Chapter Nine #2
He lifted his shirt over his head and winced slightly from the sudden temperature change. Once the shirt was off, he set it down neatly on the nearby table–knowing it would make him less anxious than if it were sprawled across Issaky’s polished floors–and then laid back awkwardly.
Issaky’s eyes drifted to the shirt, and he smiled softly before leaning down and leaving a kiss on Ellis's collarbone. Ellis inhaled sharply, but Issaky ignored it and continued down his chest. Once Issaky reached Ellis's nipple, he gave it a gentle lick, and Ellis tensed.
“Is this okay?” Issaky asked, looking up at him through his lashes.
“Y-yeah. Yes. Just keep going,” Ellis said quickly, throwing his head back onto the armrest.
Issaky listened and went back to licking at Ellis's nipple.
It felt good. Too good. Every nerve in Ellis's body was hot, his skin crawled with goosebumps, and his heart pounded fiercely in his chest. Just as Ellis was about to tell him to stop, Issaky gave it one last kiss before trailing down his ribs to his navel.
“You know, for being twenty-five, you really don’t have much body hair,” Issaky teased, releasing a breath onto Ellis's stomach that made his muscles seize.
To Ellis's surprise, he didn't absolutely hate this kind of teasing. However, Ellis shot his head up and scowled. “I’m twenty-six.”
“What you are is too clothed,” Issaky grinned up at him before sitting back on his knees and placing his hands at Ellis's waistband. “Don’t worry. I can fix that.”
Ellis was about to tell him off for being so arrogant when Issaky yanked his jeans down with his boxers, freeing him.
Ellis had never been embarrassed by his size or the way he looked. But sitting under Issaky’s watchful gaze made him want to hide and flaunt himself all at once. It was very confusing.
Issaky leaned down close to Ellis's face so he was hovering over him once again. One of Issaky’s blue dreads hung between their faces.
“If you want me to slow down, pat my arm twice,” he said in the most serious tone he’d had all night.
Ellis nodded, and Issaky continued. “If you want me to stop, just say stop and I will. Immediately.”
They stared at each other for only a moment before Issaky frowned, “Sorry, El. I need verbal confirmation.”
“Y-yeah. Okay.” Ellis spouted out.
“Good boy.” Issaky’s smile returned and he slowly scooted down to Ellis's waist.
The pet name made Ellis loosen up a little. He may have even…liked it. What the fuck was happening to him? He tried to stay present, to catalog every touch and moment they were sharing, but his brain was working overtime.
Then Issaky’s hand gripped his dick in a soft but sweetly firm way, and all of Ellis's attention zeroed in on him. Issaky had taken his shirt off at some point, and Ellis watched as Issaky’s arm muscles contracted and moved above him as he began to work him.
“Jesus,” Ellis breathed, tipping his head back and enjoying the light tug of Issaky’s dry skin on his.
“Nope, still Issaky,” he smirked.
Why was he joking right now? This didn’t feel like a joking matter. He thought about yelling at him, but before he could open his mouth, he felt Issaky’s warm tongue circle the tip of him, wetting it for the first time in what felt like ages.
Ellis's hands flew to Issaky’s head, unable to stop himself as the man swallowed him deeper into his throat. Issaky moaned around him before swallowing even deeper.
Time lost its edges. Ellis felt seen without being examined. Desired without being consumed. He stayed present in his body, which was rare enough to feel like its own small miracle. Issaky moved up and down like he was on a mission to ruin Ellis. Completely.
Issaky came up for air, reminding Ellis exactly what was happening and he felt his cheeks turn pink.
“How are you doing?” Issaky asked through panted breaths.
Ellis closed his eyes and tried to catalog his body and how it felt. He felt good. So good. He was panting slightly himself, letting out tiny breathy noises.
His lips were slightly swollen and pink with spit in the corners. He looked unruly and so far from Ellis's usually clean business man.
“I-it’s good. Really good. Please don't stop.” Ellis felt embarrassed asking for the man to continue.
Issaky gave him a wicked grin before taking Ellis's dick back into his mouth and sucking harder than before.
Ellis hissed, arching his back off the armrest and threading his hand back into Issaky’s locs. The other man groaned around Ellis's dick and it made his lower stomach tighten.
“Fuck, do that again.” Ellis demanded, unfamiliar with his own voice.
Isaky responded with another groan and Ellis felt himself come undone, shooting cum directly down Issaky’s throat.
