Chapter Text
Elain couldn’t press the block button quickly enough, though she definitely tried. Swiper saw the comment before she could complete the action that was practically second nature to her now– report, block, delete. Something about his ‘fake dick’ and telling him to shove it somewhere that Elain couldn’t exactly bring herself to repeat, no matter how many hours she spent corrupting herself on OnlyFans.
But while she was still scanning the chat to make sure there were no copies of the original, offensive message, Swiper was already laughing. It was a deep rumble coming straight from his bare chest. A smile stretched across his lips, showing a bit of his teeth. On a regular day, keeping her wild thoughts under control was difficult. Today, when she had already amped herself up by looking at his Twitter prior to that stream–that task was impossible.
Of course, there was only so much to be done about her imagination, when she was watching a gorgeous man stroking his cock on her computer screen.
“Fake?” Swiper asked breathlessly. Amused.
The lewd tone of his voice came through her headset like a tidal wave, and then his head fell back over his chair, as he couldn’t help but moan. Elain averted her eyes from the salacious sight, and instead stared dutifully at the chat.
“Why don’t you come closer and check for yourself?” He said.
Elain didn’t have time to prepare, before Swiper had snatched the camera off of its stand and brought it down closer–probably onto the surface of his desk. His face disappeared from sight, and the frame was perfectly cropped to a view of his lap. His generous cock, held lightly in one hand as he stroked it. An almost lazy grip, but he pumped himself faster and faster–beads of precum, weeping out of the tip.
A high-pitched noise crept up Elain’s throat, as her eyes went wide, and her mouth was suddenly very, very dry. Like swallowing cotton.
Soon enough, the universe granted her a distraction in the form of hundreds of comments flooding the chat. All of them either offensive, aggressive, or just downright disgusting. Nearly all of them against the rules.
Acting quickly, Elain switched the chat to slow mode, just to give herself enough time to catch up. Block, block, block. Report. Delete. Like muscle memory.
At least the guilt she felt over lusting after her friend–technically her employer–was easily overcome by the arduous task of trying to get @swiper-no-swiper’ s chat room to behave for once. She didn’t entirely place the blame on his viewers. Swiper enjoyed the negative attention. Got a kick out of it, even.
Which, she figured, explained why he had gone through so many moderators in such a short amount of time, before he met her.
It certainly wasn’t the sight currently on her monitor that had ever turned them away. Elain snuck a glance at the stream, just as the chat began to calm back down. People were logging off, and Elain knew why, even if she had been determined not to watch that directly–Swiper coming into his hands, body going relaxed. Though she could still see the evidence of his orgasm on his muscled thigh, had to bite her tongue to keep from fucking moaning at the idea it conjured in her mind–herself on her knees and licking it off.
But then Swiper was fixing the camera back onto his smug, grinning face and signing off.
Elain startled, and began working again. She took the chat off of slow mode so that everyone could say goodbye, and then scanned it to make sure that no one was being too rowdy. And then, suddenly, Swiper ended the stream, and Elain had nothing left to do.
Elain puffed up her cheeks and blew out a steady stream of air, trying to calm herself, as she navigated to the analytics page. Not a moment later, she heard the telltale ringtone coming from her headset, the one that indicated an incoming voice call.
Jerkily tapping a button on her keyboard, Elain accepted the call. And waited.
“Haze,” came Swiper’s husky voice. The little popup at the bottom of her screen was emblazoned with the banner: @swiper-no-swiper is speaking. “What did you think?”
Speaking to him right after he had just finished jacking off for a few thousand people to watch would never not be jarring.
Elain shifted in her seat, but kept her eyes on the screen in front of her. “Traffic’s been good ever since you were featured earlier this week. You got almost twenty new subscribers from this stream alone.”
Swiper hummed. “Think it will hold them over?”
“Until what?” Elain asked distractedly, staring at a graph that depicted the traffic to his page, compared to the number of monthly subscribers.
