Work Text:
The beauty of art lies in the bullshit one can justify it with.
A sentiment droned into you, now echoed by the old man with more experience being a canvas than painting one. Crass as it may be, the beauty of bullshit proves itself once again as you wander deeper into the West Wing, eyes closed, hand gliding along the wall.
As far away as possible from that boisterous group and their drunken rowdiness, celebrating who-knows-what with as much drink, food and as many nonsensical excuses to gorge themselves on tonight.
You only wanted a quick nibble before bed, but a certain Enjin had other ideas—namely, that you see their rumbustious festivities through to the bitter end (read: get drunk and play blackjack). So when an escape route opened up amongst the sea of swaying bodies, you slipped away, even if it meant heading in the exact opposite direction of your room.
With not much to do and a whole lot of time to waste, you let your imagination paint the sparse and disgustingly discoloured walls, unravelling a gallery onto them like parchment and using the decrepit textures to fuel your vision.
Artists come and go frequently, so why were the hallways so bare? Certain rooms were plastered in graffiti and posters—hell, even the urinals have them, so you’ve been told. Then again, given the collective maturity level of… some people amounts to the suggested number of fingers one is supposed to have—excluding thumbs—it was a miracle the walls weren’t covered in dicks.
A laugh bubbles out from you. Honestly, a real waste. Dicks, though funny, aren’t exactly what you have in mind, so you return to your conjuring.
Stylised signatures curve around lettering done in fat-capped markers, thick and filled out, flush against one another in plump throw-ups and jagged volumes. Your fingertips skim along their bold outlines where reds and oranges burst over the lines, flaring with the flicker of the overhead lights, before sweeping over the swells of overflowing paint frozen mid-drip.
You follow the rolling drip.
Like candlewax. Descending from a delicate source, sleek and tapering into a cooled knoll. Down the dip of your collarbone, trickling warm and unhurried along the curve of your breast, slowing as it reaches your navel and hardening into a bead pressing cool on your skin.
A crinkled edge nicks clean against your pad—a vinyl sticker, corners peeled up. You find it again, sweeping lower, and a phantom line cuts across your thumb. It flares, shooting up to the back of your neck before dissolving into a shiver. Your breath snags at the tingle; you graze it again until the edge bites, until want warms your stomach from the benign ridge.
Flecks of wallpaper crumble against your palm as you drag further along, until your fingers drift off at a corner.
Footsteps catch up a second too late after you return to the edge. Rough as a calloused hand, it guides you around to where the texture changes beneath your palm. Charcoal guidelines smooth over the abrasion, sketches blocked out and half-finished, brushtrokes soothing your skin in gentle curves.
Heat gathers at the back of your throat. The tightness winding in your chest isn’t a surprise so much as recognition of the frameworks laid bare—nursing in your open hand, unguarded and asking only to be held. The core of art; the only—
Smack!
Your hand flies out, delusions cut short when you muse yourself face-first into plaster. You rub the dull throb from your nose with the other, face scrunching as you step back.
Why is there a dead end in the building? Right. Who designs that.
With a shake of your head and an exasperated grumble, you pivot, palm still flattening your nose.
Why is it so long?
You squint at the hallway up ahead, aggressively brighter than the light here, not bothered to do its job, and reach back for the wall, grazing the shoddy texture out of habit.
Your hand stills. You turn.
A large mural stares back from the wall.
Two hands reach towards each other from opposite sides, index fingers angled downwards, creating a triangle of negative space held between finger and thumb. You squint into the dim and feel along the edge of the nail; up the smooth shell to the bump of the cuticle, following the finger as far as you can reach before your eyes take over—along the bony knuckle, over turbulent flames rolling up from the wrist. You cross to the other side, to the hand mapped in scales that climb the fingers and waves inked across the back.
Below, where the index fingers almost touch, is an insignia. The signature? You trace the arrows curving in a circle, like a current finding its way back to itself, the way you would a palm.
