Sex in C Major

Daz was as crazy as Stefan.

And...weirdly, it helped. Strangely, some of the panic that had taken hold when Yannis had walked into the bedroom and clamped a hand down over Stefan's mouth...eased. He wasn't the only idiot here. Daz was with a guy who barely touched him and didn't even love him, and had been for-

Stefan blinked.

"A decade and a half?"

Daz coughed. "Yes. Well..."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-one."

Stefan swallowed. "You're you're ten years older than me."

"Believe me, I palmed your wallet when I got you home to check," Daz said dryly. "Yannis wanted to know why I'd brought some underage kid home and if he should be reporting you missing from some foster home or something." Stefan flushed. "I don't look that young!"

"You do."

"I don't get asked for ID nearly enough for that."

"Yeah, because you go to shitty bars that serve underage. Don't try this with me, Stefan, I might be a Brummy but I know how that works."

"You're a Brummy?"

"Yeah."

"Is Yannis?"

"Yep."

"Is he thirty-one, too?"

"Twenty-nine. Lived a few streets away. We met at a wedding-his brother married my cousin."

Stefan frowned. "And you dated? Isn't that a bit...inter-related?"

"We're not related. You've been to weddings, right? You invite everyone and their dog to those things. Anyway, Yannis has seven siblings, his mum is one of fourteen, and his dad is one of five. Half of Birmingham is related to Yannis by blood, and the other half by marriage. Pretty sure my cousin and I were the only ones at that wedding not related to him somehow."

Stefan chewed on his lip.

"So you met him at a wedding, and yet you've spent fifteen years with someone who barely touches you?"

"Yep."

"How?"

"Love," Daz said simply. "And" He raised the coffee cup in a toasting gesture. "a little help from folks like you."

"Folks like me?"

"No strings attached sex is common as dirt."

"Except there are strings attached."

Daz smirked. "True."

"Which brings us right back to who the hell-"

"Hey. Stop it. Just stop. You know why you're getting wound up?"

Stefan bit his lip. "Why?"

"Because you keep asking why other people don't like what you do. There's seven billion people on the planet, Stefan, one of them's bound to like what you do."

"What, being abused and raped and then kicked out when you've finished?"

"Yeah," Daz said simply. "Turn it around. What kind of person likes chaining a virtual stranger to the bed and fucking him until he's bleeding and crying?"

Stefan's jaw clicked shut.

"This situation says as much about you as it does about me."

"But-but-"

Stefan wanted to say it was more complicated than that. Wanted to say that 'just relax and enjoy it' didn't solve the problem. Wanted to say that men-real men-didn't want this, and therefore Stefan couldn't become one like he needed. Wanted to say that he was going to wake up one morning and realise his entire life belonged to Daz, and there was no way out.

But he couldn't find the damn words.

"What's really bothering you?" Daz asked quietly.

"What?"

"There's something more than just, 'I have weird tastes' at play here. Because I could show you a library of porn and the corresponding hit counts saying plenty of people want what you want. Hell, I could even show you newspaper articles about what you want you know a guy a few years ago got prison for arranging the rape of his wife by posing as her on fetish forums and arranging for a man to come to her house and roleplay an intruder rape?"

"W-what? Really?"

"Yeah. There's whole forums full of users who want to do what you do. There's BDSM clubs here in Leeds that will have people like you visiting every single night. And-"

"Not like me."

"What makes you different?"

Stefan swallowed, and gestured vaguely at his chest.

"What, transgender people?"

"Yeah."

"They do it, too."

"Men don't."

"What?"

"Men don't. That whole trans porn thing? That's trans women."

"Yeah, but this isn't about porn. It's about real life. And there'll certainly be other trans men who like that."

"Men," Stefan said carefully, "do not enjoy getting f-being used in their...female parts."

Daz blinked, then sat back.

"Wait. Is that what this is about?"

"Men don't submit like this."

"You are not my first toy, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty: yes they fucking do."

Stefan blinked, the harsh tone jarring him out of the urge to dissolve and just cry.

"Sir?"

He didn't mean to say that, but it escaped away. And Daz's eyes narrowed.