Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nick, the little scamp, turned again to wave enthusiastically into the crowd between bouts. Joe raised a hand and felt a huff—almost a laugh—escape him at Nick’s excitement, brighter than Joe had ever seen him before. It was the first match of the kid’s he’d been able to drop in for. Joe hadn’t missed that much; it was only their second real match of the season. And it wasn’t as if he was the kid’s coach anymore.

“Are you responsible for that one?” a man asked beside Joe. He had to look up to see the guy’s face but he could tell already from the voice that it would be full of disdain. It was.

“You got a problem with him?” Joe asked, crossing his arms and settling his own cool gaze on this stranger.

“Yes. He distracts my pupil endlessly with his poor manners and poorer technique. They shouldn’t even be fencing in the same building, let alone on the same team.”

“Nick worked hard to get on that team, he deserves his spot just as much as your boy.”

“Pupil,” the man said again, correcting Joe’s over-familiar term.

“Which one is he?” Joe asked, glancing back to the puddle of boys with navy blue socks boasting their school’s crest. “Ah,” he said, noticing that Nick was getting into it with a black-haired boy that looked like he’d learned a facial expression or two off of Joe’s new friend. “That one, is it? They look like they get along well.”

“The Cox boy is nothing but a hindrance and a distraction to Seiji. He’d be better off at Exton, but he’s set on this third-rate school.” Joe could tell this man was talking more to himself now than to Joe. “He can be incredibly stubborn when he’s set his mind to something. And you,” he said, attention returning to Joe, “your son is not making matters any easier.”

“Oh, no, you’ve got that wrong,” Joe said, hands up and head shaking. “Don’t have any kids. Only his coach, here for the same reason you are. To show support for my student.”

“Ah, so you’re to blame for his bad habits and terrible technique.” It was bluntly said and accompanied by a nod that meant this man thought everything made sense now.

“I guess I am,” Joe agreed, watching the boys mill about around the strip. “You can sneer at his technique all you want, but that boy’s going places. I may not have trained him up to rank nationally and you may not think he’s much to look at with all the training I could give him, but believe it or not, Nick’s about the best thing I’ve done with my life. I got him where he needs to be, didn’t I? Shaped him up good enough to catch the eye of someone who could do better by him. Now he’s at this third-rate school, as you say, and it’s gonna get him where he needs to be for the next step up. I know he’s going far. And me and my shoddy coaching had a part in that. You wait, he’ll be taking your boy out at the Olympics one day.”

“I doubt it,” the tall man said after a long pause. “Seiji is incredible. Watch him, you’ll see.”

Seiji, the severe-looking young man that Nick evidently had a bone to pick with, was incredible. Fast and accurate and with perfect technique.

“Nick’s faster,” Joe said after Seiji stepped off the strip with seven points earned for his team.

“He’s sloppy.”

“His new coach will fix him right up,” Joe said confidently, thwacking the back of his hand lightly against the other man’s chest. He evidently didn’t appreciate the gesture and dusted off his soft green shirt as though Joe’s touch had left a visible mark there. “You’ll see.”

“It’s a little late in the game to make up so much lost ground. Seiji’s trained since he was a child, that’s years of experience Nicholas can’t hope to overcome. And you think he can take Seiji? Absurd.”

“Some of us don’t have the luxury to spend our childhoods doing what we want. Nick fought tooth and nail to get where he is. Shoulda seen the kid pester me into teaching him—while working two part-time jobs, on top of the work he did for me. He’s worked hard just to be able to fence. That counts for something.”

“You act as if training isn’t hard work as well. The hours and effort Seiji has put in since he was five years—,”

“It’s not the same thing. Being set up with the best coach and salles and fencing partners since you were a kid is a whole other world. Rigorous and intense, sure. I’m not saying your boy didn’t work hard to get where he’s at, son. I’m just saying Nick is used to working twice as hard to make up for lost ground. He found a way to fence starting with nothing but some beat-up red shoes and a stubborn determination to learn. He’s got grit. He’ll make up this ground too.”

“Every morning, Seiji wakes up at four to complete demanding exercise regimes even before he steps into the salle to fence with me. Your boy comes in far later and I’m sure he doesn’t warm up first. That isn’t what—,”

Joe and his companion were drawn out of their conversation by loud cheering. It seemed the match had ended while they’d been debating their pupils’ merits. The man clicked his tongue in what seemed to be disapproval.

“You made me miss most of Seiji’s fencing today,” he admonished. “How am I meant to give feedback of bouts I didn’t see?”

“I’m surprised you can see any of them with how far up your ass you’ve got your head.”

Seiji’s coach gave Joe a scathing glare, and Joe noticed the man’s face for the first time beyond just his expressions. He was a good enough looking man; strong jaw and straight teeth. But nothing about his face had particularly stood out to Joe until just now, when arched eyebrows pulled low over hooded eyes. He had long eyelashes that skewed his features toward what Joe would call a pretty boy. But now, with his menacing scowl, Joe noticed the line of white that broke through one eyebrow. It was interesting how that detail influenced the entire look of the man. With that scar and this expression, he looked less pretty, more jagged. But then his expression let up, easing back into annoyance right before he turned away to stalk toward his pupil, and the pretty took over again.

Pretty lashes and prominent scar. An interesting combination on a face Joe didn’t anticipate seeing again.

Chapter Text

Dmytro couldn’t seem to get the stubby, infuriating man from Kings Row’s last match out of his mind. It had been nothing at first, just a leftover irritation. Grinding teeth or a clenched jaw over the memory of being called son or talked down to by a man who only came up to his chin. It was simply that he didn’t like to lose an argument and they’d been interrupted before he’d had the chance to solidly win it. No doubt, the man thought he’d won and proven that Nicholas was somehow more impressive than Seiji just because he didn’t have the resources Seiji did. Seiji still worked hard. Had still put in more years of dedicated training than most adults. His discipline and skill were unrivaled. Even the Coste kid, who had beaten Seiji at nationals, didn’t have the same single-minded determination Seiji did.

But then Nicholas had trundled into the Kings Row’s gym only ten minutes behind Seiji one morning and quietly gotten to work and Dmytro had remembered what his old coach had said. Working two jobs. On top of chores in payment for subpar fencing lessons.

Seiji, of course, didn’t work. Where would he find the time for it in his schedule? No, it simply wasn’t feasible. But somehow that distraction had managed two and then some. He didn’t have the discipline of Seiji. But Dmytro couldn’t help but wonder if the rough-hewn man at the match had been right. It was possible he had something else. Grit.

Seiji was still undeniably better.

Dmytro didn’t see that changing anytime soon. Couldn’t imagine it changing ever.

But still, he thought rather more frequently about the boy’s coach in the following week than was at all called for.

He’d never met someone who admitted so easily to their flaws and shortcomings. And yet, that coach had. He’d agreed that he’d trained bad habits into his student. And he was proud anyway. To have gotten him far enough. Dmytro couldn’t understand that kind of thinking. Perhaps it was that curiosity that drove him to step outside the role he’d made for himself in Seiji’s life.

“Just a moment, Seiji,” Dmytro said after a Sunday practice. The distraction had, mercifully, not appeared at all during it to split Seiji’s attention.

Seiji halted, at attention at once. “Yes, Coach?”

“Nicholas’s coach, do you know his name?”

Seiji’s brow furrowed.

“His old one? From before Kings Row?”

“Yes. I have a professional interest in the local coaches. If you understand a coach’s weakness, you can frequently find the same in his students.”

“Nicholas is hardly anything but weaknesses,” Seiji said, clearly still confused by Dmytro’s inquiry. Rightly so. “And he’s on my team, besides.”

“Knowing your teams’ weaknesses is as valuable as knowing your opponents’. It can show you what needs to be worked on.”

“I’m not sure I follow. Are you implying that you want to…help Nicholas?”

“Seiji, you don’t honestly think I haven’t noticed the extra time you put in with him.”

Judging by the briefly surprised and slightly embarrassed expression on his pupil’s face, Seiji had thought just that.

“If you’re going to waste your time with him, we might as well see if there are any other bad habits you should be looking to correct.”

“I don’t know much,” Seiji said slowly. “Only that his name is Joe. And that he taught from a salle that doubled as a salsa club.”

“Thank you, Seiji,” Dmytro said, dismissing him to enjoy the rest of his day.

Joe. From the salsa club. That should be plenty to find him.

“Do you teach salsa dancing as well?” Dmytro asked. Joe grunted.

“Not when I can help it. What are you doing here?”

I couldn’t stop thinking about you wasn’t a reasonable answer, so Dmytro didn’t give it.

“I like to know what’s going on outside my own circle of fencing connections.”

“Now, I know you’re not here because you think my old show is anything worth checking in on. So why don’t you tell me the truth?”

“I was curious to see you fence. You talk like you know you’re terrible. And you’re not very good, I can say that for certain now.”

“Thanks.” It came out in another grunt.

“If you’re aware you aren’t a good fencer, why do you keep this up?” Dmytro gestured around the emptying salle. It was dingy and worn. He’d seen some graffiti on the brick on the way in. And the people that all flooded out now were even more abysmal than Nicholas Cox.

“Gotta pay the bills somehow and this does the job.”

Dmytro found that troubling.

“You don’t like fencing?”

“Of course I like fencing.”

“You just said—,”

“I know what I said, kid.”

“Do I look like a kid to you?”

“Little bit. Doesn’t look like you could grow a beard if you tried.”

Dmytro couldn’t. But that was neither here nor there.

“Just because I don’t want to look like a caveman doesn’t mean I’m the same as one of your students.”

“I’ve got students of all ages,” Joe said, as if that was the thing to respond to. “Youngest one’s seven, oldest is, oh let’s see…sixty this year, I think.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m sure I did. I said you looked plenty young from where I’m standing.”

Where he was standing was an entire head under Dmytro.

“Why don’t you improve?” Dmytro reiterated, more simply this time. “If you know you need to, why don’t you?”

“Some people are made to be champions and bronze medalists at Worlds and others are made to be entry-level shmucks who teach others just enough to—,”

“To get them where they need to be, yes. You said. And you also looked me up.”

“Sure did. Wasn’t alone in that, though, was I?”

“You’re a very confusing man,” Dmytro expressed. He talked of liking fencing and of being bad at it and yet had no seeming intention to improve. He talked of Nicholas’s achievements and of his pride over the boy and yet Dmytro had only seen him at one match. The disconnect between his words and his actions was unsettling to Dmytro. Worth investigating. He didn’t understand and he didn’t like not understanding.

“And you, Coach Dmytro Osharov, are a very simple one.”

“What did you just—,”

“Sorry. A straight forward one, I meant.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I’ve finished with my classes for the day. My place is nearby.”

What was he—oh. Oh.

“I’m not here for a hookup,” Dmytro corrected in all haste, a mix of embarrassed at the misunderstanding and unsettled at the idea of sleeping with this man. Joe was not at all from the mold of men Dmytro went for at the bar.

“No?”

“No.”

“Ah, but you’re thinking of it now,” Joe said with a wide smile and eyes that crinkled. It wasn’t a flirtatious look by any means. The man seemed amused more than interested. Dmytro responded with equal disinterest, ignoring the itch of discomfort at the thought of it and the way that itch was starting to feel familiarly like something more troublesome than discomfort.

“I can find men far more easily elsewhere.”

“I’m flattered you went to the effort of flagging me down, then.”

“I didn’t.”

“My place is close. Follow me and park on the street.” Joe hefted his bag on a burly shoulder. “Or don’t,” he shrugged, passing by Dmytro. “Up to you.”

