The dim glow of the bedside lamp cast long shadows across the rumpled sheets, turning their shared king-sized haven into a cocoon of half-hearted intimacy. Jordan’s heart thudded with that familiar mix of determination and quiet ache as he trailed kisses down Ben’s broad chest. They had tumbled into bed an hour earlier, the weight of another silent dinner lingering in the air: Ben’s eyes distant over his untouched plate, Jordan’s laughter forced, a desperate bid to coax some spark back into the man he loved. Now, here in the hush of midnight, Jordan pressed on, his mouth finding the heavy warmth of Ben’s cock, determined to summon the fire that had once roared between them.
It was the fourth time this week, each failed attempt etching a deeper line of worry into Jordan’s resolve. He’d sensed it earlier, during their tentative kisses: Ben’s full lips responding with mechanical softness, no hungry edge, no rumble from that massive chest. But Jordan had pushed gently, murmuring against the salt of Ben’s skin, “Let me take care of you, Benny,” his hands roaming those tree-trunk thighs, kneading the solid muscle beneath the softening layer of flesh. Ben had nodded, a ghost of a sigh escaping his beard-framed mouth, his glasses fogged slightly from the room’s warmth. And so Jordan dove in, pouring every ounce of his skill into the act, as if sheer devotion could will Ben’s body back to life.
He started slow, tongue swirling lazy circles around the thick base, tracing the prominent veins that mapped Ben’s impressive length like rivers on a rugged landscape, ten inches of potential, veined and proud in better days, now a reluctant sentinel. Jordan’s lips parted wider, taking him in inch by inch, his throat relaxing with practiced ease to swallow him whole, the stretch familiar and intoxicating despite the lack of response. He hollowed his cheeks, sucking with rhythmic pulls, one hand cupping those huge, heavy balls, rolling them gently in his palm, fingers teasing the sensitive seam beneath. The other hand stroked what his mouth couldn’t reach. He hummed low, vibrations buzzing along Ben’s shaft, glancing up through his lashes to catch Ben’s hazel eyes behind those wire-rimmed glasses, pleading, hoping for that telltale twitch, the swell that would signal surrender.
But Ben lay there like a felled oak, his massive frame sprawled against the pillows, one beefy arm draped over his forehead, the other hand limp at his side. He wasn’t completely soft, not that heartbreaking wilt of total defeat, but nowhere near the rigid heat Jordan craved, the girth that could split him open and make him see stars. A faint semi-firmness pulsed under Jordan’s ministrations, a cruel tease, like an engine sputtering but refusing to turn over. Ben’s breath came in shallow huffs, not the ragged moans of old, and after a long, aching minute, he shifted, his voice a gravelly murmur muffled by the pillow. “Jord... it’s not... fuck, I’m sorry.”
Jordan pulled back slowly, lips glistening, a string of saliva breaking as he released Ben with a soft pop. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, forcing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, his own arousal a distant throb now overshadowed by the sting in his chest. “Hey, it’s okay,” he lied softly, crawling up to nestle against Ben’s side, one hand tracing idle patterns over the meaty swell of his pecs, down to the gentle curve of his gut, the one Jordan had come to adore. But inside, the worry coiled tighter: four times, and counting. How much longer could he pretend this was just a phase?
Jordan lay there in the afterglow of defeat, his head pillowed on Ben’s heaving chest, the steady thrum of his boyfriend’s heart a metronome to his own unraveling thoughts. The room smelled of them, or what should have been them: faint musk and toothpaste. He traced the faded ink of Ben’s anchor tattoo with his fingertip, a cheap relic from some long-ago bender in a construction-site trailer, and let his mind drift back to the beginning, to the man Ben had been when they’d collided like fate in a fluorescent-lit lobby. It was a ritual, this mental rewind a his armor against the creeping dread that the Ben beside him might slip away for good.
It had started three and a half years ago, on a crisp September morning when Jordan, fresh out of his Art History master’s with a sleek leather portfolio under one arm, stepped into the gleaming lobby of Harrington & Hale Art Consultancy. At 26, still an assistant, gobsmacked by the Building, a fortress of glass and steel in Midtown, all polished marble and security protocols. His parents, divorcees who’d long since traded custody battles for competing wine cellars, had pulled strings for the gig, but Jordan had earned his place, nose-deep in dusty tomes and auction catalogs, craving the quiet thrill of provenance over the performative schmoozing of their social circuit.
