Felice Garibaldi’s lips were the softest things Alexos had ever had the pleasure to touch, feeling them yield under his own, and like this, bending to kiss the other man, it was as though he was descending into a cloud made up of Fell’s perfume, the sweetness engulfing him on all sides.

“You must be quiet, of course,” Alexos said quietly as they broke apart, and Fell looked up at him with his beautiful blue eyes big as saucers, and held up three fingers.

“Guide’s honour, Mr Fox,” he said softly, quite unconvincing in his innocence, and began to unbutton his blouse. He was exquisitely dressed in a woman’s suit, the suit jacket cinched in to create an illusion of a shorter torso, the better to make his legs in their flowing trousers, over top of a pair of heeled shoes that had clicked on the stone floors of the street.

He was not quite as slim as Alexos had thought, now disrobed – he had thin and delicate wrists and fingers and a long, graceful neck, but there was more meat beneath his clothes than Alexos anticipated. Under his clothes were expanses of soft, white skin, a plumpness at Fell’s breast he might have put down to a brassiere pushing him to perkiness if it wasn’t now bared to the air, a slight curve to his belly. Fell’s thighs and buttocks were generous indeed, and Alexos immediately reached out and took handfuls of each side, squeezing and marvelling at the way the flesh gave way to his grip, dimpling prettily under the tips of his fingers as he felt how sublimely warm Fell was.

His cock was very small, only a little larger than Alexos’ thumb whilst soft, and even as Alexos reached down and gripped it in his hand it only enlarged a little. He focused on Fell’s expression as he gripped at it and squeezed gently, twisting his hand as he pulled the other man off, taking a far more tender grip than he might his own, let alone one like Harry’s.

Fell’s expression was beatific, his painted lips parting, his blue eyes shining prettily, and one of his hands came to rest on Alexos’ chest where Alexos could best admire his painted nails.

“You are such a pretty thing,” Alexos said quietly. He wondered if he ought to feel embarrassed, that the words came out of his mouth so easily, and so different in tone to the sort of compliment he might give Harry, or Harry him – this was thoughtless, easy praise, with less affection behind it, but no less desire. There was something powerful in it, too, delivering the compliment and seeing Fell’s eyes widen even further, seeing the way his lips quivered, how his head tipped back as though to invite a kiss or a bite – to invite tenderness or its opposite.

“You oughtn’t compliment a man so when you have his cock in your hand – you’re liable to have him come apart.”

“We mustn’t have that,” Alexos said. “It was my intention to take you apart quite deliberately.”

He felt Fell’s shudder as much as he saw it, and he couldn’t help the laugh of triumph that tumbled from between his lips, felt the heat on his skin, burning under his clothes as he realised how easy it was, how easily he might hold the whole of Fell Garibaldi in this moment as he was his delicate little cock – how much the other man was trusting him, giving himself over to Alexos, a coarse man and a cripple.

Was this how Harry felt, knowing how much power he had over Alexos, this sense of enduring and overwhelming, exquisite victory?

“Oh,” said Fell in a tiny little voice, and then adjusted himself like a bird ruffling its feathers, standing up a little straighter and doing his best to inject some more authority into his voice as he said, “Shouldn’t we be getting you undressed, Alexos?”

“On the bed,” Alexos instructed, experimentally, just to see what might happen, almost – Fell stepped slowly backward from him, immediately obedient in a way that Larry hadn’t been, and Alexos followed after him, sliding his hand up the column of Felice’s throat and feeling the flutter of his mouse-fast heartbeat, feeling the pump of his blood.

He'd abandoned his pretty clothes in nothing more than a heap over his shoes on the floor, but Alexos didn’t care to contend with that this moment – he focused instead on easing his good knee against the mattress, between Fell’s eagerly spread legs, and leant his cane against the side of the bed.

 “Help me, then, if you want me undressed,” Alexos said, as imperiously as he dared, and Fell’s laugh was a fluttered and airy thing, his cheeks burning with a handsome red flush as his fingers went surprisingly shyly to Alexos’ vest and then his shirt, unbuttoning each with dexterous movements. “You’ve come over rather quiet. Were I Socrates and you Alcibiades, one might expect a little more backchat.”

“Do you want me bratty, do you?” Fell asked, almost breathlessly, and Alexos laughed as he laid his jacket over top of the chair, and then his waistcoat, and then his shirt. Alexos’ stomach suddenly dropped when he felt Fell’s gaze on him, as he looked over the very faint scars on Alexos’ neck, at the top of his shoulders.

His gaze dropped then to the dug-in scars, these ones bolder and pinker, at his waist, and his hands were very gentle – in a way Alexos rather liked less – as they came to unbutton his trousers, Alexos easing the way by dropping his braces off his shoulders.