Reaching for one another. Connection. Reciprocity? Chasing the desire of being chosen, of being the one someone crosses the distance for.
Above, in the hollow between them, an eye—ringed with rays streaming outwards as if it were the sun, eclipsed by a dark pupil facing the earth. It bears down on you, and you find yourself stepping back and craning your neck to hold its gaze. Why here of all places, where no one was going to find it?
A chill skims up your spine, blooming goosebumps across your nape. You close your eyes and shake your head, fingertip drifting to your mouth to lodge against your tooth.
Oh, to become a mural yourself.
To be chosen as a subject. To be studied with the same care the wall has been given. To be worked on—mounted against the cool plaster, framed by thighs bracketing your sides and a hand braced beside your head, clothes rustling as they lean in; tentative, the way an artist hovers before the first mark, so careful to capture the perfect image.
You giggle into your knuckles, alone in the dark of the dead-end hallway. “Oh, I’m so fucked.”
In your vision, the figure answers with a chuckle and praise for your eye for detail, and your grin spreads wider, cheeks pulling so hard they ache.
To be covered and made to bear the evidence of artistry in colourful bruises, kisses, and raised heat flowering across your skin. Shaped and moulded by instruments that caress your every surface, worked on by hands unafraid to be gentle or rough. By one who fathoms your framework at a glance, who sharpens your edges and refines your curves, who knows how to finish what you start.
“You seem excited,” Tamsy says with a smile. “Has something happened?”
“Yes!” you blurt, brows skyrocketing to your hairline, heels tangling behind you.
The world blurs as the ceiling swings into view, your arms flailing to grasp onto anything you can. Tamsy’s face appears as an arm hooks around your waist to catch you before the floor gets the chance, bracing his weight forward so neither of you go down together.
That was not part of the script.
He looks down at you, eyes the colour of diluted honey, pearlescent with the amusement that glints in the frame of thick lashes.
“Yes? Interesting,” he muses, voice gliding like a brush on primed surface. “Do tell.”
The mural disappears behind him when he leans closer. With nowhere sensible to go, your eyes strain as you stare at the tip of his buttoned nose.
You exhale.
Faces are like artworks—features and shapes finding their own logic in unique ways, sharp contrasting soft, rough contrasting smooth. Fine brows arching atop the heavier contours beneath; the proud crest of a nose against gentle hollows spanning the cheeks; the way wrinkles and blemishes texture the skin like custom brushwork. The balance shifts person to person; everyone carries a complex ratio of complementary, contrasting, analogous that makes looking—being—worthwhile.
And with Tamsy—
“No! No, no, no. No. Nothing happened.” You avert your eyes and shrink away, cutting your bad habit of analysing faces before it runs any further, knowing full well it makes you look guiltier for having thought-crimes. Though, part of you wants to berate him for taking such low-hanging fruit by using that delicate voice of his. The fruit is on the floor, Tamsy. “Nothing happened.”
He crowds into your line of sight, brows following the curve of his eyes as they rise—one scantier than the other, on the side where fair skin melds into caramel tissue, serrated down from his hairline to his plump cheek. It crinkles as he smiles.
He’s absolute harmony.
Hard to look at without flustering. Harder to look away without stealing another glance. And even harder to have a conversation without a slick warmth making itself known in your underwear—shame be damned.
“I don’t suppose you’re hearing any of this.”
He gazes at you with all the patience in the world—if you weren’t dazed, you’d suggest he’s enjoying this—and when you offer nothing in return, he straightens and lifts you upright. The world tilts back to normal. It takes him prying your fingers from his coat for you to notice your white-knuckled grip, and he steps away, still close enough that the distance is indiscernible.
“You seem quite flustered. Whatever’s the matter?”
Rattled, you look away, back to him, then double-take a second time before stepping out of the dip, fingers finding the cloth of your shirt. “Nothing’s the matter, Tams,” you repeat, finding sudden interest in the grout between the tiles.