Ben had been there from the start, a towering sentinel at the reception desk, his 6’7 frame folded awkwardly into a too-tight uniform shirt that strained across his meaty pecs and beefy arms. At 24, he was all raw edges: beard trimmed just enough to pass muster, wire-rimmed glasses perched on a nose that had seen one too many bar fights, cheap tattoos peeking from his cuffs like guilty secrets. Jordan noticed him immediately: not the preppy interns with their trust-fund smirks and The Row polos, the kind his mother still paraded at garden parties like eligible stallions. No, Ben was different: a working-class colossus, broad-shouldered and unapologetic, his hazel eyes scanning the lobby with the weary vigilance of someone who’d clawed his way through construction sites and night-shift warehouses since bolting from his parents’ trailer at 17. Their folks had never swallowed a gay son,Bem had told him eventually spit out over whiskey like bile, and high school had been a dropout blur of survival gigs, no diploma, just calluses and a chip on his shoulder the size of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Their first real exchange came on Jordan’s second week, during a freight elevator snafu that trapped them between floors for a sweaty twenty minutes. Jordan had been rattling off facts about a Degas he’d appraised that morning, when Ben’s low chuckle cut through the hum of the stalled motor. “But you lost me at dynamism of the line “ Name’s Ben, by the way. Ben Morgan. Security.” Jordan had extended a hand, his 5’9” frame tilting up to meet his eyes, feeling the electric jolt as Ben’s massive paw engulfed his, rough, capable, with a grip that promised he could bench-press a Buick or cradle something fragile without crushing it.
From there, it snowballed in stolen moments: Ben slipping Jordan a spare keycard for after-hours access to the rooftop terrace, where they’d share lukewarm coffee from the vending machine and talk until the city lights blurred. Jordan learned the jagged edges of Ben’s story, the runaway kid couch-surfing in Queens, bouncing between gigs that paid in bruises and beer Money; while Ben soaked up Jordan’s tales of gallery openings and parental brunches, his laugh a gravelly thunder that made Jordan’s pulse stutter. “You with your degrees and your fancy pens,” Ben would tease, adjusting his glasses as he eyed Jordan’s tailored slacks, “and here I am, the just the dude at the door.” But Jordan saw the hunger beneath, and it stirred something fierce in him, a desire to build rather than just admire.
By their third month, over dim sum in a hole-in-the-wall off Canal, Jordan laid it out plain: “You’re smarter than this lobby gig, Ben. Let me help. You’ll get your GED, I’ll tutor you through the bullshit.” Ben had balked, that stubborn jaw tightening under his beard, the weight of his past pressing down like an unpicked lock. But Jordan persisted, patient as he unpicked a forged provenance, leaving study guides in Ben’s locker and practicing flashcards over lazy mornings in bed. Ben relented, grudgingly at first, then with a fire that lit him up.
The apprenticeship came next, Jordan’s doing: a favor called in from his firm’s landlord, who owned a string of electrical outfits upstate. Ben landed the spot: apprentice electrician, decent hours wiring high-rises, a paycheck that covered his rent without. He bulked up on the job, those beefy arms and legs thickening with purpose, the six-pack etching in sharp under Jordan’s appreciative hands. The gut hadn’t existed then.
For three blessed years, it was a dream stitched from their mismatched threads: Ben coming home sweat-slicked from a seven-hour shift, Jordan greeting him with a gallery-warmed bottle of Pinot and a slow strip-tease. Weekends blurred into brunches at Jordan’s parents’ insistence (they adored Ben’s rough charm, slipping him stock tips over mimosas), hikes in the Palisades where Ben hoisted Jordan onto his shoulders like a trophy, and quiet evenings with Ben’s head in Jordan’s lap, glasses askew as he pored over trade journals Jordan had sourced. Money flowed steady, and their love was the kind that felt invincible.
Lying there now, with Ben’s flacic cock warm against his thigh and the clock ticking toward another jobless dawn, Jordan clung to those memories like a talisman. Three years of bliss, shattered by one sleazy boss’s advance and a pink slip that had unraveled it all. But he wouldn’t let go. As the memories of their golden years flickered like an old film reel in Jordan’s mind, the reel stuttered, then snapped to the fracture point that had started it all unraveling. It was a Thursday in late spring, Ben knee-deep in a retrofit job at a Midtown high-rise, the kind of sweltering gig where sweat soaked through his work shirt and plastered it to the ridges of his six-pack. He’d ducked into the site’s makeshift restroom trailer during a break, unzipping to take a leak, oblivious to the shadowed figure lingering just beyond the thin partition. His boss, some slick forty-something foreman named Harlan with a comb-over and a perpetual ler, had been prowling the perimeter, clipboard in hand, but his eyes had snagged on the open door. There it was: Ben’s legendary cock, that thick, veined monster hanging heavy and unashamed, a beast that could have starred in the sleaziest of porn flicks. Harlan’s thirst ignited in an instant.