Alexos’ stomach roiled as Fell’s gaze followed over the lines his braces had left when he was still wearing them, where the pins had pressed in against the sides of his waist even through the cotton and leather padding, and then his eyes went lower, to the lacking muscle on Alexos’ worse leg. Nausea bubbled within him, feeling Fell’s gaze on him, on the ugliest parts of himself, and with such deafening silence filling the room around them, with no other man or activity to distract them, just their breathing, just Fell Garibaldi – pretty and delicate, made for the stage - and Alexos Fox, a cripple made for something else entirely.

“Does it hurt dreadfully?” Fell asked quietly.

Alexos had a vision, all of a sudden, of having this conversation with every man he would ever fuck, every man he would ever bring to bed, be undressed with, without Harry to distract them or otherwise keep them busy. It hit him with the force of a speeding train, thundering within his head, making something clench within his chest, in the base of his throat, within his guts – he felt as though he were teetering on a precipice, because where the vision of this future stretched out before him, the knowledge of his past stood in stark contrast.

No one touching him. No man looking at him with desire or want – no man’s gentle fingers sliding over his hips as Fell’s were now, nor a mouth so sweet and tender as Fell’s against his belly, breathing warm over his belly, up to his navel.

“I shouldn’t have asked that,” Fell said, his eyes downcast, and the disgust burning with weight in Alexos’ chest turns itself over, and he felt his lips twitch. “Do they shame you, the signs of your illness?”

Alexos exhaled, curling his fingers into Fell’s pretty hair – where it had come out from under his hat, it was gelled or held with some sort of unpleasant product rather like the brilliantine Harry set his hair with, but the majority of his hair was very soft and yielding under his grip. He asked in a dry tone that very nearly didn’t quaver, “You cover your spots with make-up, I take it, when you get them?”

Fell’s expression became somewhere between sultry and rebellious. “I don’t get spots, my dear,” he said severely. “Such imperfections are beyond a creature as perfect as I am.”

“I believe that,” Alexos said. “Being as I’m a creature quite imperfect, perhaps you can understand that it’s rather frustrating I cannot disguise my imperfections, once undressed.”

“You know what they say,” Fell said, delicately shrugging his pretty shoulders. “It’s not what you have – more what you do with it, hm?”

“And what would you like me to do with it?” Alexos asked, arching an eyebrow, and then groaned as Fell dipped his head and demonstrated, mouthing alongside Alexos’ cock. It had softened somewhat, overtaken with his anxiety and his embarrassment, but there was no stopping it from swelling with blood now with a mouth as pretty as this on his prick. “Rather a pleasant demonstration,” he managed to say despite his lacking concentration, and he put his hand deeper into Fell’s hair, gripping a heavy handful of it.

The curls were tremendously soft, and he sighed and closed his eyes as he took a handful of Fell’s hair in his grasp, feeling the locks of it between his fingers and then using his grip to push Fell’s mouth where he wanted it, down to the base of his prick before pulling him back and feeding it into Fell’s mouth.

He took it as one might take communion, looking up at Alexos with his eyes wide and focused on Alexos’ face, his mouth open, his tongue waiting to receive the slide of Alexos’ prick over its surface.

“I’m going to smudge your lipstick,” Alexos said, pouting out his lips and making a show of seeming abashed, and he saw the flicker of snark ready itself, saw the light in Fell’s eyes as he readied himself with some clever or catty comment – and then he doused that light by sliding forward.

The slight gagging noise Fell made was muffled and desperate and full of soft, aching want, and Alexos felt his anxiety burn away, replaced once more with that glow of eager triumph, that victory, that power.

Dominance and domination, or if not that, then the pure, primal want to fuck and be fucked – and Fell Garibaldi, it was clear to Alexos, wanted very much to be fucked.

It was easy for a little while, keeping his grip on Fell’s hair and mostly moving his head rather than thrusting his own hips, keeping his good leg steady and supporting him whilst he enjoyed this. It added unspeakably to the moment, the way that Fell was enjoying it too – his eyes were watering and his cheeks were red, his lips slick with spittle and his lipstick prettily smudged about his chin and the sides of his mouth and the base of Alexos’ prick, and his own hips were jumping and fluttering as he thrust into his own hand.

“You love this, don’t you?” Alexos heard himself ask, and his voice had a stumble in it, a tension, that he wasn’t ordinarily able to concentrate on when Harry was fucking him mercilessly – here, in command of the room and with Fell made quiet except for the exquisite, incredible noises he was making around Alexos’ cock, his voice was filling it. He was so aroused he could barely even concentrate on the awful sound of his own voice, of its lacking strength in its distraction, of the fact that he was holding back to keep from cursing in every language he knew. “Are you ever happier than in moments like this, on your belly with a cock buried down that filthy throat of yours?”

