Chapter Text
The most sacred thing a man can do is suck another man’s cock.
No. That’s too on the nose, even for Remus. He deletes it, takes a swig of his lukewarm peppermint tea, and tries again.
The most sacred thing a man can do is get on his knees.
That’s really not much better, honestly. Less graphic, sure, but his congregation knows him too well at this point to not understand that the double entendre was precisely the point. He presses his index finger to the backspace button until it clicks at him, mockingly, letting him know he’s deleted everything there was to delete, and that wasn’t much.
It’s Saturday. Saturday night. Saturday night and it’s exactly…11:36 PM and whoever said waiting until the night before preaching a sermon to write it is the best inspiration was a damn dirty liar.
The most sacred thing a man can do is…is…is swallow another man’s hot jizz and feel it dripping down his throat and into his own stomach and it makes his own cock rock hard and
Fuck it. He slams his laptop shut and stands too quickly from his chair. His long, gangly legs miss their mark and he bangs his knobby knees into the underside of the desk. It hurts more than it has any right to and he’s already frustrated with himself for his procrastination, so he throws his mechanical pencil at the opposite wall, where it lands with a thoroughly unsatisfying tink.
Before he knows it, he’s slipping on his tennis shoes and grabbing his denim jacket off the hook behind the front door. He unchains his bike from its haphazard perch – bracketed up against one of the splintery wooden columns in between the mesh of his screened-in porch – and takes off down Broad Street without a second thought.
Griphook is crowded tonight, has been ever since Rita and the Skeeters played it a couple weeks ago. Their sleeper hit, “Beetle on the Wall”, brought in huge swaths of heterosexual hipsters and teenage punk rockers with fake IDs, and apparently, they hadn’t left yet. It never used to be like this, it used to be just the right kind of busy: not so crowded that you couldn’t find what you were looking for, but just crowded enough to suck someone off under the table without being noticed. Now it’s just…loud.
He makes his way to the crowded bar through a haze of cigarette smoke and Axe Body Spray and knows by that alone that the queers are not in charge here tonight. Marlene serves him first, over the protests of a particularly loud bachelorette party, and they share a look of frustration and resentment that’s one part fully justified queer rage and one part just not wanting to share their toys.
Griphook is a gay bar, and not the rainbow flag kind. Griphook is the kind of gay bar that’s existed for decades, pre-Stonewall even, before it could ever be advertised as such and when patrons wore different colored handkerchiefs to signal how they wanted to be fucked. Back then, entering the establishment meant you were a queer, a sissy, a dyke, a fag, and a brave one at that. Back then, entering the establishment meant risking your life for the sake of liberation. It’s different now, of course, but the owners – two old queens who refused to sell even when the real estate prices went way up – keep the drinks cheap and the floors dirty and the couches covered in cum-stains, let the patrons know “you’re welcome here, but you enter at your own risk”. Remus loves that about Griphook, that you always know what you're getting yourself into. It may be easier to be queer nowadays, but it’s harder to find places – and people – who let you know exactly what they’re about.
Remus over-tips Marlene (she’ll insist on buying him sushi later to make up for it) and leans up against the bar, training his eyes on the dance floor. He sips his drink and watches, waits, ready to find what he’s looking for tonight. The lights are a bit dimmer than usual, and the music a bit louder, and the whole room is buzzing with a kind of energy that’s not entirely settling. The couches that line the walls are all hosting couples, most of whom are making out or whispering into each other’s ears, or getting mighty close to the point where they need to decide if they’re going to take it home or take it into the back, lest they put everyone in danger of unwelcome police presence. Gawkers linger in corners, another bachelorette party and a few straight-appearing couples, and giggle and whisper and make it abundantly clear that they’d never debase themselves in such a way, despite the fact that they can’t seem to take their eyes off the scene at hand. The walls were white once, but are now covered floor-to-ceiling in art, some commissioned and some, like the striking graffiti display in one corner, not. The floors are old, cracked hardwood that wouldn’t ever get truly clean even if the management did try, and it holds up hordes of energetic dancers without so much as the occasional squeak. The restrooms are around the corner to Remus’s left, two gender-neutral stalls that always have a line and that regulars know to never shit, fuck, or shoot up in. There’s another room for that.
