Silver Fox

Author's Note: This was another one that was started with a character request. It just took a bit longer than expected.

The only content warnings for this one are that it's a longer story and it has some build up to the erotica. It's going to post in two parts and they'll be posted close together. Enjoy and have fun :)

Jackson

I think it was the hair that did it.

See, it used to be somewhat darker and then faded over the years anyway, but then it just kept fading, kept changing, until I started to see something that was more like dull highlights. By the time I started noticing that I was having some, ah, other changes in life, it was highlighted silver.

It looked kind of cool, actually, and it certainly fit on my face, especially with the scar that ran along one cheek. It's true that I changed my look to fit it, another effect I've heard comes with a midlife experience. Although, mine seemed to go backwards from those stories of guys who tried to pull off clothes they thought looked cool when they were younger. Instead of the leather I once wore to work - jackets and other odd styled shirts that were printed with the logo of a place called Sulfur's, where I bartended - I switched to collared shirts and vests, accumulated more suits for other fun events. I had a preference in style even, where I could roll back the shirt sleeves so that the tattoos along my arms crawled out and showed just a little. Where I had once kept a high and tight haircut, I let it grow a little bit and gave it more style.

Those changes were the little changes. Those made sense. Like I said, the style fit and a man has to recognize his strengths. That silver in my hair, for instance, was definitely one of those characteristics that qualified as a strength. All it took was a few times winking at a younger woman who had the right kind of interests to tell that fact, a few times of older playboy charm done with the right style.

No, it was a different change that was messing with me and I couldn't tell what had started that one. It was no conscious thought of my own, that was for sure, and I can back that claim up since it affected my sex life and that was the last thing I would ever choose to affect.

I sighed and left my bathroom, thinking that I was too old and set in my ways to have a fucking midlife crisis. Jesus in hell, I just didn't want anything to do with it when I was happy with my life. I'd never been married, never settled down. My apartment was in an area of the city that wasn't ideal for schools and families, so it was both nice and perfect for me, and I loved the opposite sex, loved them. I was a perpetual bachelor, a bartender who had once led a life that was a little too interesting and was all too happy to settle with a little bit of routine. When I wasn't bartending at Sulfur's, I worked as a car mechanic because I could and it was fun for me, which seemed a promising indicator of a fulfilled life, when a man had the leisure to do the jobs he wanted because they were fun and not because he was reliant. I was a silent partner in a few other businesses that had caught my interest, mostly because of their kinky sexual nature, and the end result was damned well enjoyable.

So when I philosophized about it, I couldn't think of a single reason why I'd have a crisis.

Of course, that's supposedly the point of one of those, I guess. I was still thinking about it on this specific night when I walked out of my apartment to leave for work, when I saw her for the first time.

--------

The apartment right across from mine had been empty for a long time, since the man who once lived there had violently committed suicide, the type of thing that catches attention. When Sam Rousey - the owner of the car mechanic shop I worked at and a high school friend - asked about places for his youngest sister to move into, I'd made a suggestion. They'd been helping her move in for a few days.

But it was the first glimpse I had of the girl herself and it stunned me. God, that hair. It was dark red and vibrant and made me feel dirty with the thoughts it gave me. What was it Game of Thrones had called that color of hair? Kissed by fire. Oh man, it got to me, but it only got better from there.

She was playfully wrestling with a black cat - crossed my path and we all know what that means - held against her shoulder, her apartment keys in her hand, dressed like my personal daydream in those tight jeans and a Grateful Dead shirt. The tattoo on her upper arm was revealed in the midst of her playing with her cat and it was of the Grateful Dead skull and everything, a sight that made me all the more interested.

And then she looked at me, those blue eyes going wide in a way - you know what I mean? It's

that

way, the one that makes you well aware that you did something right when getting ready - that made me want to grin, so that I had to keep a straight face. I even managed to make my smile calm when she dropped her keys, although my blood pounded when her wide eyes had a factor of submissive behavior in them, the kind of thing that got to me and only fueled that internal, devilish hedonist in me. "You must be Sam's sister." I knelt to pick up her keys, trying to rein in my wayward thoughts.