His woven sleeves sway into view, beige tassels flaring against the baggy slouch of his navy pants. Your gaze hop-scotches over the plaited textiles, up to the triangular edge of his dress shirt.
Even his clothing follows the same logic, you note with grudging appreciation.
Tamsy bends from the waist to angle his face up to yours. “You’ve been rather unusual.” He leans into the dark corner you turn to face. “I haven’t done anything to upset you, have I? My apologies if that’s the case.”
From the angle, his lower lip juts in the faint suggestion of a pout. Full and curved, the corners tip into a small frown, eyes fixed and seeming to grow wider as if searching for forgiveness.
Those eyes. The earnest quality in them is almost offensive.
As is the little thrill bubbling in your stomach.
You purse your lips flat and bristle away. “You haven’t.”
“Ah. That’s relieving.” He sighs, as though it was truly distressing him.
With the space between you already small, he closes in. You retreat and, in return, he advances once more, tassels casting out like a lazy barrier when you try for the dead end. You lean for the hallway and he drifts into the way; the clack of your heels count each inch surrendered while you shuffle back—while he matches them so slowly it feels like you’re attracting him near.
“Then surely,” he says, “there’s a reason you’re out of sorts.”
You’re one to talk, you wish to retort, knowing your voice would waver from the embarrassment heating your cheeks. He’s right, though, and it’s no thanks to your daydreams—or the fact they’re happening right now—that a coil of slick arousal builds beneath your navel.
“Uh, no?” you offer, nails digging into your palms. Your gaze darts to the corner of the hallway, the tiles, the mural behind—anywhere that isn’t him—avoiding everything that disrupts your thinly-veiled impression of calm.
But it’s exactly what you want. So, so badly. And he’s the perfect candidate to satiate your fantasies: the unidentified shape you’ve daydreamed into existence, none of his features captured in fear of painting your totally-coworkers-and-nothing-more relationship with after-dark thoughts.
From the way he persists, he’s probably figured something out. You chew your tongue and a metaphorical lightbulb flashes in your mind, far brighter than the one above. But he doesn’t know everything. It's enough for you to steel your nerves and brave his accusations.
You clear your throat and crease your brows into your best determined expression.
“All artists are weird, Tamsy,” you state, very pointedly and very professionally. “Freaks, even. A total, lawless, abnormal species, and that’s exactly where the creativity comes from—yeah! I mean, we’re all like this when we see something we like, right? Look at August—you don’t ask him if he’s being strange, you just”—you gesture vaguely and scrunch your nose—“accept it. So, it’s…” Your voice tapers into a pausing mumble when you see he remains unconvinced. “It’s just… embarrassing when someone catches you… appreciating?”
He stares at you—really stares—and you hold your breath as silence stretches far too thick.
“Freaks…” he repeats, nodding slowly. “Noted.”
Your shoulder blades slam against the wall, the back of your head reverberating with a firm thunk. You slide your palm flat against the surface, fingers searching the textured wall for some hidden eject button that could open an escape route.
Alas, there is none. You slink into the wall as far as it allows.
Twin tassels sway before you, the same cool tone as his neatly buttoned shirt, his tie hanging low between them—sharp-edged, with a sheen reminiscent of silk, and somehow the same shade as the hair wrapped in those tassels. It grazes your chest as he leans in, and you follow it up to his collar, where no choker wraps his half-burned neck. And just above, the metal ball of his piercing nestles below his curved mouth.
You’re doing it again.
You freeze. There’s no space to move without brushing against him. “Did you say something?”
Tamsy hums as if you interrupted his idle musings. “Something on your mind, perhaps?”
His voice tapers to a horrifyingly erotic octave, so unnecessarily sweet and husky that your thighs clench together. You shift your weight between both feet, hoping your cheeky attempt at soothing the burn goes unnoticed.
