the wound you can’t stop picking at

Except Daniel seems tense after that night—he picks at his cuticles sometimes, when he thinks Max isn’t watching, and he grinds his teeth in his sleep. Max cannot imagine what he is stressed about; even if he asked, Daniel probably would not tell him. He would just say something like, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, baby,” in a bad American accent and kiss Max and distract him until Max couldn’t remember what they were talking about. 

But it does not seem fair that Daniel makes Max feel huge and luminous and light while Daniel is suffering with something he won’t share. Max has to sometimes be creative with making Daniel feel cared for, and he’s not always very good at it.

Like with the necklace: he had thought Daniel would like it, because Daniel likes pretty things and is always wearing jewelry, and he likes the rare occasions when Max manhandles him and puts him where he wants him. But instead Daniel had looked sort of terrified, though of course he calmed down when Max got his dick in him, and now he doesn’t seem to mind wearing it so much, even if Max wished Daniel would wear it all the time. He likes seeing it across Daniel’s thick neck, the way it glints at his throat. Everyone should get to see such a sight; Daniel is too beautiful not to be looked at. Even when other people looking at Daniel makes Max feel like his bones are too big for his body and all his organs have shrunk. It is enough to know that he, Max, bought him that necklace and fucks him in it when he wants or sometimes gets fucked by him when he’s wearing it, and it bumps against Max’s chin when they’re face-to-face, his legs wrapped around Daniel’s waist. 

Daniel comes over that evening wearing a nice button-up shirt, bags under his eyes. They’re supposed to be going to dinner first, just the two of them. Not even the kind of thing Max needs a date for, but just because he can take Daniel out for dinner if he wants to, and he does. 

“Looking sharp, babe,” says Daniel, grinning at him, but something isn’t right in the way he says it. Sometimes Max has a hard time figuring out what people mean when they don’t say it outright, but with Daniel, he can always tell, which is a blessing and a curse. 

Max leans in and kisses him softly. “Hello, Daniel,” he says. “Are you tired? You look tired.” 

Daniel pulls back, laughing, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. “Is it that bad? I haven’t been sleeping well.” 

“No,” says Max. He kisses under one of Daniel’s eyes, then the other. “You of course look very beautiful as always. I can just tell.” 

Daniel smiles, softer but more genuine. “You’re a sweetheart, Maxy Max.” 

He’s still smiling, but Max can tell he means it. He blushes. 

“Let’s not go out to dinner,” he says impulsively. “It will be good to eat here instead, I think.”

A little line appears between Daniel’s eyebrows. “Because I’m tired? ‘Cause I’m not too tired for you, baby.” He pulls Max to him by the hips, kissing him. “I’m never too tired for you.” 

“What if what I want is for you to rest?” asks Max. This thing between them—there are rules, and Max has to guess at them. It is sometimes fun like a puzzle, but mainly it’s confusing. He wishes Daniel would just tell him the right things to say and do so that he would not look so stressed anymore. 

Daniel makes a face that’s a little bit annoyed but a lot fond. “Sometimes I just—get like this. I stop sleeping and I feel all buzzy and jittery. It’s not a big deal, I’m just tired.” 

“What helps?” asks Max. He wants to be useful. He wants to make Daniel feel like he feels when he’s with Daniel. “I want to help.” 

He sees Daniel try to slip into a silky, accommodating expression. He knows what he is going to say—you always help, baby, or something like it, and suddenly, unbidden, Max is a little angry at him. 

“Please do not say, whatever you want, or tell me I am good,” says Max. There’s a hot, sharp lump in his throat. “I want to help. And I—I am paying. And if I want to spend my time making you feel better, that is my choice, right?”

He hates saying it out loud. At one point they’d discussed their financial arrangement freely, but now it felt too—cheap. Controlling. He did not want to force Daniel into doing anything—that was the point. 

Daniel looks at him with an uncertain, slightly annoyed expression. “I just—I like to get fucked, alright? When I’m super stressed, sometimes it just—helps.” His tan skin blooms red in a way that reminds Max of ripening fruit.

“Oh,” says Max, pleased. “That is fine, then. We can of course do that.” He moves back to Daniel, kissing his neck. Daniel shivers; Max can feel an artery in his throat throb under his tongue. 

“And—fuck, Max—there’s—”

Max pulls away to look at him. Daniel’s eyes are already huge and dark, but he still looks like he’s got one foot out the door, not fully in yet. 

“What is it?” asks Max. “Anything, Daniel. I want to do anything for you. Please tell me.” 

Daniel shudders again, pulling Max’s hand to his mouth. He kisses his fingertips and then, carefully, wraps his hand around the sides of his neck. It’s thick, but Max has long fingers. He feels powerful and focused, like he’s just gotten into his car. Like he’s about to go 300 kilometers per hour. 

“I like to get choked,” says Daniel, sounding a little hoarse, and Max’s fingers twitch automatically. Just a little pressure at the sides, barely a pulse—but Daniel goes lax immediately, his breath getting shallow. “Yeah. That’s—if you’re asking, and you want to. That’s what I like. That’s what helps when I get like—but if you want to do something else—”

Max tightens his fingers experimentally, a little harder, and Daniel stops speaking. “I want this,” says Max. He spends so much time trying to chase after Daniel, to get him to stay in one place. He didn’t know it was so easy. He didn’t know that he could like it this much. “I want you.” 

