Work Text:
Isaac always nurtures an almost pathological affection for his craft, regarding idleness not as the human necessity it is, but as a moral failing: a peccadillo for which he bore no mercy, least of all toward himself. He spirals off into soliloquies about whatever venture had seized his imagination this week, you bear witness in tolerance, used to his particular brand of monomania, his disinterest in the conventional rituals of conversation, and the fact that he regards your attention as optional, at best.
The lab scarcely qualifies as a workspace; it is more accurately a mausoleum of clutter, where paper towers buckle under their own ambition and indecipherable contraptions crouch in the corners like house pets no one remembers acquiring. You had been gone all of ten minutes, yet in Isaac’s orbit, entropy is not so much a gradual decline as a competitive sport. Your bag has already vanished into the morass, absorbed without ceremony. The table groans under an indiscriminate scatter of papers: aborted sketches, algebraic graffiti, and hieroglyphics you had no interest in decoding. “Ten minutes,” you say, “and it already looks like a tornado hit. You knew I would be back.”
Isaac doesn’t bother to lift his head. “I know exactly where everything is. And where it belongs.”
“And my bag?” you push.
A beat, then the subsequent grin — smug, odious: “can’t expect me to be responsible for your misplacements.”
“You just can’t help yourself,” you intone flatly. “I’m meeting up with Eli and I’m already late.”
“And what a loss, to be deprived of the profound insights of your boyfriend. I’m sure you’re missing out on a riveting conversation,” he jibes, his hand hovering lazily in mid-air while, beneath it, the pencil skitters across the page in precise counterpoint.
“Not my boyfriend,” you say. “Besides, we don’t do much talking.”
That makes him glance up. The smile is hollow, but tight around the edges. “Figures,” he says. “Conversing implies the existence of something worth saying. In that idiot’s case, I can see why you’d skip it.”
He then proceeds to articulate the rudiments of his latest contraption. “If I can devise a method to stabilize it,” he begins, “then the rest is a matter of trial and error.” Without so much as a glance in your direction, he pivots to the next phase: “There’s a vial on that shelf.”
“Y’know, for someone who loves showing off his telekinesis, you make my life unnecessarily hard,” you say, but there’s no bite to it, only an exasperated amusement as you begin to thread through the cluttered shelves, rifling through glass bottles and chemical apparatus.
“The cryogenic fluid is the sole element capable of salvaging this. I’ve—” He glances up for a moment; a mistake on his part. He falters, mid-sentence, the cadence breaking as his eyes land unexpectedly on you stretching to retrieve the vial, your shirt inches upward to reveal a narrow expanse of skin at your stomach. His throat tightens. A momentary lapse, but one swiftly veiled with the same level of cohesiveness from before. “…begun formulating my own variants. It should keep the core below critical temperature.”
You return to the table and hold out the vial. “Here. You’re welcome. Now hand it over.”
He makes a vague motion at the table without any further acknowledgment, preoccupied with his instruments. A perfunctory wave in the table’s general direction and from beneath the layers of lab detritus, your bag launches itself into the air.
You snag the bag, abandon the vial, and collapse into the chair. The search for your things is methodical, almost clinical: lipliner, gloss, each motion familiar, rehearsed, a private liturgy you enact with practiced ease.
Isaac, subsumed in his work, takes one glance at the bag through his periphery and uses a hand to angle a concave mirror toward you, unthinking, as if this were his reflex. Your hands falter mid-rummage.
Then you smile, small, clandestinely, and lift the lipliner to your mouth.
*
After your departure, Isaac grew restless, unable to force his mind to the task at hand. He paced, from one machine to another, coat billowing behind him theatrically. He tinkered without conviction, fiddling with half-finished contraptions, shuffling through the dregs of earlier designs as though some abandoned sketch might jolt him back into coherence. Nothing took. The harder he pushed, the more barren his concentration became, his so-called inventions reduced to busywork.
When he yields to it, it’s not a full relenting: there’s no actualization of anything, just a tightness coiling in his stomach. He doesn’t concern himself with the removal of clothing, just shuffles and lets his unbuttoned pants sag low on his hips, his hand gripping himself with the grim intention of dispatching it quickly. Just friction, a quick release and then he can move on. He works at a punishing pace, as if masturbation could be itemized on his itinerary between soldering and recalibration. The point is expedience, not pleasure. He needs it finished, he wants the clutter in his head scrubbed clean.
You knew I would be back.
He gasps as though you’ve already breached the doorway. You could return at any time, the knob turning, your voice cutting through the thick air of the lab. The danger of it should kill the urge. Instead it worsens it. You have already invaded his space; worse, you have infiltrated his mind and now the equations won’t stop getting entangled.
