of power…it’s a rush.”
Alex scoots in closer under the false pretense of hearing him better, and gets his way when Henry lifts his arm to put it back behind his head again. Alex’s cheek presses into his bicep when he rolls his head to look at him.
“S’that why you like it? The power?”
“No. Not particularly. I suppose I like the intimacy aspect of it. The trust that someone places in my hands for the length of a scene,” Henry explains, eyes on the stage in front of them. “Being able to take someone apart at the seams and then put them back together again, ideally more satisfied than before.”
Sucking his lower lip into his mouth, Alex turns back to the men, watching them move together. There’s an energy surrounding them now, a give and take and a silent communication that Alex for some reason understands, but probably not at the level the two of them seem to share with each other. He likes Henry’s answer, thinks he’d like the intimacy of it too. Someone knowing him enough to already be aware of his limits, what’s too much and when he needs more. Sometimes that feels like too much to ask for.
“I think I want that,” Alex says before he’s even thought it through fully. Henry doesn’t flinch or pull away.
“Yeah?” he asks quietly. “It’s alright if you do. Lots of people enjoy it.”
“I’ve never…wanted anything like that before,” Alex admits.
“Which part?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean would you rather be spanked,” Henry says frankly, “or be the one doing the spanking?”
Oh.
“Oh,” Alex swallows. “Uh. I don’t know. I don’t think I would mind either? But I think—I meant that I would be the one, ah, receiving.”
“Hm.” Alex can feel his breath on his shoulder from how close they are. Somehow wishes they were closer. The man on stage cries out and bucks his hips down into the bench. “What do you think you’d like about it?”
“Quiet,” Alex breathes. “I mean—in my head. I think—I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else except for that. I could just—feel. I’d know that I was—”
“Safe,” Henry finishes.
Alex’s shoulders sag a little more. “Yeah.”
He wants it. He wants it badly. And not in Nora’s poor impulse control kind of way. In the this-might-actually-work sort of way. If just watching this happen and talking about it with Henry can make him feel like this, how much better would it feel if it were him up there, bent over and handing over control? If it were his own skin stained with handprints, his hips working rhythmically toward his release, his own set of desperate, heady noises breaking through the silence?
If it were Henry taking him there?
“Are you watching?”
His eyes snap open from his fantasy. “Mhm,” he hums.
“See how well he takes it? How much he’s enjoying himself?” Henry rasps, his lower lip barely catching on the outside of Alex’s ear. “He’s close, isn’t he? Do you think he’ll be allowed to come?”
“Yeah, I don’t—I don’t know,” Alex whispers shakily, his breathing picking up again. He shifts his hips against the booth. “Hen, uh…”
“Keep watching them, Alex,” Henry instructs. “They aren’t finished yet.”
The request hits him right in his restless limbs, stilling them all over again. He doesn’t know what he wants and he doesn’t know the answers to Henry’s questions but if Henry tells him to sit and watch, he can do that.
Up on stage, it seems like they’re approaching a precipice. The man with the gloves raises his wrist up to his mouth to take the strap of them between his teeth and rip it off, leaving it on the floor as his bare palm caresses his partner’s now bright red ass. His touches go back to the kind from earlier suddenly, that soft, smooth, sweet glide of skin on sensitive skin, reassuring and quiet. The man on the bench is whining and pleading, begging to come with tears on his cheeks and a far off look in his eyes, his body chasing any and every touch he receives.
This time, it feels like everyone in the entire room holds their breath.
All at once, the other man kicks his legs apart further, dropping his partner’s hips down fully against the bench, then reels back and lands one, two, three, four, five, six hits ranging all across and between his swollen ass before slipping his fingers inside and curling them upward, utters one single word, and the guy shatters beneath him.
In the same moment the guy comes, Alex realizes how hard he is in his own pants. Despite everything else it’s a shock and he gasps, crossing his legs and not very subtly pressing a palm to the crux of his thighs to get some relief.
If he’d been in any way trying to, Alex realizes, he could’ve gotten himself off just now. Just like that. It wouldn’t have even been difficult.
Well. That’s never happened before.
He stares at the stage until both men have begun the process of cleaning up and moving somewhere private, until the other lights in the room raise back to their normal, brighter hue. The shift immediately illuminates where Alex’s hand is and he yanks it away with a hot flush on his cheeks, tugging at the hem of his shirt to cover his lap instead.