She smiled, those doe eyes so wide and so shy, with this quality of searching for approval that naturally pleaser based people had, a look I'd learned to recognize, thanks to my own interests.

Jesus, stop it. You're different now. Whatever change you're going through means you can't play with a new one even if she was interested in that kind of thing

. "That's me. My name is Essie. Well, it's Esther, technically, but no one calls me that. And you..." She trailed off, then grinned. "You work with Sam. Jackson Sanders, right? I think I've seen you around a couple of times."

"I'm there fairly often." Although, I felt like if I'd seen her, I would have remembered it. God, that face. She had to be early 20s still, a fair bit younger than me, just old enough to drink. "I'm glad someone moved in across, though. That place is great, even if it has a, ah, colorful history."

She laughed. "That part didn't bother me much. Plus it's not within school-"

"Districts," I finished. "I know, it's great. There's never any kids here. I think there's, like, two and they both live downstairs."

She was such a

doll

. Sweet as hell, too, and I'd started to realize that I liked younger girls. Of course, I liked the ones my age, too, but younger didn't always necessarily mean a bad thing. Younger usually meant I got to teach them certain depraved delights, things like... oh, this and that.

You're not teaching anyone fuck all right now, if you don't figure out what's going on with your bullshit. You were already weird, but now you're weirder.

Sadly, that was the truth. I'd always had some odd proclivities in bed, it was true, but lately, that was the thing that had been changing about me. My strange proclivities had gotten... stranger. And not in the light way that you could just explain to someone in casual conversation.

Her eyes, though. They lit up with this shine when she laughed and it was gorgeous. And that Grateful Dead shirt and tattoo. I had depraved kinks, but one that wasn't depraved was my thing for any girl who appreciated Jerry Garcia. It wasn't exactly a standard occurrence that I got to talk with a deadhead her age. "Right, and since it's not optimal, the price is lower, but it just so happens to be gorgeous and is in perfect proximity to the bar I tend."

Oh, God, she was a bartender, too? And she was right across the hallway from me. What fresh hell was this? "What a coincidence. That's what I do."

"Really? That's awesome. I'm at a sports bar called Cocoa's. How about you?"

I smiled, absently brushing my hand across my belt before I touched the logo on a shirt sleeve, my silent form of flirting with a girl. I thrilled to how her eyes flicked to the motion, to how her gaze lowered a little in another of those submissive cues that people give. There was a kind of innocence in the reaction, in the same way a girl might react to me in general, without realizing why, when they didn't really know my kind of lifestyle, and that thrilled me again, with thoughts of teaching her.

Teach what? No, seriously, how are you going to teach anyone anything right now?

"I don't think you'd know it, but it's called Sulfur's," I answered quietly. "And who is this?" I held my hand out to her cat, who stared at it and then at me in baleful speculation.

"You would think correctly. And this is a pain in the ass. But his name is Ozymandias."

I couldn't help but laugh. "The smartest kitty on the planet."

Excitement lit her eyes. "You know Watchmen!"

Her eyes glittered again. I don't know if it was the odd vibrant blue color of them, when set against that frame of dark red curls, but it turned me on, and she seemed so happy whenever I showed happiness, another of those submissive cues to make this entire thing worse. "I do, as chance would have it. Also, love that shirt. Listen, if you need any help, just let me know. I'm in and out all the time and if I remember correctly, Sam has six other brothers that are older than you. So I feel like it's an implied threat that if anything happened..."

She was already laughing again. "Life wasn't quiet growing up, that's for sure. Have fun bartending."

She waved when I did, awkwardly when holding her cute, judgmental little cat. I wondered if she was as shy as her initial behavior suggested, as shy as the way she kept looking down in that way that made me want to give command and take control, that way that made my blood pulse with excited adrenaline and wicked thoughts. With that red hair, I was having fantasies of how she'd look with a ball gag keeping her quiet, with a rope harness framing her body, holding her trussed up to a hook, helpless and waiting.

