****
In the next few days, Vadim helped Max pack, and soon everything was ready for the big move. Wasn’t it good traveling light?
“Now it’s the time to rent some kind of moving van, I suppose,” Max said pensively, contemplating the results of their joint efforts, a few cardboard boxes from a home improvement store, all sealed with tape.
“You don’t need to. I could give you a lift,” Vadim suggested. “I’ll park in the yard and we’ll carry the boxes down. Maybe we won’t manage in one load, but it shouldn’t take more than two. I’ve got a hatchback. We’ll squeeze your boxes in all right.”
Max stared at him. “You never cease to surprise me. I didn’t know you had a car.”
“I don’t usually drive when I can go by metro,” Vadim said, almost defensively. “Traffic jams kill me. I’m too impatient for that. Besides…” His smile was a nervous one. “Doms prefer to be the ones behind the wheel, right?”
Max considered it and decided he wasn’t of the same opinion. “I don’t mind being driven, actually, as long as I tell you where to drive.”
And yes, he enjoyed their moving experience a lot. Giving orders and organizing the process was surely a more dominant thing to do than being the one behind the wheel, as Vadim had put it.
When they arrived with the first part of Max’s belongings, there was a surprise awaiting him. Something had changed, and the newly added item was hard to miss.
“So you’ve bought a bed?” Max gaped, standing in the doorframe. It was a rhetorical question, of course, because yes, there it stood, large yet narrow, with a smooth wooden headboard.
“I did.” Vadim sneaked past him, excited, and jumped onto the mattress. He resembled a bouncing puppy, overjoyed with having flawlessly performed a trick for his master.
Max couldn’t help but tease him. “Hmm, that was quick,” he said, inspecting the purchase with a thoughtful look. “Nice, very nice. The size is fine. But the headboard has no slats. How am I supposed to tie you up to it?”
Vadim looked back over his shoulder and stared at the unfortunate detail. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Vadim’s face fell, and Max added hastily, “I bet I can get you nicely secured here anyway.”
And that’s how, instead of unpacking, they ended up test-driving the new piece of furniture. Well, technically they did some unpacking first because they needed ropes, but fortunately, Max was a neat freak and remembered exactly where he’d put them.
It was certainly a bit of a puzzle how to do this tying up thing, but Max didn’t mind a good challenge. Maybe use French bowline knots on the wrists, with several loops so there was less likelihood of damage, and then attach the ropes to the bed’s legs? The problem was Max knew he would be clumsy, trying all this for the first time, but he thought a blindfold for Vadim should take care of that issue. If Vadim was to wait, luckily unable to see anything undignified, while Max crawled on his knees around the bed and meddled with intricate knots, wouldn’t that only kindle his desire? Not that it needed additional kindling, judging by the sight of his crotch.
The test went smoothly, even better than Max could have hoped. The bed turned out to be quite comfortable, safe enough for active use, with no creaking and other suspicious noises, and thus suitable for lots and lots of prolonged marathons Max now had in mind for it.
As he lay on top of Vadim, sweaty and sated, squinting in the early winter sunshine that came through the tall window, but unable to look away from the clear skies over the Moskva River, it felt like home, though he hadn’t even settled here properly yet. Wasn’t he turning sappy?
****
Soaking in a hot bath after a long day at work was utter bliss, especially because Vadim was there too, leaning against Max’s chest.
Most Soviet-era apartments had a glassed window between the kitchen and bathroom, high under the ceiling. It was meant for the noble cause of saving electricity, because during daytime, some light always came through, so there was no need to switch on a lamp. Nowadays, people usually preferred to brick up such windows during renovation works, but Vadim had chosen to leave it in place. Now it was dark, but an unearthly pale glow came up from the street lights below on the embankment, filling the kitchen and shimmering vaguely through the glass. Also, there were two large candles burning on each side of the tap, not only for the purpose of creating a romantic atmosphere, but because the bulb in the bathroom lamp had burned out and they both had forgotten to buy a new one to replace it.