For a second, it looks like his eyes flick back to yours. You gulp down the dread bobbing in your throat as his face tips into shadow.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you say, as flat as you can despite the fizzy excitement lifting your mouth into a dopey grin. You’d have to bother Enjin for tips on the perfect blank stare. Later.
“Hm. I could have sworn otherwise.”
“Nup.” Your shoulders curve inwards under the weight of his golden eyes—Oh, why does he have to stare like that?—the intensity melting your smile away. “There are many things on my mind, Mister Caines,” you croak out.
Like whether his gaze would be different if he was annoyed, bearing down at you with disgust—how does his expression change when he’s flustered? Or the arousal boiling along the insides of your thighs, tingling with pathetic, inhibited need. Or the perverse part of you gloating while he stands there causing all of it.
Like a pervert…ed freak.
Tamsy’s laugh saturates the expanse of your mind. Elegant and refined, his words melt into the echo, leaving you to catch the faint whisper that he’s not quite old enough to be called Mister. His head tilts, and your focus narrows to the way his lips part into the same amused shape the laugh poured from. “That may be. But there’s only one on my mind capable of making such… suggestive pieces.”
You blink. Twice for good measure. Your jaw drops.
That was not one of them.
Anxiety knots tight in your throat. Pages and sheets scatter through your mind as you riffle through to find whatever he’s referencing before your silence grows more damning. The doodles on your paperwork were as nonsensical as the caricatures in your sketchbook. And there’s no way he’d sneak into your room to flip through your notebooks. So it must’ve been a page or two that slipped from your sketchbook during a rush. But which is the question that determines how you navigate this surprise interrogation.
“And there are many I know capable of having the artworks you’re implying I created,” you lie, as smooth as the grainy texture beneath your palm.
He cocks his head to the side, cooling your flushed skin with a wispy breath. “Are you certain it wasn’t you?”
You stare hard. Your lip gives a sharp quiver you stifle with a bite, sucking the skin below to suppress the nervous giggle bubbling in your chest. When he leans closer to your cheek, you force your eyes forward, focusing on nothing while a watery glaze seeps across your vision from the strain of not breaking.
Tamsy’s smile dips into a frown at your refusal to engage; he sighs, deflated, and leans away—and the bright spark of excitement fizzes out like carbonation from a glass ignored for too long, leaving only a stale weight thick enough to dampen your mood.
“What did it look like?” you interject before he can fully step away. “The art, I mean.”
His brows twitch up. Before you’ve finished taking a breath, he cages you in with a forearm propping against the plaster, his chest moving against yours as his face dips close—too fast for you to think, react, or accept what’s happening.
“If memory serves, something like this,” he says, then scrunches his mouth to one side. “No. I believe this is closer.”
A light pressure on your hip guides your pelvis forward at the same time he tilts in with his own. Your gasp chokes up your throat when that hand slides around to the small of your back, supporting you, keeping you pressed firm and close.
The dampness between your thighs is becoming a nuisance.
“There we are,” he coos. “Does this refresh your memory?”
Remember. Like it’s so easy to do while pinned flush by his sex, while your body trembles and your thighs clench, while your core melts to spread molten desire through your veins. Do you remember? As if you can think at all while he fulfils your sick fantasy and gazes down at you like you’re the one with the problem.
Your toes curl in your shoes and you suck harder on your gums. Maybe later, well past everyone’s bedtime and into a sketchbook meant only for your eyes, you’d sketch Tamsy hunched over, hands to his hips and with a pout disproportionately large, and title it: Do you remember?
Of fucking course not! Knowing the risk of your voice drooping like sodden paper, you squeak, “Nope.”
Tamsy sighs, seeming unaffected by the close proximity. His fingers trace the arch of your lower back in slow circles that tingle up your spine and draw your hips forward. You flinch against the solid heat of his cock as he caresses a deeper arch out of you, pressing your chest tighter to his.
