The sidewalk out front is darker than I expect. Light pollution usually pools in blue puddles around the entryways on this block, but tonight it’s guttering, flickering. The building’s numbers are too clean, like they’ve been freshly scrubbed for a new tenant, and the lobby door is propped open with a paint can. My phone buzzes in my pocket, a single word from the burner: “Inside?” The stairs smell like fresh varnish and something chemical and a little sweet. I like that. Sharp, artificial, nowhere near natural. It’s easier that way.
I know the rules. We’ve been writing and not writing for weeks, honing it to a list: No names. No faces. No questions. The rest is improvisation. We do not shake hands. We do not linger in halls. I am not meant to know if the man behind the door is the same as the man who wrote me hundreds of times at 2:16 AM. I am not supposed to care. We will be two people in a place, nothing else.
There’s a mat outside 2A. A red X is taped on it, like a bloodied bandaid. I step on it, and grab the handle, it’s unlocked. I step inside and softly close the door behind me.
He doesn’t speak. The blanket is already hung on the bedroom door at the end of the hall, just like we agreed. It’s an old Army surplus wool—olive, scratchy, the edges pilled white from washings. At the center: the hole, razor-cut, rimmed in duct tape, not neat but precise. A brutal geometry. The blanket itself shivers a little in the hallway draft.
The blanket at the end of the hall moves minutely, just a fraction, like someone behind it is breathing slow and shallow. Watching, maybe, or not.
I pause there, in the hush of the apartment’s entryway, and take in the smell of the place: incense, spent, and underneath it something human, something I can’t name. Sweat, yes, but also fear. Or hope.
I unbutton my shirt. My fingers are steady. I force them to be. The world shrinks to the sound of my own breath, the rustle of cotton as I strip to my skin. No mirrors in this hallway, which is a mercy. My chest is flushed, pinker than usual. My hands brush the scar on my forearm, the one that puckers when I’m cold. I run my thumb along it, steadying myself. This is not new, but the scale is different. Usually, I have more control.
I step forward, closer to the blanket. I place my hand on the wall. The drywall is cold, faintly rough. My breath ghosts out of me in a white puff, which means the heating is all in the floor, none in the air.
Beyond the blanket I hear him moving. Not loud, but I can tell he’s preparing, settling himself. There is a sound of glass—maybe a jar, maybe a bottle—unstoppered, set down. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if it’s lube or oil or nothing at all, but it does matter. I want to know everything and nothing at once.
There is no conversation. Not allowed. We have agreed: our voices are for need and for permission only. The rest is mute.
There is a rustling on the other side of the blanket. I can tell he’s shifting, kneeling now. For a second, I smell something sharp: whiskey, maybe. Or sweat, fresh and briny. I breathe it in.
My skin crawls with anticipation. My dick is hard, straining against the air. I do not touch myself. That is not the point of tonight.
The blanket moves again. I see a shadow, the vague outline of a head, then the dark suggestion of shoulders. My mind fills in the rest, body invented from nothing. I decide he is handsome, even though I will never know.
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the blanket. It is cold and rough and smells of detergent and old wool. I press harder, willing it to give way, but it does not.
This is how it is meant to begin. This is what I signed up for.
The moment stretches. I open my mouth, almost to say something, but what? We are forbidden words. Instead, I settle for breathing. In. Out. Measured. I wait for what happens next, poised on the knife-edge of wanting.
I don’t have to wait long. The air shifts on the other side—an audible intake, a steadying breath, maybe for both our sakes. Then: contact.
It starts with just the tip of my cock, a barely-there brush of lips. Wet heat. My entire body snaps rigid, vertebrae stacking so hard I nearly rise off the balls of my feet. I exhale, and the sound is desperate—almost a whimper, not how I want to begin, but too late. My skin is hypersensitized, every inch tuned to the nerve-wracked tremor at my core.
The Stranger doesn’t rush. That, somehow, is the worst part. He takes me in his mouth by millimeters, lips gliding down the shaft with excruciating slowness, tongue swirling in subtle patterns that are deliberate, practiced. He’s not here to impress; he’s here to consume.