Chapter Text

Joe rolled over to an empty bed. He’d woken up to an empty bed for almost eleven years. It hadn’t surprised him to find a vacant bed even the first night after Raina had left him. He figured he was the sort of man built more for divorce than for marriage, anyway. It suited him, and he didn’t mind it. Joe had never expected any of his company to stay with him for longer than a night, and Dmytro—well, he hadn’t expected the man to come find him at all. Believing he’d still be in Joe’s bed when he woke up was laughable.

But he had come to it. And that had almost been a surprise. Joe had half expected Dmytro to drive away pretending like there was any other explanation for tracking him down in the first place.

Joe was glad Dmytro had driven here instead. He’d been…efficient. Joe got the idea that Dmytro was efficient in every aspect of his life, and so why should sex be different? Joe hadn’t even gotten the chance to undress him before he’d undressed himself. Dmytro had been efficient, a little impersonal, but good. It wasn’t often you found a tension with someone that could so easily be flipped into sexual release, but Joe had found that strange chemistry with Dmytro. A little annoyance with a little attraction with a little passion and there you had it.

And now they both had it out of their systems and could move on.

But Joe’s imaginings were slower to let go of Dmytro than usual. He’d find himself remembering the way Dmytro’s lashes fluttered as his eyes shut, or the way the scar through his left eyebrow contorted with Dmytro’s shifting faces. His mind would slip accidentally to the huffed and hitched sighs in Dmytro’s throat, which never made it out of his closed mouth.

Joe kept thinking about the sex, but the sex hadn’t even been mind-blowingly good. It had been as good as it could be with two people trying to figure each other out for the first time, trying to find how they could fit together—if they could fit together. Joe had had his doubts about that one, but they’d found their way. It had been good. But it hadn’t been good enough to be at the forefront of his thoughts for days.

Which left Joe with the same fact he’d been confronted with after watching the match at Nick’s school. There was something about Dmytro himself that intrigued him. What that was remained as much a mystery now as it had been then. Dmytro was a fencing champion with perfect technique, a cushy job, and a narrow perspective of the world shaped by privilege. Joe had met folks like him plenty who thought no one else could have achieved exactly what they did if they’d just had the same money and opportunity to do it. But Dmytro was interesting. Much like the way his face seemed to shift depending on which feature you focused on, as a whole, Dmytro shifted in Joe’s mind between a pretentious asshole and a dedicated coach.

Maybe that was what interested him about Dmytro. He was clearly a good coach. Better than Joe. Better at fencing and at all the duties that came from being a personal coach. But Joe wasn’t Nick’s personal coach. Not anymore. No, he never really had been. Not in that way. Dmytro got paid to monitor every moment of Seiji’s fencing life. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be any better about going to those matches than Joe was.

“Damn it,” Joe muttered, taking a swig of beer and setting it down on his table with a satisfying heavy-handedness.

He pulled out his phone and looked up the schedule for the Kings Row fencing team. Maybe it was the fuzzy transition from sobriety into drunkenness that made Joe add each meet into his calendar with some stupid, sentimental intention he knew he couldn’t follow through with.

Joe’s phone buzzed a single time, a plain banner lighting up the screen. At first, he was confused to see Nick’s name on his screen until he remembered a hazy decision several nights ago to—what? Be a better coach to Nick? The kid didn’t need him anymore. Going to a couple more matches wouldn’t make a difference to Nick or his fencing. But Joe remembered the excited waves and smiles he’d received last time he’d gone. He remembered, also, the judgmental, hooded eyes he’d encountered there. Which, naturally, led him to remembering fluttering lashes and clean-shaven face turned into the pillow.

Joe glanced at the time. He wasn’t doing anything tonight.

Standing up from his favorite armchair only minutes after collapsing into it after work, Joe located his keys and tossed them into the air with one hand. Who knew, it might be kinda nice to watch Nick improve through these matches.

The crowd was burbling, same as it had been last time he’d attended a function like this. And, just like that time, a dry voice spoke a couple inches above his ear.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I’ve got a student competing today too,” Joe told Dmytro.

“If he makes it off the bench this time.”

“He’ll make it off the bench when it counts.”

“And what does that mean?” Dmytro asked. It was a fair question. Joe grunted. “Precisely. He’ll ride that bench all the way to State Championships.”

“But Nick will be at State, same as Seiji. And I wouldn’t be so sure he won’t help your boy get there. You’ve gotta admit, the kid’s improved a lot already.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Gimmicks and surprising speed are Nicholas’s main contributions thus far, but that won’t hold up against steeper competition.”

“Then let’s bet on it. I say Nick’ll help get his team a couple of wins on their path to State.”

“To make that bet, you’d actually have to show up for all the matches.”

“Noticed when I wasn’t around, huh?”

“What I noticed,” Dmytro said with a smirk and an arch of his scarred eyebrow that made him look close to devilish, “is that you’re here now. I can think of only one thing that’s changed from the match last week to this one.”

“What changed was my schedule. Not everyone’s life revolves around a single student.”

“I’m sure.”

“And I’m sure you’ve got a damn high opinion of yourself to think I came here for you instead of Nick.”

“You only came out once before for him,” Dmytro pointed out. And he was right.

“I’m changing that,” Joe said, feeling his phone heavy in his pocket, loaded with dates he was suddenly set on making.

When had Joe ever seen anything of Nick’s parents? He knew the kid had a dad in fencing, but it didn’t sound like he was around. He didn’t know anything about the boy’s mother. Got the impression that she wasn’t thrilled on mothering. Joe could sympathize. Raina had wanted kids. Joe, though…he wasn’t the sort of man built for kids. But at least he knew it. At least he hadn’t had some scamps of his own to look over. This stuff—it wasn’t for him. Supporting from the bleachers, consistently being in the bleachers—that wasn’t something he knew how to give. But…

You only came once before for him.

The phrase set a frown on Joe’s face. As if Nick was only worth—only deserved—one trip out to watch him.

“I’ll be here for him,” Joe said aloud, firm.

Dmytro eyed him dubiously, smirk still caught across his lips. He was deciding whether he believed that.

“I’ll believe your commitment to that when I see it,” he commented mildly, rolling his head back over to the strip. “Now stop talking. I won’t miss Seiji’s fencing again because of your loud mouth.”

“Sure,” Joe agreed. “I wouldn’t want to distract you from watching the same flèche thirty times.”

“If it works, it works,” Dmytro shut him down tightly. “There’s no reason to add in flashy moves for nothing. Seiji is a capable fencer with a wide variety of moves at his fingertips. He also knows how to read a match and dominate it. His flèches are perfectly efficient.”

“Predictable, you mean.”

“As opposed to Nicholas?” Dmytro snapped, glaring back down at Joe for a moment. “Who is so unpredictable that not even he has a clue what he’s doing?”

“At least he’s got style.”

“I just told you, Seiji—hush! You’re trying to distract me. If you can’t be quiet, I’ll relocate.”

“Oh no, please don’t deny me your pleasant and warm company,” Joe snarked under his breath.

But he didn’t say any more after that.

“Told you,” Joe said, nudging an elbow into Dmytro’s side two weeks later. Dmytro didn’t budge a bit, but the look he cut Joe was equal to that of someone who had just been terribly inconvenienced. “They wouldn’t have won without Nick.”

“You could say the same for any of them,” Dmytro pointed out dryly.

“That is how teamwork generally functions,” Joe nodded. “But Nick really came through. What did I tell you?”

“Hardly impressive. Seiji’s practically carried every match thus far. For Nicholas to contribute to a win occasionally proves nothing.”

“Proves that he’s improving. And important to the team.”

“But it doesn’t prove that he’s any match for Seiji.”

“Maybe not yet. But he will be.”

“Absolutely not.” Dmytro started turning, off to rejoin Seiji, no doubt.

Joe caught him by the elbow.

“Come on, aren’t you excited that they won?”

“It’s not an impressive win. Seiji can do far better than this on his own. It doesn’t warrant celebration any more than a five-year-old tying his shoes successfully does.”

Joe thought about the young fencers he’d encountered over the years and their relationship with shoelaces.

“I think that’s more impressive than you give it credit for,” Joe said. “Besides, isn’t it nice to give the boy some encouragement every now and again?”

“Seiji knows perfectly well that I hold high expectations for him and that he excels in meeting them.” Dmytro pulled away from Joe’s hold. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

“I think Seiji can manage to carry his own bag for once,” Joe snorted. “It won’t kill him if you spend a second chatting before rushing to his side.”

“Not two seconds ago, you were implying I don’t celebrate Seiji’s successes enough and now you imply that I spoil him. Pick one.”

“Me? You’re the one that should be choosing one, Dmytro. You realize you pamper that kid in actions but never in words, right?”

“And you’d know?”

“Last time I went down to say hi to Nick, I heard you tell Seiji his win was nothing compared to the level he should be fencing on.”

“It’s true. Seiji understands the level of—,”

“Celebrating the little things won’t turn him lazy. You don’t have to remind him constantly about the matches around the corner. He knows they’re there.”

“I don’t need coaching advice from you,” Dmytro scoffed. “And while we’re chatting, I believe I heard you issue a ‘nice work’ the other day before leaving. How is that an impressive celebration?”

Joe thought Dmytro looked far more irritated than he had any right to be. Dmytro often looked and behaved more inconvenienced than he really was. Any slight bump or disturbance in his schedule and he got huffy as all hell. Joe had dealt with plenty of people like him—too high strung and tightly wound to be pleasant company. But Joe always sought out his company at these matches anyway. Found it fun, or at least interesting, to banter with the man. He took everything too seriously. And that was the nice way to put it. Dmytro was, frankly speaking, a bit of a snob and an asshole.

But he did have a handsome face on him. And a body worthy of a college athlete.

“Maybe it’s not,” Joe conceded. “But how about you go sort out Seiji and come back here so I can show you a real celebration.”

“Why do I need to celebrate? It wasn’t our match.”

“But it was our boys. They’re doing good, that deserves a couple of beers, don’t you think?”

Dmytro looked Joe over, still with that stuck-up expression. Like he was considering something that wasn’t all that appealing. Joe might have been offended but he knew Dmytro’s type. Hard to please and even harder to convince into showing they were anything but unimpressed with everything and everyone. If a man as meticulous as Dmytro agreed to grab a beer, that was proof enough he was interested.

“Alright,” Dmytro agreed at long last. “Let me go over notes with Seiji and see him onto the bus.”

“Boy, what notes do you have for the poor kid?” Joe asked, shaking his head as he followed Dmytro through the crowd.

There was already a hefty group of people around the Kings Row team. Joe didn’t fight through them to talk to Nick; he looked plenty busy already. But he lifted a hand and offered a smile when Nick caught his eye.

“Good job, kid,” Joe called, pitching his voice to carry over the din.

Nick’s voice didn’t carry, but Joe understood the thanks! just fine anyway.

Joe didn’t see them out to the bus. He found his car and waited leaned against it with hands in his pockets.

Dmytro found him with no trouble.

“I can find my way to your place,” Dmytro said as the school bus pulled out of the lot. “No need to wait for me to follow this time.”

“My place? I thought we were going out for drinks.”

“Please,” Dmytro said in a bored tone of voice, “let’s not pretend the point of this isn’t to get me back to yours. And I’m sure you’ve got something to drink there. Going to a bar first only wastes time.”

“How efficient of you to cut out the middle man.”

“I don’t have time for meaningless interim.”

“Alrighty. Then let’s get to it. Try not to get lost. It’d be a waste of time, and I’d hate to waste any of yours.”

“Then we are in agreement.”

Dmytro was so concerned with his time that he wasted no more of it talking with Joe.

Joe watched him walk to his slick hybrid, eyes sliding down broad back to fit ass. It was true enough, Joe mused to himself as Dmytro slid into the car, that he intended to get that ass back in his bed for another round.