“No? Surely this would’ve been enough to jog your memory.”
“Uh,” you drawl unintelligibly, until an idea sparks alive. You clear your throat and tilt just enough to meet his gaze with newfound resolve. “Well, an artist can’t work from just one rough sketch, Tamsy. Much less one so”—your eyes flick down, back up—“still.”
He hums thoughtfully. “You artists tend to pick up on things we might miss.”
Your clothes cling in the creases of your thighs, the cotton traitorously warm with slick.
It’s not ignorance that causes such inexperienced responses—you know full well how bodies respond to one another, and how effortlessly they do it. But Tamsy… He lulls you into compliance the way his hips render you pliable, clearing away your stubborn worries so your desires may assert themselves. And if his eyes are as keen as he implies yours to be—by no means a question—then he knows how you’ve always lingered, studying his form under the guise of an artist’s objective eye, tracking the frays of his uniform, the perfect split of his dual-toned hair, and his striking qualities embellishing his canvas.
Stunned is more appropriate for the way you palm the wall, teetering between creating a new dynamic with your muse and creative stagnation, keeping the canvas blank—overwhelmed by the chaos that will spill if you give in.
Choice is paralysing for this reason: infinite possibilities at your fingertips, with the burden to execute only one. So you close your eyes and feel within, allowing instinct to guide you until it finds the only path that matters: the one that leaves every phantom future behind.
“If you still believe I am the artist,” you say, clearer and more certain than anything else today, leaning into the buzz from your heart and feeling it tingle in your fingertips as they scrape against the plaster. “Then know I’d make it more dynamic. Like so.”
Your weight shifts from heel to toe as you grind forward, biting into your tongue to stifle the pleasure dragging along your core. His cock stirs and you angle again so the peak of your thighs strokes down into his bulge, brushing up so his ridge hitches against your slit. Liquid fervour spills across your nerves, tightening you up as you ease back, allowing space for him to receive your lesson.
His eyes narrow.
It’s only Tamsy, as you know—but knowing doesn’t stop dread creeping up your shoulders, from the uncertainty in his expression, contemplative and cold, and the sudden thought you’ve moved too fast, draining desire that once seemed undeniable. Knowing doesn’t stop it from leeching your verve, siphoning warmth and slick, and cracking your illusion like unsealed paint.
Yet, his fingers splay across your back before you finish shrinking away. He keeps you close, holds your pelvis to his as your eyes widen and your mouth falls into a shaky gape.
“Tamsy, I—”
“That is my name, yes,” he murmurs, purring yours like a signature gliding across paper. He responds with a caress of his own, stressing where shame pools as you absorb his movements. “Was there something you wished to say?”
You swallow. “Was there?”
The plump curve of his lip parts just enough you catch the faint sheen where his tongue must’ve passed. “If I’m following,” he says, voice sinking as he dips close to your face, “a dynamic pose implies movement, does it not?”
Every muscle draws taut. The uneven plaster scrapes your palm as your eyes flutter shut. Awkward at best, caught between pursuit and welcome, you wet your lips and taste a flicker of heat when his breath fans upon your mouth. But his lips never arrive.
Tamsy turns at the final moment and rests beside your head, his amused huff ghosting your cheek. You shudder and purse your lips flat, tilting your face down into his shoulder, refusing to look at him yet still savouring his balmy scent, memorising as though as though it’ll be your last.
“So,” he purrs into your ear, “something like this?”
He grinds properly, and you rise to your toes until he drags perfectly along your slit, unmistakably solid with need. Against his chest, your pulse skips and stammers while your fingers flex at your sides before furling into his coat and pulling him in.
“Something like this.”
The final sliver of space closes with soft exhales and shifting fabric as your body answers his in tentative returns. Friction seeps warm between your thighs, pulsing with the dissonance in your mind, while he breathes slow and steady into your neck. Every quiet swallow, every illicit rustle of your hips massaging together, echoes closer than it sounds, taunting your greed to pursue for more.