Max ran his fingers through Vadim’s hair, enjoying the feeling of easy, relaxed intimacy. The water was just the right kind of hot, and Max felt his body unwind into the long craved warmth. The steam filled the whole bathroom, so that even the mirror above the sink was completely fogged up, with tiny droplets gathering at its nether rim. Max sat with his back plastered against the edge of the tub and his legs bent at the knees. Vadim lounged between them and let Max idly massage his neck.
In this moment, they were just like a very ordinary couple.
“Don’t you want to try wax play again?” Vadim asked, as if to deliberately ruin this impression. Probably the two candles, instead of putting Vadim into a romantic mood, made him think of a rather unconventional way Max could use them.
“Aren’t you afraid to get burned again?” Max echoed. It was one of his unfortunate miscalculations he’d rather not repeat.
“It was nothing serious,” Vadim objected but didn’t insist further.
Max pushed his fingers deeper into Vadim’s hair and continued massaging his nape. Vadim hummed contentedly and nudged his head up into Max’s palm.
Max leaned in closer. “No more headaches?” he murmured into Vadim’s ear. His concern about the damage he might have caused by their asphyxiation play had been overshadowed by the little worries of the moving process, but it hadn’t dispersed completely.
Vadim let out half a gasp, half a giggle. He was very, very ticklish. “Nope.”
He shifted against Max under the water, and Max adjusted, spreading his legs wider so Vadim could settle more comfortably against him. Water sloshed against the tub sides, and some of it splashed out in the process.
“Oh, look what you’ve done,” Max said, but without much austerity in his voice. “I could think of a more interesting way of splashing water all over the floor.”
“Mmm? And what might that be?” Vadim inquired innocently. The tease.
Max gently nipped at Vadim’s earlobe, eliciting a funny noise from him. Vadim tipped his head to the side to give Max better access. Not only was he ticklish, but also very sensitive there. A nuzzle or a lick always had him gasping.
“Something like this,” Max said as his hands slid down Vadim’s shoulders, then traveled slowly over his taut belly, up and down, and finally skimmed lower to leisurely play with Vadim’s cock and balls beneath the hot water. A pleased hum vibrated in the back of Vadim’s throat, and he wriggled impatiently against him. Indeed, it made the water splash out again, but, fortunately, in very small amounts.
Max liked this unhurried play a lot. He ran his fingernails along the inside of Vadim’s thighs, then kneaded the supple flesh, alternating the sensations. Vadim widened the space between his legs, giving Max more room for maneuvering, and Max indulged him with combing his fingers through his sub’s pubic hair. Max’s knuckles brushed against Vadim’s erection that bobbed lightly against his stomach. Vadim let out a muffled whine and lifted his hips, greedy for more.
“To be honest, I feel too lazy for something more active,” Max said, moving his hands away from the strategically important area, up Vadim’s abdomen and chest again, to play with his nipples. “I’ll deal with you in a more thorough way a bit later. Promise.”
“Okay,” Vadim murmured and stretched luxuriously, letting Max do what he wanted. The humid heat that enveloped them seemed to make him a bit sluggish, too. If he was disappointed by Max delaying his orgasm, it didn’t show. Well, they’d tried
this trick a few times, and it had paid off marvelously afterwards, so maybe Vadim was looking forward to the promised sequel.
There was something Max wanted to ask, something he needed to ask, but at the same time, he felt that it might irretrievably spoil the moment.
Finally, he ventured, “The neck trauma you’ve told me about … was it BDSM-related?”
Vadim tensed in his arms, just like Max had expected. “Yes.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay,” Max told him quietly. “But I’d rather we discussed it.” It was a possible cause of Vadim’s headaches and, thus, an important issue.
“Mmm, it’s not that I don’t want to,” Vadim drawled. “I just don’t see any reason to speak about it at all. It’s not a pleasant memory, I must admit, but it’s something long gone. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He fidgeted against Max’s chest again, not playful but distressed this time. Max wrapped his arms tighter around Vadim’s waist, holding him close, and burrowed his nose into Vadim’s hair. “It does matter, at least to me, because it’s about your health. What happened? Will you tell me?”
