Leave the Apron

Raff scraped duck fat off a roasting tin and tried not to think about the way Harlan had watched his mouth all night.

The townhouse was the tall Edinburgh kind that made catering jobs feel like trespassing. Downstairs kitchen. Service stairs. A dining room full of people who said darling as punctuation. Raff was thirty-three, freelance, good with a knife and better at disappearing when the plates went out.

He had noticed Harlan at the briefing, which was not a briefing so much as a man standing in his own hallway naming wines. Forty-six. Rolled black sleeves. A watch that belonged in a different tax bracket. When Raff had said he would plate the duck in the kitchen and run it himself, Harlan had looked at his mouth and said, "Do."

That was six hours ago. Since then Raff had carried twelve bottles, smiled at a judge, and felt Harlan's attention like a hand at the back of his neck every time the dining-room door swung.

Harlan owned the house. He did not disappear. He circulated. He touched nothing. He looked at Raff whenever Raff came through with wine, and once, when Raff bent for a fallen napkin, Harlan's voice had arrived very quietly at his ear.

"If you stay after they leave, wear the apron."

"Leave the rest," Harlan said from the doorway.

Raff looked up. The last guest had gone twenty minutes ago. The dishwasher was mid-cycle. His whites were marked with sauce and steam.

"There's still the glasses."

"I said leave them."

Raff set the tin down. His pulse had been waiting for this sentence since the cheese course.

Harlan came into the kitchen like he belonged in it, which he did. Close enough that Raff smelled cedar and wine.

"You've been hard since the mains," Harlan said, almost kindly. "Don't insult me by denying it."

Raff's laugh came out wrong. "Your friends are still on the street."

"My friends are in taxis. You can walk out. Door's there. Or you can stay and take your jacket off."

Raff stayed.

The jacket landed on a stool. Under it he wore the cheap black service shirt every caterer owned. Harlan looked at the shirt the way some men looked at skin.

"That," Harlan said. "Leave it on. Sleeves up. Apron stays."

Raff's cock twitched against the zip. He rolled the sleeves. The apron strings sat tight at his waist. Harlan walked a slow circle around him, not touching yet.

"I like men who work in other people's houses," Harlan said. "I like the uniform. I like that you spent four hours saying sir with a tray in your hands. Do you understand what I want?"

"I think so."

"Say it."

Raff swallowed. "You want me on my knees in this kit. You want to use my mouth. You want to fuck me without taking the apron off."

Harlan's eyes warmed. "Good. Knees."

The slate floor was cold even through the trousers. Raff went down in front of the range. Harlan undid his own belt with no ceremony. His cock was thick, already heavy, the head dark. He tapped it once against Raff's lower lip.

"Open."

Raff opened. Harlan fed him the first third and held there, watching. Raff breathed through his nose. The taste was clean skin and a little salt. When Harlan pushed deeper Raff's eyes watered. He took it. The apron bib brushed Harlan's thighs. That detail seemed to undo something in the older man.

"That's it. Look at me. Hands behind you."

Raff locked his fingers at the small of his back. Harlan fucked his mouth in short, controlled strokes, not savage, not gentle. Spit ran down Raff's chin and spotted the black cotton. He made a helpless sound around the cock and Harlan swore softly, almost pleased.

"You did this in your head every time you came through that door."

Raff could only blink once, wet.

Harlan pulled out. A string of spit followed. "Up. Hands on the prep table. Facing the garden."

The garden was dark beyond the glass. Raff planted his palms on stainless steel still faintly warm from the duck. Harlan opened Raff's trousers just enough. No full undress. The uniform staying on was the point. Cool air hit Raff's arse. Then two slick fingers, patient and rude.

"Have you done this after a shift before?"

"Not in the kitchen."

"You'll remember this one."

The fingers found what they wanted. Raff dropped his head between his shoulders. Harlan worked him open until Raff was pushing back for it, apron strings digging into his hips.

"Please."

"Please what?"

"Fuck me. Sir."

The last word landed. Harlan made a sound like he had been waiting all night to hear it.

He took his time lining up. The head of his cock pressed where his fingers had been, a blunt question. Raff's hands left damp prints on the steel.