Fell’s eyes bulged, and he let out a whining, muffled noise, his hips stuttering suddenly, a hard thrust into his palm, and Alexos’ own knees quaked, a weakness running down his legs as he felt a powerful rush through his cock, through the very core of him.

“Fuck,” he hissed, and hauled Fell off the length of his prick.

“Hey now!” Fell protested, slightly hoarsely as he fell back as Alexos has thrown him back, his shoulders hitting the mattress, and fuck, but he was a fucking picture. His face streaked and messy, his mascara running, saliva mixed with wax on his chin, and Alexos had done that to him, turned the pretty picture he made into this one, messier and more evocative and arousing, because it was a destruction that Alexos has wrought – and Fell eagerly had wrought on him – through mutual desire alone. “I wasn’t finished!”

“I decide when we’re finished,” Alexos said, and breathlessly laughed at the little giggle that made tumble out of Fell’s mouth, at the blush in his cheeks – he laughed a little louder, then muffled the noise into his arm, as Alexos braced himself with his good knee against the mattress and hauled Fell closer to him by his gloriously plump thighs, pushing up his knees to give himself a better angle.

It was cruel of him, perhaps, not to dispense any extra oil to the matter, but he found he didn’t want to, and in any case, Fell was hardly about to argue. He helpfully hoisted up his own knees and scooted his arse closer to the edge of the bed, and Alexos’ mouth went dry as he admired how incredibly generous Felice Garibaldi’s arse was as he lined himself up to sink inside.

It wasn’t tremendously large in the way Harry’s was, appropriate to the rest of his size, but it was plush, and his hands sank beautifully into the white pillow of it, very nearly as crisply clean and white as the pillowcase of the hotel sheets, but for the barest dust of blondish hair closer to his spine.

Spreading Fell’s cheeks apart, he greedily took in the sight of him – Fell’s cock, small and dainty and pretty much like he was, his larger bollocks supporting it to stand up against his belly, and then his hole, very pink and just slightly open, no doubt from regular use.

The thought sent quite the thrill up his spine, the thought of Fell’s popularity with other men, how experienced he was, and yet how much he was enjoying Alexos.

“Get regular use, do you?” Alexos asked.

“Darling, I’m a consummate professional,” Fell said, and Alexos laughed.

“How much am I expected to leave on the end table for you, after we’re done?” Alexos asked, tapping the head of his cock against the slightly-open furl of Fell’s hole. For all it was slightly open, it was really quite wonderfully small – it was going to be tight, and it was going to feel very differently to Fell’s mouth, or anyone else’s.

“You misunderstand me, dear – I’m an actor. I’d only be charging you if you were in the audience.”

Alexos laughed again, and he waited for Fell to laugh himself, for his beautiful face to light up with it – and then he plunged forward, sheathed himself in one movement that forced him to readjust himself at the ache it shot down his bad leg, but that sacrifice was more than worth it, because he got to see Fell’s expression crumple. His eyes squeezed shut, his lashes seeming absurdly long, his perfect lips opening in a wide O, and he didn’t remember this time to stifle his long, drawn-out moan into his hand – Alexos did it for him.

Alexos groaned quietly when Fell shifted the position of his mouth to keep Alexos’ hand from just a palm resting against his lips, sucking two of Alexos’ fingers onto his tongue instead, and Alexos huffed out a breathless, amused noise through his sound of pleasure as he felt the tight squeeze of Fell all about him, felt how incredibly warm he was inside, felt the delicious friction.

“Fuck,” he hissed, and fell forward, supporting himself on his elbows, their chests against one another, as he used his knee to let himself thrust. It fucking hurt, truth be told – he had let impatience win out over wisdom, picking this position – but he ignored the pain for now and instead concentrated on the way Fell opened to take him in, the pleasure on his face, the wet, slick heat of Fell’s tongue on the underside of his fingers and his lips around them.

His eyes opened slowly and prettily, and he gazed up and into Alexos’ eyes as he swallowed and sucked on Alexos’ fingers, even as Alexos drove as fast and deep into his arse as he could at the same time, and fuck, but it was sublime. It was perfect, wonderful, Fell easy and eager and full of want.

“You are made for this,” Alexos murmured. It wasn’t so easy to be insecure about the quaver in his voice now, the sound of Fell’s muffled moans and the sound of Alexos thrusting wetly against him overwhelming his hearing, not to mention the sensations – Fell’s tight clutch around his cock and his fingers, Fell’s pretty little prick wet and slick between them, Fell warm and eager, keeping his knees up toward his shoulders as best he could without Alexos holding them for him. “That’s something you have in common with Alcibiades too, I wouldn’t wonder – treacherous as he was, ever conniving, I’ve no doubt he was never so true as when he was on his knees or his back.”

That made Fell whimper, his whole body arching, and Alexos groaned in pleasure as much as he did in slight pain, adjusting his weight, and scrambled a moment for a corner of the sheet to shove into Fell’s mouth.