“Shit, fuck I’m sorry. I should've warn-”
Issaky interrupted Ellis's rant with a hot, wet kiss. He didn't know if he liked it or not–being interrupted–but it did make the tension in his shoulders lessen.
Issaky pulled back with a drunk expression on his face, “If I didn't want to taste you, I’d have pulled away.”
That was it. Ellis knew he was bright red.
“Now, let’s finish this movie and cuddle.” Issaky pulled Ellis's pants up, leaving his buckle undone before lifting Ellis's legs and sitting down, placing them gently in his own lap.
Ellis just looked at him, shocked and still slightly horrified.
Issaky must have noticed because he said, “Can I help you, pretty boy?”
Ellis didn't know if he could handle one more pet name, so he decided to ignore it.
“Do you, uh–do you want me to…” Ellis didn't know why he was having such a hard time talking, but it was really starting to irritate him.
“I’m okay. I’m pretty satisfied just from tasting you.” Issaky grinned and the bastard looked way too happy, “Besides, I don't want to overwhelm you. We can go slow.”
Ellis felt a wave of relief wash over him. He didn't even know he was anxious and overwhelmed. How did Issaky catch that?
“Okay.” Ellis smiled softly.
By the end of the hour, they both lay tangled together on the couch.
Ellis's head resting over Issaky’s heartbeat as the man played with Ellis's hair.
It felt intimate, almost more so than what they had just done.
Ellis's heart gradually slowed from its frantic tempo to something steadier. Something sustainable.
He stared at the tv that now played some late night sitcom.
Ellis wasn't paying it any attention. Instead he counted the buttons on the bottom of the flatscreen, followed the cracks in the wood flooring, and memorized all of the knobs on the tv stand, cataloging his sensations the way he always did when things felt big.
Issaky traced a slow, absent line along Ellis's arm.
“Can I ask you something?” Issaky asked quietly, just barely audible over the show.
The question tightened something in Ellis's chest, but not enough to make him pull away. He nodded.
“Have you… been with a man before?” Issaky asked.
Ellis didn’t answer immediately. Not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he needed to decide how much truth he could set down between them without it tipping over.
“Yes,” Ellis said finally. “In high school.”
Issaky didn’t react right away. No surprise. No judgment. Just a thoughtful hum of acknowledgment.
“Okay,” Issaky said.
That was it. No follow-up questions. No demand for details. The simplicity of his response loosened something in Ellis he hadn’t realized was clenched.
Ellis turned his head toward him. Issaky was watching him, not with curiosity but with care.
“It wasn’t… like this,” Ellis added, because the silence invited honesty rather than requiring it.
Issaky nodded again. Willing to let the conversation end there.
They lay there, the quiet settling around them like a held breath finally released.
Ellis didn’t call it love. But he let himself think, for the first time, that this—whatever it was—might be something he could keep.
It wasn’t the brittle kind of silence he rushed to fill, or the heavy kind that pressed against his ears until he couldn’t tell where his thoughts ended and the room began. This quiet was shaped. Contained. It settled around them without demanding interpretation.
Issaky’s hand stayed where it was, resting along Ellis's arm like it had found a place it intended to stay. Ellis focused on that—on the certainty of contact, on the way his body still hummed with residual warmth, not overstimulation but something steadier, more integrated.
He waited for the aftershock but it never came.
Usually, after closeness—after any moment where his defenses dipped—Ellis experienced a recoil.
A delayed tightening. His brain would start sorting through what had happened, assigning risk where it could, replaying moments to search for missteps.
He’d brace for regret before it arrived.
But lying there with Issaky, Ellis didn’t feel the urge to retreat inward. He didn’t feel the need to catalog what he’d done wrong or anticipate how he’d be punished for enjoying it.
He breathed, and that alone felt like data worth noting.
The show ended unnoticed, the television cast shifting light across the ceiling, blues and whites flickering like slow-moving water. Ellis recognized the pattern without engaging it, the way he sometimes did when his senses felt balanced instead of overloaded.
Issaky shifted slightly, enough to resettle but not enough to disengage. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t tighten his hold either. He simply adjusted, as if assuming—correctly—that this position was allowed to evolve without dissolving.
Ellis thought, briefly, about how many people mistook closeness for momentum. They assumed that once something physical happened, it demanded escalation. That it came with expectations, timelines, declarations. That intimacy was a ladder instead of a room you could sit inside as long as you wanted.
Issaky treated it like a room.
After a while—long enough that the moment felt complete rather than suspended—Issaky spoke again.