“So,” Henry hums, glancing over at him, “how did you enjoy the show?”
Alex feels transparent.
“Uh. It was. Yeah. I liked it,” he rattles off, clearing his throat. “Ten out of ten. Would watch again.”
Dipping his chin with a wince at himself, Alex leans not-so-subtly forward to prop his elbow on the table, concealing his lower body.
“Mm. Good.” Henry sits up too. “Would you like to head home, or—?”
“Home,” Alex rushes with a nod. “Home is good.”
Lips curling at the corners, Henry slides out of his side of the booth, and Alex flinches when their shoulders brush.
“Wonderful. I’ll just find Pez and let him know we’re leaving and we’ll head out. Is that alright?”
Alex seriously debates whether or not he has time to hit the bathrooms for an emergency orgasm so he can calm the fuck down before they have to head back together, then flashes him a smile.
“Sure.”
Fuck. He accidentally stares at Henry’s ass as he walks away and then feels miserable.
Out of the millions of things that could have jumpstarted his super embarrassing, all consuming crush on Henry from secret and hypothetical daydreaming to very real very obvious can’t hide it anymore territory…
It had to be fucking spanking.
+
Alex is, in fact, not any less jumpy when they get home.
He didn’t have time to hit the bathrooms before they left and the walk home hadn’t done it’s job of redirecting the blood flow back to other areas of his body, his brain unhelpfully conjuring up an entire database of mental images involving himself, his ass, and Henry’s hands on said ass.
It’s not like he hasn’t pictured worse before, to be fair. Alex tries, as a general rule, not to harbor sexual fantasies about his friends and roommates, but when it’s Henry it’s—sometimes it’s fucking hard to stick to the script, okay?
And this is the first time he’s had a visual to go with it. He hadn’t just been alone in his room watching a shitty porno and imagining things. This was—Henry was there, with him, touching him, while they both watched other people get off, while Henry talked about ways he’s gotten himself off, and about what Alex might like when he gets off and—
“We’re out of the orange juice. Would you like apple tonight instead?”
And now they’re here, just the two of them again, and there’s not a single way out of this that doesn’t end in Alex either seeming incredibly rude or incredibly horny (and also kind of pathetic). He’s not sure which might be less painful.
“Yeah, sure. Apple’s good. Thanks.”
Henry hums his assent as he grabs two of the small cartons from the fridge and turns around to set them on the island between them, one on either side of the snack plate they’re sharing.
It’s a custom, now. An preemptive anti-hangover remedy after going out to rehydrate and get some protein in themselves before bed. It’s usually Alex’s favorite part of going out at all; coming back home, changing into pajamas, sharing deli cuts and cheese and gold fish as they debrief about the night, bodies loose from the alcohol and giggly, leaning into each other’s sides, like the sleepovers Alex never really had.
He doesn’t point out that neither of them are drunk tonight. He’s not even buzzed.
It adds another super cool and awesome element to this routine where Alex gets to overthink about each and every part of it: is Henry doing this out of obligation or is he doing it because he likes Alex? Because he wants to take care of him somehow?
I suppose I like the intimacy aspect of it. The trust that someone places in my hands.
Alex takes the straw of the apple juice carton in between his lips, eyeing him carefully. “Hey. You trust me, don’t you?”
Henry swallows his cracker with cheese and makes a noise in his throat. “Of course.”
“So that’s why you spanked me.”
With a wheezing cough, Henry reaches for his water, and Alex leans across to pat him on the back. It takes him a second to catch his breath and for the food to go down, Henry holding up a hand.
“Perhaps let’s not—let’s not say it that way, yes?”
“Well, I think that’s better than saying you slapped me. I don’t think people would believe it, but it might raise some red flags.”
Henry makes a progressively more urgent noise. “And who are you planning on telling, exactly?”
A therapist, probably. One equipped to handle whatever kink Alex has unlocked about himself tonight. He shrugs, picking at a cracker until it crumbles.
“I don’t know.”
Comfortable quiet shifts into something slightly less than comfortable while they continue to eat, and he can feel Henry’s eyes on him during the in betweens.
“It was…” Henry begins, licking his lips with a furrowed brow, “it was alright, wasn’t it? Have you changed your mind?”
“No,” Alex says, too fast to be considered normal. “I didn’t change my mind. I liked it. A lot.”