“Until I film another collab,” he answered. He was still breathing like he had just run a marathon.
“Depends,” Elain said into her mic, idly scrolling through the webpage on her monitor. Chat logs. Block lists. Nothing that demanded her immediate attention. “Do you have any collabs already lined up?”
“A few,” Swiper responded. It was impossible for her to ignore how he was still out of breath.
God, if he exerted himself that much just jacking off, how exhausted would he be after sex with someone else? How much of himself was he willing to give to his partner? If she was the type to place bets, she’d be willing to put her money on all of it. He’d give his partner everything he had, she was sure of that.
She was only thankful that they kept these post-livestream debriefs to voice calls only. She didn’t know what she would do if she had to speak to him while watching beads of sweat trailing down from his temple, or dripping onto his chest. As it was, she could already taste the salt of it on her tongue, just sitting there.
“I’ll actually be going out of town this week,” Swiper said. “So I’m trying to meet up with a few different people.”
Elain drummed her fingers over the mouse a few times before clicking the OnlyFans page closed. The window that was left behind on her screen was from their voice chat, displaying two squares: one with her profile picture–a gardenia–and another with his picture.
Full lips parted. Long, red hair messily brushed back by his fingers. His chin tilted up slightly, so that she could see his Adam’s apple pressing against the skin of his throat. One arm propped up behind him casually, and collarbones that had such an enticing curve to them, Elain’s mouth would start to water if she looked for too long. Which she did. Like a fool.
“Where are you visiting?” Elain asked, mouth suddenly very, very dry. She minimized the window, electing to stare at her blank desktop.
“Velaris. Ever been?” Swiper said. “I could use some travel tips.”
Elain paused briefly, before suddenly whirring back into action. She pushed off of her desk and spun around in her chair so that she was facing the rest of her bedroom. It was still the afternoon, and the sun was filtering in through her gauzy white curtains, spilling across the hardwood floor like honey. There was a small prism hanging in her window that casted rainbows around the room.
Golden hour.
“Where?” Elain asked again. Her head was suddenly very full, like tree sap oozing so slowly that it crystallized and turned into amber. She blinked, staring unseeingly at her rug. She couldn’t possibly have heard him right.
“Velaris,” Swiper repeated. She heard something creaking through her headset, like he was standing up from his chair. The flick of a lightswitch. “My brother is proposing to his boyfriend, or something, and I’m supposed to fly up so I can attend the afterparty.”
Elain got up and walked over to her nightstand, mind still reeling, and idly flipped through the book she kept there. Pride and Prejudice. A comfort read, for when she couldn’t sleep at night. She definitely found use for the soft, familiar pages now. Feeling them brush across the pad of her thumb slowly began to center her.
“Hazel?” Swiper asked suddenly, cutting through her thoughts. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Elain said, perhaps too quickly. She took a deep breath to try to get her mind to start moving again. She snapped the book closed, and whirled around to face the window. “Sorry, just… Velaris. Wow. Did you know I–”
She stopped herself. Bit her lip.
“Actually, Swiper,” Elain said in a rush, striding back over to the computer. “I think I have to go. Good stream today. Try not to encourage the trolls so much next time, I had a hard time keeping up.”
“Haze, wait,” Swiper said. She had just grabbed the mouse again, finger poised above the button to hang up the voice call, but hearing his nickname for her had stopped her in her tracks.
Haze.
And then, his warm, crackling laughter came through her headphones, and she let go of the mouse, if only so she could hear that laugh a little better.
“What were you saying before?” he asked.
And what harm was it, really? To tell Swiper that she lived in the exact same city where he would be visiting? While she might have been spiraling about it, stomach a fit of butterflies, he definitely wouldn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t like they would ever cross paths in such a big city. They probably wouldn’t even interact online, if he was going to be busy with collabs and family. He’d probably laugh it off as coincidence, maybe even half-heartedly suggest they get together, until he inevitably became too busy and forgot all about the courtesy invitation. They’d revert back to the familiar.
