A Two-Man Job

Chapter 1: Landslide

My Queen-sized bed was not engineered for this.

It was a sleek, low-profile platform frame—a discontinued prototype that I’d quietly diverted from a staging warehouse. It was designed for clean lines, minimalist aesthetics, and the occasional, efficient encounter with a guy of my own compact build.

It was absolutely not designed to withstand the rhythmic, pile-driving force of a two-hundred-and-seventy-pound Sales Manager.

The headboard slammed against the drywall with a drive that made the framed architectural prints above it jump. Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Dan," I gasped, my hands scrabbling on the sheets. "The neighbors..."

"Let 'em hear," Dan growled.

My usual sex life wasn't polite, but there was a geometry to it. It was two gym-sculpted guys knowing exactly where to put themselves to maximize leverage and pleasure.

This wasn't geometry. This was a landslide.

"Down," Dan grunted, his heavy hand landing on the back of my neck.

I was on my knees, trying to find a rhythm, trying to push back against his hips to meet him halfway. But Dan didn't need a partner; he needed a landing pad. He just let gravity do the work—leaning his full weight forward, his chest and belly hitting my back like a wet sandbag.

I collapsed, my face smashing into the pillow, the air rushing out of my lungs.

"Yeah," he growled. The vibration rumbled directly into my spine. "Like that."

He blanketed me completely. I was five-seven and compact; he was six-three and broad as a barn door. I was engulfed, with no leverage—couldn't push up, couldn't twist. I was pinned to the mattress by a solid wall of heat and hair and muscle.

His heavy arms bracketed my head and he drove into me with a punishing pace, his hips snapping forward with all his weight. His breathing came hot against my ear—Hnghhh. Hnghhh. Hnghhh.

It was the middle-aged hetero playbook: get on top, fuck hard, fuck deep, and don't stop until you're done.

And god help me, it was getting me off. Again.

"Right there, right there, right there," I begged, unable to do anything but take it.

His pace accelerated, the headboard thudding hard enough to crack the plaster. Lights flashed behind my eyelids. I could hear him getting lost in it, his rhythm breaking into something frantic—HNGHHHHNGHHHHNGHHH!

His body seized up—”FUCK!”—and his weight became somehow even heavier as he poured himself into me.

I was trapped beneath him, feeling the pulse of him deep inside. The friction of the sheets, combined with the sheer, crushing weight of him, had me on the edge, but I wasn’t finished.

"Dan," I choked out into the pillow.

I couldn't raise my hips—he had them locked down—so I squeezed my arm in between us, reaching down blindly. My fist closed around my own cock, slick with precum and compressed against the mattress.

"I'm close," I gasped.

Dan shifted his weight just enough to give my hand room to work, then reached under me, his strong fingers gripping my hip to grind my ass back against him.

Even softening, he was so big, so deep, that the motion pressed into every nerve ending I had.

I worked my hand in a frantic, short-stroke rhythm, chasing the friction.

"Come on," Dan breathed heavily against my ear, his mustache scrubbing my skin. He ground his hips forward in a deliberate, coaching rhythm to push me over the edge. "Finish, Rami. Get it."

Thrust. Thrust. Thrust. 

I came hard, jerking into a mess on the fitted sheet. My body shuddered under the mountain of him.

When it was done, Dan was a dead weight on top of me. His heart hammered against my back like a trapped animal. When he finally softened to the point of no return, he slid out of me, leaving a quivering ache.

We lay there in the dark of my Seattle bedroom—five-hundred-square-feet of curated silence on Capitol Hill. The room was musky with the smell of sex, sweat, and Dan’s Old Spice. Underneath that, there were traces of garlic and chili paste from our dinner.

"Jesus," Dan wheezed, finally rolling off of me, onto his back. His belly rose. He thumbed the sweat from his thick eyelashes. "Rami."

"Yeah," I breathed, rolling up to rest on my side.

Dan nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck, his heavy arm draping across my chest like a seatbelt, pinning me in place. The gold chain he wore—that tacky relic from 1998—was cool against my overheated skin.

He reached down blindly with one hand, grasping for the top sheet that we’d kicked to the bottom of the bed. He hooked it with his foot, hauling it up. He snapped it over us like a parachute.

The fabric settled, sealing us in a hot, sweaty bubble.

That was when my stomach dropped. It wasn't a reflex. Or not just a reflex.

I tried to lift his arm, to roll out of bed.

"Stay," he murmured against my shoulder, his voice drowsy.

"Dan," I wheezed, squirming under him, the gurgle rising in my gut. "I need to get up."

"No you don't," he mumbled, tightening his grip, his heavy leg hooking over my thighs to trap me. "Just sleep."

"No," I insisted, pushing against his forearm. "I actually need to. Bathroom. Now."

He paused, lifting his head slightly, blinking in the dark. "Bathroom? Just hold it."

"It doesn't work like that," I snapped, the biological reality of being his bottom increasing in urgency. "I can't just 'hold it.' I need to go. Move."

To Dan, sex was a deposit; he didn't have to think about the cleanup. He was a tourist in this geography.

He grumbled, rolling his weight to the side, freeing me. The mattress groaned in relief. "Fine. Hurry back."

I scrambled out of bed, naked and shivering in the sudden cool air. I grabbed my phone from the top of the dresser and walked into the bathroom. I shut the door, turned on the fan to drown out the inevitable sounds. I sat down on the toilet, my insides feeling sore and rearranged.

I opened my phone.

My insides belched, protesting the intrusion they’d just survived. I sat there, brow furrowed, dealing with the aftermath of that king-sized cock while my thumb hovered over the New York Times crossword app.

I stared at the empty grid, thumbing at a five-letter word for "relief."

There was a first leak and then a gush. Lube and the load Dan had pumped into me. A faint, cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

When things settled, I wiped my brow with my wrist, took a shaky breath, and swiped the app closed.

I stood up, flushed, and washed my hands. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess. There was a red friction burn on my neck from his stubble. I looked like a wreck. A satisfied wreck.

I walked back into the bedroom.

Dan had already rolled into the center of the Queen mattress, taking up seventy percent of the real estate. His chest was rising and falling with his breathing, his softening, sticky cock lolling against his thigh. His lips were open, softly wheezing.

Dan. The ex-brother-in-law I’d spent seven years loathing, the last week falling for, and the last fifteen minutes getting royally railed by.

I peered out into the living room. 

On the Eames lounge chair—a piece of furniture I treated with more respect than some of my relatives—Dan’s navy chinos were inside out, one leg trailing on the floor. His white button-down shirt hung over the headrest. His leather boots were kicked haphazardly onto the vintage Moroccan rug that on the open market would have cost more than my truck.

And on my mid-century coffee table, sitting on the raw walnut without coasters, were half-finished cartons of Pad See Ew and Panang Curry.

It was a vignette of chaos.

My every impulse was to clean it up. To move the boots, fold the pants, put away the cartons, and wipe down the coffee table.

But my insides felt like jelly, and the bed looked warm.

I turned back. I crawled in, finding the sliver of mattress Dan had left for me. I pulled the sheet up, leaving the mess for the daylight.

I had staged my life to be perfect, clean, and empty. And now, there was a bear in my bed who thought cleanup meant pulling up the covers.

---

Chapter 2: Displacement

I didn't wake up to an alarm. I woke up to a negotiation.

"Linda! Don't give me that 'wait and see' crap. What’s the number?"

The voice boomed, bouncing off the exposed brick wall and the hardwood floors of the hallway. It wasn't the low, throaty rumble of the night before; it was the Sales Manager voice—projected enough to reach the back of the lot, or in this case, the entirety of my 500-square-foot apartment.

I groaned, rolling over to check the time. 8:15 AM.

My internal clock was a wreck. I had a system: 6:00 AM lift, protein shake at 7:30, shower, and then espresso. On a normal Sunday, I’d be finishing up my reading and prepping to meet the guys for brunch.

Today, I was staring at a dented pillow and listening to a real estate transaction happening in my living room.

I dragged myself out of bed, pulling up my discarded boxers from the night before. My body felt used—not from Equinox, but from a very different kind of resistance training.

I walked out.

Dan was pacing the length of my living room, which took him exactly four steps. He was holding his phone to his ear with his shoulder, gesturing wildly with both hands.

And he was completely naked.

"No, no, listen to me," he shouted, spinning around near the window. "If they want the appliances, they pay for the appliances. The fridge isn’t staying unless they add a grand."

As he talked, he stopped in front of my teak bookcase. His eyes raked over the perfectly spaced mid-century ceramics and art books. His thick fingers nudged a hand-turned bowl aside as if checking behind it. He picked the bowl up and absentmindedly set it down at least six inches off-center.

"Uh-huh," he said, brow furrowed, nodding, but looking at me.

My first impulse was to walk over and return the piece to its mark. It was a reflex. Chaos made me itch.

But I couldn't look away from him.

The morning light from the east window caught the gold chain necklace and the dusting of soft, golden-brown hair on his shoulders and back. It shimmered like a pelt.

He turned, pivoting on a heel, and the structural impossibility of him hit me all over again.

I was used to gym-built guys—men with V-tapers carved out by caloric deficits and oblique crunches. Men who looked like diagrams.

Dan wasn't a diagram. 

He had a rounded gut. But it didn’t sag. It was a firm, dense weight that somehow tapered into athletic hips that looked improbably slim beneath the mass of him.

And beneath that, heavy balls and a thick, swaying cock that slapped against his thighs as he paced.

It wouldn’t make sense on paper. But in motion, standing in my living room with the sun hitting him? It was hypnotic.

"A bidding war," he said into the phone, a grin breaking out beneath his mustache as he caught my eye. "I knew it. I told Rami. The staging did it."

He reached out and picked up a coaster, flipping it over in his big hand like a poker chip.

I watched the muscles in his forearms flex, covered in that same downy brown hair.

He looked at me standing in the hallway. He grinned and winked.

"Hold on, Linda," he said. He pulled the phone away from his ear. "Rami! We got three offers. One is cash. We’re at nine-seventy-five and climbing."

"That’s great," I said, my voice sounding a little thin. My eyes traveled involuntarily down the centerline of hair on his stomach to the heavy reality swinging between his legs.

"Linda says the open house was a zoo!" he laughed. "The lemons worked, buddy."

He turned back to the phone, his voice dropping into that shark-like, closing tone. "Yeah, Linda. Don't take the cash yet. Tell the financing offer that the cash offer is higher. Make 'em sweat. Let's bleed 'em."

He hung up and tossed the phone onto my vintage Petrie sofa, ignoring the coffee table still cluttered with last night’s unfinished dinner cartons.

"Boom," he said, clapping his hands together. "House is practically sold."

"That’s great," I said. I nodded to the bookshelf. "You moved the bowl."

He turned to look at the bookshelf. A frown flashed across his face again, but he shook it off.

"Detail guy," he chuckled. He walked over—still gloriously, casually nude—and grabbed me by the waist.

He smelled like sleep and sex and himself.

"I missed my gym session," I muttered, trying to ignore the friction of his hairy chest against my bare pecs.

"Who cares,” he said, looking down at me with his gold-flecked brown eyes.

He leaned in, planting a wet kiss on my mouth. He tasted like morning breath and I wanted it to never stop.

"I have to go in," he whispered against my lips. "Sunday’s the second biggest day on the lot."

He let go of me and ambled back to the living room. Through the open door, I could see him grab his navy chinos from the heap on the chair. He stepped into them, hopping on one foot as he pulled them up.

He zippered. I realized with a jolt of horror—and arousal—that he wasn't wearing underwear.

"Dan," I said, watching him shove his arms into the sleeves of his wrinkled white shirt, covering the gold chain. "You can't go to work in that."

"I have an extra at the showroom." He buttoned it up, the fabric pulling tight across his chest, the wrinkles distinct and unapologetic. "Backup in case of spills."

He looked me up and down, a smirk playing on his lips that suggested that heavy cock was feeling the friction against his chinos. "I’d say this qualified."

My morning wood bounced against the fabric of my boxers.

He sat down on the edge of the sofa to pull on his socks, and then his boots, grunting as he laced them up.

He stood up, fully dressed in yesterday’s wreckage. He looked disheveled, rough, and entirely too pleased with himself.

"I gotta run," he said, checking his massive watch. He lifted an arm, taking a whiff at his pit. He breathed into his palm and inhaled. "Wooo! I'll grab a shower at my gym near the dealership."

He walked to the door, then stopped. He turned back, looking at me in my boxers, standing in the middle of my disrupted sanctuary.

"Hey," he said. "Sorry about the mess. I was... distracted."

"The shirt, Dan," I said, shaking my head. "It's bad."

"I know, I know," he said, opening the door. "I'll stop by my parents' place after work. I'll bring a change of clothes tonight so I don't look like a bum in the morning."

Tonight.

He didn't ask. He just announced it.

He stepped out, pulling the door shut with a decisive thud.

