Bad Stereotypes - 17. Thursday 11th July 2013

Dating Issac was about the most exciting thing I’d ever done.

Every day was exhilarating, every text and phone call electrically charged, every times we met I felt like a horny puppy mixed with a love struck teenager. We ran to the market in the mornings, and Issac showed me his athletic blade, a leg especially designed for running shaped like a hook and made from really springy steel. It made him much faster, more confident when he ran, and we kept up a good pace. Issac introduced me to the growers at the market, showed me off, and let me pick things for the menu and the staff lunches. I still didn’t really know what I was doing, but the producers humoured me, and Issac began to tilt me in the right sort of directions. I was learning things.

Somehow, work got easier. The systems and routines started to become natural to me. James and Darren starting teaching me how to make cocktails and Dale had me help out with the deliveries. I chatted to the guys from the brewery, phoned the wholesalers for nuts and bar snacks and people started to introduce me as the bar manager. Working the club was not as fun as working the bar, messier, hotter, louder, but we were encouraged to have a few dances, rock about a bit and make it fun. Sal and I got on better now that she’d stopped sensing my lust for her boyfriend, and I started to be able to have proper conversations with Zoltan again. Zoltan and Issac and Zupan had apparently all been at college together, though Zoltan didn’t share any specific details, I could tell that he was pleased that I was dating his friend.

Thursday I was working the club, but starting late, and I’d been at the Fish and Antlers until service started at seven. I love to watch Issac work, even though some people might have found it boring, and I enjoyed the quick way he worked with his hands and the certainty with which he moved around the kitchen like he was king. In a way he was, and it felt strange still to here all the others call him Chef all the time. Issac liked me to call him by his name though, he said anything else felt like work. Issac had said that we would be by later, so the work sort of flew by.

Other people in my life that had become important were Rose and Thorn. They were regulars in the bar most evenings, even if just for one, and we got talking often enough for me to be introduced properly, to find out about their lives. We had a lot of music in common, and they came to the club often enough that we danced together on occasion. Rose remembered Issac well, and showed me the photos on her phone of his tattoo when it had been newly done. She was very proud of the work that had been done on him. It was surprising then, that when Issac showed up around one, that we were deep in conversation over the bar and a collection of Rose’s sketches on her tablet phone, talking about tattoo and ink.

“So what sort of thing do you want done?”

“Something manly,” I looked up from Rose’s latest design, a fantastic mix of scales and feathers for a client of hers to grin at my boyfriend, “Isn’t that right Bay?”

“Hey,” I beamed at Issac, my hand instantly finding his on the bar, “How was service?”

“Seamless.” A quick kiss on the knuckles, “Can I have a beer please Bay. And get the ladies whatever they want. Hey Rose.”

“Hiya hun, how’s that restaurant of yours?”

I drew Issac his beer, did two more JD and cokes for the girls and wandered off to collect glasses and check on Sal in the DJ booth. After replenishing her ice and water, I waggled my fingers to Issac and went upstairs and out front to where Zoltan was standing next to the door. I sighed into the much cooler air as I got outside and grinned at the big man.

“Evening.”

“Hey Bay, where’s Issac? You’ve not left him alone down there have you?”

“He’s talking about tattoos with Rose.” I rolled my shoulders and sniffed my shirt, luckily no beer had been spilt on me yet this evening, then shuddered as I felt a warm rough hand on the back of my neck.

“Hey babe,” Issac’s voice in my ear made me shiver before he leant away, “I can take care of myself you Zol. I’m not a kid.”

“No. Not like when you were eighteen and were scared to go into clubs without us, hey?” I glared at Zoltan, “Ah shit. Bay, you know I didn’t mean that.”

I was going to take in personally, but Issac’s hand went from my neck to the small of my back, bringing me closer to him.

“Let it go Bay.”

I did.

“I can’t believe you guys have known each other so long.”

“It’s what, nine year?” Issac nodded at Zoltan’s words, “We met in college in second year, mucking about cars and shit. Hel, me and Zu took Issac to his first club.”

“The Pit.” Issac grinned at whatever memory he was seeing inside his skull, “God it feels like forever.”

“Well it has been shut seven years now.” Zoltan grinned at me, “Your godfather opened this place about four months after The Pit closed down for good. The original owner sold the business to a string of guys who couldn’t run it and one after another it lost more and more money until it shut. We spent a long time with nowhere to hang out.”

“Where was it?”

“In the basement of where that comedy club is now.” Issac wrapped his arm more firmly around my waist, “But I prefer this place. The staff are much cuter. Excuse us Zol.” Issac lead me away a little with his arm still firmly wrapped around me, his fingers hooking on my belt loops, hip pressed again my waist. “How’s my boyfriend?”

“Better now.” I grinned and pressed myself against Issac’s warm body, “Missed you.” I took his firm jaw in my hands and kissed him until I was breathless, “Stay with me tonight?”

“Really?” Issac looked half concerned, and half like a cat that got all the cream and sugar.

“Yeah. Please?”

Issac leant in to kiss me again, then nibbled on my ear lobe in a way I was helpless to resist. I moaned softly.

