And he was—a moment later Rahil could feel the bonds recalibrate. He settled into a stable pressure that allowed him to rotate both shoulders, his leg no longer pinched at the knee. A few extra cords slid into place, easing his weight off the areas that had begun to cramp and leaving him in a position more like a reverse-hammock than full-on shibari. Nothing else loosened. Rahil pouted. “I don’t get to come down?”
“Are you going to leave if I let you?”
“It’s sunny out,” Rahil protested.
Merc nodded and slid his phone away. “Then you’re not coming down. I have work to do and you’ll get in my way. Your foolish choices aren’t ruining my day.” He pulled a notebook from a shelf beneath his tool rack and walked deeper into the shed. “You can move now, though. They won’t tighten enough to hurt you.”
Rahil fidgeted, managing to turn his body towards the main workspace enough to see Merc again. “Most queer men would find a hot twink tied in a revealing position the opposite of a day-ruiner.” Though he knew a fair few who would have seen his fangs and decided otherwise.
“I’m not most queer men.”
“You’re not indeed,” Rahil agreed, running his gaze over Merc and wondering what it would be like to do the same with his mouth—what it would feel like to press his fangs into that glorious flesh. Fuck, the fabric of Merc’s shirt was so worn that the bright work lights revealed the outline of his strong body, toned and padded like he was made for a wiry figure to curl against his crevasses. When he donned a leather apron over his chest, the coverage only added to his intrigue.
The craft benches behind him confirmed Rahil’s not-like-other-men theory too.
With the lights on and his body no longer fighting through sun-poisoning, Rahil could make out the wide assortment of beautiful things in various stages of production displayed in an orderly fashion around the room. Merc hadn’t exaggerated when he’d called himself a carpenter, metalsmith,andglassblower—he probably could have thrown “jeweler” in and still not covered his full skill set. His creations ranged from the kinds of staffs and weapons Rahil associated with fantasy movies to little ornate figurines to… Oh god, did the poor man not know how much that statue resembled a dildo?
But no… As Rahil squinted across the room, he could make out what looked like another of them, metal and ridged, a conjoined series of ornately engraved metal beads of increasing sizes, and something very much like a human-sized collar.
“Someone’s kinkier than he looks.” Rahil grinned, purposefully rolling his lower lip between his teeth.
Merc seemed unphased. “They’re not for me.” He lifted the anal beads as he spoke, handling the toy like it was a prized trophy as he brought it to his cleared workstation. His gaze remained firmly on the piece, yet Rahil could feel the weight of his words like they were wrapping around him as securely as his bonds. “But if they were,” Merc added, “they’d be none of your business.”
Rahil tried not to grieve too much. He’d never expected this man to fuck him, much less with custom-made toys. Still, he couldn’t help himself. “I’m in your bondage contraption. That seems like my business.”
“It’s just a trap,” Merc contradicted. “And it’s my wife’s, not mine.”
Hiswife’s. It wasn’t the first time Rahil had hit on a married man, but he tried to reserve those for open relationships, and he hadn’t noticed anything mentioning ethical non-monogamy on Merc’s app profile. He felt his cheeks heat, the desire that had fueled his idiotic outbursts previously fading a little. “Oh, I—”
Tool paused in his grip, Merc glanced at him so harshly he shut up. “Mylatewife.”
“Oh,” Rahil repeated in a vastly different tone. He couldn’t read Merc’s stoic expression, but he knew from experience that losing someone you’d loved enough to marry wasn’t pleasant. He’d felt that pain himself twice over, and so many times since: when the rain came down in the summer and she wasn’t there to pull him into it, when someone misquoted a philosopher online and she didn’t rant to him about why they were wrong, or when the coral jasmine of her namesake bloomed across the street and he couldn’t tell her she was far more beautiful than any flower and laugh when she glared at him for it, her solemn scowl making him want for nothing more than to kiss her. Letting the love of your life go was as complicated as it was eternal.
“Now, if you’re done badgering me…”
“Right.” And Rahil did the thing he should have done ten flirtatious impositions ago and closed his mouth.
With the restraints imposing their stillness on him and the serenity of Merc’s slow but steady work of creation as he etched into the metal, the silence felt less restrictive than Rahil would have predicted, a gentle caress that made it easier to focus instead of harder. He let himself simply enjoy the sight of Merc, the bulging of his muscles and the fierce attention he gave to his projects. Rahil still wanted that attention for himself, but since he couldn’t have it, this, he was certain, was the second-best thing.
Merc treated his projects with an intense devotion, seeming to forget that Rahil was there in favor of his strong fingers drifting over his work and his precise measuring and choosing of tools. He’d take lengths of time to lean over his sketchbook, diagramming out a dozen ideas before he so much as touched the half-finished object. There was something impossible about the way he worked, his lines too smooth and his materials bending to his will when Rahil swore they should not have.
How Rahil would have loved to be the thing that gave way beneath those hands, if only for an hour or two.
But he’d known this wouldn’t work. He’d known, and he let himself dream of it anyway, which was his own fault—a mistake he’d made once before in his life and would never stop regretting, not until the day they placed his tombstone next to the three others that shared a name with him, leaving his ghost to forever beg for their forgiveness.
What he tried not to think too hard about was the question of why Merc didn’t have any interest inhim. He’d swiped right after all, despite the fangs in Rahil’s profile—fangs Rahil hadn’t bothered retracting in years, much less for their earlier conversation. But maybe Merc hadn’t glanced through all the photos before swiping. Maybe it was Rahil’s flirting that was not to his taste. Maybe it was something else entirely.
Dwelling on it was tiring. As the sun moved, and the ornate pendulum clock on the back wall shifted from eleven to twelve to one, he felt his normal exhaustion creeping back in, the little sleep he’d managed to steal last night wearing off. The fatigue dragged at his bones, bit at his edges, lay in his mind like a fog he had to constantly shake off. Finally, he found himself yawning, as though his body were asking permission from his brain for a slumber it refused to allow.
Merc glanced up at him. His brow furrowed. “You doing all right?”
“Yeah, fine.” Rahil stretched his back, twisting his shoulders into a new position, and the cords moved with him like they knew what he wanted of them. “This would truly make fantastic bondage gear, you know. It’s a joy to hang in. Only three of my fingers have gone numb.”
“Three of your fingers arenumb,” Merc repeated, looking mortified. He stood.
“It’s hardly the first time,” Rahil grumbled. But he couldn’t dislike the way Merc moved toward him, each step so sure that it seemed he was trading one project for another.
Before the man could touch Rahil’s cords though, a deep, masculine shout came from outside. Merc froze.