I stood there in the silence. My bowl was misplaced. My coaster was askew. The air smelled of him.

I looked at the empty spot on the rug where his boots had been.

"Tonight," I whispered. "Okay."

I walked over to the bowl to reposition it.

I should have been annoyed. I should have been planning my exit strategy. I should have been opening the windows to air out the musk.

Instead, I found myself picturing that taper again—the way that thick, solid waist narrowed into those hips—and wondering how a space I’d kept so empty suddenly felt so full.

---

Chapter 3: The Sunday Summit

Sunday nights were for the family.

It was a standing appointment: 7 PM sharp. A three-way FaceTime call with my mother in her two-bedroom in Mountlake Terrace and my sister, Nadia, in her beige, child-proofed condo in Bellevue.

Usually, I looked forward to it. I’d take the call from my Eames lounge chair, a glass of Pinot Noir in hand—a chance to catch up on the gossip and coo over my nephew, from the peace of my curated apartment.

Tonight, however, I was running a containment operation.

"You have to move." I kicked the toe of my slipper against the leg of the Petrie sofa.

Dan was sprawled across all three cushions directly in front of me. He was wearing a pair of heather-grey sweatpants filled out by his thighs and his junk, and a henley that was snug over his shoulders. He had a bowl of popcorn balanced on his chest—his solid gut providing a natural shelf. He was scrolling through highlights of the Mariners game on his phone.

"Move where?" he asked, gesturing around at the tiny apartment. "And I'm not in the shot. You’re facing me. The camera’s pointing at you."

"It’s not the video," I said, pointing at the popcorn bowl. "It’s the audio. You eat like a woodchipper."

He tossed a handful of kernels into his mouth. CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

"See?" I snapped. "The microphone on this thing picks up ambient noise. And you’re not ambient. You’re a percussion section."

"I'll chew soft," he grunted.

"You don't know how to do anything soft," I said. "And you’re… breathing. Nadia has ears like a bat."

"So where am I supposed to go?"

"The bedroom. Or the kitchen," I said, holding up my hands in surrender.

He rolled his eyes, a gesture that involved his entire upper body, but he heaved himself up. The displacement of air as he rose felt like a small wind event in the living room.

"Fine," he grumbled, grabbing his beer. "But you owe me."

He lumbered into the galley kitchen, leaning against the far counter, just out of my direct eyeline but well within earshot.

I sat down in the Eames chair, balanced my MacBook on my knees, smoothed my vintage t-shirt, took a calming sip of wine, and hit "Accept."

My mother’s face filled the top half of the screen. She was filming entirely too close, giving me a high-definition view of her forehead. The beige vertical blinds of her living room—the ones I’d been trying to get her to replace for three years—were visible behind her. "Habibi!"

"Hi, Mom," I said, putting on my best "everything is normal" smile.

"Rami," Nadia’s voice cut in. Her feed popped up on the bottom. She was sitting on her comfortable sofa, curled up like a cat. "You look... flushed. Is it hot there?"

"Just... the radiator," I lied. "Old building. Summer pipes."

"So," Nadia said, leaning back. "Big weekend. I can't believe the numbers coming in on the house. Dan is actually going to pull it off."

"It's a war out there," I said, keeping my eyes locked on the camera lens and not on the shadow moving in my kitchen. "He's got them fighting for it."

"He's a shark," she said, shaking her head. There was a mix of annoyance and grudging respect in her voice. "I talked to him this afternoon. He was positively gleeful about playing these buyers against each other. But he said it’s all because of you."

"Me?" I asked, my grip tightening on the wine glass.

"The staging,'" Nadia said. "He said, 'Rami made the place look like a dream.' Which is weird, coming from him."

"Why is that weird?"

"Because you hate him," she said bluntly. "For the last seven years, you've acted like he was a contagion."

"Hate is a strong word," I deflected, taking a large sip of wine. "We found a... working relationship. For the staging."

"Well, whatever it is, it worked," Nadia said. "I talked to him today about Leo’s schedule, and he wasn't doing that dour, brooding thing he does. He actually laughed. He sounded... relieved."

In the kitchen, the "brooding" ex-husband was opening cabinets.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him pull open the upper door where I kept my matte-white CB2 stoneware. He was just peering into the shadows of the top shelf, pushing a stack of bowls aside as if he expected to find something hidden behind them.

I gestured at him—What are you looking for?

He nodded—Nothing—and shut the cabinet with a sharp click. He turned around, leaning back against the refrigerator to watch me.

It had to be weird for him—listening to his ex-wife and former mother-in-law dissect his emotional state while he hid in a galley kitchen ten feet away. But he didn't look uncomfortable.

He looked entertained.

"Well," my mom chimed in. "Maybe he finally met someone. It’s been almost a year since the divorce finalized. He needs a companion. Men shouldn't be alone."

“Mom—” I began. But I knew she didn’t mean me—she meant straight men.

"I hope he has," Nadia said, and she sounded genuine. "Honestly. He needs a distraction. He needs to get laid."

I choked on my wine. "Nadia."

"What?" she laughed. "It’s true. He’s been a monk. If some Bellevue bimbo wants to take on that project, I say God bless her."

I risked a glance at the kitchen.

Dan wasn't laughing. He was staring right at me.

He took a slow sip of his beer, his gaze dropping to my lap, then back up to my eyes. Then, deliberately, he set the beer down on the counter and hooked his thumbs under the hem of his henley.

He lifted it slowly.

Not all the way up—just enough to expose the lower curve of his belly—that solid ledge of pale skin—faint silvery stripes marking where his body had accommodated his gain and then loss of weight—and the dark trail of hair that disappeared into the waistband of his grey sweatpants.

And below that, the fabric was tented—fighting the thick, stiffening ridge of cock rising under the soft cotton.

Dan was standing there, listening to his ex-wife call him a monk, and he was barely rock hard.

"Rami?" Nadia asked. "What are you doing there?"

"No," I squeaked. "It’s nothing."

Dan grinned under his mustache. He let the shirt drop, but the damage was done. My own sweats constrained my own erection, making me shift uncomfortably under the laptop.

"So," Mom said, oblivious. "Fourth of July. Are you coming or not? You never decide!"

"I... I don't know," I stammered.

Dan took another step. He was right at the edge of the frame now. If I tilted the laptop screen an inch to the left, they would see the very visible outline of a fat erection backed by two-hundred-and-seventy-pounds of intent.

He mouthed the words: Hang. Up.

"I... I really have to go," I said, my voice jumping. "The cat is... knocking things over."

"Rami, when did you get a—"

"Bye! Love you!"

I jabbed the red button. The screen went black.

I snapped the laptop shut and dropped it onto the Eames chair as I stood up.

"You," I breathed, turning on him. "Are a menace."

"And you," Dan said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble, "are a terrible liar."

The air in the room seemed to contract.

"Nadia thinks you need a 'bimbo,'" I said, trying to maintain some ground. "She thinks you're a monk."

"Nadia doesn't know what the hell she's talking about," Dan growled.

He reached out. His large hands gripped my waist under the thin cotton of my vintage t-shirt.

"Three-hundred-percent," he murmured, leaning down to nuzzle the sensitive spot behind my ear.

"What?" I gasped, my hands on his broad shoulders.

"I’ve had three-hundred-percent more sex in the last forty-eight hours than I’ve had in the last year," he whispered, his mustache scratching my skin. "I'm making up for lost time."

He ground his hips forward, his erection pressing against me.

"And Sunday night," he said, biting lightly at my neck, "is just getting started."

He didn't ask—he just acted. He dropped his hips slightly, hooked his thick forearms directly under my hips, and hoisted me upward and forward in one fluid, powerful motion.

It wasn't romantic—it was a forklift maneuver.

I gasped, my feet leaving the floor as he effortlessly flipped me. My torso tipped forward over his forearms. I was inverted, hanging down, the blood rushing to my head while my ass was hoisted perfectly into his airspace.

"Dan, what are you doing?" I choked out, laughing as I dangled against him like a suspended wheelbarrow.

He didn't answer, just hitched me higher with a grunt. My hundred-and-sixty pounds felt like absolutely nothing against his bulk.

He carried me toward the bedroom like that—my head barely clearing the doorway. 

He dumped me face-down onto the Queen mattress. Before I could even scramble to my elbows, he grabbed my sweatpants at the rear and yanked them down to my knees in one jerking motion.

"Four-hundred-percent," he whispered, his low voice vibrating directly against my exposed skin.

He buried his face in my ass.

His broad, wet tongue pushing deep, getting right into the tightest part of me. He groaned against my skin, his mustache scraping. It was overwhelming.

And even though it had only been a few days, I knew exactly what this was: Dan’s prep work he followed like a playbook. Step 1: Oral. Step 2: Insertion.

Dan was treating my ass with the same heavy-tongued, gentlemanly dedication he’d probably used for twenty years on his two wives. He was just applying the logic to the only opening available.

Not that I entirely minded.

"Jesus," I groaned into the duvet, gripping the fabric.

As my vision blurred, I caught a shape in the corner of the room—a battered duffel bag. Packed full. Zipper strained. I’d known when he came in with it that it wasn’t just a change of clothes.

He worked me relentlessly, until I was whimpering, completely wiping away any other thoughts from my mind.

---

Chapter 4: The Squeeze

There are three things you cannot fit into a five-hundred-square-foot, pre-war Capitol Hill apartment: a Peloton, a kitchen island, and Dan O'Malley.

I learned this at 6:15 AM on a Wednesday. I should have been at the gym, but my schedule had gone out the window.

The lesson arrived in the aftermath of another landslide.

"Dan," I gasped, my hands slipping against the sweat on his shoulders. "I’m close. I’m—"

"I know," he grunted, his voice a vibration against my ear. "Don't hold back."

He didn't speed up. He didn't lose his rhythm. Instead, he shifted his weight, dropping his pelvis lower.

The solid mound of his belly ground against me, the coarse hair and the sheer weight of him creating a friction against my cock, trapped between us.

My legs were wrapped high around him, trying to anchor myself against the force of him. His big arms bracketed my shoulders. I was completely enveloped.

"Come on," he growled, his breath hot against my neck. A drop of sweat dripped from his nose onto my chest. "Let go, Rami."

He drove into me—deep, punishing strokes—while grinding that stomach against my cock.

"Fuck," I gasped—his fat cock hitting every nerve inside of me, and the friction of his body finally putting me over the edge.

Dan didn't stop. He rode the wave of my orgasm, huffing hard as I clamped down around him. He drove hard—one, two, three massive thrusts that shook the headboard—and then seized up.

"I’m—HNGHHH," he roared, burying his face in my neck as he pumped himself into me.

He dropped—his breath against my neck, his body a blanket of heat and hair. I was pinned. My left arm was trapped under his ribs. I was slick with sweat—mine, his, ours—and staring at the ceiling, gasping.

"Holy fuck," Dan wheezed, his mustache tickling my collarbone.

"Yeah," I breathed, tapping his shoulder weakly. "Air."

He groaned and rolled to the side.

But there was no "side."

There was only the edge.

My Queen-sized platform bed—the Danish prototype I’d been so proud of—was sixty inches wide. Dan was, conservatively, thirty inches across at the shoulders. I was twenty. That left ten inches for leverage and movement.

Dan rolled, his hip hitting the edge of the mattress. He flailed, his arm shooting out blindly to catch himself.

His hand swept across the floating nightstand, connecting with the vintage Artemide lamp I’d spent six months sourcing. CRASH.

It took the phone and watch charger with it.

It clattered to the hardwood floor. No material damage—it was metal—but the sound reverberating in my tiny apartment.

"Motherfucker!"

Dan recoiled, gripping the edge of the mattress to keep from following the lamp onto the floor. He curled into a ball, his knees knocking hard against my thigh.

"You okay?" I asked, reaching for him in the dark.

"Yeah," he grumbled, shaking out his knuckles. "I punched the damn lamp. Again."

He sat up, the duvet pulling up from under me. The streetlights from 12th Avenue cut across the room, illuminating the wreckage.

He leaned over the edge of the bed, his shoulder flexing as he scooped up the metal lamp and the tangled cords of the chargers, unceremoniously dumping them back onto the nightstand.

He looked like a grizzly bear that had been stuffed into a cat carrier—cramped, agitated, and none too happy about the accommodations.

I rubbed my eyes, feeling the exhaustion settle deep in my bones.

The last days had been a blur of displacement.

In the "Before Times"—which was to say, last week—my work days had a rhythm. I went to the gym. I staged houses. And in the holes in the calendar, those ninety-minute gaps between a consultation in Queen Anne and an install in Madrona, I would open the apps.

Grindr. Scruff. Sniffies.

I would find assignations—or recreational friction. My job put me in different neighborhoods where I was often fresh meat. I traveled with lube in my kit bag. It was efficient. It was my release valve.

But since Monday, those holes in the calendar had changed.