“I could never say no to that noise.”

I winked at him as a pulled away, trying to calm the uncomfortable hardness in my jeans.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

That night I finished up so quick that Zoltan was still drinking his end of shift beer when I tried to kick everyone out. Issac had gone to wait upstairs and have a shower, and I mounted the stairs to my flat with a certain level of trepidation. Issac Daneil, my boyfriend, was going to spend the night with me. I hoped that this meant that there would be a certain level of nakedness involved, but as I walked up the stairs looking at my feet, wondering about Issac’s… foot, I started to think that I might have been wrong.

Shutting the door behind me I cast about for my boyfriend, not seeing him.

“Issac?”

“Up here babe,” I craned my neck up the stairs to see Issac smiling down at me, “I got finger food. Go have a shower.”

That was the fastest shower of my life.

Wrapped in a towel I nipped up the spiral staircase and smiled to see Issac sitting shirtless in sweats on my bed. Issac shirtless… oh dear god. I felt like all my Christmas’s had come at once. He was sculpted and beautiful, a thin trail of brown hair that lead into his waist band, and the black lines of an unseen tattoo which I could see running down his side. I stopped when I saw him, chest heaving, suddenly breathless.

“Hey…” I didn’t know what else to say, so I just stood there.

“Hey good looking,” Issac rubbed his hands over his thighs, “Come eat something babe.”

I don’t know how I got so lucky. Issac had a little bag with little things from the restaurant, and though I wasn’t really hungry my stomach growled as I sat down next to him. Sugared strawberries, little crispy deep friend broccoli florets in some spicy awesome dipping sauce, braised cucumber which I thought would taste weird, but were awesome, and raspberries with mascarpone. Issac fed me the raspberries with his fingers, and I made sure to keep eye contact with him as I sucked the digits into my mouth.

“B-Bay…”

“Yes?” I made sure to smile sweetly at him.

“Are you sure about this?” Issac looked suddenly petrified. I took the rest of the food from him and put the bag on the floor by the stairs. When I returned to the bed, Issac was sitting sideways, with his elbows resting on his knees. Knee. I reached out and grabbed his hand, moved so that I knelt between his legs, so he couldn’t escape me. Issac’s fingers picked at the rough-soft fabric of my towel. We had the same nervous habit. I smiled. I threaded my fingers with his and brought his knuckles up to my lips.

“Of course I’m sure babe.” Kiss on the wrist, “You’re like the most handsome man I’ve ever met,” Lean in, kiss collarbone, “And you can cook. What more could a boy want?”

Issac sniggered.

“I knew I was just a meal ticket. C’mere.” Then Issac had pulled me against him, leant back on the bed, bringing me with him. I laid against his chest, hearing his heart thudding hard against my own, loving the feel of his hard body beneath me. Kissing and touching distracted us for a long time, then I moved my legs and cracked my knee against something hard.

“Ow, fuck.”

“Shit. Sorry Bay.”

I sat up, half kneeling over Issac. My towel had stopped hiding any modesty a while ago. Issac tore his gaze from my crotch to my face.

“You like what you see?”

“Hell yes.” Issac smiled, confidence restored, “Sorry about that.”

“You normally sleep with it on?” I decided to be bold and ran my hand down his thigh, through the sweats to the place where skin gave way to plastic and metal.

“Never.” Issac gulped, “I didn’t want to take it off. I didn’t want to scare you off.”

“I’m not scared. Curious maybe. Is that bad?”

“No.” Issac sat up and leant on his elbows, “You wanna give me a hand?”

I nearly made a joke about him still having two of those, but I decided that my timing would have been crap. Instead I picked at the knot of his sweats, then dragged the trousers down over his hips and conspicuous bulge in his fitted black boxers. The white stripe down the side fascinated me infinitely. As I took the clothes off him I realised I was purposefully not looking at the bionic leg, so I looked. This one was different from the one I’d seen before, and different from the running blade. It looked a lot… sleeker, more high tech. I pulled off the sweats and picked apart the laces on the trainer.

“Bay…”

“Shh,” Issac sounded like he was going to complain about me doing things for him, so I kissed the side of his thigh to shut him up, my fingers brushing over the bulge in his boxers. That seemed to work. I got the trainer off and turned my attention to the other leg. I found the straps on the cup which clamped over whatever was left off Issac’s thigh and smiled at him. “This one?”

“Yeah. Bay?”

I looked back to my boyfriend. Aroused and petrified, both of us. I was quivering with want and need and the shiver of not knowing what Issac would look like without the bionic limb.

“I haven’t… I mean. Fuck.” Issac was blushing, and I knew I didn’t want all that blood flooding his face. I nuzzled at his crotch, loving the heat, the hardness and the masculine scent of him, “There haven’t been many people since the leg. Since the accident. It scares people. I just… I like you Bay and I don’t want… we could stop…”

I hated seeing Issac unsure, so I kissed him, hard.

“I don’t wanna stop,” I dropped my vice an octave and growled while my lips moved against his taught abdomen, “I wanna fuck you ‘til you scream.”

“Oh god…”

I felt the hardness returning under my hands and grinned.

“Oh yes.”