Just as he’d said, Dmytro found Joe’s apartment easily. Idly, Joe wondered if he’d dropped a pin here in his phone. Or if his mind was just so scarily methodical and organized that he only had to come to a location once to know it.

“I was starting to think you’d gotten lost,” Dmytro said, meeting Joe and matching his pace to the door. Joe grunted as he punched in the code and let Dmytro into the complex. It was only a flight of four steps and a single left turn to Joe’s door. “Sometimes when people say something, they expect an answer beyond a grunt.”

“Like what? Sorry to keep you waiting?”

“That would suffice.”

Dmytro stepped through the door Joe had just opened. Joe pocketed his keys and locked the door behind them. Last time Dmytro had been here, he’d already shed his shirt by this point. Now, he crossed his arms and frowned around the apartment. Idleness was not a thing that suited Dmytro Osharov. He looked uncomfortable in it.

“Make yourself at home,” Joe said, gesturing around before making his way to the fridge to grab a couple of beers, offering one to Dmytro as he swung back to the table where Dmytro had found a dissatisfactory seat.

His expression said that he didn’t think much of Joe’s little apartment. Joe could imagine the slick and efficient apartment he probably lived in. Joe would be as out of place there as Dmytro was here.

“Cheers, then,” Dmytro said, twisting off the cap and holding out his bottle to Joe.

“To Kings Row.”

“And hard work.”

“And hard work,” Joe agreed, knocking bottles with Dmytro and taking a swig.

Dmytro really wasn’t the biggest asshole Joe had ever met and it was too early for that thought to even be blamed on the alcohol.

“So tell me,” Joe said on his second beer.

“Was there a second part to that sentence?”

“Tell me about fencing. You’ve had quite a career.”

“I was contacted by the Katayamas eight years ago about coaching their son,” Dmytro started and Joe accidentally snorted. “What?” Dmytro’s brow furrowed. Joe liked the way it emphasized that scar of his.

“I ask you to tell me about fencing and you jump right into talking about Seiji. What about your win in ninety-seven? Or oh-two?”

“I wasn’t aware you’d done so much research,” Dmytro said, elastic smile pulling easily onto his face. It looked less sardonic than usual.

That had to be the beer at work. But Joe wasn’t sure if it was the beer working on him or on Dmytro.

“There’s a lot to read about you, I only skimmed for the important parts. But you start the story with the Katayamas. You’re an interesting man.”

Dmytro pursed his lips in thought.

“Isn’t it normal to consider the things most relevant to you currently the most important?”

Joe laughed—not a snort. Something softer.

“Go on, then. Tell me about your boy.”

“I’d never considered coaching before,” Dmytro continued slowly, eyeing Joe for another interruption or perhaps some sort of judgment. All he got was the lingering smile Joe couldn’t seem to stamp out. It was really something, how fond of his student this man was. “I have no great fondness for children. They’re very sticky. But the Katayamas were offering a good enough pay to warrant an interview. Seiji was very polite.”

And Joe was back to snorting. Polite. Kids weren’t meant to be polite. But of course Dmytro would take to a kid like that Katayama boy must have been. They’d have fit, he reckoned, like two peas in a pod.

“Polite,” Joe repeated. “And not sticky?”

“No. Not sticky. I took the position.”

Joe nodded, opening another drink for the both of them as Dmytro went on to talk on Seiji’s many achievements. There was real pride there, Joe could tell. Eventually, Joe found himself taking over the talking. He talked about the scrappy kid who’d come sniffing around his salle, offering labor for some lessons. He talked about the spark he saw in Nick and how it was too deep down for Joe to have any hope of polishing out of the boy.

“Do you do that a lot?” Dmytro asked, leaning over the table with drooping eyes. “Give up on things and hand them off to someone else?”

“Someone better,” Joe said, downing the last of his drink and standing up. “Some people, that’s the best we can do.”

“You’re not fond of responsibility, are you?”

“Not built for it,” Joe grunted. “Not like you. Now come here.”

Dmytro waited a moment, considering. But he set aside his only half-emptied bottle and stood up, letting Joe pull him close by the belt loops on his jeans. Held against Joe by the hips, Dmytro threaded fingers into Joe’s hair and notched his mouth against Joe’s with no need for Joe to coax it down to him.

Dmytro tasted like beer tonight. Joe could detect it on his lips and, soon, on his tongue. He was a fierce kisser. Efficient. Dmytro knew what he wanted and what he was doing and Joe hadn’t been one bit surprised by his darting tongue or pressing mouth the first time he’d felt them. He kissed the way he looked. Joe wasn’t one to talk—his kisses weren’t any less gruff than you’d think them, looking at him. They should have clashed, he and Dmytro—and they had. At first. But the sliding mouths and dragging teeth and careless hands all worked together just fine.

Joe pulled at Dmytro’s bottom lip and yanked his hips harder against him. Dmytro groaned low in his throat. Joe felt the rare sound in every inch of his body—wanted to move them to the bedroom in all haste because of it.

“Joe,” Dmytro said, the want in his voice as understated and tempting as his groan.

Joe knew from that single syllable that he wasn’t alone in his idea about the bedroom.

But as much as Joe wanted Dmytro on the bed, he didn’t relish the idea of relinquishing the man or pulling away from his kisses now that he had them. The solution was abysmally inefficient, entailing a stumbling, clumsy procession through the apartment. Dmytro didn’t correct the inefficient mode of transport, just followed as Joe pulled him along with his hands still greedily at his hips.

Dmytro fell into the bed more easily than last time and Joe relished pushing up Dmytro’s shirt, feeling his skin and the give of the fabric as it scrunched up Dmytro’s toned stomach and solid chest. Dmytro arched his back, allowing the shirt trapped under him to come loose, then lifted his shoulders off the mattress in turn. Once his shirt was off, Dmytro reached for Joe’s and tugged it off him with no care at all. Fast. Efficient. Exactly as you’d expect from a man like him.

“Come here,” Dmytro requested briskly.

“Mind your manners, boy,” Joe returned. He was listening, manners or not, already lowering himself down when Dmytro displayed his displeasure with the rebuke.

Solid hands grabbed Joe’s arms and a leg hooked his at the knee. Then Joe was flat on his back as a heavy weight fell on top of him, straddling his hips.

“You’re wasting time, Dmytro,” Joe pointed out but Dmytro just scowled.

“I’m not a boy,” he growled. “I can’t be much younger than you.”

“You’re acting like a boy,” Joe said calmly, tracing his hands up the subtle slopes of Dmytro’s sides, his hips and waist and ribs. “Throwing a tantrum.”

“I don’t throw tantrums.”

“Too inefficient?”

“Exactly.”

“Lucky for you, I’ve got time.”

Dmytro was a big guy, but his weight wasn’t uncomfortable. Joe knew his type in this, too. Sleek muscle and no fat. Strong enough but not overly heavy. His weight wasn’t an uncomfortable one and this view wasn’t a bad one. So Joe let  Dmytro stay just where he was and continued roaming hands over skin and muscle.

There hadn’t been time for this last time—not on Dmytro’s schedule, and it had been his schedule they’d followed. Not so this time. This time, they were on Joe’s. And Joe’s schedule accounted for the time taken to admire and explore. It was inefficient, sure, but pleasure wasn’t meant to be all that efficient if you asked him.

Dmytro disagreed. It was plain on his face that he didn’t think he had time for this. But he’d had too many beers to be going anywhere tonight. They had time.

As Joe raked fingers across skin, Dmytro leaned in, bit by bit.

“Stop playing around,” Dmytro scolded as Joe’s hands fit at his hips and slunk around to massage at his ass.

“What should I do instead?”

“Just—,” Dmytro frowned in irritation.

“Come here?” Joe finished. “But I’m already here.”

“You’re the most difficult man I’ve ever tried to sleep with,” Dmytro informed him as he raised up onto his knees, the warm weight of him picking up off of Joe.

“Then you’ve got an odd definition of difficult, lad,” Joe said, sitting up and beating Dmytro’s hands off their task of unbuttoning his own jeans. Tonight, he wanted the pleasure of undressing Dmytro himself. “Because I’m perfectly goddamn eager to fuck you.”

Dmytro thought about it. Hard. Squinting at Joe as he decided whether that was an acceptable and efficient use of words. It must have been because he smiled, and then made a show of rolling off of Joe, the pants pushed around his thighs limiting his movement as he swung his leg over Joe and dismounted, falling onto the bed and making it creak and groan at his lack of compassion for its old springs.

“Then why don’t you prove it?” Dmytro invited. Something about his words sounded just a little off and it took Joe a moment to realize that it wasn’t the tone but the shape of the words themselves that was different.

“Is it the beer or the impatience that’s got your accent slipping?” Joe wondered, bracketing an arm across Dmytro’s shoulder and leaning down into him.

“I haven’t got all night.” The words were back to their usual clipped cadence. Clearly, he was capable of hiding his accent if he wanted even when drunk.

Joe kissed him, running out of patience himself, but wondering if he might be able to get that accent to slip more. It wasn’t likely. Dmytro wasn’t very vocal.

But he was receptive even so, back arching to press against Joe when he suggested it through hands roughing against the smooth skin of Dmytro’s sides. Hands were in his hair shortly after, pulling him down. Not trusting him, apparently, to come here this time. But with that, at least, Joe could have been trusted. It was true he liked this. Wanted this. Wanted Dmytro… In this moment, just for now, they were together in that want.

Joe skimmed a hand down to Dmytro’s thigh, pressing his thumb into the tender skin at the joint of inner hip and pelvis, causing Dmytro to jolt and his leg to pick up and squeeze in as though in an attempt to block Joe from that particularly sensitive spot. All he really succeeded in was pressing his leg into Joe.

Joe slid his hand to the outside of Dmytro’s leg instead, pushing up underneath the fabric of his boxer briefs. Another little jolt was granted from this, but it was intentional—a deliberate and brief press of his hips up into Joe. Joe gathered the fabric spanning Dmytro’s thigh in one hand but he didn’t tug it down. Not yet. He was only ready to.

Dmytro’s tongue was sharp against Joe’s and his mouth was soft. It was a pleasant combination and Joe pushed deeper into it. At last, Dmytro exhaled a single, perfect syllable against the side of Joe’s mouth said with a peculiar inflection that shaped a word that couldn’t have been English.

“Blyat’—”

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“For the love of Christ, Joe, take off your pants.”

Joe would.

But he took off Dmytro’s underwear first.

Chapter Text

Dmytro woke up in a mostly unfamiliar bed with a heavy weight across his back. And, he noticed, he was naked.

Groaning, he rolled toward the source of warmth in the bed—he wondered if Joe produced so much heat because of the extra body weight; Dmytro didn’t produce much in the way of heat because he had none of what his mother called fluff. It keeps you warm in the winter, Mitya, she told him every time he saw her, you are so skinny, how will you survive the cold? But Dmytro wasn’t one for the extra heat. He found it uncomfortable.

The arm flung over him in sleep shifted to notch into his waist as he turned but didn’t retreat from its hold. The movement didn’t stir the sleeping bear beside him, and he let out a snorting snore as Dmytro settled back into the pillow facing him.

“I passed out,” Dmytro said. Not to Joe. To the lazy morning light filtering into the room and the quiet din of a whirring generator somewhere in the bowels of this old apartment.

Dmytro didn’t pass out at men’s apartments. In fact, Dmytro hardly went to other men’s places. He always brought them home and saw them out when their business was done. But he’d been drinking last night. And, he realized at the dull ache in his lower back, exhausted—worn out in a way sex didn’t usually tire him. He wouldn’t have guessed from looking at Joe that the man could go so long.