Yesterday, I had finished a staging at 2 PM. I had two hours before my next meeting. I didn't open the apps. I didn't look for a guy.

I drove my truck to a quiet street by Volunteer Park—not to cruise it, but to recline the seat and close my eyes.

I just wanted silence.

My apartment, usually a temple of curated emptiness, was now full. Full of Dan’s boots. Dan’s voice. Dan’s car dealer Sales Manager energy, surfacing in calls about the bidding war on his house.

Dan’s hours were almost as unpredictable as mine, timed around peak sales times and covering for guys on the showroom floor.

And at night, it was full of Dan’s body—a relentless force that left me sated, sore, and completely drained.

I didn't need a hookup. I needed a nap.

"The lamp will be fine," I muttered. "You just have to be more careful."

"Careful?" Dan scoffed. "Rami, I can't be 'careful' when I'm sleeping. I'm a grown man. I need to stretch out."

He swung his legs out of bed. The floorboards groaned. He stood up, naked and imposing, scratching his chest.

"I’m sleeping like a vampire," he said. "Arms crossed over my chest. I’m afraid if I twitch, I’m gonna give you a concussion."

"It's cozy," I lied.

"It's a canoe," he corrected.

He walked over to the closet. He opened the door, his eyes scanning the top shelf for a brief second—as if assessing what I kept hidden up there—before his gaze dropped to where I hung my staging kit bag every night. He popped the flap and started rifling through it, the tools clanking together.

I froze. "Dan, put that down."

He stopped. His hand was in the side pocket.

He paused for a long second. I knew exactly what his fingers were brushing against: the half-empty bottle of lube I kept there for "site visits."

He didn't pull it out. He didn't say anything. But the silence in the room shifted.

Then, his hand moved past it.

He pulled out my chunky, yellow Stanley tape measure.

He walked back to the bed, extending the metal tape. SNAP. 

"Checking the specs," he muttered. He hooked the end of the tape to the side of the mattress and stretched it across my chest to the other side. "Sixty inches."

"I know. It's a standard Queen," I said. "I bought it."

"And the wall," he said, turning to the headboard. He ran the tape along the wall, measuring the space between the window and the closet door. "One-hundred inches."

He retracted the tape. CLACK.

He stood there, naked, holding the yellow tool like a weapon. He looked at me with the Sales Manager glint in his eye—the look he got when he learned about the bidding war.

"This," he announced, gesturing to the mattress with the tape measure, "is the problem. Seventy-six."

"Seventy-six what?"

"Seventy-six inches," he said. "That’s a King. We have twelve inches of clearance on either side. It fits."

"It does not fit," I argued, fully awake now. My Stager brain was screaming. "Twelve inches? That’s not a walkway, Dan. That’s a choke point. You’d have to shuffle sideways to get to the bathroom. It destroys the circulation flow."

"Fuck the circulation flow," Dan said. "I want to sleep without bruising my knuckles."

"You're reacting to the moment," I said, trying to be the voice of reason. "You're used to a suburban master suite. This is a city apartment. You don't put a King bed in a pre-war building unless you want it to look like a padded cell"

"I'm not reacting to the moment," he said. "I need to sleep."

He tossed the tape measure onto the duvet. It landed heavily between my legs.

"I'm buying us a bed," he announced.

"You're... what?"

"A King," he said. "Top of the line."

"Dan," I said slowly. "Your house is about to sell. You're going to buy a new place in… a few weeks" I assumed. We’d never discussed it. "Why buy a bed now?"

He stopped. He looked down at me.

For a second, the bravado slipped. I saw the exhaustion in his eyes—the same exhaustion I felt. The stress of the sale, the daily commute from my apartment.

"Because," he said quietly. "I'm not sleeping in a canoe, Rami. And I don’t want to sleep anywhere else."

He sat on the bed and pressed a wet, heavy kiss on my mouth.

"Come on. Get dressed," he said, his voice low. "Come with me to the showroom."

"I have work," I protested.

"You're a Stager. This is work. We're restaging the bedroom."

I looked at the fallen lamp. I looked at the yellow tape measure on the duvet. I looked into his gold flecked eyes, set in thick lashes.

A King-size bed wasn't a purchase you made for a fling. It was a commitment. It was a piece of furniture you had to disassemble a doorframe to get inside.

I realized then that Daniel O'Malley wasn't just occupying my space. He was expanding his territory.

And for the first time, as I gazed at the flow I’d designed and preserved, I wondered how I was going to endure the occupation of the man who was currently wrecking it

---

Chapter 5: Technical Difficulties

The King-size mattress arrived on Friday.

It was a "hybrid-cooling-gel-memory-foam" monolith that required two sweating delivery guys to heave up the stairs.

But there was a casualty. My sleek, low-profile Danish platform—the one I’d sourced from a Copenhagen importer—was a Queen. It was useless. I had watched with a tight chest as the delivery team hauled away my old mattress, leaving Dan to dismantle the frame with my own hex key. 

He stacked the pieces in the hallway like firewood before hauling them down to my building's basement storage cages.

Now, the new King mattress sat directly on the hardwood floor.

It swallowed the room whole. My nightstands were shoved into the corners, my lamps illuminating nothing but the edges of the massive pillows.

It looked like the first apartment of a recently divorced dad.

The flow was dead. But Dan was thrilled.

"Look at this," he’d said, spreading his arms wide, not hitting a single wall. "Stadium seating."

That night—exactly one week after we’d first fucked—I realized that while we had upgraded the stadium, the game plan remained exactly the same.

"Come here," Dan rumbled.

It was 11 PM. We were lying in the dark, the cooling gel doing its job against the humid Seattle summer. Dan reached out, his hand landing on my hip, and let it rest there.

It was the signal.

For the last seven days, that signal had been enough to short-circuit my brain. The sheer novelty of Daniel O'Malley—the forbidden, straight bear—or whatever version of straight allowed for this—had been the only aphrodisiac I needed.

And he was dogged in his determination to get me off.

But as he rolled me onto my stomach, his weight settling over my legs like a lead blanket, I realized why it felt so routine.

He wasn't a player. He was a suburban dad who married his high school sweetheart, Jill. And when she divorced him, he married Nadia, my sister, a year later. As far as I knew, Dan O'Malley had been with exactly those two people in his entire life before me.

He was operating on a script he’d learned in 1998 and memorized over twenty years of serial monogamy.

Step 1: Oral Service.

He spread my cheeks with his thumbs and buried his face between my legs, eating me out with a devastating appetite. 

It wasn't tentative, or exploring, or perfunctory. It was the wet, devouring work of a high school kid trying to prove he was good at this. He was treating my ass exactly the way he must have treated his wives' pussies: with a lot of tongue, a lot of pressure, and the absolute conviction that if he just did it hard enough, I would explode.

"Oh my God," I gasped into the pillow, my hips bucking involuntarily against the mattress.

He didn't stop. He held my hips down, his tongue working with a relentless, maddening rhythm. He wanted an A-plus on the assignment.

Then, the flip.

Step 2: The Main Event.

He loomed above me, and even in the dim light, the sight of him made my cock twitch.

I was mesmerized by his build. He wasn't a gym-sculpted statue; he was Ursa Major. He had a solid, heavy wall of a belly that looked soft but felt like a sandbag, tapering impossibly into those athletic hips, where pale stretch marks mapped the unapologetic growth of his build. The slope of his back was deep, mirroring the arc of his belly and leading down to a rounded, muscular ass that flexed as he moved.

And then there was the equipment. That weighty, King-sized cock, standing at attention beneath his stomach, leaking pre-cum like a faucet.

He lowered himself, his mouth finding my nipple, applying pressure. Again—the script. Stimulate the nipples. It was something I guessed guys like Dan learned from Playboy, or perhaps from a very patient marriage counselor.

He reached down, guiding himself into me. He filled me completely—there was no space for anything but him.

He covered me with his body, arms around my head and shoulders, locking down my legs, and started to move—slow at first, then finding that driving, rhythmic pace he loved. Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Yeah," he groaned, flat on me, his sweat dripping onto my chest. "Take it."

It was incredible. It was overwhelming.

But it was a monologue, not a conversation.

"Dan," I gasped, reaching up to touch his chest, trying to slide my hands down his sides to his hips.

"I got you," he grunted, pushing arms down. "I got you."

He pounded into me until we were close, his breath heavier.

Step 3: The Finish.

And then the work to get me off first. A gentleman’s responsibility. I imagined his father telling him this the night before his first wedding: Ladies first, Danny.

He trusted that cock completely. It was his magic wand. He seemed to operate on the misplaced heterosexual belief that the cock itself did the heavy lifting, and if he just stayed inside long enough and fucked hard enough, the orgasm—my orgasm—was guaranteed.

But whether I came first or he did, getting me off was the last step of the assignment—mostly done by my own hand, or in the friction of the sheets while he fucked or held me.

But I wanted more. I wanted the gay part of gay sex.

I tried to introduce a new play.

Step 4: The Pivot.

Dan pulled out with a wet slide. He immediately reached for my hip, to flip me onto my back for the standard finish—face-to-face, missionary, lights out.

I resisted the move. I twisted out of his grip. 

"Rami?" he grunted, confused by the break in the routine.

Instead of rolling over, I pushed him down—WHUMPH—then onto his back. I knelt at his side—the angle where I could go down on that monster most easily.

"Whoa," Dan said, trying to track me in the dark.

I took him into my mouth.

It was hot and slick from being inside me. That didn't stop me.

I swirled my tongue around the head, teasing the slit. I ran the length of him, getting him good and wet with spit.

I took him deep. At this angle, it was a straight shot down my throat, if I could just keep the gag reflex at bay. 

I corkscrewed my head, on my hands and knees, choking as it pushed deeper, but not stopping.

Dan didn't push my head down. His hands came up, hovering for a second before lightly tangling in my hair, trembling slightly.

"Holy shit," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Rami."

He sounded like he was experiencing a color he’d never seen before.

I pulled off to take a breath and stroke him with my hand. His cock pulsed, thickest in the middle, towering over his hairy ballsack.

"Fuck," he chuckled, scratching his chest, just under his gold chain.

I had him right where I wanted him. If I was going to breach the defenses of a forty-year-old straight man, I needed him at the edge, defenses down.

I coated two of my fingers in spit, and returned to his fat prick. 

As I worked his cock with my mouth, I reached under him, between his thrusting thighs, finding the cleft between his rounded cheeks. I pressed my wet fingers against his hole.

The thought of that ass of his and how bad I wanted to be in it made me swallow him harder. 

I wanted to see what happened when a man who had spent forty years throwing his weight around was finally forced to take it. I wanted to pry those thighs apart, pin his hairy chest to the mattress, and make him surrender complete control to me. 

Sensing his edge nearing, I tested the terrain, pushing at his entry.

Dan flinched.

"Whoa," he breathed.

His hips shifted and his cheeks clenched, squeezing me out. A barricade.

"Rami," he stammered. "I don’t..."

He wasn't rejecting me outright. He was too much of a gentleman. But the wall was up.

I glanced up and saw the look on his face—the sheer, overwhelming pleasure of what I was doing with my mouth.

"Don’t stop..." he gasped, his hips bucking up to meet me. "No one ever did this before."

He meant the blowjob, not the fingers. But the admission broke me a little.

My jaw ached. My nose ran. My fingers were wet with spit, but that was a no-go.

I went back to work on his cock. I wanted him to know what he’d been missing—not a polite blowjob, but one where he could completely let go. I could take it.

"Jesus, Rami," he hissed—then he groaned, his entire body arching off the mattress.

He erupted. He poured himself down my throat, his body shuddering with the force of it, his hands gripping my hair like a lifeline.

I gulped, furiously. I wanted it—wanted to swallow him. I wanted his load in my belly, and I worked to get every drop out of him, and into me. I wanted his complete surrender.

When I broke away, I crawled up beside him in his hazy afterglow.

He pulled me down, kissing me deep and wet, eager to kiss the mouth that had just brought him so much pleasure, tasting himself mixed in my spit. He pulled my body flush against his. 

"Come on," he rasped against my mouth, his thick fingers digging into the flesh of my ass to urge me on. "Finish."

Even in the aftershocks of his orgasm, he was sticking to the playbook. Step 3: The Finish.

I stroked myself, grinding against his hip as he coached me over the edge. "That's it, Rami," he breathed.

I shot onto him, groaning into his mouth.

He flinched at the sudden heat of the release, but he didn't break the kiss.

When I finally pulled back, he dropped against the bed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked dazed.

"Wow," he wheezed, staring at me with genuine awe. "That... I didn't know it could feel like that."

I smiled, swiping a thumb across his damp lower lip. "Welcome to the other side, Dan," I whispered. "There's a lot you don't know yet."

He let out a breathy, exhausted chuckle. He was sprawled on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes, his mouth slightly open. He looked peaceful. He looked like a guy who had studied for the test, executed the plan, and gotten the grade.