You roll your mound into his, working the angle so pressure spreads wide and deep, returning his rhythm in full; his length strains to push back, struggling as a defined contour demanding release from the cloth.
“If I didn’t know better…” Maybe you shouldn’t, but restraint frays to nothing as you crane to find him in the corner of your eye. “I’d think you’re doing this on purpose.”
He’s already gazing down on you, though he eases back just far enough to allow you to meet him without the strain. “I came to you,” he murmurs, “I want to see through your eyes.” His breath hitches, perhaps on a sigh, lowering his voice to a husk. “Teach me.”
His sincerity cinches around your heart, sending a rush of warmth to your head. The appreciation in his voice is so direct—so devoid of performance—it blurs the line between reason and rhyme, of why he’s sought you out in this forgotten hallway. It leaves you helpless, receiving his grinds as stiff as a dry brush.
His reason for seeking you out…
Tonight, may be as self-serving as your own.
“I’m… not a conventional teacher,” you start, selective in your words, measuring what you give away. “I believe art is best learned through… experience.”
You push off the wall and rest into him, chest against chest, hearts beating in tandem.
“Observe,” you whisper.
He hisses through his teeth, body surging forward to pin you firmly into the plaster. His palm cradles the back of your head, cushioning it from the uneven texture as it bites through your shirt. You hold his gaze, allowing him to watch as your pelvis drags sodden along his length, to hear your shaky breath, to feel the tremble in your thighs.
His nostrils flare. Satisfied, you move on.
“Interpret.”
You fist at his waist to pull him impossibly closer, forcing him to feel your heated insistence. Your heart flutters with it, belly following a second later.
“Then apply.”
Pleasure simmers through you as you grind deeper, filthier, with your sex, along his firm swell until your swollen nerves snag against layers of soaked cloth. Tamsy mirrors the movement with equal force, hips driving rough and deep on the descent, then drawing the motion long and painfully slow on the upstroke as though melting pleasure into molten fervour.
“Anything else,” he murmurs, fixated on your lips.
“Much more.” Your hand rises, gliding up his side to brace at the slope of his shoulder, fingers curling around his neck. From beneath heavy-lidded lashes, your expression softens into a disarming look, lips puckering as you pull him in. “K.I.S.S.”
Tamsy’s rhythm stutters, hips going ragged before he recovers. Your lips part, though no sound comes out—an exhale catches in your throat as you give him a coy smile, an act to distract you from the sultry hum between your thighs. But with no sign he’ll yield to your lure, you continue.
“Keep it simple,” you say, scanning between his eyes, his nose, his lips, and pausing momentarily, before whispering gently: “Stupid.”
His bulge twitches against you.
Did he enjoy that?
Thumbs press into the soft curve where your thigh meets your hip. He squeezes and rocks into you, hard and high, pushing you onto your tiptoes, guiding your body into a tall arch to feel him at every angle. A breathy huff leaves him, the quietest version of a laugh ghosting over your lips. “What comes next?” he muses, sounding too pleased with himself.
Your calves burn with the burden of balancing, the strain sparking into your thighs and seeping as a quiver. His hand slides around the back of your thigh, nesting the swell of your ass, moulding the soft flesh to hold you—to lift you into him. And you take it, with the girth he offers, rolling into his grinds and the rough fabric that drags resistance and traps heat where it builds, nerves singeing in the textiles.
Smouldering.
Pent-up arousal pulses in your belly, lathering your sex with sodden need. You pant heavy, work yourself along his length to fray your nerves, charged with friction, and he bucks into you, bulge compressing flush against your cunt and into his pelvis.
“Interpret,” you manage, more breath than word.
“I should… observe first,” he sighs, lip quirking, “then interpret. Unless I’ve misunderstood your teachings.”