The back room is the best part of Griphook. It’s behind an unassuming wood door on the back wall, and to unknowing lookers-on, it appears a door to a storage room or an office. But it’s a door to heaven, that door, to Narnia or Middle-earth or Oz, to a Wonderland the likes of which no mortal has ever created. It’s saved his life, that room. That room is why he’s here. Later, if he doesn’t find someone right away, he’ll go alone, take a spot against the wall and survey the scene. Not everyone can do that – people get suspicious when they see an unfamiliar face watching – but Remus has frequented this bar for years now, and is more likely to get an invitation to join in than he is a dirty look. He’ll let the wall hold his weight and he’ll get high on the air, high on black-gloved fists working their way in and out of their partner’s bodies, high on the strangled moans and muffled screams, high on the smell of cum and sweat and fear and love and liberation.
He’d rather not go alone tonight, though. Tonight, he needs connection, needs to touch and be touched. Tonight, he wants to feel pain; deep and achy or sharp and stinging, he doesn’t much care. He wants his cock touched, his throat tickled, his asshole stretched. Tonight, he wants to fuck.
He sips his double whiskey and starts surveying the room. He nods his head or smiles at the folks he recognizes, some of whom he’s fucked and some of whom he hasn’t. There’s all sorts here tonight; the rave types, who dance frantically with glowsticks tied around their necks. The leather crowd, conspicuous as can be in their attire yet the most likely to tenderly stroke their dance partner’s arm, or tuck a strand of sweaty hair behind his ear. The hipsters, low jeans and flannel and craft beers and septum piercings. There’s a few goths and some punks (always and emphatically different, even if you can’t tell based on appearance alone) and a bunch of other folks who, like Remus himself, can’t be boxed into any one subculture. And then there’s…
There’s him.
Remus’s eyes land on him and they don’t move, couldn’t even if they wanted to. He’s absolutely positive he’s never seen the man before, and yet the man moves like the entire club belongs to him. He’s dancing, moving his body as if through water, smooth and fluid and almost elegant. His shoulder-length black hair is half tied-up, but errant strands drop around his face and stick to his forehead, which glows with what might be sweat or might be glitter or might be both. He’s dressed simply, in dark jeans and a dark tank top and simple black boots, but it’s his skin that catches Remus’s attention. Save his hands, neck, and face, every visible inch is adorned with tattoos. They’re beautiful on him, suit him as if they simply appeared there one day, and Remus is overcome with the urge to run his tongue over every one of them.
He swallows the rest of his drink and discards his glass on the bar top before moving purposefully in the man’s direction, weaving through people, some of whom greet him with a warm “hey, Remus!”. When he finally reaches his target, the man is turned away from him, moving his head languidly back and forth. Remus begins dancing, waiting for the man to turn his direction (approaching a stranger from behind is not Remus’s style, nor should it be, in his opinion, anyone’s).
The song winds down, it’s final notes fading and Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” beginning to take over. If that’s not a fucking sign, he does't know what is, so as soon as the man turns back around, Remus pounces.
“Mind if I join you?” Remus shouts over the music.
The man’s eyes remain closed, his arms moving up his body and over his head as his hips sway in perfect rhythm. “No, thanks, I’m…” he begins. But then he opens his eyes, looks into Remus’s face, and his movements slow a bit. He smiles at Remus – brilliant and warm, perfect white teeth interrupted by a single crooked canine – and Remus is fully prepared to back off, cut his losses and reevaluate his options. But the man reaches out his hand, as if to shake Remus’s, and says, “Would you like to dance?”
Remus smiles back, reaches out his own hand even though he finds the gesture a bit formal for the setting, and no sooner have their hands touched than the man is pulling Remus close to him and oh, his body. Warm and solid and hard lines, it meets Remus’s, which is more soft edges and painted fingernails. Remus is instantly hard, and he’s certain the man can feel his erection as they begin to sway in time together.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” Remus says, more for the sake of saying something at all.
The man grins, betraying nothing, and uses his grip on Remus’s hip to spin him around so his back is against the man’s chest. He’s surprisingly strong, and Remus nearly loses his balance for a moment before the man grabs him around the middle, steadying him and destabilizing him all at once. His senses are entirely overcome – pulsing music and pulsing bodies and heat and the absolutely intoxicating scent of what Remus thinks is sandalwood and musk and tobacco but is actually just sex. Remus can feel the man’s own cock now, impossibly hot against his ass as they grind together, and his head starts to float into a space alcohol can only somewhat be responsible for.