He took it without complaint, biting down and leaving more smeared lipstick in place – Alexos shoved one of his knees against his shoulder, using it to support himself as he gripped Fell’s cock between them with his other hand. It was a tricky balancing act, but if Fell knew that, he didn’t show it. He was a little overwhelmed, Alexos supposed, with Alexos fucking him as hard as he was capable.

He gripped at the sheets and fuck, but it was easy for him – how easily he came and how beautiful that was too, the strain on his face and then the sudden beatific relaxation, the sputter of Felice’s prick between their bodies.

He tightened further, squeezing tight around Alexos’ prick, and Alexos grunted because it was so tight it very nearly hurt, but it was a good hurt, well-earned.

He was breathing heavily when Fell stopped writhing, when his louder moans quieten down some, and he laid atop Fell’s body and buried his face against his soft shoulder, took in the perfect scent of his skin, the sweetness of it. He’d reached some of the way to the peak, had tasted the ghost of it within reach, but it would have been too much to actually summit, and now he lets himself go mostly boneless. His cock is beginning to soften, still sunk in the wonderful heat of Fell’s perfect arse, and for all he’s not going to come inside him, it’s a wrench to draw away from the warmth.

“God,” Fell mumbled as he tugged the sheet out of his mouth, stained with red-dyed spit. “I hope you had to get a license to go wandering about England, fucking like you do.”

Alexos laughed, which fucking hurt as well, and he braced himself on Fell’s body to slide forward and lie beside him on the bed on his back, and Fell sat up, looking down between Alexos’ legs with an expression of mild upset.

“Oh, haven’t you…? Ought I…?” Fell began to lean over, gesturing between his hand and his mouth, as if encouraging Alexos to choose between them, and Alexos caught his shoulder.

“Please,” he murmured, stroking his thumb over Fell’s cheek. “I’m afraid between that ladder we had to climb at the restaurant and the walk there and back on top of that vigorous exercise, I’m rather at my limit.”

“Oh,” Fell said, pouting out his lips in a very pretty moue. “You can’t even bring yourself off, and let me watch?”

“Maybe put your make-up back on, let me watch you,” Alexos suggested, although for all he liked the idea of watching Fell remake his face, part of him wanted Fell to get out and be gone as soon as humanly possible so that Alexos could find some sort of fucking painkiller. “Pour me a double first, would you?”

“Gladly,” Fell said, and Alexos pointed toward the whiskey, which Fell poured him a generous measure and a half of. “You can’t drink this without something to ease the taste?”

“I’ve put far nastier things than this in my mouth,” Alexos said, and Fell laughed airily as he slipped into the bathroom and filled the shaving jug with hot water.

Alexos still had his shoes on, and as he pushed himself up against the headboard, keeping his legs outstretched, he leaned forward to unlace his shoes with the very tips of his fingers, then leveraged the heels of his shoes to kick them off onto the floor, carefully kicking off his trousers pooled around his ankles as well. He was a little self-conscious of how stiffly he’s holding his body, the pain that was now radiating out from his side, up from his knee, and through most of his other joints how that his body was beginning to ease off from need and desire that had overwhelmed it and remember the standard state of play.

He needn’t have been self-conscious at all – Fell was focused on his reflection in the mirror, pretty little budgerigar that he wa, washing off the marks of black and red and peach around his face with a damp cloth. Alexos smiled slightly as he tugged over a blanket over his lap.

Using his cane, he held it by the base and used the handle to hook his vest from the nearer chair and then his pyjama trousers, although he didn’t manage the shirt as well, making it drop to the floor.

Getting the vest on was alright – getting the pyjama trousers was fucking miserable, and by the time he actually had them around his ankles, the pain of bending to wrestle with them was too much to keep on with.

“I thought you were meant to be watching this performance,” Fell said archly, and Alexos looked up – he’d put on a little blush and foundation, Alexos thought, and now that Alexos was watching, he made a lovely show of reapplying his lipstick. It was quite artful, how he did it, a fluid and easy motion, well-practised.

Alexos watched as he fixed up his mascara, then applied a little something else to his brows – shadow? Some sort of highlight? Alexos was no expert in modern cosmetics, although this put him in a distant mood for… something, he didn’t know.

He thought he’d enjoy seeing Fell Garibaldi play an ancient Greek role, although he supposed there wasn’t money in that like there was for an adaptation of a Lawrence Kidd romantic comedy.

“How much of it is on my face?” Alexos asked fifteen minutes later, and Fell laughed as he leaned and kissed Alexos again, a gentle touch to the mouth before he drew up.

“Not as much as is on the rest of you, darling, I can assure you of that.”

“Toss the tie inside on your way out, will you? My man will know it’s safe to come in.”

“Will do. My details are on the desk – do write me.”

“I will.”