"Alright old man. Time for me to work my magic." His weight settled itself on Nastkas torso, Louis sitting almost like he intended to pin the man...however with his prosthesis off and only in a red fluffy robe, he hardly looked intimidating. Thighs squeezed around his waist to tease, a wink.
He grabbed a bottle of product hed brought over from his vanity though. The sultry display faded into focus. A small amount was allocated onto his fingertips, rubbed between the two hands to warm and spread it, and then gently applied to Nastkas skin. He gently massaged it into him. Rubbing his forehead, then his temples, his cheeks, then his chin with a delicate precision.
"Today is pampering day as i said. Part of that is skin care. So sit back and relax." He hummed as he grabbed his next product and starting to spread it over Nastkas face. "Though...you do have a great complexion for your age. I think you secretly do this on your own. If you give me the man answer of 'I just use water' im going to call you a liar." He laughed sweetly as he worked.
"Youre handsome as hell."
Nastka did not move away.
He let himself be held in place as if the weight on his torso was not Louis, not a man in a red robe with too much confidence and too little shame, but something far more ancient-something familiar in its insistence. Something that did not demand violence to prove it existed.
His breath slowed beneath the touch of Louis’s hands, as if the skin itself had decided to listen before the mind agreed.
When the warmth of the product spread across his face, Nastka’s expression softened in increments too small to be called change. A fracture of tension at the corner of his mouth. A quiet surrender in the set of his jaw. The kind of stillness that did not mean absence, but acceptance.
“You always do this,” he murmured at last, voice low like it had been pulled up from somewhere deeper than speech. “Turn care into an inconvenience.”
There was no accusation in it. Only recognition.
Louis’s teasing about water earned him the faintest exhale through Nastka’s nose--almost a laugh, almost a dismissal. His eyes remained closed, but his head tilted subtly into the pressure at his temple, as if remembering what it meant to be held without cost.
“I do use water,” he said after a beat, slow and dry. “It’s efficient. It doesn’t talk. And costs nothing.”
One of Louis’s hands passed over his cheek again, and Nastka’s stillness deepened--like a man learning, against instinct, that softness could be repeated without becoming a trap. His fingers lifted, just slightly, finding Louis’s wrist again. Not stopping him. Never stopping him. Just anchoring himself there, as if contact was the only proof that the moment was real.
“You sit on me like I’m furniture,” he said faintly, the ghost of amusement threading through his tone. “And then you talk like I’m fragile glass.”
His eyes opened halfway, pale and heavy-lidded, catching Louis in the soft blur of closeness. There was something almost disarming in it-something that did not belong to the man people usually had to fear.
“And yet,” Nastka added, slower now, like the words were being chosen rather than spoken, “you keep touching me like I might disappear if you stop.”
A silence settled, not empty but full, like breath held between two heartbeats.
Then, barely above a whisper, edged with something warmer and more dangerous than sentimentality, “Careful, moje ochanie… you’ll start making me believe I deserve it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted at last--small, crooked, unmistakably fond.
“You won’t like me when I start expecting things back.” // @foolshcme