Henry’s shoulders relax again. “Oh. Well. Good, then.”
“Yep. Good.” Alex pops another bite into his mouth and forces himself to swallow it so he won’t say anything else, and then promptly says something else anyway. “Would you do it again? Like. If I asked?”
With yet another new sound to add to the growing collection, Henry drops his head to his chest and grips the side of their counter until his knuckles white out.
“Alex, I think we should talk about our boundaries—”
Shooting up from the stool, Alex dusts his hands off and backs away, waving one of them dismissively. “Nope. All good. Seriously. Just forget I said anything.”
“Alex—”
“It was—I shouldn’t have put you in that position. That was shitty of me—” Henry steps around the island and Alex trips over his own ankle into their coat rack, “and we should really just forget it, because I would honestly never forgive myself for fucking up what I have with you just because I think I want you to spank me, like, that would be so fucking stupid, so—”
“Alex.”
It’s sharper than the other times, and Alex’s legs stop moving before his brain even tells them to, going motionless in their entryway. Henry stands across from him, his face unreadable when Alex croaks out, “Yeah?”
“Is that all you want?”
What.
“What?”
Has he been that fucking obvious?
Henry takes another tentative step forward. “Is that all that you want from me?” he repeats. “Because I can give that to you, but not if that’s all you want.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Alex frowns. There’s no way he’s talking about what Alex is talking about. Not when he’d wanted to set boundaries.
“Alex,” Henry breathes. It sounds like a warning. He tilts his head and steps closer.
Alex shakes his head, but he’s pretty sure looking deliberately at Henry’s mouth gives him away. “I, uh…”
It’s a stalemate for all of a few seconds before Henry makes one, glorious final noise and surges forward.
He tastes like apple juice, or maybe it’s Alex that still tastes like apple juice, but it doesn’t fucking matter because Henry’s kissing him— Henry’s kissing him —and then there’s a hand in his hair and one on his hip—on his hip! —and then Alex’s hands are on the side of Henry’s face and on his neck and shoulders and how the fuck did he think he was going to handle being spanked if he can’t even handle being kissed?
“Alex, is this—is this alright?” Henry breaks away from him to ask, already breathless and pink-cheeked.
“So alright,” Alex nods, then tries to pull him back in again.
He groans when Henry dips out of the way. “You haven’t answered my question,” Henry says.
The distance he puts between them again feels like a personal offense, the corner of his mouth pinched and his ring twisted between his fingers.
“What do I want?” Alex double checks.
Henry looks up at him. “Yes.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Alex asks, a nervous grin overtaking his face as he tosses up a shoulder. He feels fucking transparent. Which would be terrifying, if it were anyone but Henry.
But it also feels right, and familiar, like something finally falling into place that he hadn’t even known was missing.
It’s the furthest fucking thing from impulsive that Alex has ever felt.
“Everything,” he finishes.
Henry practically falls forward to hold him again and Alex meets him there halfway. He gets his hand back in Alex’s hair and tugs him forward and says “Alex,” again like a confirmation this time, and Alex channels the entirety of his big feelings into something he can communicate with his mouth. Or he tries to, anyway.
Then he pulls back and says, “So. The spanking.”
Henry groans and grins into the side of his neck. Alex’s entire body feels warm.
“We’ll get to that later,” Henry promises, holding the side of his face. He swipes his thumb over Alex’s lower lip. “Let me just have this first.”
He leans in and kisses him again, softer than anything Alex has ever felt before, more gentle than anyone’s ever treated him. The fact that Henry can sway between both so easily, the rough and the sweet, is making him dizzy. He wants both extremes and every last thing in between.
“I’m holding you to that, sweetheart,” Alex rasps eventually, shoving his pinky into a barely-there dimple. “Whatever you want.”
Henry sighs against him. “Whatever I want, hm?”
“Mm.”
Before Alex is even finished nodding, Henry’s pressing their smiles together, pulling him backward toward the sofa, and kissing Alex like he might very well be the answer.
+
Alex is disappointed when he doesn’t have a mark on his wrist the following day, despite already having Henry’s previous warning that it wasn’t near hard enough to cause one.
Three weeks later, after their third ‘official’ date—because Henry is a gentleman when he wants to be, apparently—Henry leaves his big red handprints all over Alex’s ass to make up for it.
Yeah. Definitely not an impulse thing.