“Okay, so how do I get out?”
	“Use a key?”
	“Ha ha,” Theras replied dryly. He and Ajil had started talking over lunch at the office earlier about ways of escaping from cuffs. He couldn’t remember how the conversation had started, but it had piqued his interest, and so he’d asked if Ajil could show him some of these ways to get out of cuffs when they got home again. Thus it was that he was sitting, hands cuffed together around the back of the chair. He was still in his usual work clothes: button-down shirt, belt, slacks. His tie had been discarded first thing when they’d come in the door, followed by his shoes. He wished he’d thought to change into more comfortable clothes first; he had the feeling he might be here a while. He strained against the cuffs.
	“You know, I can’t help remembering something your sister said to me once. …more than once, really,” Ajil added, standing in front of Theras. He was similarly shed of shoes and tie, and smiling. 
	“If Asolda said it, I’m afraid,” Theras murmured, looking over his shoulder and trying to squeeze a hand out to no avail.
	“Back before we were dating, she constantly recommended that I steal your cuffs and just handcuff you to the bed,” he commented off-handedly. Theras stopped attempting to free himself at that, but didn’t yet look at his boyfriend and partner. “And after you came out, she got very insistent about it. I tried to tell her you didn’t seem the type, but she would just point out that you used to think you were straight, too.”
	Theras couldn’t help rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I keep hearing that from her.” He blinked a little and now looked at Ajil. “Wait, so… are you telling me you brought this up just as an excuse to see if I liked being handcuffed?”
	“Not entirely. I do know some ways to escape cuffs.” He smiled. “But I figured, you know, as long as we were …experimenting in one way…”
	“Well, so far I’m not terribly fond of the experience,” he groused. “So either teach me how to get out or unlock them already.”
	Ajil tsked a little. Part of him wanted to do what Ther asked, because he didn’t want him unhappy, and he wasn’t sounding too interested in things at the moment. But Ajil reminded himself at the same time he informed Ther: “Being handcuffed itself is not the fun part.”
	“And what… is?” He’d started that question off strong, but it got suddenly quiet at the end as Ajil suddenly straddled Ther’s lap and sat down, making himself comfy. The former thief smiled knowingly at Theras who felt heat start to come into his face.
	“Well, there are a lot of options,” Ajil told him matter-of-factly. His hands moved to Ther’s sides and slid up over the dress shirt’s smooth fabric, over Ther’s shoulders, down his arms a bit. Then he brought them up, looping his own arms around Ther’s neck. Ther was sitting very, very still, but he licked his lips quickly just before Ajil leaned in to kiss him deeply. 
	Okay, kissing Ajil was always enjoyable, but Ther instinctively tried to bring his arms around him and… no dice. The cuffs clinked their disapproval of the action. He tried again, and it was like having a reflex stymied: frustrating and a little bewildering, even though he knew what was holding him back. Ajil ended the kiss by nibbling a little on Ther’s lower lip, and he let out a frustrated sigh.
	“What’s the matter? Didn’t like the kiss? I can try again,” Ajil offered, purely out of the goodness of his heart.
	“I want to hold you,” Ther replied. “And I can’t.”
	“That’s the point!” Ajil moved in to attack one of Ther’s ears, like the fiend he was. Ther yelped a little, jumping in the chair: having his ears licked and nibbled and sucked on was both enjoyable and sort of ticklish, and it tended to make him restless. He pulled again at the cuffs, which remained adamant. 
	“Stop that!”
	“But you like it,” Ajil whispered. He smoothed a hand down to the third button of Ther’s shirt, the first two already being opened. He worked it through the buttonhole as he continued enjoying his captive’s ear. The fourth soon followed. Ther closed his eyes, trying to ignore his body’s tormented desires to both twitch away from and lean into the ministrations. He tried to focus, to breathe, to retreat into the sure, swift confidence that jiu-jitsu had trained in him. But dammit, Ajil was just too good with that tongue; it kept him locked here in the physical world. He strained at the cuffs again. Yup, definitely locked was the word.
	“Ajil,” he managed raggedly, “please stop that?” He sounded almost pleading, and was not impressed with his reserve in this situation. He’d been trained to withstand enemy interrogation! But this wasn’t torture, and so, in a way, it kind of was torture, and in any case, he hadn’t been taught how to withstand his boyfriend’s skilled mouth. He wasn’t sure his pleas would be heard, but Ajil did, actually stop.
