**

"Easy," Ethan says, "hey, easy. Didn't they ever send you to school?"

A surgeon, and a student at that, builds up certain patterns of calluses on his hands. Victor might identify a body by that alone, had he nothing else available to him from which to extrapolate an occupation if not a name. Certain characteristics would manifest themselves, already an imposition of one's willful activity on a body only too willing to comply -- or the hardy flesh adapting itself to meet the challenge of this sort of pressure or that manner of consistent wear over months or years. A sharpshooter, a laborer of a different kind -- a man accustomed to violent uses of his hands -- might have others, a different constellation of calluses and scars. Mr. Chandler's hands are around his cock.

Victor inhales raggedly, self-conscious of how weak he is and how utterly laid bare. Chandler's hands are working in slow firm pulls down the length of what Victor had once considered practically beneath notice. He had sought to escape the mechanical limitations of the body, and if certain verses of poetry were less than modest, if they made his pulse quicken and his blood burn -- The side of Ethan's thumb teases against the slit at the head of his cock and he makes a whimper with no dignity in it at all. He pulls himself back deeper into the leather armchair in which he sits. The sense of certain dread that they'll be intruded on is still not enough for him to call this little experiment to a halt. Ethan is a very obliging instructor.

If Victor were so inclined -- and his natural inclinations tend to this so strongly that it takes a conscious effort not to, and only the chafe of flesh on flesh distracts him -- he could enumerate every muscle and vessel and duct complicit in this, from his own genitalia up through every digit and each of the elegant bones of Mr. Chandler's forearms to his broad shoulders. His own sweating throat, swallowing sharply and feeling the cartilage bob in his neck.

Victor puts a hand out to his sleeve, not to stop him, but to hold him there, fingers knotting uselessly in his sleeve and balling into a fist as another spasm of unfamiliar sensation shoots through him. This can't be as pleasant for the one who administers it as its recipient, but nothing in Ethan's demeanor suggests reluctance. If he's enjoying himself half as much as Victor is, he possesses masterful self-control.

It's so exquisite that it nearly hurts, and the expression on his face must show it -- biting his lips and closing his eyes to chase away the torment of Chandler's affable downturned face and to focus on the sensations he's isolated even as it seems like too much to bear. He has no envy or affinity for the normal procreative act, but if it is anything like this it must be excruciating, a torment very different from the erotic languor poets profess. His breath comes in gasps; his own hands tighten their knuckly grip on the armchair (which is very old, and may have seen its own share of transgressions) and his legs tremble with the protestations of straining muscles.

Chandler spits into his palm with no great excess of delicacy and continues his work.

Explaining himself feels ludicrous but Victor can't help but try, though he's at a loss as to how to be succinct about his own slightly embarrassing sensitivities, undoubtably borne of inexperience. His tongue trips over the phrases as soon as he starts, and his breath catches in his throat.

"As you can see, I don't--"

Victor finds himself swallowing down the words for what, precisely, he does not do, as Ethan shifts against him and his grip alters as well. He's not in the habit of touching himself and this other man does it expertly, his gentling touches turning to swift short strokes that tease and promise and yet deny. Some of the slickness must be his own.

"You don't get laid too much, huh? There's only one thing for it."

Chandler's other hand comes away for a moment and returns to press through Victor's laid-open trouser flies and cup at his balls. Ethan's callused fingertips and ragged nails promise nothing but indecency and infection but the touch of him is irresistible -- he is both coarse and strong, radiating a kind of animal heat through his clothing, being as he is bent over his lap and very close. An awful, inexorable fullness has begun building in him, approaching piece by piece but all too fast, and even he, devoid of waking experience and practically untouched, knows what it is -- a climax that must be released. It comes pouring out like a discharge of lightning -- as if all his strength is drawn up and concentrated into this, this unnecessary sweetness. It's worst because he feels it drawing near, the approach of a thing he cannot stop.

His world goes white, and for a moment everything is forgotten -- everything is eclipsed, in the blazing center of something neither life nor death.

Slumped and panting like a winded runner, he comes back to himself looking into the genial dark eyes of one Mr. Chandler, an American renegade of some renown who currently has Victor's semen all over his hands. Fortunately he's not a barbarian, and goes about remedying this with a pocket handkerchief, wiping off each finger in a businesslike fashion while looking very satisfied with himself.

"Better now? See, hey, I haven't hurt you, doctor. How was that?" Chandler asks, with a wickedly solicitous look.

"I'm afraid I can't speak for your technique, Mr. Chandler," he says, the slightest of smiles playing at his bruise-colored lips, "but there's little that can't be improved on with practice."

His own hands -- which are clean and very white -- find the stiffness of Chandler's member through his trousers. Victor feels very near fainting, and wholly spent, but he knows what he'd like to do.