With the playbook complete, he reached out, hooking an arm around my waist, and hauling me backward until his belly filled the small of my back. He wrapped around me like a thunderblanket—the kind you put on dogs to sedate them in a thunderstorm. His nose pressed into the back of my neck.

"Night, Rami," he mumbled.

Within thirty seconds, he was asleep. The snoring started—a low, rhythmic rattle against my neck.

I lay in the dark, wide awake, completely trapped by his mass.

Dan didn't have a submissive bone in his body. He was a car dealer. A suburban dad. All Top, all the time. He was a forty-year-old virgin in gay years.

I looked at Dan’s sleeping arm slung over my chest—the arm of a massive, beautiful, frustrating wall of a man.

"You have no idea what you're doing," I whispered into the dark.

And the worst part was, he really didn't. He thought he was giving me the world, when all he was giving me was the one thing he knew how to do.

---

Chapter 6: Market Research

I was sitting at a high-top table at Vivace on Broadway, staring at a lukewarm, three o'clock Americano.

I’d finished my afternoon consult early—a loft in Pioneer Square that needed "softening"—and I had forty-five minutes before I dared to go back to my own apartment.

It was Wednesday—a week and a half after the day the dam broke, and we fucked. A week and a half since the first night we slept together. A week and a half since Dan had moved in.

I was thoroughly, completely fucked. In every sense of the word.

Outside the window, a pair of flawless, identically dressed guys walked by, their matching iced lattes in hand. The Capitol Hill standard. 

My thumb hovered over the yellow icon. I opened Scruff.

It wasn't about looking for a guy, I told myself. When you’re considering a property, you have to know what else is on the market. You have to check the comps.

The grid populated instantly, a mosaic of localized thirst, sorted by proximity. I was at ground zero, the heart of it.

I bypassed my usual inventory of guys exactly like me: smooth, gym-built, and somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-two.

I was looking not quite for him, but the category he was supposed to fit into. A new demographic.

200 feet away: SeaBear206. 500 feet away: Cubby_Hole. 0.1 miles away: BigDaddy_Woof.

I tapped on SeaBear206.

Flannel shirt, kind eyes, full beard. I looked at the body shots. He was pear-shaped, his weight settling into his hips and thighs in a way that looked comfortable, like a well-worn armchair.

I swiped to BigDaddy_Woof. Same story. Plump. Round. The kind of guy who would be a hoot at brunch. A great big spoon, soft and yielding.

I realized then that Dan O'Malley wasn't actually a "Bear." Not in the way these guys were.

Dan was something else entirely.

He had his high school linebacker foundation. And while he had let himself go during the marriages, the year between Nadia and me had been defined by a panicked mid-life crisis exercise regimen.

He hadn't done cardio. He lifted heavy things.

The result was a physique that defied physics. The guys on the app were governed by gravity; their weight pulled them down. Dan seemed to defy it.

His belly was a high, solid gut that didn't sag so much as project. And his ass... It was a high, rounded shelf that looked like you could bounce a quarter off it.

Where the bears on the app widened, Dan tapered. His hips remained improbably athletic—locking his upper body into a V-shape that his gut tried, and failed, to ruin. His broad shoulders kept the whole architecture in perfect, mouth-watering proportion.

A message popped up on my screen.

SeaBear206: Hey handsome. Into bigger guys? I give great cuddles.

I stared at the blinking cursor.

I didn't want cuddles. I didn't want brunch. I wanted the structural impossibility of Dan O'Malley pinning me to the mattress until I couldn't breathe.

But more than that, I didn't just want to ride the structure. I wanted to get in it. I wanted to fuck Dan.

I closed the app.

The market research was conclusive: There were no comps. Dan was a unique property.

I needed User Research. And, god help me, I was on intimate terms with the former tenant.

"Nadia," I said when she picked up on the second ring.

"Rami! Perfect timing," she said, sounding breathless. "I was just about to text you. Dan accepted an offer on the house! Full price, all cash. A family from India relocating for Microsoft."

She thought she was breaking the news. She didn't know that Dan had spent the last two days brokering the deal and playing buyers against each other with his booming Sales Manager voice echoing in my five-hundred-square-foot apartment.

"Well," I said, sipping my cold coffee. "He knows how to drive a deal."

"He’s in such a good mood," Nadia said, a teasing lilt in her voice. "I honestly haven't heard him sound this light in years. Maybe ever. He can get so morose. That new girlfriend of his must be a miracle worker."

Morose? Dan? The man who was currently treating my apartment like a megaphone and fucking me with the subtlety of a freight train? 

I set down my Americano. "Listen, Nad... I actually wanted to ask you something. Weird question."

"Okay?"

"I met someone," I lied, keeping my voice low. "A guy. You know I don’t have a lot of experience... not with them sticking around, anyway."

"Right."

"But you were married… how was the sex?” I rolled my eyes. “With… Dan?"

There was a pause. The background noise of her kitchen stopped.

"Rami, are you asking me about my sex with my ex-husband?"

"No. No. No, no, no. I'm asking for a comp," I said. “For when they stick around.”

Nadia sighed. "Well. With Dan? Basic."

"Basic?"

"Missionary. Lights off. Saturdays. Wednesday nights. It wasn't bad—but it was routine."

"But you had a kid—"

"Yeah?" She let out a sigh. "But it was before that too."

I glanced out the window of the coffee shop, eyeing another pair of smooth, gym-sculpted guys in their twenties jogging past. "That kinda sucks."

"Honestly? Looking back... I don't know if I really wanted a husband. I wanted a baby. I wanted Leo."

I gripped the phone tighter. "And Dan?"

"Dan was… safe," she said, her voice softening but staying brutally pragmatic. "He was available. Reliable. But God. The brooding. The silences when he was stressed. I just didn't want to be his emotional support animal anymore."

We had never talked about it much. Mom and I had just circled the wagons when she told us about the divorce; I’d secretly been thrilled that the Dan Occupation was coming to an end.

She let out a trilling laugh. "To be fair, I don’t think he wanted me that much either. It was only a few months after his first wife divorced him. I think he just didn’t want to be alone."

"He just didn't want to be alone," I repeated, the words landing hard in my gut.

"Exactly."

"Right," I muttered.

"Mom, come on!" a voice yelled in the background.

"Oh! Hold on. Someone wants to say bye before we're late," Nadia said.

The screen shuffled, blurry motion and ceiling fans, and then a face filled the frame.

"Uncle Rami, we gotta go!"

It was Leo. My nephew. A full six years old and perpetually impatient.

I felt a sudden, sharp pang in my chest.

The kid was a genetic photocopy. He had Dan’s square jaw. He had Dan’s shock of hair. The same brow.

But he had my eyes. Or rather, Nadia’s eyes—which were my eyes. Dark, heavy-lidded, deep brown.

He was a perfect, innocent blend of the sister I loved and the man currently fucking me into a coma every night.

"Hey, buddy," I said, forcing my voice to a breezy register. "How's the T-Rex?"

"T-Rex is for babies," Leo stated with serious authority. "When Dad gets the new house, we're getting a Spinosaurus. It's bigger. It eats sharks."

"Of course," I said. "Bigger is better."

"We're going to after-school swim class," Nadia resumed, Leo darting out of the frame.

“Thanks, Nad.”

"We didn’t even talk about you. But honestly, if you just met and you’re already dissatisfied… Well. You don’t have to cling to a mistake just because you made it. Take it from me."

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

The screen went black.

I sat there for a long moment, staring at my reflection in the dark glass. Seeing Leo was like looking at a map of my own transgressions. I was sleeping with my nephew's father. I was lying to my sister.

And the worst part was, Nadia made sense.

Dan didn't want to live at his parents’ place. He didn’t want to be alone. And I was the convenient option. I was right there. A known quantity. I was willing, and I had a bed. 

I was a hole with a lease. 

And God knew the sex wasn’t going to add to his child support payments.

I chugged the rest of my coffee and walked out to my truck.

When I got home, I walked into the living room and froze.

My Samsung Frame was gone. My floating console, which I had calibrated to hold exactly forty pounds of electronics, was now groaning under the weight of a black plastic monstrosity that was roughly the size of a billboard.

"Dan?" I called out.

"Back here," a voice grunted.

Dan was on the floor—the floor—wedged between the wall and the floating console. He was on his hands and knees, shirtless, reaching blindly behind the new television to route the cables. His back dipped, and his ass was in the air, framed by the low-rise waistband of his jeans.

"I brought the beast out of storage," Dan grunted. "You can't watch the playoffs on a postage stamp, Rami."

Most guys his size—the ones I’d seen on the app—in that position, would sag. Dan looked like a loaded spring. The rebuilt muscle under the field of soft brown hair on his back shifted as he worked. And that deep, hairy plumber's crack wasn't sad; it was an invitation to a very specific kind of trouble.

I’d fucked more guys than I could count. But the thought of taking that particular ass—of pushing my hands into the slope of Dan O’Malley’s back and finally, finally driving into him—made my mouth go dry.

But that wasn’t in the playbook.

Even divested of his wife and his suburban life, Dan still moved with the gravity of a man who expected the world to accommodate him. In Dan’s hetero playbook, dicks only went one way, and he sure as hell wasn’t the one catching.

I felt like a closeted high school teen, trying to choke back the secret desire.

He pushed himself up, grunting with effort, and rested on his heels. The rise and fall of his chest was hypnotic. He wiped his forehead with his forearm.

He looked like a "Before" picture that could beat up the "After" picture.

And I had never wanted him more.

"You okay?" he asked, catching my stare.

I cleared my throat, looking away from the darker hair trailing down his stomach into his jeans. "Just… the TV. It's... huge."

Dan smirked, that arrogant, easy confidence sliding back into place. 

"You know me, Rami. Go big or go home."

He winked and turned to grab the remote.

Go big or go home. A stupid, throwaway cliché, built on the arrogant assumption that "big" was inherently better. 

But I liked my home. I liked my small, perfectly controlled five-hundred-square-feet.

Only now my home was entirely occupied by "big." Dan. The King-size mattress. The massive TV. The crushing weight of him grunting on me in the dark.

The only option left to me was to go big. And I’d had no say in it at all.

---

Chapter 7: The Custody Schedule

The text message from the bank arrived at 10:14 AM on a Tuesday—exactly seventeen days since Dan had first shown up at my door on a Saturday night with Thai takeout.

It was also his day off, since he worked almost every Sunday on the lot.

I was in the kitchen, checking emails before my noon consult. Dan was in the next room, looking at his phone with an intensity I’d never seen in him before.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

He stood up and crossed the room, turning the screen toward me. It was a Wells Fargo push notification: Deposit Received. The number was followed by a string of zeros that made the font shrink to fit the screen.

"It cleared," he said, his voice cracking slightly. "The wire just hit."

He ran a hand through his hair, looking like he couldn’t be sure he believed it. The Sales Manager energy, which usually maxed out at a manageable hum, suddenly spiked to a deafening roar.

"We broke the ceiling, Rami," he roared, staring at the ceiling. "One-point-two. One million, two hundred thousand dollars. For a generic split-level I bought in 2010!"

He grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me clean off the hardwood floor. "I bought Jill out of her half for pennies when we split. Nadia and I always kept our equity separate. It's all… I’m liquid, Rami. I mean, even after paying off the mortgage and the broker fees, I’m flush. I have over eight hundred and fifty grand sitting in a checking account right now."

"Congratulations, Dan," I said, smiling at his infectious energy as my feet dangled. "You beat the market."

"Beat it? We crushed it!" He kissed me hard on the mouth—a sloppy, exuberant, victory kiss. "I couldn’t have done it without you."

"We should celebrate properly," I said, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him right back in as he set me down. "This weekend. We can drive up to Vancouver. Get a room at the Fairmont. Order room service. Spend forty-eight hours doing absolutely nothing but fucking and spending that money."

I saw the change immediately. The light in his eyes dimmed.

"I... I can't," he said, his voice dropping.

"Why not? The deal is closed. You don't have to be here for inspectors or brokers."

"It's not the house," he muttered, looking down at his phone. "It’s the weekend, Rami."

"The weekend?"

The air went out of the room.

"The kids," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Nadia... she’s been cool about the last few weeks because of the move and the quick close. Jill too. But now that the money is in? The clock starts again. I have to take them. All of them. Connor, Kayla, and Leo."

He let out a long, heavy exhale. "Connor’s looking at colleges, Rami. I have to take him on a campus tour of UW on Saturday."

The word dropped hard. Colleges.

The last time I had really paid attention to my former brother-in-law's oldest kid, Connor was a fifteen-year-old obsessed with lacrosse. The realization that Dan had a son old enough to tour universities—a son who was only seven years my junior—rattled me. 

It made the gap between us feel impossibly wide—a stark reminder of the twenty years of hetero-suburban life Dan had lived before crashing onto my floor.