	Of course, that seemed to all be part of Ajil’s plan, as he now shooed the open shirt away from Ther’s chest. Soft palms and slightly calloused fingers slid over his abdomen, and Ther sucked in a jagged breath. Ajil seemed to be perfectly content to let his hands play over the revealed skin, eyes drinking in the toned musculature exposed for him now, watching his hands slip up, up, up, over the sides of Ther’s throat, and when they took hold of his face, his eyes took hold of Theras’s own. They stayed locked like that for a second, two, and then Ajil kissed him again, harder, deeper than last time, and Ther jerked against the cuffs trying to get out. He didn’t want to get away from this treatment: he wanted to be able to pull Ajil in more, to show how much he wanted more of it without… without having to say it. Without having to ask for it in words, because it’s too embarrassing to say it, but it’s easy to show it. Getting easier all the time, he thought, aware that he was getting aroused and that if Ajil couldn’t feel it now, he would soon.
	Ajil moved down to Theras’s throat, sucking hard on the skin, just over the jugular. The hands slid down, around to his back under the shirt, pulling more of it out of the waistband as they wrapped themselves around him. If Ajil minded the steadily-growing erection in Ther’s pants pressing against him, he didn’t say so. His mouth was otherwise occupied in leaving dark marks along Ther’s pale skin. It was almost winter now, after all, and what tan he’d been able to get during the summer months was fading away to a whisper.
	Theras just panted at the hands over his skin and the mouth at his throat, bucked his hips and strained his wrists to try and escape. “Something wrong?” Ajil asked innocently, sitting up and licking his lips quickly, as if he’d been enjoying a good meal. But before Theras could even try to formulate an answer, he tsked at himself. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re right, this isn’t at all fair of me.” And he stood, legs still straddling the chair, and started slowly unbuttoning his own shirt.
	Theras whimpered softly, once, and tried to stand – he could do that, the cuffs weren’t linked to the chair – but Ajil pushed him down. “Ah ah.” The shirt was opened, the shirt was being peeled off, slowly, so slowly, and Ther desperately wanted his hands free to hurry it along, to touch, to pet, to caress Ajil’s skin. He loved touching Ajil, even in innocent places, he loved that he was free to touch him as long as he wanted to, to enjoy the feel of his skin against his own. His first non-platonic dreams about Ajil had been about touching him, after all, and now, like this…
	“I want to touch you, please.” He hated giving voice to it, but he hated not being able to touch Ajil more.
	“In a minute,” Ajil told him, laying a finger against Ther’s lips. Ther kissed the finger, gave it a little lick, watching Ajil to see if there were a reaction. Ajil just smiled, tossing his shirt aside. “You have a problem that needs seeing to.” He looked significantly at Theras’s crotch and Ther shifted again, uneasy at the reminder.
	“Your fault,” he groused, jangling the cuff chain again.
	“Then it’s my responsibility to see to it, hm?” Ajil backed away enough so that he was no longer straddling the chair; Theras had quite liked the view (a bit too much perhaps), and it hadn’t escaped his notice that Ajil was starting to get hard, too. But Ajil was busy unbuckling Theras’s belt, unbuttoning his pants. As much as Ther wanted him to unlock the cuffs already, he rocked to one side or another, lifted his hips, did everything he could to help Ajil get his pants open and off. Ajil went after his underwear next, being careful of the growing errection and sliding them with the same unhurried speed down Ther’s legs. By the end of it, Ther had nothing but the shirt (which couldn’t be fully removed without uncuffing him) and his socks, and felt rather silly partially dressed. This paled in comparison to his arousal and the desire to be free of the cuffs, so he could… so they could…
	Ajil moved around back behind him, giving him hope for a brief second that he was going to be let loose, but then he just attacked Ther’s other ear. Ther jerked a bit, tried to move away, but of course he couldn’t go anywhere. And Ajil reached his hands around, sliding his left down, down along the revealed length of Ther’s body. Ther was pretty sure he knew where that was going, but he didn’t expect Ajil to tease him: fingertips played lightly along the length of his shaft, ignoring the head entirely and just… just toying with him, because he could, because there was nothing Theras could do about it, and the fingers on his right hand were outlining a nipple and that tongue was tracing the bones in his ear.