Vadim heaved a sigh, defeated. “Okay. Fine. If you insist. I was seeing someone then, at Uni, and I liked it. Mostly. I mean, not everything was fine right from the start, too many bruises in visible places, but I thought it was worth toughing it out. He was my first. And it felt close to euphoric.” He chuckled shakily and without any mirth whatsoever. “Very foolish of me. Now I see that there was no cause for euphoria. But before that, I’d never thought I could find someone who’d share my … proclivities. I’d never thought it could be fun. When I suddenly stumbled over a like-minded man, by pure chance, and listened to him talking of the things I’d forbidden myself even to think about … that was a hell of a revelation. No wonder I rushed into something stupid.”
Max pressed a kiss into Vadim’s curls. “How stupid?”
Vadim laughed quietly again. “Extremely. You have no idea. But it all continued for quite a while. Until everything went to pieces, in one day. He got carried away practicing with a cane on me.”
“Oh.” Max involuntarily cringed as a bright picture flashed in his mind’s eye—Vadim’s back crisscrossed with welts and a cane coming down with a whoosh again and again. If the thing had been heavy, no matter how flexible, it could easily damage his spine if it hit him in the neck by accident. There was nothing erotic about this vision.
It felt strange and out of place, imagining something as horrible as that in the intimate warmth they shared.
“It was bad of course … but what came next … it was much worse,” Vadim said haltingly, as if pondering whether to continue or not. “That man I’d been with—he got scared. Quite understandable. He was older than me, he had a reputation to lose. If it became clear that he was involved, he would have had tons of problems. So he helped me to dress—it took some time because I couldn’t turn my head or lift my left arm without crying out—and then ushered me out of his apartment. He called an ambulance and sat with me on a bench outside until paramedics arrived, but he never visited me afterwards. I don’t know why he was so sure I wouldn’t out him … maybe because it would have been too excruciating to explain what had really happened. Too shameful. Anyhow, I ended up in a hospital, alone. Actually, I’d been lucky. It was just a neck and shoulder sprain and a mild concussion, no nerve damage, no fracturing. But I didn’t know that at the time, not until x-rays came back negative. It hurt. I thought that maybe I shouldn’t have moved, maybe I’d dislocated something, maybe I’d be maimed for life. And I did something very foolish. I asked a nurse to call my parents. The thing is, I was not only beaten up. There were clear signs that I’d had very rough intercourse. The doctor who treated me decided that it was better to tell my parents about it. Naturally, they thought at first that it had been a rape. I suppose I wasn’t very lucid then, or I would have guessed that it might not be the best moment to come out to them and say that I’d agreed to it, or some of it. As you might imagine, it didn’t work out well. I was told that I was to blame for what had happened.”
“For being beaten up and left alone?” Max couldn’t hide the astonishment in his voice.
“It was very much of a shock to them,” Vadim retorted as if defending his parents. “We’d been a very ordinary family. Middleclass, traditional values, the like. I’d never caused any problems. An obedient boy. Always getting good grades. Always listening to what my parents said. Following rules. Never hanging out with bad guys. Nothing could have predicted that I’d become a pervert. In their point of view, I was either sick and required psychiatric help, or I was corrupted by someone else and needed a shrink all the same. I’m not sure if you know, but homosexuality was a crime in Russia up until the early nineties. And medics considered it to be a mental illness until a few years later. Many people still think that it’s either a sexual disorder or depravity, my parents included. Moreover, as if it wasn’t enough, I declared that I was a masochist or something like that. Of course they freaked out. I should have broken the news differently, somehow, but I still don’t know what I should have said. Maybe lying would have been a better option.”
Max got it, the need to confide in someone in such a situation. Besides, the fact Vadim’s first relationship went horribly wrong must have added to the break-down, and he’d poured his soul out, only to be met with a rejection.