The Vancouver fantasy—the white sheets, the room service, the privacy, the sex—evaporated.

"Right," I said, my voice tight. "Right. Of course."

He looked around my apartment. He looked at the white walls, the vintage pottery, the Eames chair. He looked at the space that was designed for one man with a thumb on the hook-up apps, not a two-hundred-and-seventy-pound Sales Manager with two teenagers and a six-year-old.

"I can't bring them here," he said quietly.

"No," I said. It wasn't a negotiation. It was a statement of fact. "You can't."

It wasn't just that the apartment was too small. It was that we were a secret. To Connor and Kayla, I was their ex-stepmother’s brother—the guy who bought them art books as Christmas gifts. To Leo, I was Uncle Rami. I wasn't the guy sleeping with their dad.

"So," I asked, "where are you going to go?"

The answer, it turned out, was a nomadic tour of every indoor activity within a twenty-mile radius of the city. He’d cashed in his accumulated favors at the dealership to get the whole weekend off, pick them up, keep them out all day Saturday and Sunday, and crash at his parents' place in Renton on Saturday night.

He left at 9:00 AM on Saturday.

It should have been a disappointment—no weekend in Vancouver. But for the last two and a half weeks, my apartment had been a construction zone of suburban white male energy. Now, it was just... white. Quiet. Perfect.

I spent thirty minutes in the shower, the water as hot as I could stand it, scrubbing away the trace scent of Dan’s drugstore body wash. I dressed in a fresh t-shirt and jeans, and spent an hour resetting the living room—aligning the coasters, smoothing the rug, and reclaiming the kitchen counter from Dan’s sprawl of car keys.

I made an espresso. I sat in my Eames chair, with a copy of Wallpaper on my lap.

It rested there, unopened.

I needed to think. Now that the house was sold, the temporary arrangement could end. Dan had money—real money. He could rent a place. He could buy. He could move out.

I needed to have The Talk. I needed to tell him that living in limbo wasn't working, that we needed a plan. I rehearsed the speech in my head: Dan, I care about you, but I need my space back. And you need a home—for yourself, for your kids.

But before I could even finish the thought, my phone buzzed.

Saturday, 10:45 AM - Dan: UW campus tour is a disaster. Connor is walking twenty feet ahead of me pretending I don't exist, and Leo is screaming because the library doesn't have any dinosaur bones.

Saturday, 1:45 PM - Dan: Kayla just asked me why I’m ‘homeless.' I told her to be patient. She rolled her eyes so hard I thought she’d have a seizure.

Saturday, 6:00 PM - Dan: At my parents. Complete chaos. My mom is force-feeding Connor his body weight in baked ziti. Dad is trying to teach Kayla how to count cards. The dog won't stop barking. Send help.

Sunday, 11:15 AM - Dan: Bellevue Square. Kayla has been in Sephora for forty-five minutes. I’m holding a tiny black basket filled with $200 worth of lip gloss. I’m the oldest man in here.

Sunday, 1:30 PM - Dan: Food court. Leo spilled a Fanta in my lap. My crotch is sticky.

Sunday, 2:45 PM - Dan: I miss you.

Sunday, 4:20 PM - Dan: I really, really miss you.

Every text was a reminder of the chaotic, messy life he had outside of my home—a life that didn't fit into my carefully planned square footage. But every text was also a tether. He was reaching out. He was drowning in family obligation, and I was his lifeline.

There were twenty-five messages in total by the time I heard the key in the lock on Sunday at 6:30 PM. The door opened, and Dan walked in.

He looked like he’d been dragged behind a truck. His shirt—the blue button-down he’d worn—was wrinkled and stained with faint orange rings.

He dropped his keys on the entry table with a clank.

"Hey," I said from the Eames chair, setting the magazine aside.

He didn't say anything. He just walked over and collapsed onto the sofa opposite me. The cushions groaned under his weight. His knees spread wide as he stared at the floor.

"I hate my parents' house," he mumbled. "I had to sleep in the twin bed again, but with Leo. He kicks. And Connor and Kayla slept on the pull-out couch in the den and spent the whole morning telling me how 'cringe' I am."

He looked up at me. His eyes were bloodshot.

"I have the money," he said again, as if trying to convince himself. "I could buy a Porsche in cash tomorrow. I could fly us to Cabo. And instead, I spent my weekend holding a basket of lip gloss at Bellevue Square." He let out a long, bearish breath. "And the whole time, all I wanted was to come home to you."

He looked so broken, so stripped of his usual bluster, that The Talk died in my throat. I couldn't do it. I couldn't talk to him about "next steps" or "leases" or "boundaries." Certainly not about the sex. Not tonight.

I stood up, crossing the few feet to the sofa. I stepped between his spread knees and placed my hands on his heavy shoulders.

"You're not a loser," I said quietly. "You're just transitioning."

He wrapped his arms around my waist, burying his face in my stomach. He held on tight, letting out a long sigh. I could feel the heat through my t-shirt, against my skin. He clung to me like I was the only thing in the world that wasn't teetering.

"I can’t believe I had to sleep in that bed again," he mumbled into my t-shirt. "My feet were hanging off the edge. Like I don’t fit my own life."

"It’s okay," I said, my fingers threading gently through his brown hair.

He pulled back just enough to look up at me. The deep exhaustion was still there, but beneath it, something else—adoration.

His hands slid up under my shirt. His palms were warm against my bare skin. He stood up and tugged me along with him into the bedroom.

The desperation between us shifted the air in the room. There was no slow build-up. Dan reached for the hem of my t-shirt, yanking it over my head and tossing it blindly. I went for his belt, my knuckles brushing against his stomach as I undid the buckle and unbuttoned his sticky, wrinkled jeans.

He kicked his boots off, shoving his jeans and briefs down his thighs and stepping out of them, leaving them in a heap on the floor. I toed off my slippers and pushed my own sweats down, stepping out of them just as his hands found my hips again.

He pressed me backward onto the King-size mattress, on my back. Before I could even adjust, his weight settled over me—a heavy, familiar blanket pinning me to the bed. I felt him shift, his knees nudging my legs apart. I spread them, letting him settle deep into the cradle of my thighs.

He dragged his hips in a slow circle, the blunt friction of his cockhead grinding directly against my hole sending a jolt through my spine.

“Is that good?” he asked against me, whiskers brushing the back of my neck.

“Uh huh,” I groaned.

Dan reached his free hand up to cradle my jaw, his thumb gently stroking my cheek. He kissed me wet and deep—like a man who’d spent forty-eight hours holding his breath, and I was made of fresh air.

With a grunt of effort, he broke the kiss. He pushed my legs up and back. He folded my thighs toward my chest, opening me completely to the cool air of the room. His broad shoulders settled solidly between my spread legs.

I tensed instinctively, my hands dropping to catch his thick shoulders.

"Dan," I gasped. "I wasn't expecting... I didn't clean out."

He paused, looking up at me through my spread legs. His brow furrowed for a fraction of a second—a brief collision between the logistics of fucking guys and his hetero playbook.

He didn't really get it, and more importantly, he didn't give a shit.

"I don't care," he rasped. "After the weekend I've had," his hands spread me open, "I just want to be in the one place where I actually fit."

He pressed his face into my ass, his tongue wet and eager as he started to eat me out.

He didn't mean the apartment. He didn't mean the King bed.

He meant me.

I pulled my legs back, opened myself wider, and let him.

---

Chapter 8: The Hostile Takeover

I had assumed the clearing of the wire meant the end of the temporary housing arrangement. I thought Dan would rent a luxury high-rise, or at least a sprawling Airbnb, while he shopped for his next house. I thought he would pack his bag.

Instead, with over eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars sitting in his checking account, Dan settled in. 

I came home on Thursday to find my vintage lounge chair—the centerpiece of the living room, the axis upon which the entire apartment’s feng shui revolved—pushed into a corner. The sofa had been angled toward the TV, cutting off the natural flow of the small room, and the coffee table was shoved against the wall like it was in timeout.

"My back was killing me," Dan yelled from the kitchen. "Function over form, Rami. We’re upgrading."

We.

But the real flashpoint was the bedroom.

The arrival of the King-size mattress had turned my bedroom into a literal padded cell. The bed was all-consuming. It touched three of the four walls. To get to the closet, I had to perform a humiliating lateral shuffle, pressing my back against the plaster to shimmy past the footboard.

I was living in a layout error. 

On Tuesday evening, I came home tired. I had spent six hours staging a condo in Belltown. There was a dull throb behind my eyes. My patience was thin.

I was pacing my narrow hallway, trapped on a call with the Belltown client who was questioning the shade of beige I'd chosen for her throw pillows.

"It's not yellow, Susan, it's ecru," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose as I walked into the bedroom to change. "It reads warm on camera, which is what—"

I made it two steps before my bare toes collided with something hard and heavy. I stumbled, catching myself on the edge of the dresser, knocking a framed photo face-down with a sharp clatter. I inhaled between my teeth.

"Susan, I have to call you back," I gasped as pain radiated up my leg. I jabbed the 'end' button before she could argue.

There, sitting directly in the middle of the only twelve inches of navigable floor space, were Dan’s boots—size-thirteen Timberlands.

"Dan!" I snapped, the vibration of the shout feeling good in my chest.

He walked in from the living room, his blue button-down shirt completely unbuttoned, framing his belly. He held a beer in one hand and a rolled-up set of printed MLS listings in the other. The hallway light caught the gold chain resting in the hair at his collarbone. All middle-aged muscle and weight.

He filled the doorframe, completely blocking the exit.

"Yeah?" he asked, oblivious.

"The boots," I pointed. "I’ve told you. We don't wear shoes past the entryway. And we certainly don't leave them in the middle of the obstacle course you’ve turned this room into."

"Sorry, sorry," he muttered. He leaned against the dresser, making the wood creak. "I’m just wired, Rami. That place in Renton? It’s got good bones. I was thinking... if we knocked out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, we could put in an island."

I stared at him. "We?"

"Yeah. It’s a three-bedroom. Plenty of room for the kids on weekends. And the master bath has a soaking tub. Plus, there's a big corner in the living room. Your weird vintage chair would fit right in. You’ll love it."

He said it so casually. Like it was decided.

"I don't live in Renton, Dan," I said, my voice tight. "I live here. In my apartment. In the city."

"Well, yeah, for now," he said, taking a sip of beer. "But this place... come on, Rami. It’s a shoebox. You can’t raise kids here."

"I don't have kids, Dan!"

"But I do," he said. The jovial energy flickered, replaced by that stubborn, jaw-set look. "And if we’re doing this—"

"Doing what?" I stepped closer, ignoring the lack of space. "You never asked, Dan. You realize that? You never asked to move in. We fucked once, and you just brought a duffel bag, then a TV and a mattress that requires a building permit, and now you’re putting my chair in Renton? And I'm supposed to do what—come with it?"

"I didn’t 'move in,'" he scoffed. I could see his wounded pride flaring. "I'm just... being practical. I thought you wanted this. I thought you wanted us."

"I want my space back!" I shot back. "I want to be able to walk to my closet without turning sideways! You take over everything, Dan. You just assume everyone wants to live in your king-size suburban footprint."

"Yeah, well, your footprint is a museum," Dan snapped, his voice rising. He gestured sharply with his beer bottle at the carefully arranged vintage pottery on my dresser, the abstract art on the walls. "Look at this place, Rami. Nothing’s allowed to be out of place. There's no room for anyone else to actually... exist. Everything has to be vintage, or imported, or, or perfectly angled. You won't even put up a photo if the frame doesn't match your exact ‘vibe.' You don't even have the plate!"

I froze, completely derailed. "What the fuck plate?"

"The plate! From Christmas!"

My mind spun, and then, suddenly, it hit me.

Christmas. Three years ago.

Of course, Nadia had always managed the gifts for both of them. It was suburban law. She bought the tasteful architecture books and the expensive wine, wrapped them, and signed both their names. Dan would usually just sit on the sofa, nursing a coffee, as surprised as the recipient when the paper came off. Gift-giving wasn't his department.

Except for that once.

It was Christmas morning at their house in Bellevue, wrapping paper flying everywhere. Nadia had handed me a perfectly wrapped square box. As she pressed it into my hands, her eyes were wide, telegraphing a frantic, anxious warning.

"Dan picked this one out all on his own," she announced over the noise of the kids. "It's a gift from his heart." Her gaze was locked on mine in a silent, desperate plea. Please like it.

Inside was a plate. Not a sleek, minimalist accent piece, but a chunky glazed pottery plate from some local craft fair, swirling with muddy earth tones and a pine tree motif. 

Dan had been watching me from his recliner across the room. He had been sitting up a little straighter, his meaty hands resting on his knees, waiting for my reaction.

I smiled, told him it was great—looked really hand crafted—and thanked him as warmly as I could. And the second I got back to my apartment, I stuffed it deep into a storage box in the very back of my closet, just in case they ever came to visit, so I could pull it out and put it on a shelf.