Two people, on opposite sides of a computer screen.
“Oh,” Elain mistakenly said on an inhale, the sound coming out strangled. She cleared her throat, and tried again. “Nothing, really. Just… I live in Velaris.”
She heard rustling on his end, and when he spoke again, his voice was much clearer. Sharp. “You do?”
“Yeah,” Elain laughed through her discomfort. “I mean, I could definitely give you some travel tips. Places to visit. Although, maybe you should ask your brother. I admittedly don’t get out that much. Too busy modding for you.”
“You’ll be there?” He didn’t comment on her joke. “This week?”
Elain swallowed. “Yeah.”
A beat. And then, “When are you free? We’ll meet up.”
“You want to meet?” Elain asked. She lifted the edge of one of her curtains, and looked outside to the street below. This, at least, she had expected. An obligatory invitation that would quickly be forgotten. Okay. She could handle that.
“Of course,” Swiper said. Then, as if amending the thought, “I mean, as long as you’re comfortable with it.”
‘Comfortable’ wasn’t the word that Elain might have used. It wasn’t that she was concerned about meeting Swiper. She had known him for the better part of a year, now, and no one she knew had ever spoken an ill word about him. He was always kind and professional with his collabs. Fair and attentive to his subscribers.
And moreover, ever since Elain had interviewed with him for a job moderating his chatrooms on OnlyFans for the extra cash, he had been kind to her. In fact, they had gotten along easily as friends. She felt she knew more about Swiper–or Lucien– than she did some of her real life friends, even.
But she wasn’t comfortable. Thinking about Lucien in front of her–in the flesh, and not just pixels on a screen or soundwaves in the air–made her distinctly uncomfortable. Her stomach would flip in odd patterns, her skin would turn hot and sweaty, her breathing shallow. All she could do was listen to her heart race and think about him. His lustrous red hair, long enough to go down his back. His warm brown skin, covered in a light sheen of sweat that she just instinctively knew would taste divine. And then she would become…
Aroused. Lucien made her feel aroused.
“Yeah,” Elain said finally. Just to derail that particular train of thought. “Of course, Swiper. I’d love to meet you.”
“Great,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice, a decent enough distraction from the lingering huskiness in his tone. Something scuffed on the other end of the line, like he was adjusting his headset. “It’s a date.”
Beep.
Incredulous, Elain looked at the monitor and scanned the screen to confirm that– yup. Swiper had hung up on her.
Elain disconnected from the call and turned back around to flop down face first onto her bed. She drove both hands back through her hair, across her scalp, and groaned.
Date. He had called it a date, hadn’t he?
But Swiper was chronically flirtatious. She knew this. Swiper adored flirting with his trolls, even, making her job all that much harder, albeit entertaining. But if he was willing to flirt with them, then surely calling their meeting a ‘date’ meant nothing to him.
Only, it meant everything to Elain Archeron, who hadn’t been on a proper date since last year, when she broke up with her fiance, Graysen. Let alone a date with someone who turned her bones to jelly or made her fingers itch to open her bedside drawer and relieve the throbbing ache between her thighs.
But she was a professional, damn it. And more importantly, she was Lucien’s friend. So even though she was still feeling on edge from watching his stream earlier, and from hearing his hoarse voice asking her on a date–a platonic one–she resolved to approach this meeting with him like she would any other time she hung out with a friend.
Although, Elain thought with a sidelong glance towards her bedside drawer. This meeting might require much more self-control than I’m used to.
Sighing, Elain stormed out of her bedroom, not even bothering to shut down her computer. On the way to the front door, she snatched her keys off of the hook, and then slipped some sandals on. She needed to take a long, boring walk.
Elain paused, looking down at her shoes, and then kicked them back off, opting for sneakers, instead.
Maybe a long, boring jog.