	Theras jerked hard against the cuffs’ restraint and growled faintly. “Let me go.” He wasn’t pleading so much this time, sounding more demanding instead. He couldn’t see Ajil smile but he could hear him practically smirking when he responded with, “I don’t see why I should.”
	“I want to go into the bedroom. I want to take you into the bedroom and… and…” He was blushing, curse it all, and the words were stuck in his throat.
	“And what?” Ajil asked.
	“I’ll show you if you let me go,” Ther promised him. He tried to sound seductive, but it didn’t work right now because he was feeling desperate. Desperation didn’t seduce people; desperation got seduced.
	Ajil chuckled a little. “I’m enjoying this,” he whispered directly against Theras’s ear, otherwise hot breath feeling cold against recently licked skin. Theras shivered a little and that was when Ajil finally made good on the unspoken promise and took full hold of him. The lotion they usually used for this activity was on the nightstand, but all Ajil had to do was rub a thumb over the head for a reasonable substitute. The slight friction was a new sensation and he’d resumed toying with a nipple and decided Ther needed dark marks on the other side of his neck, too, so he was working on that as he stroked him.
	Theras gave up trying to... to do anything. Pleading, demanding, cajoling, speaking – these were all unnecessary things now. There was only breathing and feeling the building ecstasy. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and just gave in to it. Let Ajil do as he pleased with him, because it was wonderful, it was all wonderful, and he wouldn’t be in the cuffs forever. As soon as he was free… oh, but that was for later. Now was Ajil’s hands and mouth and Ther’s complete surrender to them.
	And then Ajil’s hands and mouth disappeared and surprisingly cold air took their places, and Theras jerked against his cuffs once in an attempt to escape as he groaned, opening his eyes and lifting his head again. “You are a cruel, cruel vicious man,” he accused around panting breaths as Ajil walked around in front of him again, shirtless but still pantsed (and more aroused than he had been before).
	“I’m sorry, but I’ve done this enough the last few months to know when you’re getting near your limit,” he explained, just standing there, watching Theras suck in breath in great jags. “I don’t want you to make a mess on the living room carpet; it’s less easily laundered.”
	“Cruel,” Theras told him matter-of-factly – well, as matter-of-factly as he could when he was still catching his breath. “Sooooooo cruel.”
	“Besides, my hand is getting tired.” And then Ajil smirked and started to kneel. He put his hands on Ther’s knees to push them apart and his legs just sort of…fell open for him. He blinked as he watched Ajil lean forward and he sucked in a long breath and held it as his boyfriend’s mouth replaced the missing hand. 
	“Ohhhh,” was all he could even attempt to say. He had been warm before, then briefly cold, and now there was heat, wet and close, and the tongue that had been tormenting ears and lapping at his throat was licking along him and he heard more than felt his hands jump in the cuffs again, attempt to get free again. That wasn’t protest as much as surprise, and it came to him that this was good, this was sooo good.
	It wasn’t that he’d never had a blowjob before. Or a handjob. He’d enjoyed them, with his girlfriends. They were nice, when his significant other had felt like doing them (he’d never pressed; it seemed ungentlemanly). But this was more than nice, and he wasn’t sure if it was because Ajil was a guy or because it was Ajil or maybe just because he was more skilled than Caroline or any of the others had been, but fuckitall who cared why it was better, it was and he wanted more. He let his head roll back again and his arms hung limply behind the back of the chair. He licked his lips and just let it happen, and if it were ungentlemanly to say it, so be it, because he couldn’t stop a faint, “fuck yes” from passing his lips. 
	That was the last thing he could say though; once again, his heart and lungs began demanding more, more, more, though they wanted oxygen rather than pleasure, oxygen to feed it, like a candle flame. It was burning through his air, and he needed more to keep living, to keep it burning like that because it was too good to want to let go of. So it didn’t take him long to be back to panting, and Ajil was stroking the skin of his thigh, and it seemed like all sensation in the world outside of that small (well, not that small) area inside Ajil’s mouth was feeding into that one (really, quite decently-sized) area, and his blood was a drum in his ears and he couldn’t warn Ajil in time even if he’d wanted to because coming came as a surprise to him, and he barely had air to keep himself breathing, let alone speak, and dear GOD, he stopped breathing for a second there. But he was breathing now, scraping the air into his lungs again, draped over the back of the chair like a rag doll, like a deflated thing, but he wasn’t deflated, he was full, so full of …contentment. He needed air though. And words again. His brain had to remember how to English.
