"Oh A-li-che," Fabian Prewett said with a heavy sigh into his vegan Welsh rarebit. "Would you be so kind as to offer some of your sagely advice?"
Alice looked up from her spaghetti marinara. When he felt the need to be exceptionally endearing Fabian always pronounced her name the Italian way.
"It's not some boy trouble again, is it?"
"Prescient as always, Alice."
"It's not prescience. I deduced it from the frequency of the occurrence."
Fabian sighed again and folded his hands on the table. "Do you believe in true love, Alice?"
"Do you even have to ask?"
"You're such a cynic sometimes, Alice."
"I am not a cynic. Cynicism is lazy thought and jumping to conclusions. I treat everything with a healthy dose of skepticism. I subject every claim to rigorous scrutiny and I decide based on the strength of the evidence. Love, for example, I believe in, but not the concept of true love as defined in the heteronormative, monogamous sense of a romantic relationship."
"Consider this, then, my dear friend."
"Yes?"
"I met a man," Fabian gushed. "Blessed with incredible physical beauty, the sight of whom causes extreme emotional turmoil within me. I think of him and I feel spiritually ravaged. It's like he's a soul-eating demon with the face of an angel, tearing my insides apart with despair and desire."
"Is this the main crux of the problem?"
"I'm getting there, Alice. Well. So yes, I met the perfect man, but I cannot tell what he thinks of me. He is so opaque, he just sits there and broods all the time in a deep, dark way. I wish I knew what he thought of me."
"This does not appear to be a particularly challenging obstacle."
"No, Alice no! I'm not done! The thing is, I thought he didn't care about me at all, because why would perfection seek to mingle with mere mortals but the other day he kissed me."
"Is that the only thing that's ever transpired between the two of you?"
"No! There was a fair bit of naughty business, but of the kind that means nothing, you know? But the kiss—he didn't just kiss me, Alice, he kissed me just after I had spewed my guts out right in front of him."
Alice made a sour face.
"Sorry, I forgot you were an emetophobe, but think about it—what kind of man kisses you on the mouth when there are still traces of vomit in it?"
Alice cringed. "I know you take that as a sign of true love, Fabian, but he could simply have a fetish for the stuff."
"That's awful! Anyway I don't think he's the sort."
"What makes you certain?"
Fabian scrunched his face in thought, scratching his chin.
"Were you drunk? Was he drunk?"
"That was the reason I threw up."
"Think of your liver, will you! It's not like you cannot hold your liquor so you must have seriously overdone it."
"I'm so sorry Alice, but it was New Year's Eve and also he drinks like a fish yet never gets drunk so all my self-restraint goes in trying to keep up."
"He's probably drunk too, just that he hides it well."
"Oh, I don't know, Alice. He's er, he's uh...from the Soviet Union."
"That sounds fishy all right, Fabian. You had better let me do a background check on him."
"Oh, I don't know his full name. I don't even know his real name. I just know him as Tony."
...
When lunch was over they returned to the office. They had some interrogation to do and Alice had invited some experts to help.
One of these experts turned out to be Bob, who was here to lend some insight into shapeshifting creatures. The serpent lady they caught that day insisted that she was not human but an animal, and Bob said that it was a western-centric viewpoint to hold that these were deluded humans who preferred their Animagus selves—in many cultures, he said, it was more common to think of animals turning into humans and not the other way round. It was therefore natural for a person to define themselves by what they saw as their primary form, and for this woman it was the snake.
The other expert Alice called down was the magical representative from the Indian embassy, however he seemed a little fearful of talking to the snake lady. Eventually, it seemed that though she claimed to be from Pune, she could barely understand a word of Marathi, Hindi, Gujarathi or English. Neither did she have any official travel documentation with her, so there was trouble in even making a case to send her back to her home country. Bob suggested that she might be a Parselmouth, but hardly any could be found these days and the ones the Indian consular had heard of had no means of long distance communication.
They decided that they would detain her in a low-security centre until they could locate a next-of-kin to take her home.
After the interview, Bob stopped by Fabian's table to ask him out to dinner, surreptitiously putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it affectionately when he thought no one was looking. It was at this point Fabian remembered that he was supposed to have spent New Year's Eve at Bob's place with his parents.