They never did. Until after the divorce, when Dan invited himself to move in.

By then, it was long forgotten—by me.

"I bought that for you," Dan said, the old hurt bleeding through the anger. "I spent an hour looking for something you'd like. But it wasn't 'curated' enough for you, was it? Did you just… throw it out? You don't make room for anything that doesn't fit your exact, perfect aesthetic, Rami. Not a plate, and sure as hell not me."

With it said, his shoulders seemed to deflate. "Rami..."

His hand landed on my waist, an attempt to pull my smaller frame to him.

Normally, it would have been enough to quiet the irritation. Normally, I would have melted.

But tonight, his touch felt abrasive.

"Don't," I said, pushing his hand away.

He blinked, his brow furrowing, and dropped his hand immediately. "Whoa. Okay. Since when do you push me away?"

"Since I got tired of you taking up all the space," I said, my voice tight. "All the air, Dan. I’m tired of being moved around my own home. I’m tired of being managed. And I’m tired of the script."

He set his beer down on the dresser—no coaster—with a sharp clack. "The script? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I’m tired of being your landing pad!" I said, clipped. My breath came fast and hot as it spilled out. "You have exactly one move, Dan. Prep the site, drop on top, move in and out, and assume your dick is magic enough to get her off."

Dan’s face flushed a deep, wounded red. "Her?"

"Yes, her! You treat me like I'm a woman. Or your idea of one."

"That is bullshit," Dan snapped, stepping forward, eating up the last inch of space between us. "The first time we did this—you told me you weren't 'tolerating' it. You told me you wanted it. I’ve been busting my ass to give you exactly what you said you wanted."

"And it was amazing!" I countered. "But Dan... I didn't sign up to play the bottom for you to lie there and hump on, just because you’re too straight for anything else."

"Oh, right. You prefer your other arrangements," Dan laughed, but it was harsh. "Rich, coming from the guy who keeps a go-bag in his truck."

My stomach tightened. "What?"

"The kit bag, Rami." His eyes narrowed—darkened. "The one with the lube. The bottle is sitting right there in the side pocket. Next to your tape measures."

"So?"

"So, I know you've got a... a system," he spat. "I know you've got your apps and your swipes. You keep that bag packed because you're just waiting for the next 'appointment' with some guy who fits your aesthetic better than I do."

"I keep that bag because I’m a professional who spends half his life on the road!" I lied, though the truth was sharper. "And maybe I keep some lube in it because sometimes I want to meet guys who actually want to do more than throw themselves on me and hump till they shoot."

"Oh, so there it is," Dan said, nodding slowly, his jaw ticking. "You want the 'scene.' You want one of those guys on your apps who knows all the tricks."

"Yes!" I shouted. "I AM one of those guys! And if you ever bothered to look at my profile on those apps—if you ever bothered to ask who I actually am—you’d know I’m a Vers Top, Dan. I like to get on top. I like to fuck. I accommodated you—but I’d like a little reciprocation."

I stepped fully into his space, forcing him to look down into my furious face.

"I’m not a woman. I’m a guy who’s been letting you use him as one."

"I don't use you," he whispered, looking suddenly stricken.

"You do," I said, my voice dropping to a lethal, quiet register. "You occupy me. Just like you occupy this room. You take up all the space, Dan. And honestly?"

The words hung in the air, terrible and final.

"You're not even that great at sex. You're just big. And you're heavy. And I need you to get off my back."

I watched the Sales Manager retreat.

I watched the confidence that had survived two divorces, three kids and twenty years on the showroom floor vanish in a single breath. He looked at me, his mouth slightly open, and for the first time since he’d arrived in my life seven years ago, he looked incredibly small.

He didn't yell. He didn't argue. He didn't try to close the deal.

He just looked at me, the ghost of the last month hanging between us. Slowly, his large hand came up, grasping the edges of his unbuttoned shirt and pulling the fabric closed over his sternum, like he was suddenly cold.

Then he reached down and picked up his boots.

"Right," he said, his voice weary and scraped hollow. "I'll... I'll get my things."

---

Chapter 9: The White Box

Dan packed with the chilling efficiency of a man who had done this before. He moved through the bedroom, gathering his clothes from my closet and from the floor, the toiletries from the bathroom counter, the phone charger from the wall.

He was methodical and fast—faster as he went on. He didn't look at me. 

He zipped his duffel bag shut.

He walked to the front door and paused for a second, his hand on the knob. I thought he might turn around. I thought the Sales Manager might try one last close—a last, best offer.

Instead, he just said, "I'll... figure out the mattress. I'll hire someone to come get it next week." His voice was flat.

He was an auto dealer sales manager. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Upsell you? Negotiate?

"Keep the key," I said, the word numb in my mouth. "For the movers."

He just said, "Yeah." 

And then he was out the door.

The lock clicked shut, and the silence rushed back into the apartment—instant and absolute.

I stood in the hallway for a long time, staring at the wood grain of the door.

Fuck.

I waited a full fifteen minutes for him to tap on the door.

When he didn’t, I went to work—the Stager habit kicking in.

I picked up the beer bottle he’d left on the dresser. I wiped the condensation ring off the wood with my sleeve. I threw his printed MLS listings into the recycling bin.

I went into the bathroom and swept away the stray whiskers from the sink.

I made the best of the massive King mattress, pulling the white duvet drum-tight across it to make the monolith look intentional.

I dragged my Eames chair out of the corner, repositioned it, aligning the ottoman perfectly with the rug’s geometric pattern. I moved the sofa back to its original angle, restoring the natural flow of the room. I oiled the teak coffee table, rubbing it in until the wood glowed.

By 10 PM, the apartment was perfect. It was pristine. A white box, with clean lines and zero clutter.

It was exactly what I’d said I wanted.

I should have loved it, but the silence made me want to climb the walls.

I thought it would feel like relief by Wednesday morning. But it didn't.

I went to my gym in Capitol Hill at 6 AM, trying to slip back into my old routine. The weight room was full of my usual peers—smooth, gym-sculpted gay guys, checking their angles in the mirrors.

A month ago, I would have been scanning the room, making eye contact, sizing up the inventory.

But looking at them now, they all just looked... weightless. None of them moved with the thoughtless, infuriating gravity of Dan O'Malley.

I did three sets of squats and left early, feeling entirely unmoored.

On Thursday afternoon I was on Mercer Island, staging a mid-century split-level that was going on the market that weekend. I was standing in the dining room, adjusting a tasteful, neutral ceramic bowl on a teak credenza. It was a beautiful object. It fit the space perfectly.

My hand hovered over the ceramic bowl.

You don't make room for anything that doesn't fit your exact, perfect aesthetic.

I had spent my entire adult life staging vignettes so flawless that no one could ever live in them.

I moved the bowl, an irritating two inches off center, and left it there.

I left work early.

When I unlocked my apartment door and walked in I tried to see it the way a stranger might. The way Dan might: a museum exhibit. Portrait of a Solitary Man, Mid-Century Modern.

I dropped my keys on the tiny entry table and opened the hall closet.

Squatting down, I dug into the very back corner, pulling out a neatly closed storage box. I popped the lid. It was filled with the things I couldn't throw away but refused to display—my grandfather’s faded immigration papers, a stack of old architecture school sketchbooks, and a framed wedding photo of my parents.

And there was the plate.

I pulled it out and sat back on my heels in the hallway. It was just as hideous as I remembered—chunky, heavily glazed—an eyesore.

But holding it now, the clumsy weight of it felt like shame.

Nadia had been right. It was from his heart. Dan had walked into some craft fair, completely out of his element, and spent his money trying to buy something that would fit into my snobbish world. At a time when I wouldn’t give him the time of day without an eyeroll, he had tried to bridge the gap. And I had literally shoved his effort into a dark closet.

I stood up and walked into the living room. At my prized teak bookcase, I shifted a perfectly balanced piece of mid-century pottery aside, and set the ugly earth-tone plate right in the center of the shelf where Dan must have looked for it, that first day.

It ruined the composition—too big, too garish. Out of place.

I left it there and walked into the bedroom.

The King-size mattress was still taking up the entire floor, swallowing the room. It looked ridiculous—a massive white slab in a space designed for a postage stamp.

I spread out on it. It was firm. It was cold.

I thought about the argument. I thought about what I’d said to him. You occupy me.

I’d meant it in more than one way. He was an invader, a squatter taking up resources. But when he fucked me—he filled me totally. He pushed at every nerve ending; there was nowhere to retreat to. Nowhere to hide. It triggered an animal panic response every time. And then it always faded into a white-hot surrender.

Lying in the cold perfection of my apartment, I realized the inverse was also true. Without him occupying it, occupying me, I was just empty.

I wasn't wrong about the dynamic—the script. It had been one-way. He had been dominating the space, both physically and sexually. But I realized, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that I hadn't exactly offered him a roadmap to anything else.

He was a forty-year-old guy who was straight—or had played the part of it for twenty years—and was completely out of his depth. Of course he relied on his high school playbook—it was all he had. And instead of talking to him, instead of teaching him or taking the wheel like the Vers Top I claimed to be, I had just accommodated him.

I’d gotten off so hard on the idea of this big suburban straight guy wanting to fuck me—and then when he did, I silently resented the weight of him while moaning into the pillow until I erupted. And then I used it as ammunition to humiliate him.

Well done, Rami.

I spread my arms wide. My hands didn't even touch the edges.

For the first time in a month, I had plenty of room. I could roll over. I could stretch out. I could sleep in a starfish position if I wanted to.

I dropped my head to the side, dipping into Dan’s pillow. It still smelled faintly like him.

"Fuck," I whispered into the silent room.

I’d reclaimed my property. I’d successfully evicted the tenant.

So why did I feel like I was the one who had been foreclosed on?

---

Chapter 10: Off Market

Two days later, Dan had sent a single, brief text: Still figuring out logistics for the mattress. Can it stay a few more days?

I had replied with a single word: Fine.

So, the mattress remained. The room's circulation flow was still completely wrecked, and sleeping in the center of that expanse felt like drifting on a life raft. I couldn’t fill it alone. It was a physical reminder of exactly what I’d lost.

I went to work. I staged a condo in Clyde Hill—too much beige—and a bungalow in Green Lake that smelled like dogs. I went to the gym. I ate sensible salads on my Petrie sofa in total silence, actively avoiding turning on the massive flat-screen TV he had left behind.

I was performing my routine, but the audience had walked out.

The silence persisted for eight more days, during which time not a single thing in my apartment moved except by my hand. Static.

I glanced at my phone more often than I wanted to. Not for the apps—I hadn't opened them since the explosion—but for the inevitable follow-up. The text telling me the movers were finally coming. The final severing of the tie.

On Saturday afternoon, just as I was debating the merits of a third glass of wine, my phone buzzed. It was Dan. It wasn't about the mattress. It was a shared location pin.

Dan: 4208 37th Ave S, Columbia City.

Dan: Need a professional opinion. Bring a tape measure.

I headed south, leaving the vertical gray of downtown for the tree-lined, historic grid of Columbia City. Undeniably urban, with a bustling main drag of bakeries and bars—but the residential streets had real yards and driveways.

The address led me to a house perched on a slight rise. It was a 1970s contemporary—cedar siding and slanted rooflines that looked like it had been designed by a committee of drunk architects. The yard was overgrown. The gutters were hanging by a thread. It looked like a house that had been tired since the Clinton administration.

But the driveway was wide. And parked right in the center of it was a spotless black F-250—clearly a demo truck off the lot.

I pulled up behind it. Dan was sitting on the lowered tailgate, wearing a pair of faded jeans and a light blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He was holding a clipboard. His forearms rested on his thighs and the gold chain glinted at his open collar.

He watched me get out of the car. He didn't smile, but he didn't look like a kicked puppy either. He looked like a guy assessing a project for safety, but the project was me.

"You came," he said.

He hopped off the tailgate. The rear end of the truck rose a visible inch as it was relieved of his mass.

"Columbia City?" I asked. I didn’t know why he was wasting his time on this. There wasn't a Ruth’s Chris Steak House or a private golf course within a ten-mile radius of this street. "Not really your territory, Dan."

"Yeah," he said, turning to look at the cedar monstrosity. "Come take a look."

He walked up the driveway with a long, heavy stride. I had to quicken my own pace just to keep up with his longer legs. Inside, it wasn't suburban-massive. But compared to my apartment, it was an estate. It smelled like dust and Lemon Pledge. 

We walked into the living room. And it was a disaster.

"Exposed beams," Dan said, pointing up at the ceiling. "They’re real wood underneath that white paint."

He walked to the center of the room and spread his arms wide. He didn't touch a wall. He didn't knock over a vase. He was just a big man standing in a space that didn't flinch at his size.