They dance a while, Remus thinks, at least a few songs, though each one is just a series of beats and sounds that enter their shared bodies like current, kinetic energy made from vibrations and transformed into heat and power and fuck, Remus wants him. Wants him like he hasn’t wanted anyone or anything maybe in forever. He’s glued to this man, completely at his will, and it’s exactly where he wants to be.
The energy builds and builds, and finally they are so close, so physically close that there is nothing more to touch. Physics says two things can never really touch anyway, so all that’s left is to consume. Devour. The man takes Remus’s ear between his teeth and bites, hard and sharp into cartilage that would otherwise bleed. He pulls the skin with his teeth and Remus goes too, his head lulling back further into the man’s control. It’s time now, so Remus grabs hold of the man’s hand and pulls, leads him to the back room with something urgent and desperate.
They find a corner, somewhat private, and the man has Remus backed against the wall. Remus’s hands are pinned above his head and his hips thrust needily into the air between them. He’s embarrassed at how much he wants it, but the man just smiles and pins Remus’s hips to the wall with his own, whispers “poor thing” into Remus’s ear and grinds against him and fuck. This one is going to ruin him.
The man doesn’t stop, doesn’t breathe, just drops to his knees and takes out Remus’s cock and swallows it down, choking on it and wanting to choke on it and fucking Remus with the hottest mouth he has ever seen. He’s going to come soon, has been right on the edge throughout the last three songs at least, and tugs on the stranger’s hair to warn him. It’s soft, so fucking soft, and long and heavy, and making Remus come embarrassingly quickly must be just this man’s goal, because he holds Remus’s hand there, encouraging him to guide the man’s head however he wants it.
The air smells different here, smells different from its usual different even, smells like metal and cranberries and blood and it’s only because the stranger wants him to, only because the stranger wants to choke on his cock that Remus really lets him choke on his cock. He thrusts into the stranger’s hot, wet, cranberry mouth and grips his head, pulling him onto it, and still the man looks up at him as if he’s fully in control. He is – if Remus is honest – because his eyes glint as they look up at Remus and his throat swallows him down as if beckoning him into it, devouring him. It’s too intense, far too intimate, so Remus shuts his eyes and thrusts harder and comes down the throat of a man who swallows it like wine.
Remus hasn’t begun to recover and the man is on his feet again, is biting and licking his way over Remus’s throat – is on a goddamn tour of it, really, sniffing and marking and running his flat tongue over the skin as if memorizing its texture. He’s rock hard, Remus can tell, but he’s still completely in control of himself. He pulls back and looks at Remus so intensely Remus has no choice but to open his eyes and look right back into the startling silver orbs mere inches from his face.
“What do you want?” the man asks.
Remus shivers. It’s a certain kind of question. It’s not “what do you like?” or “what are you into?”, the most common questions around here after “do you have a condom?”. It’s an invitation. It means Remus could say whatever he pleased in response, and this man would do it for him. They are trading power back and forth, and Remus won’t have it for long, but he has it right now.
“Hurt me,” he says. And because that’s dangerously open-ended, adds “no blood play, no breath play.”
The man, in response, smiles again. It’s not sadistic, truly, not the kind of smile that indicates this was the answer he was hoping for. Instead it’s almost servile. “What’s your safe word?” he asks.
“Whatever you want it to be,” Remus responds. Because that’s the mood, what he wants to say, and because he truly cannot remember.
“'Christmas',” the man replies. “Can I fuck you?” He asks.
Please, Remus thinks. “Yes,” he says. “With a condom.”
The man nods and his eyes glint. He turns Remus so that he’s facing the wall now and instructs him to place his palms on the wall. He’s commanding and confident and gentle all at once. Remus feels like bending right over, like telling the man he can have Remus however he wants, but he doesn’t. He waits.
The man goes for Remus’s fly, ignoring his cock altogether and Remus wants him to so desperately he has to place his forehead against the cool wall to calm himself. He breathes through his nose as the man works his zipper down.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” the man says to him, surveying his bare ass as he pushes Remus’s pants over it.
Remus doesn’t get that often, actually. He gets “cute” and “pretty” and “handsome” and “adorable” and even sometimes “beautiful”, but “sexy” is a specific word. Sexy is irresistible hunger and lust and leather jackets. Sexy is putting its hands all over Remus’s ass and running its tongue over the top notches of Remus’s spine.