“What happened next?” Max prompted, aware the answer would probably be rather grim.
“They didn’t walk out on me. Nothing like that. They supported me while I was recovering. But all through my time in the hospital, there was a constant stream of reproaches. My mom wanted me to see a psychiatrist. I agreed. I felt absolutely rotten. I’d always had thoughts that I was abnormal, of course I had. But it’s different, seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes and finding that, yeah, others find you a freak, too. For some time, we pretended that I could be reversed to what they thought normal. But you can’t reverse what has been there all along, and I don’t think I’ve ever been straight. There was nothing that made me like this. No traumatic childhood experience, no corporal punishments, all that bullshit that therapists ask you about. In the end, I understood that it was no use trying to change myself. My parents never got over it.”
“That’s why you’re not in touch with them?”
“I call them sometimes. We talk. A few minutes—usually it’s enough or we start quarrelling again. Besides, they live in Saint Petersburg. Long distance phone calls are hardly cheap.”
Max skipped the question if Vadim’s mom or dad ever phoned him back. During the time they’d spent together, he’d only heard Vadim answering work-related calls.
“Sorry about all this whining,” Vadim murmured. “I should have just said that I’d been hit with a cane accidentally. Instead, I overbore you with a full-scale drama.”
“It’s not whining,” Max protested. “I’d rather know what troubles you.”
He’d asked about the trauma because he was worried about its consequences for Vadim’s health. But it looked like these consequences were not only physical, but psychological too, and maybe the latter were the most disturbing and lasting. Max could hardly imagine what it felt like, being abandoned in distress by those who were supposed to love you, at least in theory. Had Vadim ever told someone else about it all? Had this someone accused him of whining?
It was probably better to change the subject to bring Vadim out of his self-loathing mood.
“When did you realize that you have a penchant for, well, things like we do?” Max asked.
“I’m not sure,” Vadim said slowly. “It wasn’t something that popped up in an instant. Maybe I didn’t understand what I really wanted for a very long time, but I wanted it nevertheless. Have you ever had a fantasy of something without realizing what it is that you’re dreaming about? Like there’s an image in your mind’s eye, a scene, and you can’t stop thinking it over and over and adding more details. You can’t have se
en it anywhere, that’s for sure, and yet the picture is too vivid not to be real.”
Max encouraged him to go on. “What fantasy was it?”
“Of kneeling with my hands behind my back. Crawling, naked, while someone watched me. Um. What else? Being told out and spanked, or driven forward with a whip through a crowd. Sometimes I imagined myself being a slave or a war prisoner. It could be different scenarios, but always something like that. I remember playing Robin Hood once, with other boys, and one of them was to hold me captive. I told him that he could whip me on my bare ass with a twig, like he took me to a torture chamber and interrogated me. He said he didn’t want to. A bit awkward, that.” Soft laughter made his abdominal muscles flutter under Max’s hands. “Funny, but until some point, I’ve never thought of it as something sexual, just weird. At least not until I was a teenager. I started jerking off to these fantasies then, and it made me feel all the worse because it wasn’t what boys dream about. Not women from Playboy, all tits and long legs. So I tried to force myself not to think of things like that, but always slipped up.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“Nah. Oh wait. I have. I called a help line for teenagers once. I felt confused about what to do, and I think that the woman who listened to me got baffled, too. She tried to persuade me that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I didn’t have this problem. It convinced me even more that it was a problem. I knew of masochists of course, but nothing more than that they were sick perverts. A few psychos. I also knew about homosexuals to the same extent. If I was one of them, I must be not right in the head either, and it was better to hide it from others. From normal people. You see, lack of information doesn’t make you less of a pervert. It just makes you feel very, very lonely.”
It was something Max had gone through, too. Shame and self-disgust. Inability to confide in close friends. Fear that he must be an immoral maniac, because weren’t all sadists serial killers or something? It had been a long time before he’d realized what he wanted to do with another male could be fun for both parties and it had nothing in common with the fantasies of the notorious de Sade.
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