Daniel makes a sound like half a groan, half a laugh. Like he can’t believe his own audacity, or maybe Max’s. 

“I am going to fuck you,” says Max, squeezing again, “and I will do this, and you will feel better, and you will sleep.” 

Daniel looks at him, his expression cautious but open. “Okay,” he says, and Max is on him in an instant. 

When Daniel gets like this, there is hardly anything else as beautiful. Pliant and sweet, like there’s something he’d been holding back and is letting Max see. 

In his bed, Max strips Daniel quickly, tired of clothes. His narrow, muscular body against Max’s sheets—Max is so lucky. 

“I want you to wear your necklace,” says Max. He’s feeling greedy. He can’t believe Daniel is letting him do this, that he’s trusting Max to give him what he needs. His head feels like there is static in it, a bad radio connection, but instead of being frustrating it makes Max feel crazy and hot. 

Daniel nods, and Max retrieves it from the drawer in his bedside table where he keeps it. It’s so beautiful, it’s like it was made for Daniel to wear, specifically. Maybe someday Max would get him a custom necklace and give it to him. Daniel deserved to have something that was just his. 

Carefully, Max clasps the necklace around his neck. Daniel looks up at him while he does, his eyes dazed. Max is going to go insane, if he isn’t already. 

“You are so beautiful,” Max tells him. “Naked, just with diamonds on you.” Max traces them with his fingers and Daniel gasps, his hips bucking slightly. Max needs to be inside him. His head is going fuzzy with it. 

He opens Daniel up carefully, even though they are both desperate for it. Usually it is Daniel making sure they are safe, but tonight it’s Max, and he has to stay focused enough to fulfill his end of the bargain. Daniel is all whiny and eager for it by the time Max is satisfied; Daniel talks a lot when he’s topping but mostly makes these little whimpering sounds when he isn’t, which Max finds very hot. 

“I want you to be on top,” says Max. “Sitting up, both of us, so I can reach your neck still.” 

Daniel groans, complying dutifully, even when Max slips his fingers out of him. He knows Daniel hates that. 

The first push in feels like—

There are hardly any words for it, and Max is already not good with words. It feels like sailing through a chicane. It feels like the top step of the podium. Like wringing his fireproofs out later, drenched in champagne. 

Daniel cries out, “Max,” in a punched-out kind of way, so Max thrusts in again, and again, and again, until Daniel is making a sound that could be his name again but also could be anything, vowelless and urgent. 

He has one hand on Daniel’s hip, pleasingly curved under his touch, and snakes the other up to Daniel’s neck. 

Without really thinking about it, he pulls the necklace tighter around his throat, and Daniel yelps. 

“Oh,” says Max. Every part of him is buzzing. “Daniel, did you like that?” 

He knows he did, but he likes to ask anyway. Daniel nods furiously. “Please, Max—”

Max does it again. It’s not even hard—he does not want to choke Daniel for real, of course, and the necklace is too beautiful to break. But just the very slight pressure of the diamonds against his skin makes Daniel cry out. He sounds so pretty. Max tells him so. 

Max has always prided himself on his focus: when he’s in a car, there’s nothing else. It’s the same with Daniel. His world has narrowed to the hot clutch of Daniel around him, the smallest hitch of his breath, the feeling of diamonds in Max’s hand. The way Daniel’s chest rises and falls, his head tilted back. 

“You are so beautiful, Daniel,” Max says. He tells him this a lot, but it seems like Daniel thinks it’s just words, just something to say in the throes of a passion. But Max means it—Daniel is beautiful when he’s taking his cock, he’s beautiful when he’s giving it to Max, he’s beautiful when he’s just woken up, he was beautiful soft in that restaurant bathroom, he is beautiful in the driver’s seat of Max’s car, and in his plane’s bathroom, and on his yacht, and when jealous of Toto fucking Wolff. 

“Max,” says Daniel again, frantically. “Max, I’m—”

Max closes his fist again around the necklace, and Daniel stops speaking, and then he comes. 

His whole body shakes with it; he collapses forward onto Max, who releases the necklace. Daniel lets out a wounded, pained sound, little gasps and moans against Max’s collarbone. Max kisses the side of his head. 

“I am going to keep going,” Max says. “I am so close too, my Daniel, I need to—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” says Daniel raggedly. “Yes, Max, whatever you need, please—”

I love you, thinks Max as he comes, pressure releasing behind his eyes and in the small of his back and in his fingers and toes. Daniel, I think I love you. 

Daniel shivers in his arms, eyes fluttering shut, immediately tired. Max’s dick twitches inside him; it had worked. Daniel had told him what he needed, and Max had been able to give it to him. He had done it; they both had. 

“Beautiful,” says Max, letting Daniel slump onto him. He will clean them up in a moment, when Daniel is asleep. For now, he just scooches them both down the bed so Daniel can lie down properly, Max still inside him. “Beautiful, my Daniel.” 