“Um,” Remus responds, the “m” elongating into a moan as the man dips his fingers into the cleft of Remus’s ass. “You’re sexy.” He’s never been able to take a compliment. “You’re very, very–fuck!”
The blow hits him deep in his body, not sharp and smarting like a hand spank normally is, but thudding and intense. The second one too, on the opposite side of his ass, hits and holds and stays, like it’s making a home there.
“That okay?” the man asks.
Remus doesn’t trust his voice, so he just nods enthusiastically.
“Your ass,” the man says, a whole sentence in itself, as he grabs and massages and spanks and grabs again. “Can I taste?”
If Remus was in his right mind, he’d say “no”, or “let’s talk about it”, but he left his right mind back on the dance floor somewhere and besides, it’s the man putting himself at risk, not Remus. It’s a selfish thought and an irresponsible one and he pushes his ass back anyway, spreads his legs, inviting.
The man drops to his knees on the sticky floor and licks like he’s absolutely parched, like he’s been waiting his whole life just to taste Remus’s asshole. He spreads Remus and laps at him, moaning so deeply Remus can actually feel it, and grabs hold of Remus as if he’s afraid the whole thing might be an illusion, a mirage of a thirsty, desperate man.
Rimming has never done much for Remus before, but now he’s absolutely losing it. Every swipe of the man’s tongue is amplified, his hunger for it awakening a hunger in Remus too, and soon he’s thrusting back into the man’s mouth with absolute abandon, fucking his tongue.
“Fuckfuckfuck…” Remus moans.
The man answers him with a sharp blow to his ass and a growl of his own, not letting up even a little. He breaks only to spit into his hand, after which he inserts two fingers into Remus’s body and licks around them and Remus is going to come again, feels the pressure building in his balls, is going to come right against this wall without a single stroke to his cock. He doesn’t think he says it out loud, but the man eases off moments later anyway. He stands again and makes quick work freeing his own cock and putting on a condom he pulls from his back pocket.
“Suck,” he says, putting two fingers in Remus’s mouth.
Remus sucks. He licks and moans and nearly swallows those fingers, gagging on them slightly when they push deeply into his mouth, before they pull out with a “pop” and enter Remus’s asshole instead, slowly and gently and almost reverently.
“Please,” he says, rutting back onto the fingers and forward into nothing. “Please just fuck me.”
“You sure?” the man asks. His chivalry would be charming if it wasn’t the only thing standing in the way of Remus having a cock in his ass, so he impatiently reaches behind him and grasps the man’s cock clumsily, guiding it towards his hole in a way he hopes answers the question sufficiently.
The man still enters him agonizingly slowly. Remus is so distracted by the torture that it takes him a moment to notice the sharp pain of the bite to his shoulder and the relief of the hand on his cock. The man finally bottoms out, and Remus doesn’t know whether to thrust into the hand around his cock or back onto the cock in his ass or recoil from the sharp pain of the bite or levitate straight up to the ceiling, so what he actually does is nearly fall over. Maybe the man catches him or maybe he was planning to do it anyway but he wraps his free arm around Remus’s torso. Tight and warm and hard and reassuring.
“My God,” he says, and he sounds on the verge of losing it himself. “You feel incredible.” He begins moving inside Remus, slowly pulling out and then thrusting all the way back in. He fucks like he dances, as if through water, graceful, smooth movements that allow Remus to feel everything. “So incredible,” He repeats.
He speeds up, but keeps the same intensity. The pressure continues to mount in Remus’s balls and he doesn’t think before he brings his own hand to join the hand already around his cock, strokes himself a few times and doesn’t even have time to warn the man before he’s shooting into his palm.
And the man, growling as Remus pulses around him through his orgasm, does not let up. He pounds into Remus, still like water but now more like a wave, and holds Remus even tighter, keeps his body upright. His cock brushes over Remus’s swollen prostate and sends shocks of sensation through Remus’s body in a way that is more pain than it is pleasure, but he asked this man to hurt him, so he leans into it. He comes down from his orgasm and leans back into it and welcomes the pain, helping it along with the hand that he brings behind him to the man’s hips, encouraging him in even deeper.
“I want you hard for me,” the man growls behind him.
Remus nearly laughs, being both not sixteen anymore and also on the verge of nearly passing out. But then the man begins rolling one of Remus’s nipples between his fingers, planting open-mouthed kisses to the back of his neck and whispering encouragements to him and, still, moving inside him like water. He feels his cock stir, somehow, again.