No, I had felt it was a fairly safe guess to assume she wouldn't have heard of Sulfur's. See, the bar I worked at, the bar where I met people and picked them up to play with, the bar that was filled with people who would be willing to talk about my preferred kind of games, was a fetish club. And not one of the more playful ones. I mean it was playful in its own way, don't get me wrong, but there were fetish clubs where you went if you were looking to experiment, to find out if kink was your thing, and then there were clubs like Sulfur's, for people who knew kink was their thing and wanted a place to safely find their edges, as wild as they might like.

The truth was that my kinks included domination, but that wasn't my main kink. No, I was one of the bad guys, one of the ones with that name that didn't go over well, the sadists. Pain was my kink, first and foremost, and always had been. Giving pain was... Oh, there was nothing like it. It was my romance, my drug. As far as I could tell, I was just born that way and it wasn't a bad thing, either. I mean, while growing up I'd had those inner struggles where I wondered what was wrong with me, but I'd outgrown those and turned into a happy, playful, well adjusted sadist. Hell, I used to play with newer friends all the time, had played with a lot of submissives who wanted to know how much pain they liked or if they liked it at all. But lately, my proclivity for giving pain specifically had gotten... a little worse, a little more dangerous, which was the real reason why I couldn't play with newer people anymore. It wasn't that there was a problem for them, exactly. It was just that newer people would never be interested in the kinds of games I wanted to play now.

Because the other truth was, that was what was affected with the one change I was having that scared me sometimes.

I ran my hand through my hair when I left my apartment building, sighing in the night air when I thought of her and how adorable she was again, having fantasies of what I'd do if she did like my kind of thing. I'd be a kind sadist, so that she trembled in pain, but whimpered happily with my loving encouragements. I had vague images of her in one of the rooms at Sulfur's, daydreams of how dominant adrenaline would flood my body with every paddle strike or strap lash.

But I didn't daydream about sex anymore. Because that was the reality of that one change that freaked me out, the reason why I couldn't play with newer people. I was turning so obsessed with pain that I didn't even want sex anymore. Sex was a release of all that dominant energy that giving pain gave me.

I didn't want that release these days because that dominant energy made me want to give more pain and I wanted to burn in sadism, even more than I wanted sex now. The only thing I could think about whatever weird midlife crisis I was having anymore was a thought I couldn't face just yet. They said that crises came from the fear that you hadn't lived enough in some way, that you hadn't fulfilled some need.

All I could come up with in the reasoning of this crisis was that my one regret seemed to be that I hadn't indulged in heavier sadism and harsher pain. It was the kind of thought that made me flinch when I had fantasies of her gorgeous, sweet blue eyes and all those adorable, submissive cues.

God, this is fucked.

I shoved the thought back and did what I did every night. I went to my favorite fetish bar to tend it and to maybe get into some twisted form of depravity for the night. It actually worked for a little while, too.

It'd be a few months before I even realized that night was my first meeting with the girl who would turn my world upside down, when it was already not exactly stable. Even so, I didn't forget it, though. A redheaded deadhead with a black cat. How cool was she?

--------

Essie

One thing about being an introvert is that our stories are pretty damned boring until some extraneous factor comes along and forces us to be interesting.

No, seriously, looking back, you would think that having moved back to the city again after a divorce from marrying too young and fast, going into being a bartender, and getting used to it would have something of note in the tale. Terrifyingly, it doesn't. Hell, even the part where I became a bartender was something one of my brothers directed me into doing. It's all a story that anyone could just imagine, if they've ever met a subservient personality with such low initiative that you instantly could tell they needed some guidance. A quiet bartender watches football games at a sports bar, talks to people, uses a people pleasing personality to substitute for charm, talks about her pet cat with anyone she can, and attracts regulars. That's the story. It turns out that submissive attitude I was born with was something that made me really good at talking with people, even if I was shy. Who knew? Oh, at nights, by myself? That was even more boring. I went home and watched either an old spaghetti western or a musical.