	He was vaguely aware of Ajil standing, coming over to press a kiss to his cheek. He heard Ajil moving around, but his eyes were still closed as he begged for air in silent prayer in his mind. And as his brain began to reboot, his hands twitched in their cuffs again.
	“There, see? No mess.” Ajil sounded smug, he sounded happy, he sounded… desirable and warm, and the cuffs smacked against the back of the chair as he tried again, harder this time, to be free of them. He wanted Ajil in his arms, lying next to him. He wanted… yes. He wanted a lot of things, and yes, that was one of them, now. If only he could be free of the cuffs.
	He lifted his head and looked at Ajil, breathing better now, but still faster than was normal for anyone who hadn’t just run a marathon. He licked his lips and looked pointedly at Ajil’s pants. “You need seeing to.”
	“Do I?” he asked as if he were unaware of his own penis. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do about that right now though.” He was still smug. 
	“I will make you a deal,” Theras told him, looking him in the eyes now, in those beautiful stormy eyes. He loved Ajil’s eyes, but right now he didn’t want to see them, he wanted them closed, he wanted Ajil moaning in closed-eyed rapture just as he’d been. “Let me out of the cuffs, and let’s go into the bedroom. Because I want you. I want you right now. Inside me. Please.” It wasn’t pleading, not yet. It was a statement of fact, and even if he wanted Ajil in ecstasy, he did take some small pleasure from the absolute look of astonishment he got instead.
	It was brief though, replaced by a worried frown. “Ther, I’ll unlock you if you want out of them that badly; you don’t have to…”
	“I’m not just saying it to get out of the cuffs. I’m not. I… Ajil,” and the name was whimpered; he cleared his throat to sound normal again, because he didn’t want to sound desperate, lest Ajil think it was for the wrong reasons, “I want to touch you again. I need to touch you, and hold you, and I do, I do want this. I’ve never been so sure of anything as I am of this.” Ajil was weighing the words, sizing him up as he sat there, mostly naked in the chair. Men said a lot of things they didn’t mean in the afterglow of coming. That was the stereotype, and they both knew it. “You’re worried I’ll regret it later; I know that. The fact that you’re worried about it makes me want it –you- more. Please. You know that if I change my mind, I’ll say stop, and I know that you will if I ask you to.”
	“It’s just such a jump,” Ajil replied. “I might’ve expected you to reciprocate the blowjob, but this…” He looked Theras over again. “What happens if I release you from the cuffs?”
	“Do it and find out,” he told him, trying not to sound wicked or desperate. 
	“I’m starting to worry about your mental state.”
	“You just blew my mind with sexual ecstasy; if you weren’t worried about my mental state, you’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb.” 
	Ajil chuckled a little, back to being proud. He came over and squatted down in front of Ther and his chair. “So I blew your mind –and dick- so well that you want to jump straight to… to that?” It was reassuring to Theras that he wasn’t the only one who had trouble saying it. Well, he had had trouble with it; right now, being blunt about his desires was the only way to achieve them. So he said so.
	“I’ve… wanted it for awhile, but I was… I dunno. Shy, maybe? Still a little uncertain. I didn’t know how to ask for it, how to bring it up, but now, like this?” He tried again, to break out of the cuffs, giving a good hard tug on them with both his wrists at the same time. “I can’t touch you, I can’t tug you over to me, I can’t try to seduce you the ways I know how.” Which weren’t many. “I have to say what I want, or I can’t get it.” Ajil’s smile started to shift into a smirk as Ther continued, “And dear God do I want you. I want to be inside you, too, but right now, that’s not happening. I want to be with you every way I can be. I want to feel you every way that’s possible. I love touching you, Ajil, and this…this is torture. Please.”
	“Well, first of all, stop straining against those cuffs; you’re going to cut yourself trying to get out of them like that,” Ajil advised him, standing and walking around behind him again. There was a jingle –of keys, this time, and not of the chain- but he wasn’t yet free. “If I release you, are you going to whip around, pounce on me, and drag me off to the bedroom?”
	“Is it a problem if I do?”
	“Just checking.” One hand was freed, and Ther pulled it around in front of himself. The wrist was red, but the skin hadn’t broken yet. And just before the last click, Ajil commented quietly, “Thank God it’s Friday.”