"The layout is insane," he admitted, kicking at the matted orange shag carpet with a scuffed boot. "The kitchen is closed off. The dining room is a closet. It's not Bellevue big. But it's got three bedrooms. A yard for the kids. And a living room that doesn't make me feel like I'm breaking things just by breathing."

“Speaking professionally,” I said, stepping over a patch of the matted orange shag and looking around with a clinical eye, "you'd have to gut the central core just to make it livable.” I gestured at the offending wall.” There's zero flow. Obviously, your commute would be impossible. If you're seriously considering this place—"

"I bought it," Dan cut in.

The "professional advice" died in my throat. I actually blinked, certain I’d misheard him. "You... what?"

"I bought it," he repeated. "Cash offer from the Bellevue payout. Ten-day close. The previous owner was a customer's grandmother. Estate sale. I traded the guy a great lease on a RAV4 for first dibs before it hit the market."

"But... it's Seattle," I said, my mind running the math. "Getting to the dealership in Bellevue from Columbia City? The I-90 bridge traffic. That’s going to add forty minutes to your commute. Every single day."

"Forty-five in the rain," he corrected. He shrugged, his broad shoulders shifting effortlessly beneath the cotton shirt. "I don't care. I like driving. But you? You’d wither in the suburbs. I saw your face when I mentioned Renton. You looked like you were suffocating. So I bought the compromise."

He had bought a house. 

And in typical Dan O'Malley fashion, he had done it completely unilaterally. Without a single conversation. A million-dollar house in the city, just because he had noticed the look on my face. And after I’d said the most awful, humiliating things to him.

It was a staggering, asinine and terrifying gesture. 

He looked at me, his gold-flecked eyes serious. The Sales Manager mask wasn’t there at all.

"I didn't fit in your apartment," he said. "You were right. I was occupying your space. I was taking up all the air. I can't shrink, Rami. I tried. I tried to be smaller. I tried to fit in your bed and your schedule and your aesthetic. But I’m big. I’m loud. And I come with three kids, and..."

He gestured around the ugly, empty room.

"So I bought a bigger box. One that’s close enough to your gym and your clients that you won't have to hate me."

"I didn’t hate you," I said, my throat suddenly tight. "I never hated you. I just—"

"I know," he interrupted gently. He stepped away from the wall. "It's just... the days staging the old house, working on it with you? That was the most I felt like myself in… I don’t know. And it's how I want to feel. Every day."

He dug his hands deep into his pockets.

"I don't need a stager," he said quietly, baring himself completely. "I need someone who knows how to knock down walls. I need someone who can look at a disaster like this and see potential."

He walked over to a wall—the one separating the sunken living room from the dark kitchen. He slapped it with a flat palm. Thud.

"This is non-load bearing," he said. "I’m pretty sure."

I looked at the hideous orange carpet. I looked at the terrible 1970s wallpaper. I looked at the wall he wanted to demolish. It was big and outdated. A total mess on the surface. But maybe, underneath the terrible aesthetics, the bones were incredible.

I turned away and reached into my pocket and pulled out my Stanley tape measure.

"First of all," I said, my voice shaking a fraction as I snapped the metal tape out and hooked it onto the doorframe. "That wall is absolutely load-bearing. If you knock it down, the roof will collapse."

Dan blinked. "Is that right?"

"Yes," I said. I kept my eyes on my hands, stretching the metal tape along the length of the plaster. "But... if you install a steel header beam, you can open it up completely."

I stopped and turned back to face him.

"You’re going to need a sledgehammer," I said. "And a dumpster. A really big dumpster."

"I can get a dumpster," Dan said, his voice dropping. His eyes tracked my movement. "I'm good with logistics."

"Good," I said, allowing a slow smile to finally break across my face. "Because you have terrible taste in carpet."

I walked into the center of the room, spinning around, my brain already tearing down sheetrock and reimagining the flow. I looked up at the ceiling and the painted beams. It was a disaster. It was a masterpiece waiting to happen. It just needed a second chance.

"The only problem is," I said, stopping to look back at him. I let the metal tape retract into my palm with a sharp, echoing CLACK. "This isn't something I can do."

Dan flinched, just slightly. The mask flickered.

"Not alone, anyway," I clarified. "This is a two-man job."

Dan’s hands slid into his pockets, rocking back on his heels as he let out a long, heavy breath.

"Yeah," he said, “I was hoping you'd say something like that."

He grinned under his mustache. Not the practiced grin of the guy who was closing the deal on the lot. It was the gut-deep, relieved grin of a guy who just got permission to finally be himself.

---

Chapter 11: The New Playbook 

We locked the deadbolt on the cedar monstrosity, leaving the orange shag behind for the night. The sun was dipping, casting long, amber shadows across the overgrown yard.

I started walking toward the black F-250 idling in the driveway—that mountain of steel that belonged in a different zip code—but Dan passed it. He reached over and put his hand on the passenger-side handle of my truck.

"You drive," he said.  "I can pick up the demo tomorrow."

There seemed to be a lot of weight in those few words.

I unlocked the doors and we got in. It was the first time I’d ever seen Dan in the passenger seat of anything. He looked oversized in the cabin—his shoulders nearly touching the glass, his knees high—but he didn't look uncomfortable. 

“Buckle up,” I said.

We stopped at Dick’s Drive-In on Broadway, right in the gay center of the Hill. We ordered burgers and sat in my truck. Absent the territorial friction of the last month, the silence was easy as we watched the neighborhood move around us. Occasionally, we’d talk about the house—subway tile, industrial lighting, the grit of the project ahead—but mostly, we just breathed the same air.

We didn’t need to talk about where we were going. There was only one destination.

When we walked into my apartment, the boots and the shoes came off at the door without a word. The space was dark and still, but the air felt like it was crackling.

We moved into the bedroom. The King-size monolith was waiting for us. I reached for the buttons of my shirt, but I stopped when I saw Dan wasn't moving. He was standing at the foot of the bed, his hands deep in his pockets, watching me.

"So," he said. “You were right.” The rumble of his voice was stripped of his usual bombast.

I paused. "About the load-bearing wall?"

"About the script." He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers dragging through the hair at his nape. "I was sure I was straight because of the math. But the math... Rami, the math is small."

He let out a long, heavy breath, his broad chest rising and falling under the blue cotton shirt.

"Jill was my high school girlfriend. When we got married she was the only girl I’d been with. We split up when I was thirty-three. Six months later, I met Nadia." He met my eyes, raw and unprotected. "That's it. That's the list. Two women. That’s all I know."

I’d thought it might be. But I hadn’t realized how much of the swagger, the ham-fisted dominance wasn't arrogance but a forty-year-old man clinging to the only blueprint he had, no matter how flawed.

"I don't know the 'scene,'" Dan said. "I don't know the tricks. I only know what worked with Jill, and what worked with your sister." He let out a short, self-deprecating huff. "And even then, it didn't really work, did it? The sex was never… great. And they both divorced me. The first night we were together you seemed to like it. So I kept it up... I didn't know how else to be with you."

He took a half-step forward. 

"But I don't want to run the playbook anymore. I sure as hell don't want you to accommodate me. You said you're a Vers Top. You said you like to be on top."

"Not always," I breathed. I didn't want him to think the last month was a lie—it wasn’t. “But yeah. I do.”

Dan swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing, his gold-flecked eyes burning into mine. "Then show me."

"Okay," I whispered.

I stepped into his space and pushed the light blue work shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. I placed my hands firmly on his furry chest, right over the hammering of his heart, and backed him up until his heels hit the edge of the floor mattress.

He sank down, the foam sinking under his weight. Because of the height difference, his face was perfectly level with my waist. I reached for my belt, but his large hands caught my wrists.

"Let me," he rumbled.

His thick fingers undid the buckle and pulled my jeans and boxers down to the floor with a soft thud. He looked at me, testing the weight of my cock in his hand before he leaned forward and took me into his mouth.

It was hot. It was wet. 

It wasn't expert. 

Dan’s was awkward, unsure of what to do with his tongue, trying to take too much and triggering a quick gag reflex. His mustache scratched against my skin, and his teeth accidentally grazed me as he tried to figure out the angle. 

It was the hottest thing I had ever experienced. 

The sheer reality of this man who’d spent two decades wrapped in suburban heterosexuality, eagerly, earnestly learning how to suck my cock was intoxicating.

"Dan," I whispered. My hands tangled in his thick, messy hair, guiding his head. "Let your jaw drop. Relax.” I pushed in, hitting his throat. “Fuckkk. Yeah, right there."

He groaned against the root of my cock, tracking the praise immediately. He cupped my balls in one hand and reached down to grip the mound in his own jeans. He dragged his broad, wet tongue exactly where I wanted it, suppressing his body’s instincts against the invasion.

I let him work, letting my hips thrust gently, savoring the clumsy friction.

I rarely came from head, but staring down at him, seeing Dan—of all people—learning on the job, getting off on gulping down my erection had me close. I could have let it go, fueled by the thought of him sucking my load down. 

But I wanted more than this. I wanted the whole playbook rewritten.

"Dan… Dan," I choked out, my hands tightening in his hair, pulling back. “Stop.”

He looked up, eyes dark and slightly glazed, his chin wet. He looked worried, like he’d failed a test he didn't quite understand yet.

"You're doing great," I whispered, leaning down to thumb the string of spit from his lip. I let a grin spread. "A little too great. But I’m not letting you finish me off like that. Not yet."

My pulse drummed in my ears. “I want you in the bed. On your hands and knees.”

A nervous smirk broke under his mustache, but he didn’t argue. He rose up to lock eyes with me as he shucked his jeans and briefs. He was rock hard.

He kicked them aside and crawled onto the mattress. His broad, furry shoulders shifted as he settled. He cracked his neck. Waiting.

Seeing the big, lumbering ex-brother-in-law I’d spent seven years resenting willingly submitting to me was an absolute mindfuck.

I grabbed the lube from the nightstand and knelt behind him. Parting the rounded cheeks, I could see the soft brown hair that dusted the undersides, converging at his tight hole. I gripped a fleshy cheek, pressing my thumb into the meat.

“Fuck.”

I leaned in and dragged my tongue along his cleft. I lapped him with the flat of my tongue, wetting him down as I held his cheeks open. He tasted rank.

He hadn’t prepped, and I didn’t care.

I didn’t have the strength to push or pull his full weight, but I had technique: I reached under him with one hand, wrapping it around his balls and the root of his cock like a handle, to draw him back against my mouth.

I breached him with my tongue, pushing in and pulling him back against my face. His knees shifted; he dropped a fraction lower as I tongue-fucked him deeper.

When he was wet and groaning, I poured lube into the crevice, smearing his hole and pushing in—a single finger. He tightened, his body reflexively trying to protect itself.

“You’re so sexy,” I murmured against the skin of his thigh, adding a second finger and then a third.

“Yeah,” he hissed through his teeth. “Don’t stop.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I promised. I curled my fingers, probing for—and then finding—the firm, walnut-sized shape inside him. I ran my fingers over it, sending a visible tremor through his shoulders.

He pushed back against my hand.

“You like that, don’t you? Yeah, look at you.”

I worked his prostate until I couldn’t wait any longer. I pulled my fingers out slowly and sat back on my heels. I wrapped my hand around my own aching cock, stroking myself as I looked at him.

“Down on your elbows,” I ordered. “If you want more.”

Dan dropped his chest to the mattress, keeping his hips elevated.

Because of the physics of our height difference, I needed him lower. I guided his hips down, estimating the angle. “Right there,” I muttered, grasping the meat of his ass. “Fucking beautiful.”

And he was. A masterpiece of masculine surrender—his gold chain dragging against the sheets, his body loosened and waiting. I moved in on my knees, lined up, pressed the head against him, and pushed.

The head went smooth and the first inch—then he clenched and I slipped out, sliding up his crack instead of in.

“Fuck—sorry,” I muttered, gripping his hips.

“It’s okay,” he rasped, exhaling hard through his nose. “Just… slow. I’m trying to—” He bore down a little, awkward, like he was figuring out how to relax the right muscles.

I tried again. This time the head pushed past the tight ring with a shared hiss from both of us. I sank in slow, feeling every flutter, Dan clamping down as he adjusted. My pelvis finally met his ass, pubic hair scratching against skin. I rested my hands on his hairy back.

“Oh my god,” I whispered. He was so hot inside. I’d been so wrong: he wasn’t a landslide. He was a volcano.

Dan’s head fell forward against the pillow. “Fuck. Jesus, Rami.”

“Yeah, I know,” I grunted, leaning my hips flush against his rear. “Dan… you feel so good.”

I wrapped my hands around his hips and pulled back to thrust into him. Once. Twice. I found my rhythm, pumping into the furnace of him.

I felt him ease into the occupation—the give of his elbows, the shift in his breathing. The “Oh fuck,” gasped against the pillow.

“Take it, Dan. All of it.”

I wanted to work his dick, but the physics were wrong. I needed him to do it for me.