It was nearing on late morning now, judging from the light, and Dmytro ought to get on his way. But when he made to sit up, the heavy arm around him dragged him back down and, now that Dmytro was in any sort of position to be pulled in close, was tucked neatly against Joe, under his chin. His beard tickled Dmytro’s ear when he tried shifting away. Joe, it turned out, had a strong hold.

“I thought you were asleep,” Dmytro said, tone flat and unamused.

“’was but you woke me up.”

“Let go of me, I don’t do snuggles.”

“Hmm,” Joe hummed. Really, it was more like a grumble. All Joe ever seemed to do was grumble and grouch and Dmytro should have expected this from him in the morning too.

“This is disgusting,” Dmytro tried again. “I know we didn’t clean up after last night. I’m not spending any more time in this cesspit.”

“Hush, ‘mytro,” Joe mumbled, kissing into Dmytro’s hair. “Jus’ a few more minutes.”

Dmytro stayed put. He was increasingly convinced that Joe wasn’t entirely awake. Clumsy morning kisses and a sleepily and accidentally said almost-nickname weren’t things Dmytro was used to receiving in the morning, and he somehow doubted that Joe was naturally inclined to give them—not if he was awake. But Joe had given them and Dmytro hesitated in leaving. Too long. The heady warmth of the man holding him grew until Dmytro had to escape it.

Sitting up, Dmytro pulled away from Joe and started getting up.

“Leaving so soon?” Joe asked, and Dmytro saw the sleep cleared from his eyes now. He was awake.

“I don’t do snuggles. It’s hot and sticky and I’m already sticky. I’m using your shower.”

“Fine by me,” Joe grunted, indicating with a vague jab of his thumb where the shower could be found.

Dmytro felt Joe’s eyes on him the entire walk there. The light in here was dim—the light everywhere in this apartment was dim. Not at all like Dmytro’s apartment. There was, at least, a clean towel folded in the tall bathroom cabinet, though the other towel was haphazardly strewn on the floor. Dmytro nudged it out of his way with a toe before stepping into the shower, which didn’t look as though it had been cleaned since Joe had moved in, with terrible water stains on the glass door and porcelain tiles. Dmytro liked his showers on the colder side, which was lucky because that seemed all this shower was capable of delivering.

Dmytro helped himself to Joe’s shampoo and took the time he needed in the shower. He was still fast enough. And, besides, Joe hadn’t seemed in a hurry to get to it.

Dmytro turned off the water and reached for the towel he’d hung just outside it to dry his hair. Wrapping the towel around his waist when he’d finished with his hair, he stepped from the shower and then from the bathroom altogether.

“You’re not shy, are you?” Joe asked in a huffing grumble that was close to a guffaw as Dmytro located his underwear and dropped the towel.

“Should I be?” Dmytro asked, already stepping into his briefs. “You’ve already seen.”

“Suppose that’s true,” Joe inclined his head. He was in a loosely tied bathrobe and boxers. Dmytro didn’t understand how he could get dressed before at least rinsing. “And I don’t mind seeing it again.”

“If you want to see it again,” Dmytro told him briskly, pulling on his jeans, “I’d better not see a damp towel on the bathroom floor again.”

Joe raised an eyebrow at Dmytro.

“That so?”

“Yes. If you expect me to come back here, you’ll need to clean up your act. I have standards.”

“Standards?”

“Once was a fluke. But I won’t continuously sleep with a sloppy drunkard.”

“I’m not a drunkard.”

Dmytro was dressed now, missing only his shoes, so he led Joe out of the bedroom and gestured around.

“That’s a lot of bottles for a sober man to have in his apartment.”

“An accumulation.”

“Then take out the trash before inviting me over next time.”

“You invited yourself over.”

“You invited me out to drinks.”

“And now you’re assigning me chores,” Joe said, crossing his arms and leaning his heavy frame against the wall, watching Dmytro pull on his brown loafers.

“Only if you want a repeat of last night,” Dmytro corrected. And then he left.

Usually, a hook-up lasted Dmytro more than a week. But it wasn’t even ten days since leaving Joe’s apartment for the second time that he was caught by the urge to seek out company.

It was a nuisance. But it was more trouble in the long run to ignore it. So he did what he always did when the mood struck. He found a bar and a pretty man who shared his goal for the evening. Dmytro bought the man a drink and invited him home. Just as he’d known would happen, the invitation was gladly taken.

Dmytro always left his partners satisfied, and this time—not for the first time—he was slipped a number before the man slipped back out of his apartment. Dmytro watched the door fall shut with a dissatisfied sigh.

Sometimes it was like this. He’d wasted all the time of finding a body to share a couple hours with without actually banishing the distracting itch for release.

The night was still young by the standards of young men out for a fun time. Dmytro could have gone out and found another sweet-faced man to kiss and hold, soft hair and lithe weight and eager energy.

But Dmytro was sure doing so would only waste more time. 

“You fenced well today, Seiji,” Dmytro told his young charge, taking up his sports bag, packed with his gear.

Most of the boys from Seiji’s team were back on the bus, but Seiji had only just emerged from the locker rooms. Dmytro noticed that the Cox boy wandered out shortly after. It was entirely possible he’d slowed Seiji with some conversation or another as he was often wont to do.

“Thank you, Coach,” Seiji acknowledged, standing smartly and waiting for notes.

Behind Seiji, Dmytro saw Joe thumping Nicholas on the back jovially. So far, he hadn’t missed a match since his proclamation.

Celebrating the little things won’t turn him lazy.

“Your team is improving. Don’t let your success make you lazy. But you’re well on your way to State, closer than Kings Row has gotten in decades. You should be proud.”

Seiji blinked, then nodded.

“Understood.”

Dmytro felt his fondness for this boy he’d spent so many years with at the crisp and serious response to this praise.

“Good. Collect your straggler and let’s get you back to school.”

Seiji looked over his shoulder toward Nicholas. He hesitated before turning. It was most unlike Seiji to hesitate. But social interactions were an entirely different terrain to navigate than fencing. Or so Dmytro had been told.

“Nicholas,” Seiji commanded, interrupting the conversation with none of his small hesitance. “The bus will leave without you.”

“Maybe,” the boy said cheerfully. “But it won’t leave without you, so I’m still safe.” He was already gravitating toward Seiji, letting him draw him toward the bus. But he turned a last grin on his old coach. “Good luck with the renovations—let me know how they go.”

Joe grunted in a way that Nicholas seemed to take as agreement.

“We’ll see you next time, kid.”

“See you!”

Dmytro saw Seiji onto the bus, handing his bag off to him and reminding him of their afternoon fencing tomorrow after his team practice. Seiji had never needed reminders. Even as a small child, he’d kept track of his own schedule after only weeks of their routine.

He watched until the bus turned out of the parking lot before acknowledging the presence at his side.

“Renovations, hm?”

“Figured I’d better fix the place up a bit.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Is that right?” A pause. “You coming over or not?”

“I have the time tonight.”

And with that, Dmytro was driving again to Joe’s shabby living accommodations. It was still dingy, but it was cleaner. No chip bags or magazines scattered around an armchair in the living room and no bottles stacked in the kitchen. It wasn’t much. But it was more than Dmytro suspected Joe would bother with on his own.

“Impressed?” Joe asked, crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes like he knew already Dmytro was not.

“Hardly,” he clipped tersely, if predictably. “This is the baseline for living like a human being, Joe.”

“Is it? You must be turning me human again. What can I getcha to drink?”

“Beer.”

“A man after my own heart,” Joe grunted.

Dmytro toed out of his shoes, though Joe was still in his own sneakers. Not an altogether terrible idea in this apartment. The floor wasn’t entirely clean.

Joe pressed a sweating bottle of beer into Dmytro’s hand.

“Remind me,” Dmytro said distastefully of the floor, “to bring a pair of house slippers for next time.”

Joe didn’t make any answer to that, which made Dmytro look up from the filthy floor.

He nearly dropped his beer.

Joe was smiling—properly smiling. Big and broad, one brow raised high and the other pressed low as he considered Dmytro with what seemed to be some mix of amusement and—possibly—fondness.

“So you can leave them here for the time after that?”

“I…” did imply that, didn’t I?

“Bring a toothbrush too.”

“I changed my mind,” Dmytro said, shoving his beer onto the nearest surface he could find.

“Hey now, don’t be that way,” Joe said. “I didn’t mean anything by it, no need to get—,”

Dmytro shut Joe up with hands hard in the front of his jacket, pulling him even harder in for a kiss he hadn’t been able to hold out for a moment longer. Joe grunted in surprise—did he ever stop grunting? Dmytro saw in his peripheral the way Joe held his beer up out of the way of getting knocked. And then he heard it getting set down as hastily as Dmytro’s had been, both his hands coming to catch on Dmytro’s body. Never one for subtlety, Joe already had a palm on Dmytro’s ass.

“No time for beer?” Joe asked.

“You’d waste my whole evening with it, keep me in your bed until morning from the intoxication.”

“Boy, trust me, I can keep you in my bed until morning without the beer tonight.”

Dmytro didn’t contradict him. Partly because it was likely true, and moreover because the prospect of it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Dmytro didn’t do snuggles, but that wasn’t what Joe was talking about here, and Dmytro was perfectly satisfied with that.

Dmytro let go of Joe’s jacket to pull at his own shirt, trying to rip it off him. Infuriatingly, Joe caught the hem before it had made it all the way over Dmytro’s chest.

“Slow down, kid.”

“No.” Dmytro gave another tug, pulling the shirt free and flinging it off him. “And don’t call me that.”

Joe didn’t even acknowledge the request.

“Pent up, are you?” he asked with a kiss against Dmytro’s chest.

“Something like that.”

It really had been a while since he’d felt satisfied in these things. About as long as the time between his last visit here and now. But Joe didn’t need to know that. Nor did he need to know the persistent pull that smile of his had had on Dmytro. It was such a strange thing to be so worked up over, but Joe was never anything but grunts and gruffness. He was handsome when he smiled. The kind of handsome Dmytro, apparently, couldn’t resist. He’d never run into that kind of handsome before. Dmytro was not a man to lose control of himself or for any sort of desperation.

He kissed Joe desperately, trying to sate the desire in his stomach, chasing the pleasure building from Joe’s rough hands dragging over his bare skin and his thick hair tangled into Dmytro’s fingers. No, Joe didn’t need beer to keep Dmytro in his bed tonight.

Dmytro pushed Joe off him, panting hard.

“When you join me in the bedroom,” he said, already moving, “you won’t be wearing those shoes.”

“And what will you be wearing?”

“That depends on how fast you are.”

Dmytro was just stepping out of his pants when Joe found him, pushing him down onto the bed and helping him out of the remaining pant leg.

Dmytro sat up again as soon as Joe had pushed him down, tangling up in Joe’s jacket again and pulling the man fiercely to him for a kiss. And then another.

Joe scraped a hand down Dmytro’s spine, resting at the small of his back, spanning over the band of his boxer briefs. And then he was scooping Dmytro to him, pulling him practically into lap. Dmytro couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat in anyone’s lap, but thighs spreading around Joe’s girth, he found it surprisingly comfortable, even if it broke their kiss from the way it disrupted their configuration.

Joe tipped Dmytro’s head down to kiss his brow. It wrinkled as soon as Joe’s kiss had been placed.

“What’s the story behind that?” Joe asked.

“Joe,” Dmytro said flatly, “I believe I was clear that I don’t have patience for beers and conversation tonight.”

“Patience,” Joe noted, eyes crinkling in a smile that was frustratingly handsome on him, teasing as it was. “Not time.”

Yes, Joe had noticed that little slip.

“You know I don’t have patience for your dallying.”

Joe grunted.

