by Domashita Romero (地下ロメロ)

(mirrors http://s2b2.livejournal.com/336526.html)

“Buy you a drink?” came the slightly nasal voice from Tom’s left. “Could I, I mean? Buy you a drink.”

Tom did not yet look over to see the source of this offer, instead neatly poking at the ice in his vodka cranberry with his straw. “I do seem to already have a drink, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Well, fine,” said the man, who Tom could glean from peripheral vision had a stupid haircut. “I’ll buy you a drink and then drink it for you.”

Tom finally craned his head over to look at his suitor. He was long and gangly-limbed, with a hopeful horsey smile and, confirmed, a stupid quiff. He was also definitely too old to be trying to pick up a young vital piece of ass like Tom’s own self, while Tom was trying to just peacefully get tipsy while not sitting on his own sofa.

“This isn’t that kind of bar, you know,” Tom said, and took a sip of his drink.

“What kind is that, then?” said the man, undeterred. He wasn’t unhandsome, Tom supposed, on further examination, once you’d gotten used to how all his weird parts and features fit together. It was a bit like staring at a magic eye puzzle made of elbows and arched eyebrows.

“The kind where you chat people up,” Tom said. His drink was almost empty.

“Who said anything about chatting you up?” the man said. Tom decided he was going to call him… Rupert. “I was just offering to buy you a drink.”

“And then, what, watch me drink it in silence?” Tom said.

“Would be a pretty nice sight,” Rupert said, and Tom was very annoyed at how that made him laugh a little and drop his gaze. Damn it, it’d been far too long since anyone had made a pass at him that here he was getting flustered by a few bad lines from some creep on the wrong side of thirty-five.

Tom sipped up the last of his drink and rattled the ice cubes. “Fine, buy me a drink. But we’ve agreed on the silence part.”

“Whatever you say, darling,” Rupert said and Tom narrowed his eyes at him, which only made him grin that stupid wide-mouthed grin more. He caught the bartender’s attention. “Two vodka crans, please, and if you could put a spritz of ginger ale in one? Thanks.”

Tom furrowed his brow and bit his lip, annoyed. Just how he liked it, but usually felt too self-consciously fussy to ask for. Bastard. The bartender returned with their drinks and Rupert paid cash, leaving a nice tip. That was a sign of good character, at least. Tom drank his slightly fizzy drink, and when Rupert opened his mouth, he held up a finger.

“Ah. Silence,” he said, and sipped delicately through the tiny little straw. Rupert just grinned, watching him with sparkling eyes. Watching his mouth in particular, pursed around the straw as he sucked up tangy-sweet booze. He drank down a good third of the glass before drawing back. “Okay, fine, no more silence, you just staring at me is creepy.”

“So this isn’t the kind of bar where you chat someone up,” Rupert said, gesturing with one long, knobbly finger in the air like he was checking something off. Tom lifted his glass to just bite at the straw. He did like a man with big hands. “But it is one where you let another man buy you a drink.”

“My mother raised me to be frugal,” Tom said. “And that if a man wants to buy you a drink it means the only actual expectation placed on you, should you accept, is to drink it.” He sipped a little more, making pointed eye contact with Rupert, who bit his lip a little.

“Very shrewd woman, your mother.” Rupert said.

“Very,” Tom said.

“Here’s to her, then,” Rupert said, and brought his glass up. Tom rolled his eyes a little and clinked them together. In a fit of impishness he quickly reached up with his other hand to knock the lime perched on the end of Rupert’s glass into the drink. Rupert laughed in delight and took a deep drink, skipping any coy straw-sipping entirely. A shame, really, as Tom might have enjoyed seeing how those cheeks looked a little hollowed out.

Rupert put his drink back on the bar and leaned in a little closer to Tom. He had hooded, sleepy eyes, and this close Tom could really appreciate the length of his eyelashes. “Right, so, if we’re giving your mother her due respect–”

“Which we are,” Tom said, and Rupert laughed.

“Then that drink is just a friendly gesture of hydration.” Tom bit his lip to fight a smile, but didn’t quite get it back. “And if this isn’t the type of bar where you chat someone up, then I’m not going to waste both of our time trying that.”

“As though you haven’t wasted my time already,” Tom said, but he couldn’t quite make it mean.

“Since I’m not going to chat you up, I was saying,” Rupert said, and let those long fingers fall to brush over the back of Tom’s hand. “I’ll just cut to the chase and ask if you’d like to go somewhere private and let me suck you off.”

Tom looked at those long fingers wresting on the knob of his wrist, a little chilly where they brushed over his skin. Since those stupid knobbly skeleton fingers — that Tom was now helplessly thinking about being inside different parts of him — were resting on the hand that he had curled around his glass, he just leaned down to take the straw between his lips and drain his drink dry.

After an exaggerated amount of time making empty glass slurping sounds, Tom lifted his head back up. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Why the fuck not?”

