Notes: This story owes a debt to both Francesca's "Cheap" and Aristide's "Solitary Creatures", two tales which made me think seriously about an issue I'd never really considered. Although I went in a completely different direction with this, those two stories, taken together, caused ferocious plot bunny breeding in my head.

---
Then an image will indart,
down through the limbs' intensive stillness flutter,
and end its being in the heart.
--Ranier Maria Rilke, "The Panther"

Blair was behind me, his fingers had left me moments ago and now I could
feel the press of his cock, the smooth feel of latex, and I bit my lip
and he was in, God, inside me, and abruptly I couldn't handle
it--this--anything. I was shaking, and curling myself forward, and I
realized, suddenly, that I was sobbing, brokenly, like a child whose dog
has just died. Only it wasn't a dog, it was my self-image, everything I
thought I knew about me was gone, suddenly, because I was *fucked*, there
was a man's--Blair's--cock inside me and I was broken, irretrievably
broken, and sobbing on my bed with him behind me and inside me and around
me.

"Hey," he said, and began to pull away, but I grabbed his arm with one
hand and reached around with the other to press at the small of his back,
keeping him in me.

"No," I said, "don't go, it won't make a difference." It was too late
for this to not happen--even if he pulled out and never, ever touched
me again, I'd been *fucked*, he'd been *inside*, I was not me anymore,
I was someone who would lie down for him, who would let this happen,
who would ask for it--I was someone *else* now, and maybe that someone
else would enjoy this, if I gave him the chance.

He freed his arm and reached up, stroked my hair and wiped the tears
from my face, his cock still hard inside me, tearing me apart with its
presence and the pulse of blood within it, but his hands, callused fingers
that were trying to keep me together or maybe to put me back together--maybe
if I concentrated on his hands, I would be fine, I could deal with this.
But I tried to uncurl myself, and that pressed me back against him, pressed
him deeper into me, and I cried out and fell apart again, the sobs coming
back, shaking me, and because I was shaking I was moving, and because
I was moving he slid within me, and there was latex and his heat through
the latex and his chest against my back.

And his arm came across my chest and held me tightly--he's stronger than
he looks--and his mouth was next to my ear. "It will make a difference,
Jim. If you're not ready for this, or you don't like it, we should *stop*."

"No!" I realized as I said it what this was--this was the last bit of
the me that had been, this was me desperately trying to hold on to myself.
Don't start things you can't finish, my father told me when I was a kid
and left half-built model planes around the house for him to trip on,
and I'd lived my life that way--I'd finished projects, assignments,
everything: beginning, carry-through, end. And now I'd started something
that I shouldn't have, and I was *broken*, and the only thing keeping me
here and now and not huddled in a corner as far from Blair as I could get
was the thought that if I could finish this, get through this, that some
part of me would survive. That I had to have the strength to finish this.

He tried again to ease out of me, his hands gentle as he stroked my side
and back, but I bit my lip and rocked back, my ass against his hips,
and said it again. "No. Don't."

He pressed his forehead between my shoulder blades. "Jim, are you sure?"

"No," I said, "yes, fuck, I don't know, will you just fucking *move*?
Please?"

"Jim..."

"Please. Just...let me do this for you."

"This isn't about me." He moved away again, and I moved with him, keeping
him inside. I knew I wasn't being fair, that he was being considerate
and thinking of me even though he was in deep and hard as hell and it
had to suck not to be able to move, to pound into me as his pulse and
his heat and the smell of his arousal told me he wanted to do, so I let
out a breath and moved my hips forward, then back, sliding him halfway
out and back in, and he gasped against my back and I did it again. "Jesus,"
he said, "Jesus, Jim," and then he moved, wrapping an arm around my waist
and pulling me close, his hips finding a rhythm and going with it, and
he really was fucking me now, not just inside me, I was really, honest
to God, being fucked by a man here, and I knew now why he'd said it made
a difference, because this I really, really couldn't handle, no matter
what I'd said when we discussed it and no matter how much I'd encouraged
him and how unfair I'd been while getting him to *do* this, I couldn't
handle it.

"Jesus *fuck*," he said, and came, his body shaking against me.

Afterwards, I lay quietly, still on my side, and he got up and came back
smelling faintly of latex and more strongly of semen because he'd just
removed the condom and cleaned up a little, but no soap, nothing to take
the smell of musk off of him. He sat down next to me and petted me,
his fingers in my hair, soothing. "Why?" he asked. "Why, if you weren't
ready?"

"Had to finish what I started," I whispered, and heard my voice shaking.

"Oh God," he said, "you *idiot*," and I leaned forward and pressed my
face into the side of his thigh and cried.



### The End ###