"I thought about this during the cheese," Harlan said. "You coming through with the board. That mouth. I had to sit down."

"I saw."

"I know you saw."

He pressed in slow. Raff's mouth opened on nothing. The stretch burned and then went sweet. Harlan's chest came to Raff's back, shirt to shirt, and he started to move.

It was not romantic. It was a man using the caterer over his own prep table while the dishwasher hummed through another cycle. Raff's cock hung untouched, dripping onto the inside of the apron. Every thrust shoved him into the steel. Harlan's hand closed on the nape of his neck, not choking, just pinning.

The first full stroke dragged a sound out of Raff he would have been paid not to make during service. Harlan gave him another, then a rhythm, then the particular angle that made Raff's vision narrow to the dark garden and the faint reflection of his own open mouth.

"You look better like this than you did with the wine."

"Fuck,"

Harlan reached under the apron and ignored Raff's cock on purpose, just a pass of knuckles, a reminder.

"I could leave you like this," he said. "Send you to the late train with your hole full and your mouth red and nobody on Princes Street any the wiser."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't send me yet."

"Quiet. The neighbours have windows too."

Raff bit his own wrist. Harlan noticed and pulled the wrist away.

"No. I want to hear you try not to make noise."

That was worse. Raff's sounds came out anyway, punched thin. Harlan reached around, finally, and gave Raff's cock two lazy strokes. Not enough. A tease dressed as mercy.

"You come when I say. Not before."

"I won't."

"You will if I keep doing this." He squeezed, just under the head. Raff's knees threatened. "So don't."

Harlan fucked him properly after that. Deep, even, the slap of it under the extractor fan. Raff's world narrowed to the cold table, the heat in his arse, the apron wet against his cock, and the voice at his ear telling him he was good, he was easy, he was exactly what the room had been missing.

"Now," Harlan said, and stroked him in earnest.

Raff came with a broken gasp, spilling over Harlan's fist and the inside of the apron in thick pulses. His hole clenched hard. Harlan cursed and followed, burying himself and coming with his mouth open against Raff's shoulder, shaking through it.

They stayed locked like that until the dishwasher beeped.

Harlan pulled out carefully. Raff hissed. There was a roll of blue paper towel on the wall. Harlan used it on both of them with a practical tenderness that was almost funnier than the situation.

Raff's legs were not convinced they were legs.

"There's a shower on the half landing," Harlan said. "Use it. Leave the shirt if you want it laundered. Or take it home wrecked. I don't mind which story you prefer."

Raff looked at the stained apron, then at Harlan's mouth.

"If I take the late train I can still make it."

"And if you don't?"

Raff buttoned nothing. The trousers sat open. His mouth felt used in the way he had wanted since the first bottle of red.

"Then you can put me back on my knees before the glasses," he said.

Harlan smiled, small and sharp.

"The glasses can wait."

They did not make the half landing immediately. Harlan poured two fingers of something the guests had not been offered and put the glass in Raff's hand as if the uniform still entitled him to service.

"Drink."

Raff drank. The burn helped. So did Harlan's thumb at the corner of his mouth, wiping what the first round had left.

"I hire the same company because they send different faces," Harlan said. "I asked for you specifically after last October."

"The pheasant night."

"You said sir when you didn't have to. I thought about that for months. Pathetic, probably."

"It isn't," Raff said. "I remembered the watch."

Harlan's eyes flicked. "Good."

On the half landing the shower was too small for dignity. They used it anyway. Harlan washed Raff's chest with the impersonal care of a man who liked aftermath as much as use. Then he turned Raff to the tile, put two fingers back inside him, and made him come a second time with nothing but that and a mouth at his ear saying stay, stay, stay.

Raff's forehead rested on wet plaster. The apron hung over the rail outside like a flag.

"Next month," Harlan said, when the water started to cool, "I'm doing a lunch. Smaller. I don't need twelve bottles. I need you to arrive early and not put the jacket on."

Raff closed his eyes. He could already see the empty dining room in daylight. The slate. The range.

"I'll check my bookings," he said.

Harlan kissed the place behind his ear that the steam had made obvious.

"Check them in the kitchen," he said. "The glasses are still downstairs. I find I've changed my mind about waiting."