Well, for the most part. There was that one thing that did make things interesting. Him. The guy next door.

Over the next couple of months, every time I saw Sam's friend, Jackson, I felt like my heart was going to give one day. Sometimes I would get home from going shopping or hanging out at the bar, because that was how awesome Cocoa's was as a sports bar and there was always some fantasy football nerd around for me to get into a conversation with. Eventually, one of the other bartenders would tease me for working without getting paid because people loved me so much when I loved pleasing people.

But I would get home and every now and again, that was the atmosphere I had when I saw him, the submissive mood that would make me look up at him and turn eager, needy even. The silver in his hair looked like distinguished highlighting and it turned me on. One time, I'd been looking through messages on my phone when I was leaving for work and almost ran into him. When I looked up and saw who it was, already apologizing, I'd backed against the wall too fast and in a way that made me aware of my blood flowing south in my body. His eyes were a darker blue than mine were and that scar along his face always twisted a little when he smiled. The way I'd pressed back against the wall gave me images of him pressing me against a wall instead. There was something about him that shouted a sense of roughness and experience and it made me tingle in this delightful way. Even better, he made it clear when I amused him, laughing along with me so that I felt happy that I had made someone else smile.

"Easy, little deadhead," he'd said with a wink that time, making me want to melt all the more. "You're not so bad yourself." And that. Oh, that charm was dangerous, the kind of thing a girl's mother warned her about, but it was hard to remember that when his smile was warm and approving, the kind of smile that made me feel like I'd pleased him.

It was that quality, too, that made me crave to see more of that smile from him, when he made me feel more pleasing than anyone ever had.

Girl, you're crazy. He is too old for you and you just got done with your divorce from marrying too early and too fast.

True on both counts, but God, my body did not care about either of those things.

I tried to remind myself that his being the same age as Sam put him at 18 years my senior and that was 41 to my 23. I started the reminder to try to make myself think straight.

Only to get all the more horny off the thought because oh man, that silver in his hair and those tattoos that showed under his sleeves. He might have had age, but age fit him incredibly well.

If I was honest about the fact, though, there was a little more to it than that. See, I didn't know what my type was when it came to sexual interests. Whatever it was, it didn't center around hair color, eye color, gender, or body type. It seemed something more based on presence, from what I could tell, although whatever that presence was, it did seem to show up more often in guys who were bigger than me.

Whatever that type was, he was it. He was all of it, in spades.

You've got way too much going on right now to be this distracted.

That was true and all, but it felt so damned good to flirt. Another time, I ran into him again when Ozzy ran out and that time I actually did run right into his knees at the same time I finally caught my favorite little nightmare of a cat.

He grinned and helped me up. "I always wondered why people claimed cats were superior to dogs." He winked again, so close to me that I was getting so damned horny. "I still have questions, but I can't argue against the judgment of someone with a tattoo like that and hair that red, sweetheart."

Oh God, I liked that nickname. He didn't say it with insecurity like a younger guy would. He said it deliberately, meant it, and owned it in that way that sent shivers of danger down my spine. "But I didn't choose the hair," I said with a grin.

He lowered his voice in conspiracy. "I won't tell anyone if you don't. Besides, that color being natural? We can't tell people that anyway when it's just not fair."

He was good. And I mean good. But it wasn't just all that either, if I'm being honest about it. Some of it had to do with the time I ran into him in life. See, the next part was embarrassing, but I still had all the memories of the times my ex had called me frigid when I wasn't in the mood for sex, when he told me I seemed so distant and hard to please, which always confused me.

For whatever reason, I wasn't frigid when it came to the kinds of fantasies the man next door inspired, fantasies that were only exacerbated by all the BDSM books and stories I'd read in secret before. I was starting to be obsessed actually. My nights would start off with my usual quiet behavior, things like watching the Sound of Music or reading Herbert's Dune or something, but then I would pick up my phone and read other stories instead, fantasizing until I ached and my fantasies started to go crazy about him.