“Touch yourself,” I growled, grinding deep.

Dan shifted his weight onto one shoulder. His hips opened a bit, but his belly pressed down and made the angle awkward—he had to crane his arm at an odd tilt to reach.

“Goddamn it,” he laughed breathlessly, half-frustrated. “This is harder than it looks.”

“Here—” I reached under for a second, guiding his wrist, but he’d already found the angle.

He grunted approval, found a rhythm that was close enough—jerky at first, then steadier as he synced to my thrusts. His breathing hitched every time I bottomed out.

“Don’t stop,” I ordered, fingers digging into his flesh. “Take it, Dan.”

The wet clap of our bodies echoed in the silent room. My pace picked up and he met it. “I’m not gonna last,” I grunted.

“Rami,” he choked out.

His hips worked frantically against his own fist. He let out a half-whimper-half-groan and I felt him go impossibly tight around me as he released his load, pumping it out onto our bed with his hand, my cock pushing it out of him.

The trembling clench of his inner muscles tipped me over the edge. I gasped out loud. My fingers dug into his sides and my hips stuttered as I emptied almost two weeks of cum as deep as I could get in him.

My pelvis slumped against Dan’s rear until I slowly and regretfully pulled out. My semi was hypersensitive and slick, and the final friction sent tremors through me. A thick stream of lube and cum followed me out onto the fitted sheet.

“Good job,” I grunted, my heart thundering. I gave him a clap on his hairy ass.

Dan dropped against the mattress. He reached blindly for the discarded t-shirt I’d thrown earlier, wiping his sticky hand clean and running it through his ass cheeks before dropping the cotton directly over the lube and cum he’d pumped onto the sheets.

With the mess covered, he finally turned over on his back. I awkwardly found a space beside him, on top of the damp t-shirt.

He let out a long, exhausted breath and turned to face me. We pulled together for a soft, warm kiss as our bodies came to rest. 

"Holy shit," he whispered, letting out a relieved chuckle.

“Yeah,” I answered, cupping his cheek as a lazy, awe-struck grin spread beneath his mustache.

We dropped onto our backs, and I let the knuckles of one hand rest on his sweaty, solid chest. 

"If you think that's great," I said softly, my thumb brushing over his gold chain, "Wait till you hear about the second hole."

Dan raised an eyebrow. "Rami, I know there's a lot I don't know. But I'm pretty sure I know all the holes."

I laughed, resting my cheek against his bicep. "Okay, it’s not really a hole. Let me tell you about it..."

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Chapter 12: The Header Beam

Six weeks later, the cedar monstrosity in Columbia City was unrecognizable.

The massive yellow dumpster sitting in the driveway was already half-full. The orange shag carpet was gone, exposing the original hardwood beneath. “Great,” I’d mock-complained, before taping down professional-grade Ram Board and canvas tarps over every square inch of it. You don't disrespect good oak.

Then came the demo: the terrible, flow-ruining wall that had choked the kitchen—was coming down.

“Hold it right there," I called out, swallowing hard and forcing myself to look at the drywall instead of the man destroying it.

Dan paused, a twenty-pound sledgehammer resting easily on his bare shoulder. It was mid-August, and the house didn't have functioning AC yet. He was wearing battered work boots, a pair of dust-covered jeans, and nothing else. Two-hundred-and-seventy-pounds of thick shoulders, gold-brown fur, and the solid ledge of his belly, all slick with sweat and dusted with white plaster.

When he shifted his weight, I caught a glimpse of wide, black elastic peeking out above the frayed denim waistband. It was the black jockstrap I had bought for him two weeks ago. Nothing fancy—just basic, utilitarian. 

It was, objectively, the most distracting thing I’d ever seen on a job—and I’d once walked in on a homeowner going down on a contractor in the middle of a freshly staged master closet.

"I have two more studs to knock out, boss," he rumbled, a slow smirk playing under his mustache. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"I know," I said, tapping my clipboard against my thigh to ground myself. "But just be careful with the load-bearing supports. We need that steel header to go in clean."

Dan leaned the sledgehammer against his thigh and wiped his face with a flexing, dirty forearm.

"Got it," he said, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register. "You're the architect."

"I'm a stager," I corrected him, trying to maintain my focus.

"Right now," Dan said, walking over to the cooler we had set up in the gutted dining room. "But maybe it’s time you finish that degree. Seriously."

That got my attention almost more than the sight of him.

He reached in and pulled out two bottles of Rainier, popping the caps off on the edge of a sawhorse. He walked over and handed one to me. I took a long drink, the cold beer cutting through the dust in my throat. I looked out over the open space, calculating the scale of the mess.

"We still have to run the new electrical, hang the drywall, and that's not even counting the exterior."

"How long is it going to take?" Dan asked, watching me.

"Years," I admitted. I took another swig of beer, letting out a breath. 

"Okay,” he said, nodding.

We were our best together this way. Maybe fixing up homes was our love language—and the longer it took, the better.

Dan sank heavily onto an overturned five-gallon bucket, his long legs stretching out. He took a pull of his beer and let out a satisfied sigh. "Nadia texted me today," he said casually, resting the bottle on his bare knee.

I lowered the bottle, my heart kicking up a notch. "Oh?"

"Leo's soccer cleats," Dan nodded. "And about my 'contractor.'"

It was the lie we’d settled on for now—that Dan had hired me after the success of staging his Bellevue house.

"Has she figured it out?" I asked.

"I don’t think so. But she’s curious—trying to piece it all together."

"She should work for the CIA," I said, leaning back against a stud.

Dan let out a loud, booming laugh that echoed in the empty living room. "If she only knew."

"It's not funny, Dan," I sighed, looking at the floorboards. "When we drop this bomb... it's going to be nuclear."

"It'll be fine," Dan said easily.

"Fine? Dan, they are going to lose their minds. And it's not just my mom and Nadia," I continued, the anxiety spiking. "What about your kids? Connor is eighteen. He’s exactly the same age I was when you married my sister. You know how I was about that, and I didn’t have half his reason. The karmic payback alone is staggering."

Dan chuckled. "Connor will be fine. And my parents already love you, Rami."

"Your parents love everyone," I pointed out. "They aren’t very discerning people."

Dan’s grin widened. "True. But you're missing the most important part."

He set his beer on the floor and stood up, the bucket scraping against the board protecting the hardwood. He closed the distance between us, his shirtless frame blocking out the light from the front window. He held out his phone.

"We're already family, Rami," he murmured, his voice a low, vibrating rumble. "Look at Leo. My genes and your genes, already mixed up together in one kid. We're already tied."

I looked at the photo. Leo was six years old, wearing a jersey two sizes too big, squinting against the sun. I’d seen the photo a dozen times, but looking at it now, through the haze of plaster dust and the heat of Dan standing inches away, the geometry of it changed.

I saw the exact curve of my own eyelids. The same dark brown irises. My lips. But they were grafted onto the heavy, stubborn jawline of the man standing in front of me. It wasn't just a resemblance; it was a merger—two distinct genetic blueprints fused into a single, living person.

The undeniable truth of it hit me right in the chest: We were locked into the same structure, for the rest of our lives.

My restraint completely snapped.

I stepped directly into his space, reaching up to dust his chest, feeling the thud of his heart against my palms. 

My fingers caught the hair at the nape of his neck and pulled his head down.

I kissed him. Hard, and unrestrained.

Dan let out a rough, startled groan. His hands dropped to my hips. His fingers dug into my jeans, pulling me flush against the hard ridge of his erection.

"Rami," he gasped against my mouth. "We're covered in drywall."

"I know. It’s so hot," I growled, biting at his lower lip.

He gripped my waist and walked me backward toward the pile of drop cloths in the center of the living room. He lowered me down, the canvas rough against my shirt. I reached for his belt, my fingers clumsy with want. We pushed his denim down his thick thighs. He dropped back on his heels, making quick work of the laces. He yanked the scuffed boots off, tossing them aside, and kicked his jeans and boxers away.

And there it was.

The black straps of the jock cut sharply under the solid arc of his gut, the pouch straining, while the back straps perfectly framed his round, furry ass. It was raw, intensely masculine, and the forty-year-old father of three, the Sales Manager, put it on specifically for me.

"You're wearing it," I breathed, my eyes devouring the sight of him.

"Told you," he rumbled. There was a dark, filthy heat in his eyes. "I like how it holds me."

He hooked his thumbs under the waistband and shoved it down, freeing his huge cock to bounce under its own weight. He kicked the jock aside to join the dusty pile of clothes on the canvas.

I stripped just as fast, leaving my clothes in a pile. Before he moved over me, Dan reached into the side pocket of his canvas tool bag. He pulled out a small, familiar bottle of clear lube, flashing a slow, devastating grin under his mustache.

I let out a laugh. "You came prepared?"

"Learned from the best," he rumbled. "Lie back."

I settled onto the canvas. Dan poured lube into his palm, warming it. He rubbed his fingers in it, and then slid them into me—two, then quickly three. I didn't need much prep anymore, after the last month of adjusting to having Dan’s heft in me. 

Within seconds I was slick, my hips rising, seeking the pressure of his knuckles.

Dan wedged himself between my legs, my hip turned to the side. He tucked one of my legs under his heavy thigh and hoisted the other high onto his shoulder, positioning himself to completely open me up.

He looked down to watch the head of his erection smack against my hole, and then with practiced skill pushed it in, the head and straight through to the thickest girth in the middle.

I dropped my head back against the canvas, feeling the stretch. "Fuck."

"Yeah," he whispered.

He sank into me in a single plunge. The pressure of him filling me completely triggered every biological alarm—and then, as it always did, without my ever understanding how, the sensation melted into white hot pleasure.

He drew back and thrust in again. He rolled his hips forward, a slow, deep grind. He picked up the pace, and as I opened to him he plunged deeper.

Because of my position, he had the perfect leverage to adjust the angle. He expertly dipped and thrust up, and then he hit it—the flared head of his cock bumping bluntly against the elusive "second hole"—the sigmoid bend that only someone with his sheer size could get deep enough to reach.

"Oh my god," I choked, clutching at the drop cloth.

He adjusted his stance, his eyes darting from my flushed face to the place where our bodies connected. He pulled back a fraction, adjusted the angle of his hips—tilted up a hair—and thrust again. First try: just heavy pressure, no lightning.

He exhaled through his teeth, pulled back again, shifted his stance so his knee braced better against the canvas. Second thrust: closer, a dull throb deep inside.

Third time he nailed it. The flared head dragged right over that bend and my whole spine lit up; I arched hard enough that my shoulders left the drop cloth for a second. A sharp gasp ripped out of me.

“There?” he asked, voice rough, holding still to check.

“Fuck yes—right there. Don’t you dare change it,” I managed, toes curling against his back.

Dan’s mustache twitched at the corner of his mouth. He pulled back and then in again, at a rhythmic pace. Every thrust was a deliberate drag over my deepest nerve endings.

"You like that?" he growled, his mustache scratching my sweaty skin.

"Yes," I gasped, my hips snapping back against his thrusts, chasing the profound feeling of him in my core. "Don't stop."

The thrusts came harder and faster. His right hand locked onto my upper thigh, to keep me completely open to his angle. His left hand wrapped firmly around my cock, stroking me in perfect time with his hips.

"Fuck," I groaned, as his hand brought me right over the edge. I shot hot, white ropes of cum through the blur of his fist, shooting onto my belly.

He groaned as my body tightened around him. He leaned forward, boxing me in, his breath growing ragged. His gold chain swayed as he drove into me. A bead of sweat fell from the tip of his nose, splashing hot against my collarbone.

"Rami," he warned, his body suddenly going rigid. He gripped my leg tight enough to bruise and groaned a loud “FUCK!” as his fat cock went even stiffer for a long, mind-blowing moment, as he erupted in me. His hard, full-bodied thrust was followed by a series of slowing jabs as he emptied out.

Dan dropped back on his heels, breathing hard, hairy chest heaving. Eventually, he softened and eased out with a wet squelch, leaving me hollow, aching, and leaking onto the canvas. 

He dropped beside me, scrambled closer, his hairy thigh smearing through the spilled lube and sawdust, bringing his face to mine. His mustache scratched against my upper lip, his tongue sliding against mine in a lazy, intimate rhythm.

Dan finally shifted his weight, pressing a soft kiss to the side of my neck.

"A header beam," he murmured, his voice completely wrecked.

"What?" I laughed softly, catching my breath.

"We need to get that header beam in. Fast,” Dan said, his thumb lazily tracing circles on my stomach, right through the mess we had made. "To hold up the roof. Before we tell your family. I’m tired of waiting."

I turned my head, resting my cheek against his thick bicep. I looked at the gutted walls, the exposed studs, and the incredible, solid foundation underneath it all.

"Make it a strong one," I whispered. "We've got a lot of family to tell."

 

End of Book Two

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Thanks to my friend Hayden for helping me think this through. 

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