i must not fear cringe. fearing cringe is the mind killer

If Jack was lost, on the other hand, he was at an age where that wayward feeling made some kind of sense. That familiarity and odd sense of safety attracted Jules to the young man as much as his looks did. He hadn’t been quite sure how to approach him, what would work with him, but it had been a thankfully easy process regardless. The boy was wary, but he was still looking for something and Jules was the first something that happened across his way. Luck had been on both of their sides.

The light had been too low at the bar to notice a particular set of scars between Jack's collarbones-- thin, white, straight lines that etched a careful "X" into his skin. Now, as Jules was straddled in half-undone leather atop him, they were all he could see.

“What’s that…?” He ran a finger across them. His voice was hushed. Halting.

“From my ex. We both like knives.”

Jack saw the sudden flash of jealousy spark inside Jules’s eyes and twitch across his lips. The sadomasochism within their sex tonight, up until that point, had revolved around bondage, bruising, scratching, whipping. It had been the farthest thing from inadequate, but now there was a clear, obvious measuring stick the older man had to compare himself to. Something he lacked. Other dominants, though not all, had a similar reaction to those scars. In the wrong mood, it would strike Jack as a tedious annoyance; a sort of immaturity he was apparently expected to either diffuse or tiptoe his way around. Jules was enough of a stranger that Jack couldn’t help but tense into a guardedness, but beautiful enough (--his slender frame, long shining dark hair, thick-lashed warm hazel eyes all a strange, clashing juxtaposition with his leather--) that he was willing-- for now-- to remain curious as to where that jealousy would lead.

Jules scratched a line across each scar, as if to cancel them out. “...Hmm. I’m sure it must have taken quite some trust, getting scarred up like that. I mean, little cuts're one thing, but marking you possibly for life…” Jules dug his nail deeper into his skin; Jack felt his cock thump, once, against his stomach.

--Really, it was more that him and Billy were horny and impulsive. It happened only a month into their relationship. Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Jules that, though. He wanted to see what he would do.

Jules bent down to lick the temporary, pink line he’d made across Billy’s white scar. Kissed and bit his way up Jack’s shoulder; sank his teeth lightly into his neck. “...I can only mark you for a week or so, tonight. That would usually be enough to excite me.”, He murmured into his ear with a short laugh. Bit him harder. Sucked. “...You like knives, you said?”

Jules felt Jack nod against him. “Yes, Sir.”

“...Do you have one close by? Would you trust me with one already?”

“How much experience do you got with ‘em?”

“Heh… admittedly little, outside of cooking. But I have a steady hand. I’d only draw any kind of blood from you if you allowed me to. If not… I’d still like to get a little feel for it. In my hand, that is.”

Jack paused. It was a damn lucky thing the guy was as pretty as he was. Luckier still that he took Jack’s differences near completely in stride. He’d tilted his head to the side with a single, surprised blink when Jack had explained the other, more obvious scars underneath his pecs. “Yeah, those were tits, once.” --Jack always tried to be as matter-of-fact with it as possible. Careful, tip-toeing explanations were more work (and more embarrassment) for little gain. “Oh! Interesting.”—Jules had said that, and then they’d moved on, for that time being. It came up again once they were in Jack’s bedroom. Sex with guys like him would be a little different. There was no way around that. Jules had shrugged. “Well, whatever you’re comfortable with. You still like it in the ass?”

“That’s the only way I like it.”

“Well, there’s not much in the way of complication after all, is there?”

Do what you like, and avoid the absence of what both of you wished existed. There was still a pessimism to that outlook, a preemptive bracing, a curtailing of fully embodied joy, but Jack couldn't believe in that joy. He took what he could get, as long as it was something that didn't come with too much bullshit.

Sadomasochism, of course, was already a kind of sex different enough from the norm that it inspired various kinds of creativity. It was a safe place, that way. Freaks were more likely to understand, or at least accept, other kinds of freak. Alongside that, of course, was the appeal of the pain itself. It was a pain that actually felt good; an intentional presence rather than a crushing absence.

So Jack nodded over to his bedside table. “In the drawer there. That’s where the clean ones are. Pick whichever one you like best.”

A preference in knives told enough about a person that he was willing to allow a near-stranger to pick one for his own temporary personal use. Some in that drawer were rarely-used gifts from other one-night would-be Masters; garish, obnoxiously-shaped switchblades with oil-slick-rainbow steel and acidic green plastic grips. You pick a knife like that and it’s clear you had no taste; moreover, that you had particularly boyish ideas about dominance and sadism that, to Jack, would’ve been utterly and unforgivably off-putting. Julian’s jealousy was boyish enough. If he paired it with one of those ugly butterfly blades, it would’ve been enough to kick him (quite literally) off the bed and out of his apartment.