But he didn’t push for more conversation. He tipped Dmytro’s head back and kissed down his neck, beard tickling at Dmytro’s skin as he kissed Dmytro’s collarbones, then chest. Joe was all rough hands and bristling beard and kind touches and kisses that were sometimes too doting to match the man they came from. He was something of a teddy bear, surprisingly gentle even in his gruffness.

One of his hands came up to cup around Dmytro’s pectoral muscle as he kissed it.

“You’re damn well built,” Joe said. “Like a marble statue.”

Dmytro didn’t have any response. Sweet touches were one thing, sweet words quite another. And he’d expected neither from Joe.

He was spared the need to come up with a response at all because the compliment was driven from his mind as Joe’s kiss turned to a bite that had Dmytro almost jerking away, caught up in surprise—men didn’t bite him, not like this. Not with the teasing tongue and bruising suction, the scraping teeth meant to elicit sounds from him rather than stifle them from someone else.

Dmytro let out a determinedly even breath, not letting Joe have his way. His stubbornness did nothing to deter Joe. He kept working with skilled mouth all across Dmytro’s chest, tongue flicking and mouth cupping over skin that made Dmytro’s body react even if it did nothing to unsheathe his voice. Only when Dmytro had enough marks across his chest to put his competition days to shame with the bruises left over did Joe let up some.

Joe pushed heavy down into Dmytro as he rocked them back into the bed, a most substantial weight than that of the last man Dmytro had found. Solid and warm—Dmytro didn’t like warm. Joe was different from all the things Dmytro sought out in a partner. But their bodies fit together as well as their lifestyles clashed.

As Joe’s hands went to their exploring, bold and unhurried and stupidly good, Dmytro got his revenge for all Joe’s earlier bites, sinking his own teeth into Joe’s shoulder, biting harder the more Joe insisted on teasing. Joe didn’t seem to mind. He never seemed to mind anything. Anything but Dmytro trying to hurry him up.

I’ll get to what I get to when I get to it.

Dmytro had to release Joe as he was pushed up the mattress by the hips, Joe dragging lips all the way down his stomach to reach them. Dmytro’s breath hitched at Joe’s hot breath over the crest of hipbone. Carefully, slowly, agonizingly, Joe pulled down just the band of his briefs to kiss newly-exposed skin.

“Joe,” Dmytro said. “For the love of god.”

It was the closest he’d ever get to please and they both knew it.

Dmytro only woke when the world shifted under him.

Not the world. Just the bed. He wasn’t used to sharing one, wasn’t familiar with the way another’s every move could disrupt him.

The bed creaked. Shifted again. A kiss brushed over a spot on Dmytro’s left shoulder, high on the blade but not quite at the crest. Dmytro stayed still, sure that this time, Joe was well and truly awake. Maybe he was the type for morning cuddling after all. But Dmytro wasn’t.

Rolling from his stomach to sit up, Dmytro found Joe’s eyes.

“You may as well give me your number,” he said. “It will be much more efficient than stumbling into this every time we meet at a match.”

Joe huffed a laugh, the echos of that smile that had captured Dmytro so completely last night etched into the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. And he gave Dmytro his number. Dmytro left with efficient and appropriate speed, showering and dressing in less than half an hour. Joe watched him with a raised brow, as if asking what the hurry was.

Dmytro was always in a hurry. He had countless things to do, and he’d already disrupted everything by staying so long here.

But the next time Dmytro felt the pull of desire for another body intertwined with his, wasted time didn’t occur to him. Only the satisfaction that was to be found in the dingy apartment of an unlikely man. He didn’t go to any of his usual bars to pick up a man for the night. Instead, he reached for his phone.

“Joe, what are you doing tonight?”

Chapter Text

Dmytro spent a lot of time in Joe’s little corner of the world. He also spent a fair amount of time in Joe’s head, even when he was safely tucked away at Kings Row or some no doubt luxurious apartment. 

He was in Joe’s head now as he reached for his third beer of the evening. The insufferable man couldn’t leave Joe in peace. Sighing, Joe gave up on the idea of another beer. And he cleared the evidence of the three already had into the trash, which he’d better take out in the morning. Dmytro was judgmental as all hell, but he was fine as all hell too. And he’d proven to have a good deal of libido—not anywhere near as much as he had judgment, but enough to make that judgment worth it. And he’d be back here soon enough to judge Joe’s trash. 

Joe sat back in his favorite armchair with a coca-cola and turned up the volume on the game.

And as predicted, it was hardly two days before he was back in his chair with another cola in place of a second beer when his phone interrupted his evening. Muting the TV, Joe picked up the call. There was only one person who called Joe’s personal cell these days.

“Come on over,” he answered, not wasting any time.

“Fourteen minutes,” Dmytro replied. Then the line clicked off. If Dmytro could charge people for his time, he would. He was well suited to be a personal coach, Joe supposed.

Joe had learned plenty about his companion in the months since they’d first met. The first was that Dmytro was a straightforward man. Anything you’d think of him to look at him was correct. Strict and judgmental and disapproving, Dmytro was all of them. He was also scarily accurate in time estimates. When he said fourteen minutes, he meant it.

Joe opened the door for him—he’d long since given Dmytro the code to the building. 

“What’ll it be tonight?” Joe asked. “Dinner? Drinks? Bed?”

“I highly doubt you have anything edible in this place,” Dmytro sniffed, brushing past Joe into his apartment, stepping out of his polished shoes and into the slippers he kept here.

“I’ve got a pizza in the freezer.”

“I don’t eat pizza. And if I did, I wouldn’t be eating pizza out of your freezer.”

“Beer, then?” Joe offered.

“No. I’ll be driving in an hour or so.”

“Is that a time limit or a challenge, boy?” 

Dmytro smirked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t. You’ll be here hours either way.”

Dmytro didn’t say a thing in response, just continued on his way to the bedroom. Joe caught him before he could get far, turning him back around and trapping him there with an arm hooking around lower back. He’d learned that if Dmytro was left in charge, he really would be out of here in less than an hour. The trick to it was derailing that fast, and elongating the journey to the bedroom was the place to start—otherwise, Dmytro would be undressed before Joe even got to touch him.

An irritated huff left Dmytro at the detour, but he didn’t muscle out of Joe’s hold. Joe kissed the huff against Dmytro’s throat, chasing it with lips. It had been longer than usual since Joe had captured Dmytro—not that a week was a long time. But it was long enough. Dmytro’s skin felt particularly soft under his hand when he crept it up shirt, bunching the hem up as he roughed up Dmytro’s back. He let his other hand roam up and down Dmytro’s side, thumb catching over ribs and chest at the crest of each caress. 

It had been long enough that Dmytro huffed again at the touches. It was an impatient huff, but as Joe kissed at this one, then scraped teeth over the next one, he could taste the wanting in that impatience. Dmytro didn’t moan, but he did give away his desire in a quieter, grumpier way. 

“Joe,” he said now, stern. “You’re not giving me a hickey. I’m an adult.”

Joe grunted in acknowledgment. But he gave a bite before leaving Dmytro’s smooth neck alone.

“What am I doing, then?”

“Getting on my nerves.”

“Is that all?” Joe asked, pushing up Dmytro’s shirt the last leg of its journey up his chest. Because Dmytro wasn’t obliging him in raising his arms, Joe kissed his newly exposed chest instead.

To Joe’s surprise—and even more to Dmytro’s—that got him a short and involuntary laugh. Joe knew it had been an accidental and surprising response by the way Dmytro batted him off to peel off his shirt without help. But Joe grinned at Dmytro, taking a step back to lean against the counter that technically was part of the kitchen. 

“What was that?” he asked.

Dmytro’s jaw flexed, his eyes flicking from Joe’s to his mouth.

“Your beard tickles,” he said grudgingly, then turned to continue past Joe and to the bedroom. “When you’re too soft with your kissing, your beard tickles.”

“Hey now,” Joe said, catching Dmytro again, this time reeling him backward to fit against his chest. Wrapping an arm around Dmytro to continue his exploration of soft skin and hard muscle, Joe planted a new kiss at Dmytro’s shoulder. Softer than a whisper. It made Dmytro shiver the tiniest bit in reaction. “That was dangerous information you just gave away, boy. And I’m not letting you off easy for it either.”

“You intend to dawdle even more, you mean,” Dmytro said with a click of tongue.

“Dawdle wasn’t the word I would use,” Joe said with another soft kiss, this one between shoulder blades. “But sure.”

Dmytro wasn’t built for idle moments, and Joe felt his coiled muscles under every kiss and light touch. He stayed put anyway, occasionally making a sound of impatience or disapproval. And also occasionally flexing in ways that might just have been twitches or shivers. From a man like Dmytro, Joe counted them.

But with a man like Dmytro, patience would run out. He’d tear away soon with a snap at Joe to follow this time. Joe would, but he had other ideas too. It wasn’t until the last possible moment that Joe committed to his attack.

Joe anchored a hand on Dmytro’s hip before he could march off to the bedroom and pivoted them around to bend Dmytro over the counter. There was that curse again. Blyat. But Dmytro caught himself of forearms and remained where he was as Joe leaned over him to kiss that spot on his shoulder blade again. Below his trailing kisses, Dmytro’s shoulders sloped and his shoulder blades dipped and shifted in a tempting way. 

Plenty of things about Dmytro were tempting, and Joe let temptation fit him more closely against the curve of Dmytro’s spine and his hand take a fist of hair. He pulled that hair to twist Dmytro’s neck around for a kiss. Heavy and deep and satisfyingly exactly what Dmytro’s impatience had him wanting so bad. 

As he kissed Dmytro hard, Joe’s hand trailed low on his body, teasing at the band of jeans, dipping only briefly under them before retreating and finding already availably skin to tease further. He left Dmytro’s mouth to bite at the growl growing in Dmytro’s throat before leaving it to blow a kiss over it. 

Dmytro didn’t have the patience for teasing. 

“Joe—,” Dmytro said in something satisfyingly close to a gasp as he collapsed a little more on the counter, “—fuck, get on with it.”

This time, Joe listened

Dmytro didn’t even make it to Joe’s bed within the hour, much less leave the apartment in that time. And when Joe woke up the next morning, it was with a warmth trapped under his arm.

Dmytro woke up swearing. Or he woke Joe up swearing.

“Fuck, Dmytro, cut out the racket,” Joe groused, sitting up and trying to ground himself in the waking world. Dmytro was already collecting up clothes and shooting for the shower.

He had to wait for Dmytro to come out, pants already half on, to get English out of him.

“What in the blue moon are you so worked up about, boy? It’s six in the morning.”

“Kings Row has a match this afternoon. I’m meant to be meeting Seiji in an hour—,” Dmytro finished that thought with harsh snap of wrists to turn his shirt right-side-out. “You’ve thrown off the entire schedule—move,” he commanded, shoving Joe out of the way, getting to the bathroom again before Joe could go for so much as a piss. 

In a moment, Dmytro’s mouth was full of foam as he furiously brushed his teeth with one hand and tugged on shoes with the other. It was a sight to see him hopping frantically all around the apartment.

Joe sighed and gave up on the bathroom for now. He went to the kitchen instead.

“The match is almost twelve hours away, Dmytro, cool your horses,” he suggested. Dmytro’s derision was clear from the bathroom. It was impressive to growl and spit out toothpaste at the same time. Funny too. 

“Every victory starts far before the battle even begins,” Dmytro said, shrugging into his jacket now as he flew down the hall.

“Here.” Joe stopped Dmytro with the back of his hand tapping against chest. He flipped his hand up then, pressing the napkin he held to Dmytro. 

“What is this?” Dmytro’s question sounded like an accusation.

“A bagel. With blueberry cream cheese. Can’t fence on an empty stomach. Now get. Your boy’s waiting on you.”

“Shake it off, kid,” Joe muttered under his breath, watching Nick shake out his wrist after a bad bout. “Don’t let it get in your head.”