A sharp, snare-like sound huffs from your nose. Insufferable. But promising—already showing a primary quality of an artist: retention. “I said I wasn’t a conventional teacher—”
“A hint.” He punctuates with a deep rock that your body curls into, his hand kneading to find better purchase against your ass. When you grumble, he softens his voice into a teasing drawl. “Please?”
Fragmented details of the mural blur in your peripheral, shapes bleeding into nothing until only the eye remains. “Negative space is a good technique…” You drag your foot up the slope of his leg, caressing his calf before trailing slowly back down. “But there can be… too much of it.”
Quick as ever, his hand curves along your thigh to hook behind your knee, hoisting you against his hip. You shift to find footing, but Tamsy holds most of it, easing your balance as he crowds you deeper into the wall. A supportive knee slides to wedge beneath the claimed leg, driving him directly into your heat to rub insistently through the clinging fabric.
You moan.
You buck into his cock, once to savour the contact, again in demand for more, until you're riding the heat coursing through you; his clothing does nothing to conceal his own desire—hot and heavy, dirtier in the friction that delights your core. Breasts flattened against his chest, he leaves no breathing room for your cunt, forcing you to suffocate in your own desire.
“May I suggest this?” he coos, kneading you into the wall, framing your leg tight against his own.
Suspended like a piece for his personal display, you abandon all effort to hold proper and surrender to every demand he moulds. You rest your face into the crook of his shoulder, arms lacing around his neck and heel digging into the back of his thigh, urging him tighter into you.
Words melt into breathy moans and sighs that muffle into his body, mirrored by the exhales warming your ear. With a hand securing your neck and fingers digging into your thigh, he leverages his grip to grind with more persistence—nudging where your entrance clenches, rubbing up to your bristling peak, firing sparks up your body and coiling the pressure tighter as his cock, hot and heavy with release, urges to tear through the textiles.
“Consistency,” you mumble, clawing at the thick layers of his coat, borrowing words from some vague memory diluted in your heated mind. “Learn best… through consistency.”
His answer blends into the echo of your moans; you push your chest into him as if it can satiate the ache of your unattended breasts, tilting your pelvis so he feels every inch of your slick need. “Here.”
He angles where your panties cling hottest, dragging his full length. “There?”
Your body clenches up, reacting as if he’ll finally stuff himself inside. Drool soaks into his clothes when your mouth falls open, saliva spilling over your lip. “Fuck, yeah,” you moan. “Again.”
His grip locks down and he drives into you, melting your muscles and re-forming them—molten when he plunges and taut when he draws. Your timing slips, rhythm staggering as you sway in his frame: too late to grind down when he rises and too early you glide over the rawest edge of friction. So you give in completely, and ride urgently to chase the heat that’s so good, so close, so not enough.
“Distracting,” he murmurs into your ear, voice straining with the effort to hold steady. “Are subjects meant to move, like so?”
Your ragged breaths wash over your cheeks. “You’re meant to look,” you gasp back, too far gone to play coy, “not touch.” A jolt of panic snaps cold in your core. “Don’t.”
He huffs. “And feeling texture?”
Awareness moves your body—digging your heel into his behind, dragging him deeper as you abandon his neck to tug his arm. You back away but he pursues you down, wedging so there's no budging from his firm limb, so you claw blindly, grabbing at his solid forearm to pull down.
“What do you insist I do?”
“Apply,” you growl.
The friction eases for a cruel second as he leans slightly, just enough to maintain his press against you. Then the rhythm stops, and with it, the heat, when Tamsy stills.
Even if negligible, the loss is unbearable to your voracious core, driving you to writhe into him, pursuing the lost momentum, refusing to let your orgasm slip further away. He throbs, too, in irritation at the wane and in pleasure as you grind your sex into him.
Until you feel him look away, forcing you to pry off his shoulder, saliva connecting like a thread. Angled towards the bright hallway, you follow his gaze.
A whistle echoes down the hall.
