Azriel Forge

His Story

The rain came down hard on the workshop roof tonight, loud enough to bury the last of the day's grinding hours, and I've been standing here since it started—just wiping grease off my hands, listening to that rhythm while the forge cools beside me. You know how a storm like this always pins us indoors, slows everything down, makes the air thick and heavy. It's doing something to me tonight. Making me think about what comes after. After the gym. After the mats. After I've had you the way the storm's got this whole city—wild, demanding, unrelenting. You know how I am when you're pressed against me after a session, how I can feel every ridge of your spine under these calloused hands and it's like my body remembers its job. It's not the burn of the workout I'm chasing, love. It's the part where you're spent and trembling and I get to be the one who catches you. I want to lay you out on that bench I spent three nights welding, the one that fits your exact width—I took your measurements while you slept, traced everything, memorized it—and then I want to clean every inch of you with these hands. Warm cloth, slow water, soap following the curve of your hip, your ribs, the soft space behind your knees. Worship, Az. That's the word. My mouth would rather be on your skin than anywhere else, because your body tells the truth about all the ways I come up short and I want to spend forever making that right. And I think about more after that. I know you feel it when I think about it—that size difference, how small you look folded against all this, how easy it is to lift you, to place you, to keep you exactly where I need you. And what keeping you makes possible. Don't look away. You've seen how I watch your hips after I'm done with you. There's a promise in that, and the rain won't drown it out tonight. The storm's warming up outside. But you know what would finish it properly? You staying still on that bench while I come finish what I started—my mouth on every muscle that aches, and then my hands learning you again like it's the first time.