“I told you,” Dmytro said irritably from beside him. “That boy is unpredictable. It will be next to impossible to regain the lead with this team. And it’s your fault,” he added with a distasteful glance at Joe.

“I’m responsible for Nick, at best,” Joe snorted. “Don’t have a thing to do with the rest of those boys.”

“You’re responsible for keeping me in bed all night. It threw off the entire day.”

“Your schedule getting a little disrupted did jack shit to affect this match.”

Dmytro would have argued, Joe knew it. But Seiji was up to fence next, and today, he only had eyes for his pupil. Joe watched his mouth shape words of advice as his brows lowered further and further as the bout proceeded. Put him in a leather jacket at a biker bar and he’d look downright dangerous with that expression. 

“They can’t all be wins,” Joe reasoned. Dmytro made a curt hand gesture that obviously meant shut the fuck up or I’ll break your nose next time. 

Joe shook his head and then set it back on the match.

Kings Row lost.

First loss of the season, which Joe figured was great. Dmytro disagreed. Joe didn’t need to hear a word out of him to know it. But he caught Dmytro’s arm and put force into keeping him in place.

“Wait,” he said, watching the way the team fluctuated at their loss. “Don’t interrupt them. This is a team moment.”

“A loss is an important learning—,”

“Dmytro,” Joe snapped. “Seiji’s not flying solo anymore. He needs to function on a team, and if he can’t figure out how to lose with one because you step in to pile notes on him, that’s you failing him.”

“He functions perfectly well.”

Joe nodded, tipping his head again at the boys.

“Look, there. Nick’s got him.”

“They appear to be having a shouting match.”

“They’re figuring it out.”

“You’re wasting my time. And Seiji’s,” Dmytro added, tacking it on like it was an even worse thing to do than waste his own time. “We need to go over all that went wrong today so that he can improve. If he’d go to Exton, those boys could have supported him, but as it is, he has to be strong enough alone to carry his entire disastrous team.”

“It’s good for him to be with boys he likes. He chose Kings Row. Let him have it. Let him be happy at it.”

Dmytro looked affronted at the suggestion.

“Seiji’s happy wherever he can fence. Exton has better fencing.”

“He’s a teenage boy, Dmytro, not a Ukrainian robot passing off as a fencing coach. Do you really think he’d be happier at Exton, or do you just think he’d be more successful there?” Joe shrugged, still watching the boys, who all seemed to have calmed down a little. They were making it work. “And then ask yourself which you care more about. Seiji or his fencing.”

Dmytro’s shock turned quickly to a scowl.

“You’re a good coach,” Joe said, turning from the boys now and leveling with Dmytro. “Maybe you should care more about having a successful pupil than a happy kid, but then, there’s a reason I’m not a personal coach.”

“Yes. Your subpar fencing.”

“Sure, sure,” Joe agreed with a shake of his head as he let go of Dmytro’s.

“I will…consider what you’ve said,” Dmytro said. 

“Another thing I can admire in you as a coach.”

“It appears,” Dmytro said, a step behind Joe now that he’d started for the exit himself, “that I don’t have a pupil to attend to tonight. Which means I have time for you to waste.”

Joe looked up from the city when he heard the balcony door shudder open.

“Morning,” Joe grunted.

Dmytro slanted eyes at him, giving a nod and nothing else as he came to rest his elbows on the rail next to Joe, joining him in overlooking the cluttered view.

It was a nice morning. Peaceful. Content, Joe took another drag of his cigarette.

“Joe, for Christ’s sake, put that out,” Dmytro said, a tsk on his tongue and judgment in his eyes. 

Joe grunted.

“’S my house, Dmytro. I can smoke if I want.”

“You can. Or you could kiss me. Not both.”

“You sure about that?”

“Entirely. I don’t kiss smokers. The taste is terrible.”

“It tastes bad?” Joe asked, eyebrow raising. 

“That’s what I said.”

Joe grunted, putting the cigarette out on the railing. 

“A big guy like you can’t handle the taste of smoke. I gotta hand it to you kid, you’ve got a helluva way of getting what you want.”

“Smoking is proven to be detrimental to your health,” Dmytro said disdainfully of the ash on the peeling metal. “Even secondhand, I want it nowhere near my body.”

“No,” Joe agreed, “it would be a shame to ruin a body like yours. But that’s not what you said. You told me to quit because you don’t like the taste of ‘em.”

“I didn’t tell you to quit.”

“You sure did. Put out this cigarette or forget kissing you now. Put out the next one or forget kissing you then. And then the one after that. And after that. Am I wrong?”

Dmytro tapped a finger against his bicep with a frown.

“No. I don’t kiss smokers because they taste terrible. And I don’t sleep with smokers because I don’t believe in sleeping with morons. So you’d be wise to quit. And don’t call me kid.”

“Sure, whatever you say, kid.”

Chapter Text

A kiss brushed against Dmytro’s left shoulder blade. Again. Joe had an irritating habit of catching him for such pointless things. Dmytro escaped from it today, rolling off the bed before he could be properly trapped. 

The bed creaked and groaned as Joe rolled over, falling easily into his awful bed. 

“Swallow your pride, kid. Stay the night.”

Dmytro ignored the suggestion and the provocation. He’d found himself staying too long in this apartment, and it unnerved him how lazy he was getting, actually sleeping at some man’s home after sex. 

“I have engagements in the morning,” Dmytro said. “I can’t miss them, and I can’t see why I’d stay here either way.”

Joe grunted. 

“You’re worn out.”

Dmytro snorted derisively. 

“I have far more strength and stamina than you.”

“That,” Joe said, sitting up again to grab a handful of Dmytro’s hair, “sounds like a challenge.”

It hadn’t been, but Joe was skilled with his mouth, and when the heat of his kisses trailed down Dmytro’s body, Dmytro sighed and permitted it rather than pull away immediately. 

A mistake. 

In another moment, the terrible mattress was creaking protests louder than his as Joe threw him down onto it. Dmytro tsked at Joe for the behavior but found it hard to push him off and sit up again. Not because Joe had him truly pinned—though, he acknowledged with irritation, despite his remark, strength wasn’t a quality he was certain he possessed more of than Joe. The man’s physique certainly didn’t read as athletic, but Dmytro had found that the muscle of a fencer was a very different variety than the bulk of hard labor. 

If Joe truly did have superior strength and it was his weight and will that disallowed Dmytro from leaving, Dmytro would be far less disturbed by it. 

Joe’s hair was familiar in Dmytro’s fingers. Thick and coarse—good for getting purchase. And heated in the way of sweat and arduous activity. Joe’s hands were familiar too, courser than his hair and burning. They pressed into his skin and dragged pleasant furrows along his body. Joe didn’t do caressing, which Dmytro appreciated. The hand on his waist wasn’t gentle or light. Less like a lover’s touch and more like a practical grip to keep something—someone—steady. And the opposite hand tracing uselessly over the outline of his pectoral muscles wasn’t caressing either. It was more crass than that. More blunt. Dmytro could appreciate that. He’d always found clinging to be an annoyance. 

The first kiss to his chest was irritatingly ticklish—more irritating was the sensitivity Joe had already worked there earlier in the evening. It turned ticklish into something else. Something more heated and—

Dmytro let out the tiniest hiss when the sensation was addressed properly, Joe’s teeth scraping wide around the curve of his chest and then finally closing around burning nipple and tugging satisfyingly hard. 

But because Joe was tiresome, he released his teeth too soon and pressed with tongue instead, kissing and denying between relief. 

“Joe,” Dmytro chided with a discouraging pull of hair after he’d had enough, “you’ll give me a friction burn and for no good reason.”

Joe’s eyes sparkled when they looked up to meet Dmytro’s. Humor and suggestion combined in a slight smirk and raised brow. 

“That’s bullshit, sweet cheeks. You don’t want to admit you’re about to get loud.” Joe shifted, callouses groping Dmytro’s ass to pull him down the mattress and up Joe’s body just slightly. “Trust me, I know.”

The scratch of Joe’s beard against his chest was in direct contradiction to Dmytro’s wishes. 

“Blyat,” Dmytro cursed in an exhale. It felt good. “You waste so much time.”

“Boy, I can wear you down fine. But we’ve got time to waste after the round we just had.”

Dmytro would beg to differ. He was ready to skip the recovery and foreplay both. But he gave up. 

“After this round, I’m leaving.”

“Time to waste,” Joe repeated. 

And he was true to his word. Joe wasted hours. 

As Dmytro fell into a sleep heavier than the arm flung thoughtlessly across his back, he mourned for the exhaustion and aches he’d suffer tomorrow for his foolish indulgence tonight. 

A kiss brushed against Dmytro’s left shoulder blade. 

Dmytro shrugged up his shoulder to dislodge Joe, but his touch was already gone. 

“Shower’s all yours,” Joe grunted. Always with the grunting. 

“You’re dressed,” Dmytro commented, rolling to his back. 

“You slept in.”

The concept in itself was absurd. 

“I don’t sleep in.”

“You did this morning.”

Dmytro looked to the shitty digital clock on the rickety table by Joe’s side of the bed. 

8:37

But Joe’s clock was two hours slow and three minutes fast. 

“Did you fix your clock?”

“Nah.”

“Shit.”

Dmytro bolted out of the bed, attempting escape from the sheets that were insistent on tangling around him. 

“Slow down, boy, I know you haven’t got anywhere to be today.”

“How would you—shit!” 

The stupid sheets clung to Dmytro the more he tried to shuck them off. That was what he got for passing out after thrashing about in the damn things for ages. 

Joe’s chuckle was near. And then his hands were peeling away the constraints Dmytro couldn’t escape alone. 

“Don’t rush so much,” Joe told him. “Take it easy today. God knows your busybody ass deserves a proper day off.”

Dmytro was poised to reply that there was no such thing as a day off, but a question and a memory to answer it derailed him. 

Dmytro pushed into Joe’s rat hole before the door was even open an inch. 

“I was all but useless today thanks to you,” Dmytro ranted. “I’m nearly forty years old for fuck’s sake, Joe, my body doesn’t bounce back like a twenty-year-old’s.”

That only seemed to interest Joe. 

“Give me your phone.”

“My phone?” Joe asked. “What, are you going to delete your number?”

“Give it to me.”

Dmytro’s expectant hand was answered with a phone yielded bemusedly to it. His passcode was pathetically easy to guess—the birth year of his favorite fencer. With a series of efficient taps, Dmytro finished the process of connecting Joe’s calendar with his. 

“Next time,” Dmytro said, returning the phone to Joe with a jab into chest, “choose a more convenient evening for that sort of behavior.”

“Are you telling me to pencil hard fuckings into your calendar?” 

“I don’t care what you do, just don’t make it my problem.”

Dmytro left. He had a full schedule today, which Joe could now see.  

“You’ve been checking my calendar?” Dmytro asked, astonishment making him pause before standing. 

“You programmed it into my phone for a reason.”

Dmytro had all but forgotten about that. It had been a month ago, but, now that he thought about it, Joe’s calls, coaxing, and cooperation had all lined up very conveniently with Dmytro’s schedule that entire time. 

“There’s no such thing as a day off if you’re smart,” Dmytro said, returning to his original point. “And I’ve already wasted four hours of it.”

Free of sheets at last, Dmytro snatched up his shirt from the foot of the bed. He cast eyes around to find his pants, locating them on the floor with one of the legs turned almost entirely inside out. Joe had clearly been in charge of taking off his pants last night, then. 

The room was tiny, and with two swift steps, Dmytro was bending to collect the carelessly—

A sharp smack to his ass straightened Dmytro right back up, irate at the crude manchild behind him behaving like a high schooler in a locker room. 