It played out like the setup to one of those bargain-bin pornos Ben and Jordan used to mock over beers, blue-collar hunk cornered by the authority figure. But this was no fantasy; it was the grim prelude to Ben’s nightmare. Two days later, in the foreman’s cramped office, Harlan had cornered him after hours. “Saw what you’re packing down there, big guy,” Harlan had slurred, “We could... collaborate. Keep things off the record.” Ben declined, of course.
Just three days after that, Ben came home early, his tool belt slung over one shoulder like a noose, face ashen under the scruff of his beard. Fired. Harlan and the site manager had sputtered some corporate boilerplate in the termination meeting: “Hard to work with... attitude issues... not a team player.” Bullshit, all of it, wrapped in HR forms and a severance check that barely covered a week’s groceries. Ben knew the truth: retaliation, pure and petty, that unwanted advance twisting into a pink slip because he wouldn’t play along. Jordan had been in the middle of a client call. Outrage hit him like a freight train, his polished world of legal briefs and auction disputes ill-equipped for this raw injustice. “We’ll sue the bastards,” he’d fumed that night, phone already dialing a litigator friend from his parents’ Rolodex. Ben had just sat there at the Formica table, massive frame hunched over a lukewarm beer, staring at the label like it held the secrets to starting over. He’d already given up, the fire in his hazel eyes banked to embers; taking the hit quietly was his armor, forged in years of swallowing pride to survive. No fight left for courtrooms or comebacks, just a nod and a murmured “Let it go, Jord,”.
Jordan had been there all the way, a constant in the storm. By week’s end, he’d convinced Ben to pack his duffel and move into the big, spacious loft in Chelsea, the one Jordan’s consultancy salary afforded with its exposed beams and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson. He didn’t care that he’d be the sole breadwinner for a stretch, dipping into savings to cover the electrician’s union dues Ben still paid in vain hope. Things were tight money-wise: takeout swapped for home-cooked pasta, gallery happy hours skipped for couch nights, but Jordan knew they could make it. Ben was worth every pinched penny.
But things only went downhill after that, a slow slide into the abyss that Jordan watched with a helplessness that clawed at his gut. Ben stopped going to the gym altogether, those once-rigid routines of deadlifts and bench presses abandoned for evenings slumped on the leather sectional, remote in hand, the flicker of a dumb cop show called Precint 17 only exertion. He started drinking a lot, beers turning to six-packs, then whiskeys neat to chase the day’s defeats. The weight crept on stealthily at first, softening the sharp V of his hips, then blooming into a proper belly that spilled over his beltline, a plush curve Jordan traced with tentative affection but couldn’t coax Ben to laugh about anymore. Sleep evaded him too, the loft’s king bed becoming a battlefield of tosses and sighs; Ben would rise at dawn, shadows bruising under his eyes, glasses askew as he stared out at the waking city like it mocked him.
Not even his legendary cock was working anymore, that veiny, girthsome pride of their early days, the one Jordan had worshiped like a talisman, now betrayed him in the most intimate betrayal. It hung heavy but unresponsive, a ghost in their fumbling attempts at closeness, leaving Ben to pull away with muttered curses and Jordan to swallow his own frustration, curling against that newly softened chest in silent solidarity. Jordan was really worried about Ben, the kind of bone-deep fear that whispered of fractures too deep for quick fixes. He thought Ben was depressed, truly, clinical, consuming, the vibrant spark that had drawn him in three years prior snuffed to a flicker. Ben was a shell of his former self, no confidence at all: the giant who once hoisted Jordan like he weighed nothing now shuffled in oversized hoodies to hide the gut, avoiding mirrors and their reflection’s judgment, his beard unkempt and voice a low rumble of self-recrimination.
When Ben finally started going out to look for Jobs, hope had bloomed in Jordan’s chest like a tentative gallery spotlight. But rejection after rejection piled on like wet cement, each “We’ll be in touch” email or curt hang-up another crack in Ben’s armor. Construction foremen who smelled the desperation; union halls that favored the connected; callbacks that ghosted into silence. It only made him worse, retreating deeper into the bottle, the bed, the black hole of “what ifs” that Jordan couldn’t reach, no matter how tightly he held on in the dark. The man who’d wired their world together was short-circuiting, and Jordan’s every fix felt like grasping at smoke.
Jordan’s mind churned through the wreckage of it all. He needed to think of something, and quick. Worry gnawed deeper than any auction-house deadline, a vise around his chest that no amount of client schmoozing could loosen. Ben wasn’t just slipping; he was dissolving, the colossus reduced to a specter who flinched from his own reflection.
But there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his man. Nothing. Jordan had pulled strings for apprenticeships, folded pride into shared leases, worshiped every softening curve with lips and lies that masked his fear. This time, he’d dig deeper, conjure a lifeline from the ether. As dawn’s first gray light filtered through the blinds, Jordan resolved it: he’d rebuild him, brick by brick.