And the image is persistent in its refusal to leave: stretching for the vial, shirt riding high, that flash of smooth, bare skin. He thinks back to when you’d lean over him to retrieve something, your breath hot on his skin. It needles into him, slows his wrist, alters his rhythm until what was perfunctory begins to spiral into something else. The irritation flares, but his body doesn’t care. It’s always worked against him. His palm drags, tighter now, strokes unspooling into a rhythm meant to prolong, not end.
At the back of his mind there’s a scintilla of annoyance but he lingers. Your presence barges in, insolent, like you were the first time you had stumbled into his space, and impossible to get rid of. He envisions the heat of your breath when you lean close, the shape of your mouth forming a retort, the warmth of skin revealed so casually it brands itself into his memory. His strokes deepen, a rhythm forming despite himself, his body treacherously savoring what his mind condemns. He should be vexed by the ease with which you occupy his mind. Instead, he accommodates you, his hand matching the shift in tempo, slow and more deliberate.
An unsolicited thought intrudes with the shift in pace: how would you touch him? At first he conjures up your manicured fingers grazing, the practiced tease. But the fantasy collapses almost immediately. The pressure mounts, grip hardening, nails scoring flesh; whatever softness there was curdles fast into something relentless and sharp.
His fist works over the head, smearing it, precome thick enough to string between knuckles and leave his cock shining. Each drag of his palm only coaxes more, dribbling down the underside, slipping into the dark curls at his base. It spatters onto his thighs, obscene in its persistence, wetting him beyond function. The mess clings sticky and translucent, dripping steadily with each jerk until it slicks the heel of his hand, until his strokes become sloppy, sliding over the length with no restraint.
His head tilts back, mouth falling open. “Fuck,” he hacks, throat rough. “Fuck.”
Experimentally, Isaac reaches down with his free hand to grip into his thigh, nails gouging in to hurt, to draw blood. The sharp sting only fuels him, making his strokes jerk and stutter. He presses his teeth into his lips, nose scrunching into a sneer and tugging at his own flesh until a sharp trickle of blood slides down his chin, a taste that makes the heat spike harder, his lip twitch. Pain and pleasure fuse together, cloying and messy, like an experiment gone wrong and every slick, clumsy stroke drags him deeper into the chaos of need.
His breath grows ragged, filling the cramped room with the sound of him straining against his own restraint. He imagines your warmth, your voice close enough to graze him, the way your mouth would part if you noticed the hunger in his eyes. His hips lift, chasing sensation, no longer controlled, no longer detached.
Do you think of him at night? The question rings through but he refuses to delude himself, you and him were nothing more than friends and you had a repertoire of paramours. He knows this degeneracy only exists in the aberrant confines of his mind, but your voice drifts through so vividly, curling through his head. “Isaac…” He shudders violently, cock slick in his fist, precome running down the underside, pooling at the base. His strokes jerk and falter, sloppy and desperate.
“Do you like that I’m thinking of you?” you whisper, almost teasing, almost patient, and heat flares through him like fire. Hips jerk, chest heaving, nails pressing into the tender curve of his thigh, every flare of pain sharpening the wet friction in his hand.
“Look at you… just can’t help yourself, can you?” The words curl through him, coiling around every nerve, making his grip sloppy, desperate. Precome glistens thick and sticky, dribbling down his thighs, clinging to the slick already there. Sweat mixes in, hot and wet, running over chest, stomach, collarbone, and into the mess already coating him.
There’s a wavering grin that comes from him at the question you pose, fondness permeates his clockwork-heart. His tongue peeks out to wet his lips.
“Do you want me to touch you?” The whisper lands like a lash, making him tilt, trembling, but he clamps down, impelling a control he does not feel. His hips lift and jerk anyway, nails rake into thigh, each flare of ache feeding the wet slick on his hand, every movement sloppy and ragged, every pulse of heat unbearable.
“Looks like you’ve got that covered,” you hum, sharp-edged. “I’ll have to take care of myself.” His eyebrows pull together, almost in dissent, though dissent is meaningless; his body has long since abandoned his reason. “I’ll just make myself come—” The thought truncates because your eyes flick to his throbbing length, then to the dark smear of his own blood along the curve of his thigh, and back up to meet his gaze.
“It’s okay,” your whisper curls through his mind, intimate, teasing. “It’ll be easy, because you’ve already helped.” In his imagination, your fingers lift, and he sees them coated in his come and blood.
He does not think his body could get any hotter, but it does, ribs tightening, hips twisting instinctively as your hand vanishes beneath the band of your clothing, glossed mouth parting, each contrived motion driving him insane and all he can think of is how you’re touching yourself with his come, his blood and the possessiveness he feels, sets his nerves aflame and it’s enough for his release to overtake him, it wrenches through hot and ungoverned. A low, harsh grunt escapes him, your name leaving his lips, clipped and urgent. He spills over his hand, his stomach, the tremor in his thighs betraying how hard it hits. A muffled curse escapes, unplanned, before he can bite it back. He shudders through the aftermath, chest heaving, hand sticky with the evidence of how far gone he let himself get.