Page 31 of Bare
‘Aren’t you?’ Rory said. Not unkindly.
‘I don’t know.’
Three words. They sat in the studio between them.
Neil kissed him.
Slowly this time. His hand on Rory's jaw, thumb against the cheekbone. The stubble rough under his palm.
This kiss was different from last week's, not the desperate, clumsy first. This one knew things. Had memory. His mouth remembered the ring, found it, pressed against it, the click of metal on his lower lip now familiar. The taste of Rory's mouth already becoming what he recognised: coffee, turps, and underneath, just him.
Rory's hands found Neil's hips and they sank. Down onto the drop cloths. The floor was hard. The studio small and warm.
Neil wanted to learn the body. Map it. The impulse that had made him draw Adam Kershaw's shoulders at fifteen, the need to understand a form through attention, except now he could use his mouth.
He pulled Rory's T-shirt off. Pushed him back against the cloth and looked at him in the studio light. Without urgency. Without blur.
A scar on the lower ribs, thin, old, white against the dark hair. A story he didn't know yet.
He started at the serpent tattoo that went from Rory's right hand to his upper arm. Put his mouth on the wrist where the ink curved across the dorsal surface and traced the line with his lips. Turpentine and soap here. Up the wrist, following the serpent between the tendons. The skin thinner here, the pulse fast beneath, and the skin changed, warmer, saltier, the beginning ofthe animal underneath the chemicals. The tendons shifted under his palm as Rory's fingers flexed.
Up the inside of the forearm where the tail coiled. The hair finer here, pale against the darker ink. He let his tongue trace the serpent's final curve and Rory shivered. A tremor ran through him, the length of the arm, into the shoulder.
He kept going. Shoulder, the deltoid bunching as Rory braced. Collarbone, the ridge sharp under his tongue, the hollow above it where sweat had pooled. He tasted the salt and swallowed. Down the chest, over the sternum, the hair coarser here, catching on his lower lip. He pressed his face into it. Different from the wrist. Just skin and the faint musk of arousal, a musk he'd encountered but never this close, never with this much light, never with the intention to remember it.
The ring. Cool metal against his lip, he took it in his mouth. The contrast startled his tongue, silver and skin, two textures that shouldn't coexist and did. He tugged gently. The nipple stiffened against his lip. Rory's breath caught, a tight hiss, head dropping back against the canvas. The sound hit below his stomach. A pull beneath the ribs. He tugged again. Rory's fingers found his nape, not pushing, just holding.
Neil circled the ring with his tongue. Tasted the metal warming in his mouth. Let his teeth close around the base of the nipple, gentle, experimental, and Rory's hips bucked up involuntarily, a sharp jerk that pressed his hard cock against Neil's stomach through the denim.
Down. Stomach, the muscle tensing under his mouth, the abdominals visible, the narrowing trail of dark hair that thickened below the navel. Salt and skin, the heat deeper, the body warmer the closer he got to the centre. The hip bone where the tattoo roots reached, he kissed along the ink, the root system that crawled down past the waistband.
He undid Rory's jeans. Fingers steadier than last week. Rory lifted his hips and helped.
All of him. Hard and flushed in the studio light. Neil studied him with the same attention he'd given the painting, the proportions, the details.
This was Rory. Whose paintings he'd studied on a Friday night alone. Whose brother slept with the landing light on. Whose coffee he drank. Whose name he'd bitten off while coming.
He lowered his mouth on his cock. Learned the mechanics the way he learned anything: attention first, then practice. The weight. The breath through the nose. The slow drag, tongue flat, pressure steady, that shattered Rory's exhale.
‘Like that.’ Rough. ‘Fuck, Neil. Like that.’
His name in that voice in this room with his mouth full of this man and the painting of his own shoulder watching from the easel. It hit below the ribs and stayed.
Rory's fingers in his hair. ‘Wait. Come here.’
He pulled Neil up. Kissed him open-mouthed, hungry, his cock still hard between them and rolling slick against Neil's stomach in a slow, involuntary rhythm he didn't bother hiding. The lack of shame in it was its own revelation.
Then reversed them. Neil on his back, the canvas rough through his shirt, the studio ceiling cracked plaster and exposed wire. The sudden wet furnace of Rory's mouth. Deep. Held. Mouth and hand moving together, an artist's attention applied to a different surface.
‘Yeah. Slower. There.’
‘Alright?’
‘Don't stop. Don't... don't stop.’
Imperfect at the edges. A scrape of tooth that was almost too much. Two men willing to be bad at something together untilthey were good at it. When Neil got close Rory slowed. Let the muscle in his thigh unclench. Built it again.
Neil couldn't hold it. ‘Rory... I'm...’