Daniel sleeps for an hour like that, and then another eight that night, after they’ve eaten and drunk some wine and watched a movie, Daniel curled up next to Max, sharing a blanket. 

Bright shock of ear poking out of his messy hair. Pink handprints on his ass. Pimples across his shoulders. 

Mark lets himself reach out. He doesn't touch the cum smeared across Oscar’s ass, interrupting the bright magenta splotches. They'll fade by tomorrow. Oscar is easy to mark, hard to bruise. 

Instead, he lets his thumb sweep against Oscar's lower back. Oscar stays perfectly still, his breath controlled. He's not asleep yet, no little wheeze every few breaths. Mark presses just a bit harder, to the place he saw Oscar rubbing as they stood in line for beers, where he knows he aches after being folded in half for too long. 

There. A shiver, not caught in time. He digs in just a hair harder and hears the rustle of sheets as Oscar tenses and relaxes. “Yeah?” Mark asks, as he rubs a circle with his thumb. 

Oscar arches his back into Mark’s hand and mumbles something into the pillow. Some awful part of Mark wants to fist his hand in Oscar's hair, pull him off the pillow, make him repeat it so Mark doesn't miss a thing while they share this rented bed. 

Instead, Mark takes his other hand to the other side of Oscar’s bony spine and massages as hard as Oscar needs. The pillow can't cover Oscar’s “Fuck,” this time, his hand tensing in the sheets. It's sick, the adrenaline Mark feels from getting a rise from a 25-year-old, keeping him from the obliteration of sleep just a bit longer. 

Just a massage, Mark tells himself. He lets Oscar stay face down, wet breaths in the pillow. His hands range up to the pimples along his shoulder blade, down his skinny little ass to his hamstrings. Oscar gets looser and louder, his huffs of breath and the way he presses back into Mark’s hand. His hole is pinkest of all, and Mark’s trying so hard to avoid it, to give it a well-deserved rest. His hand is bigger than Oscar’s whole cheek when he touches, thumbs in the dimples on his low back, first finger reaching to the barely-there curve to his soft pale thigh. “Jesus fuck, Mark,” Oscar says, pushing himself up raggedly from the pillow, and all of Mark’s restraint flies out of the window. It’s either hands or mouth, so Mark swallows a few times, spits, and only lets himself luxuriate in Oscar’s shocked little “Oh” for a second before his finger is pressing back inside. 

Oscar writhes on the first finger, always acting like it’s his first time even when the evidence of last time is still sticky on his skin. Mark is endlessly fascinated by his hole: tight but giving, always capable of more than Mark thinks. It’s not long before Mark’s knocked over the lube and possibly squirted it across the lamp in his quest to open it one-handed, unwilling to take the other hand out of Oscar.

With two fingers in, after, Oscar’s usually well on his way to wrung-out. But instead he keeps getting tenser, rocking back and forth on Mark’s hand, pulling one corner of the sheet off entirely. “Fuck, Mark,” he says, his thick neck the only thing holding his face up. “Deeper, come on, more.”

Is that how your girlfriend begs? Mark wonders. Does she even have to ask, or are you so eager that you slide right in, pump a few times and then pass out. Is she satisfied, after? Mark pictures Oscar’s mouth, pink and shiny, between her perfectly hairless thighs, and presses against Oscar’s prostrate meanly. Oscar drops back into the pillow, gasps near hysterically, but it doesn’t stop him from chanting “More, c’mon, more, please.” 

It’s the please that gets Mark. A third finger pushes in like butter, but Oscar’s still tense, his back arched towards Mark, and Mark has a flash of sliding in past his knuckles, impossibly thick in Oscar’s little body. Like a man possessed, Mark realizes that his dick is hard again. Twice in one night – Mark is a fucking medical miracle, or Oscar should be bottled and sold in pill form.

He pulls his hand out to slick his dick up, giving himself a few pumps. Oscar looks over his shoulder in response to the sudden emptiness. The sight of his face, after so long studying his back, is a gut punch. His eyes are shiny, his chapped lips bitten red, tongue visible between his teeth. They’re still looking at each other as Mark pushes in.

There’s a swirl of relief as he bottoms out. Oscar, finally, goes boneless and limp, laying his cheek back down on the pillow, closing his too-bright eyes. Mark's dick is along for the ride, a traitor to Mark’s brain, ready to satiate the insatiable. Oscar’s moans are long and drawn-out, now, not panicky and desperate like before. Mark wants to bite and suck, leave an obvious hickey over the muscle of his neck that will linger for a week. Disgusting, juvenile, pathetic.

He licks behind Oscar’s ear instead, tasting sweat, feeling the bump of a blemish. His knees are aching, sliding against the sheets and Oscar’s sweaty thighs. He slides one thigh back up Oscar’s body, undoing all the work of the massage, but Oscar just sighs in relief, clumsily finding the crook of his knee with his hand, pulling it closer to his chest. With the extra room Mark settles in to rock in and out of Oscar’s body, little circles like the lapping of the waves on a windless day. He could float like this forever.