Dmytro rounded on him, pointer finger unfurling from the fist holding his shirt to jab at Joe’s chest. 

“Don’t.”

Joe laughed, holding up his hands in innocent surrender. 

“Sorry, sweet cheeks,” he said, his hands not repentant at all as they slid around Dmytro’s waist before dipping down to grope his ass, “it’s hard not to touch when such a fine rear end presents itself.”

Far from sated and not amused in the least, Dmytro leaned out of reach of the kiss that followed the groping. 

“What is it that is so important for you to do on your day off?” Joe asked. 

“I have half a novel to read, relatives to write, notes to type up for Seiji, colleges to research for Seiji, regimes and lessons to revise and perfect—”

“For Seiji,” Joe finished. “You can do all that stuff anywhere. Get dressed, we’ll grab a late breakfast then come back here.”

“Why?” Dmytro asked, genuinely baffled at the prospect. 

“Because you forgot one very important part of your day off.”

Dmytro didn’t need to ask what Joe thought that was; he was still palming at ass, starting now to pull and inch inward in a teasing manner. 

“I’m showering,” Dmytro said, breaking from Joe’s arms. 

But after he’d showered, he found Joe with his keys in one hand and Dmytro’s jacket in the other. And after taking the jacket, he climbed into the passenger seat of a rusty pickup truck. 

Joe brought him to some greasy spoon far away from the bustle of civilization. 

“Not up to your standards?” Joe asked with a smirk that betrayed his expectation for Dmytro to be a snob. But Dmytro only raised eyebrows at him. 

“If you’d brought me here after our first encounter, I would have assumed you meant to kill me and bury my body out back.”

“You wouldn’t have let me bring you here after our first encounter.”

“And lord help me for allowing it now,” Dmytro muttered. 

The food was far from nutritious, but it was food. Dmytro had been his mother’s son before he’d been a professional athlete and personal fencing coach, and she’d instilled in him a basic respect for all food. He ate his corned beef hash with, if not as much vigor as Joe devoured his breakfast bowl, then as much appreciation. 

“What book’re you reading?” Joe asked, wiping his greasy fingers off on his jeans. 

Dmytro didn’t like to ask witless questions, so instead of asking Joe what he was talking about, he took a moment to absorb it and understand it. 

“It’s boring,” he replied when he understood Joe was referring to the novel he intended to finish today. 

“Then why are you reading it?”

“You would find it boring,” Dmytro amended. 

“Why’s that?”

“You only read the morning paper and four magazines.”

“You know that specifically?”

“Yes. There’s not a single novel in your apartment.”

“Do you want to see my library card?”

“I won’t make you dig it out of whatever forgotten crevice you stuffed it in three months after getting it.”

“It’s one of them bodice ripper romance types, isn’t it?” Joe asked. His grin was certainly teasing, but Dmytro couldn’t read it more specifically. 

“It is not,” he had to defend. And at Joe’s laugh, there was nothing to do but explain to Joe who Charlemagne was and how his famous chess set was the object of the centuries-spanning story Dmytro knew would bore Joe. 

Joe didn’t let it go. He had no issues with asking witless questions, and each one got increasingly frustrating to try and answer. 

“Joe,” Dmytro said after his third cup of coffee, “if you want it to make sense, you’ll actually have to read it.”

Joe grunted. 

“Yeah, I could do that.”

From Joe, that could either have been a dismissal or an agreement. It was hard to tell. 

“Let’s get back, then,” Joe said, dropping a crumpled wad of cash on the table, which Dmytro couldn’t leave without smoothing out and stacking nicely. It was, at least, an appropriate tip if not an elegantly presented one. 

By the time Dmytro had finished putting the table in order, Joe was already pocketing a receipt and heading for the door. 

“You’ve already wasted my entire morning,” Dmytro observed upon climbing back into Joe’s truck and checking the time. It was three minutes past noon. 

“Your busy ass could use a proper rest,” Joe dismissed with a grunt. 

“Then there’s no point in getting back to your place.”

Joe guffawed as he tore out of the tiny parking lot. When he parked again outside his unimpressive apartment building, Dmytro didn’t follow him inside. He had an itinerary for his day off, and completing it was much easier without grunting men asking him asinine questions or offering him beer and sex. 

Although, he was disquietingly distracted by thoughts of gruff men, beer, and sex the entire day anyway. 

A kiss brushed against Dmytro’s left shoulder blade. Then it moved up to his neck, forcing Dmytro to fight back a shiver. He hadn’t been expecting the touch, not so far away from the bed. Not fully dressed and working at Joe’s small table across from the almost as small kitchen.

“Stop that nonsense,” Dmytro scolded, ignoring the hands that fell on his shoulders and rubbed and squeezed in something between a massage and a hold to keep him still. “I’m busy.”

“You’re here,” Joe countered.

“And I could easily be elsewhere if you continue to behave like a needy child.”

Joe huffed, the sound sending another reluctant shiver down Dmytro’s neck where it ghosted.

“You sure are something,” Joe said, abandoning Dmytro at last to go clang around in the kitchen. He returned with an open beer, offering it out. “I’m not complaining, understand, but I don’t see why you’re here if I’m such a nuisance.”

“It’s convenient,” Dmytro said, accepting the beer without looking up from his work. “I’m not distracted from productivity by baser urges being unmet.”

“Because I’m here to meet your needs on your schedule?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Joe grunted. “But you still make me wait until you’re done with all your productivity.”

“There’s a certain reassurance in knowing you’d take care of them at the first opportunity that eases the urgency to be relieved. Thus making it easier to focus on tuition payments and scheduling and all the rest rather than your cock.”

At the spluttering fit of coughing and the heavy pound of chair legs previously off the floor landing, Dmytro actually looked up. Joe was pounding his chest as he coughed. 

“If you’re in need of CPR, do let me know. Otherwise, please keep your inability to drink your beer a more quiet affair.”

“You’re dead blunt,” Joe said after regaining himself. “And damn shameless too.”

“Oh, good, you’re not dying,” Dmytro said, returning to the computer. “That’s very convenient.”

“Convenience is really the love of your life, isn’t it? I can see why you’re single, that’s for sure. Too impersonal. And too distracted to be a good fuck buddy either.”

“Your status as a bachelor is no mystery to anyone,” Dmytro replied dryly with a vague wave of hand around the cramped, untidy apartment Joe kept. 

Then his eyes followed over the movement and a frown took his face as he realized the image in his mind didn’t line up with the current reality. The sink was clear of beer bottles and cans, the trash wasn’t piling up, all the dead bulbs had been replaced, and there weren’t dirty clothes and chip bags strewn around like a carpet. 

“Which makes this thing damn convenient for the both of us.”

“Precisely.”

 But the email Dmytro had set out to write wouldn’t present itself in English. And he was sure no one at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Salt Lake spoke Ukrainian. 

Dmytro threw back the rest of his beer, then closed his computer with finality and slipped it into his briefcase. As he stood, Joe looked up from his newspaper. 

Dmytro took it, folding it efficiently back into a neat square to throw on the table next to his computer. Joe hadn’t reclined his chair again, but it was still pushed far enough back from the table for Dmytro to easily fit when he stood between Joe and his paper and beer on the table behind him. 

“Can I help you?” Joe asked, a bushy and unruly eyebrow slowly lifting. 

“Yes.”

Dmytro fit in a straddle over Joe’s legs, taking bunches of his shirt as he smashed his mouth to Joe’s for a kiss. 

Joe got the hint. 

Enthusiastically, he pulled Dmytro’s hips closer against him, kissing him hard while he suggested Dmytro should undulate in his lap. Dmytro wasn’t opposed at all; his philosophy included as few wasted minutes as possible, and if Joe was cooperating with that for once, who was he to deny him a prize? 

Joe took Dmytro’s shirt for his first prize, but Dmytro had no time to return the favor before Joe was dragging his mouth down neck and chest, stopping to tease in both sensation and promise of a mark. 

“Behave like an adult,” Dmytro told Joe irritably when the man took too long sucking against the undercurve of his pectoral only to pull away and thumb at the mark. “Cut that out. You’re defeating the entire point of me being here. No hickeys or lingering. Just get to it.”

“I guess that means we haven’t got time to move to the bed.”

“Right here is fine,” Dmytro confirmed, grinding his ass down deliberately. 

Joe was not fast—at least, not in letting Dmytro go back to his work. His work that ended up scattered all over the floor when Joe got impatient and perhaps a little greedy, shoving Dmytro onto the worn table and returning to his indulgences without pause. 

Joe was as disastrous to Dmytro’s work no matter where he was, and at least the proximity meant pleasure and more immediate relief. Overall, it wasn’t a bad deal. 

A kiss brushed against Dmytro’s left shoulder blade. 

Dmytro hummed, pulling only superficially from sleep at the touch.

“Where?” Dmytro asked, sleep and home both heavy in his question. He thought he might have remembered Joe leaving the bed. A slight disturbance. A lifting of weight and retreat of warmth. Now returned.

“Got a call,” Joe grunted as his mattress groaned under his weight.

Dmytro turned his head on the pillow, locating Joe.

“Who?”

“You don’t mince words, do you?”

“You don’t use words,” Dmytro countered.

Joe grunted. Again. 

“The call?”

“Nick.”

“Seiji?” Dmytro asked, awake enough now to push up onto elbows.

“Fine,” Joe laughed under his breath. “They’re both fine. Nick needed a code from the club for some application.”

“Some application,” Dmytro repeated, eyebrow quirking. He was sure Joe knew exactly what Nicholas Cox was applying for, no matter if he wanted to pretend otherwise. 

In the coils of sleep returning now that Seiji was safe and accounted for, it occurred to Dmytro to ask why.

Why pretend he was less invested than he was?

And why bother leaving his own bed to take a call?

He was properly back in it now, the deep weight of him shaping the mattress. He slept like a bear. He’d be asleep within the minute.

Sure enough, Joe’s breathing deepened and evened out. And then an arm flung over Dmytro’s back. Uncaring and claustrophobic. Dmytro considered leaving; he was awake now and not too distracted or worn out to make it back to his own apartment. He shifted, his body ready to respond to the decision, but Joe’s arm disrupted his intent.

“You smell like cigarettes,” Dmytro observed when Joe was close enough to share the faint scent.

Joe grunted groggily. 

“Joe,” Dmytro said more sharply. “You smell like cigarettes.”

Joe forced his eyes open.

“’S only one,” he tried to assure, pushing up under the covers too. He leaned over Dmytro, the kiss at his shoulder causing his entire back to stiffen. “‘M sorry.”

“I don’t like men without conviction. If you’re going to half-ass something, don’t start it.”

“One,” Joe said again, rough hand scraping against Dmytro’s cheek. He was shaking off sleep again, but slowly. “In all these months, just one smoke.”

“Why?” Dmytro asked.

“You don’t like kissing smokers. Tonight called for a cigar.” Two answers to two different questions Dmytro might have been asking.

Dmytro couldn’t smell a difference to it from the usual haze of cigarettes; he wasn’t sure if the difference was supposed to be a defense. 

“No smoking,” he reiterated, then had to say it again when Joe kissed him. 

Joe grunted, rolling his hand from Dmytro’s cheek, pushing down on a shoulder blade and planting Dmytro into the pillows by surprise. 

Calluses scraped up and down his back and the faint scent of cigar smoke settled into something comfortable as Dmytro fell back into dreamless sleep.

Dmytro was not inclined toward theatrics, but if he were, he would have sighed as he sunk into the perfectly stiff memory foam mattress in his perfect 67° Fahrenheit temperature room. And he even had on pajama bottoms. The circumstances were perfect for sleep. He’d spent too many nights as of late in a cramped and lumpy mattress that creaked and reshaped whenever someone shifted on it. The crick in his neck and ache in his back proved that he’d been on Joe’s shitty mattress more than was strictly wise. 