He lifted one of Jack’s favorite knives out of that drawer instead. Practical in every way; easily flipped and folded, a quietly stylish black and silver, a delicately curved blade. He flicked it open. Eyed it with fascination. Ran his finger along the dull side; pressed the sharp edge against the palm of his other hand with just enough pressure to make him bite his lip in anticipation. Jack felt the older man’s cock throb, once more, against him. “I think I can understand why you like them, Jack.”, Jules breathed out.

“So you’re enough of a masochist to get that, then, Sir.”, Jack replied with a careful smile.

Jules nodded. “Oh, you have no idea… Pain’s beautiful on both ends. --Or at least, it can be. I learned that my own way.”

He ran the dull edge of the knife across one of Jack’s small, chiseled cheekbones and down his neck; he traced his collarbones with it, caressed his nipples, mimicked the surgical slicing beneath his pecs. Smiled at the obvious, gently aroused daze he found within Jack’s eyes. The anticipation of wanted pain brought out its own sort of beauty.

He brought the knife up to Jack’s lips. “Lick it.”

The sight of his eyes closing, his tongue running slowly with pleasure and reverence across the metal, made Jules’s own mouth water. He lowered his head down until the tip of his nose grazed the blade; nuzzled it, kissed it, licked at the steel, moaned at their tongues meeting against it. His cock was fully stiff, now, nudging with a quietly desperate request of invitation against Jack’s inner thigh. Jack tilted his hips upwards, lifted a leg up over Jules’s back, sighed with gradually trusting excitement at the sound of him hastily lubing up his cock.

Jules looked him in the eye as he pressed his cock to his hole. He slid the dull edge of the blade back against the side of Jack’s neck. Pushed his thumb against the tip-- hard enough, this time, for a thin pearl of blood to sprout from his skin. “...D’you wanna taste it, Jack?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Jules brought his thumb to Jack’s lips with a smile; pushed his cock deeper into his ass in time with his other, smaller appendage disappearing into Jack’s mouth. There was a pride, there, in how eagerly Jack took his cock and sucked at his blood; in the quiet moaning he felt vibrate against his skin. Yet, still, an envy alongside it. He removed his thumb from Jack’s mouth. Pressed it even harder against the blade, struck a deeper well of blood from it, brought it back to Jack’s lips and quickly leaned down again to join in and share a new taste of metal against met tongues. The excitement of it drew another, louder moan from him; sparked an increasingly insistent thrusting of his hips. He wanted to slice open those stupid old scars, lengthen them, make them entirely his; he wanted to slice a set of matching scars into his own chest and bring them to Jack’s lips for consecration; he wanted to learn every single caress and prick and poke and slice of that knife that would drive Jack wild and know him enough to discover brand new ones that would belong to them alone; he wanted to be worthy of that, worthy of him, and it was just a single night; he still had no idea whether Jack would want more than a temporary ownership and Jules already wanted Jack bound to him in entirety, wanted to cut every part of whatever stupid ex-boyfriend that was out of Jack’s mind and stitch himself in his place, wanted him, all of him, GOD--

All the fantasies spilling forth helplessly from his mind were nearly enough to make something else spill, far too quickly. He reigned himself back just in time. He wasn’t going to cum until Jack did, at least once, and Jack had enough of a defiant streak that he was willing to dance along his own kind of edge to try and bring Jules over it first. There was a tug of war of sorts happening, there. A delicate balance. Jules was sure that Jack knew he wanted that feeling of worthiness and was dangling it above the both of them like a carrot. At the same time, Jules could see the pleasure Jack was increasingly lost in. He could feel Jack’s control slipping as easily as his occasionally stumbled. He knew Jack was hoping, in his own way, that Jules could be worthy of him. Jack didn’t know just how powerful that drive was inside of him even if he could see, obviously, that it existed. He didn’t know the damn lengths it could power Jules through.

He’d have to teach him.

He slowed his thrusting down, again. Lifted himself up a bit and stroked the side of Jack’s neck with the knife. “...If I were to cut you, Jack… where would you want it first?”

Jack hissed in a shuddering breath. Nodded his head, once, towards his right collarbone. “...There.”

Jules traced it, gently; smiled at the moan it pulled out of Jack’s lips, the contraction he felt around his cock. He flipped the blade over to its sharp end. Flicked his eyes up to Jack’s. “If you want that tonight… I need to hear a little more from you than that, Jack.”

Jack pushed that breath out as shakily as he’d pulled it in. “...Please. Sir.”