“Why, indeed,” Rupert said, and then twined those fingers with Tom’s. “Come on, then.” They both slid off their stools and Rupert was tall, fuck.

He started at first to push into the bathroom, but Tom squawked an objection. “For fuck’s sake, it’s the only stall in the bar, have some respect for other people’s needs,” he growled under his breath, and Rupert leaned his head back to crow a laugh.

“So considerate,” he purred and pushed them out a fire exit into the alley behind the bar. His hands were in Tom’s hair as soon as the door closed behind them, and he was kissing him, that big rude mouth of his kissing Tom hot and filthy.

“I don’t do this sort of thing,” Tom said when he had a moment for breath, and Rupert just laughed into his mouth, a sound that made his cock jerk in his pants.

“Don’t care,” Rupert said, and kissed him more, wet tugging things that made Tom feel liquid. “Doing it now, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tom said, and reached up to brush his hands over Rupert’s stubbly cheeks, thumbs skimming over the knob of his throat, feeling it bounce as he laughed a little. “Don’t laugh. Why are you laughing?”

“Nothing,” Rupert said, and turned his head to suck Tom’s thumb between his lips, and Tom let out a breathy moan at the promise that just that swirl of his tongue held. “Just liked you right away, is all.”

“Shut up,” Tom said as Rupert backed him against the wall of the bar. He leaned his head back, an invitation that Rupert took right away, sucking at his throat and tugging the already loose collar of his t-shirt to nip along his collarbones. “Ohh, god, shut up.”

Rupert laughed again and sunk down to his knees. He looked up at Tom for a moment and Tom just put his hands into that stupid haircut, messing it up. He gave him a grin, horse-toothed and happy and rubbed his hand over Tom’s cock through his pants. “Right, yeah,” he said. “Silence, we agreed.”

“We, yeah,” Tom said, and then stopped saying anything as Rupert tugged his pants open and sucked at his cock through his briefs, getting the fabric wetter than it already had been. Tom pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth to muffle the little whimpering noises that came out of him.

The alley smelled like garbage and he was basically standing in a pile of cigarette butts and Rupert had his cock out to tongue at the head and Tom cared about nothing else in the world but that, exactly that. He tugged at his stupid hair and Rupert purred, so he tugged a little more.

Rupert closed his mouth around Tom’s cock and sucked him just at the tip, long eyelashes fluttering as he toyed with his foreskin with flutters of his tongue, just the way Tom liked, just the way that made his knees go week. “Fuck, fuck you,” Tom said and grabbed his hair tighter. Rupert laughed again and started an actual rhythm, languid movements to swallow him down to the root.

Tom rocked his hips, never managing to move quite as smoothly as Rupert did. Unfair advantage, he had; of course you could stay suave when you weren’t getting your brain sucked out. Tom would have to have his revenge. He stopped muffling his noises with the back of his hand and instead grabbed one of Rupert’s, bringing one of those awful gorgeous long fingers up to his mouth to suck it between his lips, taking it deep, giving him a promise. He bit a little in satisfaction when he felt Rupert moan around him.

Tom had to let that finger fall from his lips, though, when Rupert wriggled the fingers of his other hand into Tom’s briefs to tug at his balls, just the way that always made him lose it, right away, an absolutely rude cheat. “Ah, fuck, Peter,” Tom said as he grabbed a handful of that stupid pompadour and came, shuddering and gasping and wobbling on his feet.

He just stood for a while with his head back against the bricks, trying to catch his breath. And then he heard a clearing of throat and a nudge at his thigh and looked down to see that horse-faced asshole, now on one knee only, holding up a ring box.

“Oh my god,” Tom said. “You unbelievable bastard. That’s why you wanted to do this?”

“Couldn’t think of a better way,” Peter — Tom had decided he was named Rupert that night when they first met, and still occasionally called him that even after learning his actual name — said, and opened the box to reveal a gold band with ivy engravings.

“You are the worst,” Tom said, even as his fingers pressed softly through his awful, obnoxious, idiot boyfriend’s hair. “You are wretched if you think this is romance.”

“Just staying on theme, love,” he said, and leaned in to kiss Tom’s stomach where his shirt had ridden up, just like he had the first time they’d done this four years ago, the night they’d met. It was that little soft gesture that had made Tom decide he might actually want to ask that brash idiot’s name.

Tom was still catching his breath. In fact, he seemed to be having a very impossible time at slowing down his heart at all. “Well, you have to actually ask. My mother will have your hide if you don’t actually ask.”

Peter laughed, warm and low. “Anything but that,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Tom said, and held his hand out to let Peter slip the ring on to his finger. It was shaking, just slightly. “But if you try to do this for any anniversaries I’m seeing right through you.”

“I’m willing to take that risk,” he said, and stood up to kiss Tom, wet and filthy and loving. Damn it all to fuck, now Tom was always going to find the smell of bar trash mildly romantic.