...
And so it was that Fabian found himself locked in Bob's arms after dinner, hot breath against hot skin, pushed up against a wall, gasping, moaning.
"I want you," Bob said. "Fuck, I've missed you even though it's been only a week. I want you on me, I want to fill you so deep, I want to make you come without even touching yourself." He nibbled on Fabian's earlobe and squeezed his right butt cheek and thrust his crotch against Fabian's crotch.
Fabian spread his legs apart, wider, and threw his head back against the wall, mouth gaping. Bob kissed him down the exposed flesh on the neck, and sucked at his clavicles. Bob was big, and strong, and he put his hands around Fabian's flat waist and lifted him from the wall and led him to the bed, where he laid Fabian down and pulled off the last of his clothes. Gripping his ankles he propped Fabian's legs up and sank his head beneath the knees towards the crotch, taking the burgeoning tumescence into his mouth.
Fabian groaned and jutted his hips upwards uncontrollably. "Easy, boy," Bob said, and after a while flipped him over to lick at the puckered arsehole, which clenched and loosened tantalisingly. Grabbing a tube of lube he squirted some all over his cock, which stood at a proud angle and curved upwards with stiffness. He leaned over to kiss Fabian on the back, pulling his legs apart even wider as he did.
"I love you, baby," he said as he thrust in at full length, slowly at first. Fabian grunted and buried his head in the pillow, begging to be fucked harder and harder.
In truth all that occupied Fabian's mind was Tony. He wanted, he desperately wished that the cock slipping and sliding in and out of his arsehole belonged to Tony, Tony who gripped his hips so tight it could bruise and Tony who banged him like a drill, who kissed him open-mouthed and bit him like he was hungry, who fucked him like he meant to hurt him but couldn't bring himself to just at the cusp.
Fabian moaned incoherently into the pillow, his heart beginning to ache. He felt sorry because he wanted to be a good boy for Bob and Bob was sweet and always said he loved him and they'd been going out for several months now but it seemed like the age old problem of the grass being greener elsewhere and this was why Fabian knew he was imperfect and sometimes bad, and he wanted to be treated like a naughty boy who had done something horridly wrong, because he did all these wrong things all the time.
At some point he realised that Bob had been trying to flip him back on his back, so he obliged, but at the same time burned with so much guilt he couldn't look Bob in the eye.
"Are you okay, baby?" Bob asked with genuine concern, slowing down.
"Yes, I'm fine," Fabian lied, and turned his head to bury his face in the crook of Bob's neck, trying to avoid a reassuring kiss. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Tony, Tony's milk white skin and lean muscularity and surprising strength.
"I love you, I love you baby," Bob gasped, the way he often did when he was close to coming. "I love you I love you I love you."
Bob was going really quickly now, panting breathlessly. Fabian wound down on his cock, keeping them close, and gently squeezed Bob's balls.
"Oh baby, oh baby," Bob gasped, and Fabian closed his eyes and fucked himself harder on Bob's cock, thinking of the way Tony came on him, fast and wild and uncontrolled, messy and sticky and warm.
Bob wrapped a hand around his cock and began pumping vigorously, whispering to him and kissing him, as he neared climax. Eyes still closed, Fabian moaned and bit his lip, arching his back, still thinking of Tony, Tony's fastidiousness and Tony's hair that was lightly scented with apricots from his shampoo and Tony's hairy legs but sparse chest and the way Tony kissed him and the way Tony laughed at him and he would do anything to have Tony laugh at him forever, be the biggest fool in the world for him, if that was the only way he could hear him laugh. With a loud groan he felt Bob come into him, and at the same time began to crest on his orgasm and spurted into Bob's pumping fist.
"Oh baby, I love you so much, baby," Bob whispered, settling into the post-coital sweetness. "That was so good, baby, so good."
"Yeah," Fabian lied again. He felt Bob's arms curl around him, and he turned to look at Bob in the eye. Bob's face was shining with happiness and he kissed Bob tenderly.
What was the price for forgiveness? he wondered.