“That’s it,” the man says, taking Remus’s cock in his fist and encouraging it along. “Get hard for me. Fuck yes…just like that…so good…so tight around me…milk my cock, baby, yes…”
He keeps talking, short little statements that travel right back down to Remus’s burgeoning erection, the blood rushing back into it making him lightheaded. He leans his head back onto the man’s shoulder, and it’s strangely intimate given he doesn’t even know this man’s name. But the man encourages it, even plants a small kiss to his cheek, and keeps stroking Remus back to hardness, keeps moving inside him.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he says.
Remus brings his arms behind him, grabs onto the back of the man’s neck and gives thanks for the long, lanky limbs that used to get him made fun of in high school. Without the stability of the wall there’s nothing to hold him up now, nothing but the stranger moving inside him like water, so he lets go entirely. He lets his body be a ragdoll, a cliff for the waves to crash over.
The man kisses at the dip between Remus’s shoulder and his neck, kisses and then licks and then bites and then licks again, his movements becoming ever so slightly more erratic now. He fists Remus’s cock with one hand and holds Remus to him with the other and they are both moaning incoherently now, Remus’s closer to sounds and the man’s closer to actual words. He’s close, Remus can tell, because he feels the little stutters in his movements and the man grips him almost painfully hard now.
“I–fuck,” he growls. “Fuck, I want you to come. I want you to come around my cock.”
Remus didn’t know he could orgasm on command, but he’s so, so close to doing so. He can’t do anything but moan “yes, please, make me come” into the air around them and lean further back into the man’s grip.
“Come here,” the man says. Somehow Remus knows what he means, and he turns his head, capturing the man’s mouth in a rough and sloppy and hungry kiss that is mostly tongue and teeth.
“Oh, fuck yes,” the man moans, breaking the kiss. And then desperately, “Please. Please come for me.”
It’s the desperation that does it, and Remus's vision goes black for a moment, his knees giving out, as he paints the wall with a mural of his own cum.
The man goes silent, keeps holding Remus up and bottoms out inside him a few strokes later, muffling what might have been a scream into Remus’s shoulder. Remus can feel the way his hips stutter a bit, the shakiness of the breath that ghosts across his neck. They stand there, panting and sweating and coming back to earth. They kiss again – the man still inside him – and this time it’s deeper, more intimate.
It’s him, not Remus, who finally loosens his grip around Remus’s torso and pulls out, removing the condom and dropping it in one of the small, lined wastebaskets scattered around the room for just such a purpose. He runs his fingers through his hair and gives Remus a look he can’t quite place.
Remus chuckles a bit, tucking himself back into his jeans and straightening his shirt. “Well,” he says. “Um…”
“That was fun,” the man responds, smiling at Remus.
“Yeah.” Remus smiles back. “It was.”
The man bends over to fix a loose lace on his boot, looking up at Remus through long eyelashes. Something catches Remus eyes, a loose gold chain that slips out of the man’s shirt as he bends over, adorned with a medallion Remus would recognize anywhere. Before he can comment on it, the man has tucked it protectively back inside his shirt.
He stands, walks the few paces towards Remus, and cups him gently behind his neck, planting a sweet kiss to his lips that catches Remus so off guard he doesn’t even have time to close his eyes.
“Thanks,” the man says, and then turns and walks right back out towards the dance floor.
Remus stands stock still for a few moments, completely thrown by the interaction. His mind is foggy from drink and climax and physical exertion, but he can’t help but feel something important has just happened. Something odd. He brings his fingers to his lips as to check they are still there, that the stranger didn’t just up and walk away with them. He can feel the sensation of that final kiss – gentle, appreciative – and it nestles itself into his mind. More than being fucked or rimmed or coming all over the wall (all of which are not unusual for a Saturday night at Griphook), that final, sweet kiss holds itself to his memory, and Remus decides he’ll let it stay there.
Remus takes a deep breath, checks that he looks presentable, then leaves out the fire exit. He feels no need to go back out into the main room, to dance more or drink more. He’s gotten what he came he for.
He arrives back home just past 1 AM, has a glass of water and doesn’t bother showering. When he sits again at the chair by his desk, he feels the familiar ache in his ass, runs his hand absentmindedly over the purpling mark where the stranger bit into his flesh as he came. He smiles, and then opens his laptop and begins typing quickly.
The most sacred thing a man can do is allow himself to be okay with what gives him pleasure.