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With his long aquiline nose and his large ears, which appear all the larger because of his perpetual military buzzcut, Rhoden isn’t what one would call conventionally handsome.
He is so much better than that.
There’s an infinite number of things Steinberg loves about him: the warmth of kindness in his smile, the keen flame of his intelligence, the weight of the years in the crow’s feet etched into the almost-translucent skin in the corners of his eyes. He loves the structure of his face, fine and angular, as if sculpted out of white stone by an artist from some faraway sun-drenched country. He loves the decisive set of Rhoden’s bony shoulders and the way his mouth curls self-deprecatingly around the stem of his pipe when he makes some joke or other.
But on a purely sensory, primal level, Steinberg’s favourite thing about Rhoden is how acutely responsive he is to the slightest touch, to the slightest hint of affection. It’s exciting and delightful and so very, very attractive.
Steinberg presses a kiss below the angle of his jaw, into the little hollow between the mandible and the sternocleidomastoid muscle. That’s enough to make Rhoden’s breathing heavy and ragged, to get his body to tense under Steinberg’s hands. It’s intoxicating. Steinberg has never met anyone else who would react like this to a single kiss.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Rhoden mumbles.
“Of course I do,” says Steinberg confidently. He’s leaning over Rhoden, effectively pinning him to the back of the worn plaid armchair. Not that Rhoden is putting up any resistance. “I’ve had relationships with men before. Not to mention Inge.”
He kisses Rhoden’s thin mouth, inhaling a lungful of tobacco smoke and shaving foam. Rhoden responds with a full-body shudder, his lips parting for the kiss and his hands gripping the handles of the chair until his knuckles go white.
Something occurs to Steinberg, however, that makes him pause. He straightens up a little. Rhoden looks up at him, wide-eyed, his face so close that Steinberg’s ginger curls are touching it.
“I assume,” Steinberg says carefully, “that you have also had... relationships like this?”
Rhoden takes a deep breath and looks away, as much as it is possible at such a distance.
“I have never-” he gets out, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar. “I haven’t, with anybody-”
He’s not incredibly coherent but Steinberg gets his meaning well enough. He recoils in shock, letting go of Rhoden’s shoulders.
“Never?” he asks, disbelievingly. He has the urge to ask why?, because the thought that nobody has ever wanted Rhoden – Rhoden! – is almost personally offensive, but stops himself at the last moment. It is, of course, far more likely that Rhoden himself has never had the time for any matters of the heart. Better not to touch on that.
“I wouldn’t want to pressure you into anything,” he says instead, and tries awkwardly to smooth the front of Rhoden’s crisp white shirt. The words sound like a jarring platitude; the man’s a panting mess, his lips still red with Steinberg’s kiss, small beads of perspiration on his temples. It seems rather late for such concerns.
A brokh! Why does being with Rhoden always make such a schlub out of him?
“You’re not pressuring me,” says Rhoden, after clearing his throat. He still sounds a little more high-pitched than usual, and there’s a hint of an accent in his Venlish. Normally he speaks no worse than any native, but Steinberg has long noticed that at times of agitation his consonants get softer and longer, as if he were struggling with a stutter, and that occasionally he forgets which syllables to stress.
Somehow that, too, is unbearably attractive.
Steinberg also clears his throat. “Uh, good,” he says. “Good.”
“If anyone here is being unethical and potentially coercive,” Rhoden begins, “it is certainly not you-”
But this is familiar territory, and Steinberg knows how to deal with it. He gets a hold of Rhoden’s collar, leans down, and begins to pepper his face and neck with little kisses.
“Ikh hab dir lib,” he murmurs against Rhoden’s skin. “Love you, love you, love you.”
Rhoden makes a small desperate sound, almost like a sob, and grips Steinberg’s forearm. “Sasha,” he chokes.
“You do want this,” Steinberg comments happily. He runs his fingers over the gentle blue of the retromandibular vein beating next to Rhoden’s right ear, and is rewarded with another audible reaction. The whispered yes that follows it is all the encouragement he needs to start undoing Rhoden’s collar.
The man is rather stubborn about clinging to this silly fear that he is somehow harming Steinberg. No matter; they have the whole evening to themselves, and Steinberg knows just how to disabuse him of this notion.