“There’s a good boy.”

Jules pressed the blade into Jack’s skin gradually enough for Jack to utter another “please”; he felt another contraction around him as soon as the knife pricked blood.

“FuuuuuuUUUCK—”

Jack came as he felt the knife drag, effortlessly, into and across his flesh. Jules was focused, careful; gentle enough in his touch that Jack’s orgasmic twitching and heaving breaths caused no accident or sudden shift in pressure. A thin, bright line of blood followed the trail of that blade; dripped down Jack’s pale chest--

The sight of it was enough to send such a strong surge of pleasure through Jules’s body that he hastily folded the knife up and brought his tongue to the line of blood he’d created; he pulled his cock out of him and jacked off, vigorously, across Jack’s torso as he lapped at him, tasted him, came all the more at that taste, at Jack for allowing it of him, for already having proven himself worthy of that much--

He still needed to hear it. More than anything. He needed to know.

“...Did I give you what you needed, Jack?”, He asked him as soon as he had Jack in his arms, after the two of them had come down enough from their respective highs. The aftermath of it all was always beautiful, to Jules, if the sex itself had gone well. He had made those men safe through weakness, created a mutual enjoyment of rendering and being rendered weak, and then, finally, felt enough of a safety himself to provide gentleness and in turn, provide a safety for that weakness to be completely expressed. Even in one-night scenarios-- or perhaps, especially in one-night scenarios-- there was a deep kind of trust Jules had to instill in his submissives.

Jack nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

...Jules, of course, could remain at a distance that this providing role gave him, and there was a thrill not only in being deemed so quickly trustworthy that men were willing to be whipped and penetrated and cut open for him, but in being deemed such while remaining behind an invisible curtain. This had been another successful, highly pleasurable balancing act. He could keep it at that. Move on.

Those scars in the center of Jack’s chest compelled him otherwise, and his strange difference in anatomy only drove him further. It could’ve been an unfortunate turn-off, but it had been a discovery made once he was already in Jack’s apartment. A belief in a certain kind of tact overrode his misgivings. Regardless, in the end, it hadn’t been a turn-off whatsoever. It surrounded the boy with a pleasing aura of mystery.

“Would you like me to give it to you again?” And again and again and again and again until he could do something about those disgustingly beautiful lines etched into Jack’s skin by some nameless stranger Jules could do nothing about--

There was a far too painful pause of hesitation, that time, before Jack gave his reply. He wasn’t immediately eager, breathlessly excited, the way some boys were. He was about as young as those boys-- in his early twenties, somewhere; in that comfortable space of youthful, fresh adulthood most easily convinced in Jules’s potential for successful dominance-- but there was a worldly wariness and weariness about him already that he didn’t try at all to hide (he had far more vulnerable things to hide-- but then again, Jules could relate to that, too). There was a challenge inherent in that; something Jules was both hesitant about and intrigued by.

The smile Jack gave him, finally, was still a small and careful one. “...Yeah, actually. I would, Sir.”

Did that ex-boyfriend share Jack’s anatomical irregularities? Did Jack ever have a regularly-formed man or trust one enough to have him? And if he did, was it ever for a longer time than a single night? Jules allowed himself to dip his toe into a fantasy of providing what that ex-boyfriend never could. It was an old fantasy, an easy one to wrap himself in; always thrilling enough that he could temporarily forget the inevitable, dreaded disappointments found at the end of its road.

He would earn a place for his own scars, even if he couldn’t overwrite the existing ones. He would try, with all he had, to get to that place, if only to prove he could. --And what drove him, so? His mind, his heart, his dick? He convinced himself, there, that it was a mix of the three. Even and fair. It felt best, that way.

Jack, meanwhile, shared Jules’s mix of hesitance and intrigue in his own directions. There was something familiar about him; a distance and coldness alongside a burning drive for pleasure and physical closeness. An enjoyment of pain within their control. Were they too familiar, in the wrong ways? That was impossible to know, in that moment. Jules was pretty enough, and a fast enough sexual learner, that Jack was far too quickly willing to move beyond what he thought was wise. He was sure Jules knew that, in some capacity. He’d been charming enough from the very beginning that it had to be a well-used tool in his arsenal. Did Jules knew that Jack knew? That, again, was something that remained to be seen. Jack was curious enough to find out where it all would lead and just confident enough to know he could cut himself loose, fight like hell if need be, if it started to go bad.

They were both their own kind of coiled spring, and that, Jack knew, could easily lead to disaster. Yet all the same, it was familiar enough that he knew that the road towards that disaster would likely be an exciting one.