Dmytro slid under silk sheets and tunneled both arms under his pillow, resting his head down on the resulting mound. It was his preferred sleeping position, but sleep didn’t come. His back was bare of shirt and blankets; it felt cold. And his body felt like a perfectly balanced feather in the cradle of his mattress. There was no fighting for—or out of—blankets. No tug of gravity or fling of arm. No rough calluses sweeping lazy circles across his back. 

No kiss brushed against Dmytro’s left shoulder blade. 

Chapter Text

Dmytro sunk into Joe’s bed with a sigh, for once not even complaining that Joe was wasting time as he kissed that sigh from throat to lips. He was getting less and less rushed during these encounters, which should have taken the satisfaction out of making him wait, but there was something satisfying in the change itself. In knowing he was the cause of that change, wearing Dmytro down over months of stubborn struggles between efficiency and leisure.

The huff of impatience as Joe kissed down his chest over his shirt was proof that Dmytro was still perfectly himself—patience from him wasn’t all that patient. But Joe knew Dmytro’s type, and it was a rare thing to have men like him yield anything. Joe hummed fondly at the frustration in Dmytro’s scoff and took a little extra satisfaction in taking advantage of the man’s indulgence of such extravagantly wasted time.

“Joe, really—,” Dmytro complained sharply when Joe’s dragging mouth found his inevitable target. A little nip to the stiffened nub under Dmytro’s soft shirt made him cut off. A moment later, he huffed again, sounding less frustrated with Joe and more frustrated in a sexual manner. “At least take off my shirt if you must waste time there.”

Joe took his time in responding, kissing and nipping turning into a slow and sustained roll of nipple between teeth.

“Thought you told me to be considerate about beard burn,” Joe grunted.

“Ruining my shirts is not the solution I had in mind.”

“Out of curiosity,” Joe said after nearly ignoring the statement and continuing his work. “Was your solution for me to shave my beard or stop kissing you?”

“No,” Dmytro answered, more irritated than his original complaint.

“Wasn’t a yes or no question, kid.” Joe kissed against the wet, stretched section of shirt, unrepentant for the damage he was doing it. “Suppose it’s a good enough answer though.”

Dmytro huffed. He was the huffiest man Joe had ever met. Joe knew exactly what he was huffing about. But instead of arguing, Dmytro arched his body to press against Joe’s thigh, planted in the mattress between Dmytro’s. He didn’t have any complaints about friction now, seeking after it. Joe helped his efforts by pulling him by the hips to notch more snugly around his leg. It had the effect of pulling Dmytro’s shirt up his body somewhat, but not far enough to expose the sensitive skin of Dmytro’s chest to Joe’s beard.

“For the love of—Joe,” Dmytro hissed from gritted teeth after long minutes of endurance. “If you don’t touch me directly this second, I will—!”

Joe kissed Dmytro’s threat away, responding to the irritable plea with a hand up Dmytro’s shirt to press against the nipple he’d been mouthing at. He greedily swallowed Dmytro’s resulting moan, low and reluctantly given. He always got more sensitive for all the time Joe took bringing his body to life. Joe was sure the man had noticed the same—it was part of the reason Dmytro let him take so long these days without so much resistance. He knew as well as Joe did that he’d feel better for it. And Joe knew as well as Dmytro did that it was the reason Dmytro kept coming back.

Joe wasn’t expecting the knock on his door, but the quick and sharp rap against it made him expect to find Dmytro at it even before turning the knob.

“Here,” Dmytro said, pushing something into Joe’s chest and hardly waiting to be sure Joe had a hold of it before letting go himself and pushing past Joe into the apartment.

“What’s this?” Joe asked, partially meaning the box he’d been given and partially meaning the visit itself.

“A solution.”

Joe looked down at the gift. And then back up to Dmytro with a snort.

“I take good care of my beard, son.”

“Don’t call me names. And I’ve seen your bathroom, Joe. You have drugstore shampoo and a bar of Dial soap. Good shaping is not the only maintenance required.”

Joe grunted, taking another look over the kit of moisturizing and softening conditioner, butter, and oil with a bristle brush and wooden comb for good measure. Turning it over as he examined it, he found the price tag unashamedly declaring this was a pricy goddamn gift. And knowing Dmytro, a well-researched one. The man couldn’t know a lick of beard-care.

“Guess I’ll use it,” Joe grunted. “’s not as though you can.”

After so many mornings spent together, Joe knew Dmytro’s jaw remained as smooth in the morning as the night before.

“Good.” Dmytro squinted at Joe a moment after that. “I do not appreciate being laughed at, Joe.”

“Who’s laughing?” Joe asked, but he dropped the smile.

“You were. I saw the humor in your eyes.”

“You didn’t say you’re welcome.”

“Why would I? You didn’t thank me.”

“That’s the ticket. Most people would be arguing for a thanks over a gift. But not you.”

“It’s not a gift,” Dmytro said with a frown. “It’s a compromise.”

“A compromise?”

“Yes. I don’t like the way your beard scratches after too much rubbing. You want to continue kissing me. It’s reasonable for me to provide a solution and for you to agree to the upkeep of it. This way, we’re both happy. You get to kiss me and I don’t get so raw from it. Compromise.”

“That’s what you call taking over my life with ultimatums?” Joe asked, amused.

“You’re under no obligation to choose me over the rest of your life,” Dmytro said automatically, and he meant it. He was right. There were no sentimental attachments or obligations between them. It was simple: if Joe wanted the pleasure of fucking Dmytro, he followed Dmytro’s demands.

“Suppose that’s right,” Joe acknowledged. “Any other compromises I should expect?”

“Plenty,” Dmytro said with no elaboration.

“Alright. Well, since you already made the trip out, why don’t you sit down? I’ve got a couple of cold beers.”

Dmytro gave him a wry smile.

“Your idea of showing men a good time is very narrow.”

“Would you like to go out to dinner before bed?” Joe asked.

“I already ate.”

“Thought so.”

It had been in his calendar: Dinner with the Katayamas - 6:30 pm. Joe had expected Dmytro to be too busy with his star pupil to show his face around this old place tonight. But the calendar in Joe’s phone was double booked for tomorrow: Kings Row v Ravenswood - 4:00 pm / Nick - 4:00 pm.

If Dmytro had only meant to give Joe the beard care kit, he could have waited until tomorrow. But he’d come over tonight.

Joe stirred awake to a shifting bed and a lot of noise. The noise was gone now, and Joe saw the coiled phone cord on the shitty old nightstand next to the bed and he deduced that Dmytro had been trying to plug in his phone. Before Dmytro, that had been Joe’s side of the bed. Somehow, it had become Dmytro’s preferred side to fall asleep on. Of course it was. It had the nightstand and the outlet. Now, Dmytro sat on the edge of his side of the bed and looked down at something in his hands. Not his phone, which was next to its unplugged charger on the table.

“What’s that?” Joe asked, frowning at Dmytro’s strangely stiff posture. Frozen more than proud. Sitting up, Joe thought he knew what it was. The open drawer gave him the last hint he needed to guess what Dmytro had found.

“I’m sorry,” Dmytro said efficiently, setting the golden band on the stand next to his phone. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You haven’t pried,” Joe grunted.

“Then I’m sorry I have to pry now.” Dmytro turned his body to face Joe, his feet staying firmly on the floor. His face was perfectly neutral, but Joe couldn’t be sure if there was any reason he might be holding it carefully blank. “Are you married?”

“Not for years,” Joe snorted. “How would I be hiding a wife from you, boy?”

“I see.” Dmytro paused. “Why do you keep the ring?”

“Don’t know what to do with it,” Joe shrugged. “Nobody tells you what the hell to do with your wedding ring after the divorce when you get married.”

Dmytro raised an eyebrow. The left one. Joe wondered, not for the first time, if Dmytro only ever raised the eyebrow with his scar on purpose.

“To my understanding, there’s not meant to be an after when you get married.”

“Then let’s both be glad there is.” Joe leaned to kiss a shoulder. He followed the obvious path up to an open neck and mouthed another kiss there. Dmytro shivered, tickled, Joe was sure, by his beard. He was surprisingly sensitive to the soft sensations.

It was easy to convince Dmytro’s body to fall back down to the bed, but as they both worked to get Dmytro’s legs up onto the bed too, some shift of Dmytro’s body sent the nightstand wobbling. A clink followed the clatter of contact.

“You ring—,” Dmytro gasped, starting to untangle from Joe like he meant to look for the damn thing and straighten up the table.

“Leave it.”

“But—,”

Joe pulled Dmytro to the center of the bed to roll onto, pinning him in place as he kissed him. Dmytro’s concerns left his body soon enough as it was surrendered to Joe.

This time, when Joe woke, Dmytro was still asleep. Yawning awake, Joe spared a moment to kiss Dmytro’s bare shoulder, the skin warm beneath his lips. It wasn’t often that Joe woke first, but when he did, it was always after a particularly busy night, and last night’s midnight snack had clearly worn Dmytro out.

Joe considered getting up until Dmytro shifted in his sleep, not rolling onto his side but tipping closer inwards as though sliding toward the sink of his weight in the middle of the bed. It was easy to let himself be pulled in as well, another yawn somehow turning into a kiss against Dmytro’s turned face as he settled back into bed.

It was no surprise at all when Dmytro woke him up some ninety minutes later with a terse scolding for distracting him from plugging in his phone and subsequently missing his alarm.

“So set the alarm clock,” Joe grumbled when Dmytro wouldn’t stop his rantings.

“If I program my alarms into your clock, they’ll wake you up every day. You realize that, yes?”

“Compromise,” Joe shrugged. Dmytro frowned at him for a moment, then reached for the clock he’d already fixed to show the proper time long since.

Joe left him to it and took a shower first. The whole routine took longer now than it had once, thanks to Dmytro’s last compromise with him, but Dmytro didn’t comment on him taking too long despite his late start to the day.

“I suppose,” Dmytro said when he came from the bathroom in a towel, “that I’ll be seeing you this afternoon.”

“This evening too, I hope,” Joe replied, watching Dmytro dress. He never took his clothes into the bathroom to dress after his shower, a habit that Joe appreciated very much.

“I really shouldn’t let you keep me overnight so often,” Dmytro said with a click of tongue as he pulled into yesterday’s clothes. Joe had heard his complaints about not having fresh clothes to wear after his shower here and needing to go back to his apartment to change dozens of times now.

“You should really stop pretending you won’t end up staying the night, sweet bottom,” Joe grunted in response. “Just bring a change of clothes.”

Dmytro turned as he finished buttoning his pants, the absolute look of disdain on his face a familiar sight.

“Use my name when you speak to me,” Dmytro said. “I won’t answer to that.”

“How about sugartits?”

“Sugar what? No.”

“Honeybuns?”

“Don’t.”

“Angel cakes?”

“No.”

“Butter butt?”

“I’ll leave, Joe.”

“Sweatmeats?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Love muffin? Snugglebutt?” Joe offered as Dmytro made for the bedroom door, but he quelled his laughter. “We’ll stick to sweet cheeks, then.”

“I don’t like that one either,” Dmytro said crossly, turning to scowl at Joe. Then he sighed. “If you must call me something, call me Mitya.”

“Mitya?”

Dmytro nodded curtly in the affirmative, but when he turned to leave again, something about him seemed softened and almost awkward. The name meant something to Dmytro. And it meant something that he was letting Joe use it.

“Then I’ll see you this afternoon, Mitya,” Joe said, soft after the raucous laughter of his previous pet names

The back of Dmytro’s neck flushed ever so slightly.

And then he was gone.