Teetering too close to the edge to give in, you deem it far enough.
“Quiet,” you hiss, goading him to concede with messy thrusts, urgency recovering what was lost. “Let me come.”
He turns back into you, attention and hips returning. “No more innuendos?”
You make a frustrated noise at him.
Hotter now, stoked by the imminent risk of discovery, you burrow into his chest to stifle yourself, breathing in his musk as you tremble into him. You grind up against him and as far as the angle allows, nerves reignited far too fast that your teeth clamp into the rough canvas of his coat.
Footsteps and whistles draw nearer, then douse out when you plunge into the suffocating heat between your thighs and exist only in the pressure Tamsy brings. He feeds off your panicked desperation, quickening twofold to stroke your clit over and over, fucking into you so pleasure bubbles and boils beneath your clothing with no means of smothering.
Your thighs melt, teeth clamping hard around the rough weave. The burn in your core fills you, expands you, drowns every nerve in a molten frenzy that trickles through your vessels, searing your senses from the inside out. Until everything spills over.
You jerk through the flood of euphoria, convulsing as you ride into him, cunt contracting around nothing while your clit pulses with unrelenting heat. Static buzzes through your veins until it rings in your ears, muffling the world into a deafening rush so violently fast you don’t notice Tamsy coming undone too—wetting the fabric between you, pulsing into your fluttering cunt as he stifles his ragged moans into your neck.
His hips prop you up while you buck fervently, still insistent and nudging against your sex. He shuffles sideways as you float in your post-orgasm bliss, deeper into the shadows and using his sleeve to cover your form. The sudden movements tip you into twitching overdrive; you quiver into him and jerk away, clinging helplessly to his form, all of it too much and not enough.
Tamsy continues grinding, slow and purposeful now, cock throbbing with the remnants of his release, milking it out until your sighs melt into his body, spent and wrung thin. As the footsteps encroach, he leans his weight into you, mimicking a stagger and stealing the last of your breath.
“Dizzy,” he calls out, convincingly slurred and hitched—thanks to you. “Had too much to drink. Don’t mind.”
“Didn’t think you’d be a lightweight, Tamsy. Shucks, sorry to hear that,” the stranger calls back, their voice too hazed and unfamiliar to place. “Anyway, the Boss wants to see”—you and Tamsy stiffen at the sound of your name—“Have ya seen her?”
Tamsy feigns a grumble, heart stammering once against your chest. “Depends on when. I’ll… I’ll pass it along,” he slurs with a nod of his head, then gives a final grind against your sex.
Only when the footsteps fade away do your breaths finally even out. The moment Tamsy steps back, you buckle, almost sliding down the wall like a messy paint drop before he steadies you by the waist. You swat him away with a half-assed flick, then lean into the plaster until the trembling settles into stability.
“Well. I’m sure you heard,” he says, the lingering breathlessness in his voice just noticeable, “It seems you’re wanted elsewhere.”
The cool draft from fanning your clothes provides immediate relief to your flushed skin; you exhale into it, staring intently at the tiles while you pat wrinkles creasing your sleeves. A wave of dizziness washes through you when you bend for your pants, so you shake them out with lazy kicks, too drained to bother with anything more thorough.
A trip to the washroom will be a necessary detour.
You clear your throat. “I did, so I’ll be off.”
He passes by you and you look forward, catching him loitering near the mouth of the main hallway, hands easy at his sides. “I look forward to more lessons,” he muses with a smile.
You scoff, though it comes out fonder than you intend, which you dubiously ignore—as with the thrill of sharing another lesson. A smile tugs at your lips as you move to follow, glancing back at the mural one last time.
The eye stares directly at the patch of wall where you’d been hiked up, its iris centred now amongst the outstretched beams. Your brow creases as you try to recall the original details of the image. But when Tamsy interrupts your recollection with a questioning hum, you shake your head and follow him into the light.
Weird. Was it always like that?