Auden lived in a world of softness. As a curator of textiles for a university museum, his days were a whisper of silk samplers, a sigh of merino shawls, the delicate ghosts of lace held together by will and archival glue. His apartment was a temple to tactility: cashmere throws, velvet drapes, linen sheets starched to a crisp, forgiving softness. It was beautiful, serene, and to him, increasingly sterile. It lacked a certain… truth. A certain smell.
That truth walked into his life on a Tuesday, smelling of saddle soap and ozone. His name was Rhys, and he was the new head of the museum’s security and conservation logistics. He’d been hired to handle the heavy, awkward things—the oak chests, the iron-bound tapestries, the fragile sculptures that required more muscle than finesse. Auden first saw him across the staff meeting, and the contrast was jarring. Where Auden was all careful angles and muted tones, Rhys was a study in worn, dark browns and blacks. And leather. So much leather.
It wasn’t the polished, anodyne leather of a designer handbag. This was worked leather. A heavy belt with a simple, brass buckle that sat low on his hips. Boots—engineer’s boots, Auden’s research later told him—that were scuffed and creased into a map of miles walked. A worn, unlined jacket that seemed less a garment and more a second skin, molded to the broad planes of his shoulders and the dip of his spine. It sighed when he moved, a low, soft groan of protest and accommodation.
Auden found himself inventing reasons to be near the loading dock, near the conservation workshops where Rhys might be. He’d catch the scent first: a deep, smoky, animal aroma, cut through with the clean, astringent bite of neatsfoot oil and the faint, ever-present hint of Rhys’s own sweat—a warm, human spice beneath the hide. It was the antithesis of his world of lavender sachets and acid-free tissue. It was alive.
Their first real interaction was over a 19th-century traveling trunk, its leather straps brittle and cracked. “It needs conditioning,” Rhys said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate from his chest. He ran a thumb along a dry strap, and the gesture was so intimate, so knowing, that Auden felt a blush creep up his own neck. “Not with your modern creams. With something that knows it’s kin.”
“Kin?” Auden asked, fascinated.
“Animal to animal,” Rhys said, looking at him directly. His eyes were the colour of dark honey. “Leather’s not dead. It’s sleeping. You can wake it up, make it supple again, but you have to respect what it was.”
That respect was a revelation. Auden began to see not just the man, but the material, with new eyes. The leather wasn’t covering Rhys; it was collaborating with him. Every scratch was a story. Every soft, whitened crease at the elbow or knee was a testament to use, to life lived in it. It was a diary written in stress-marks and oil stains.
One evening, working late on an inventory, Auden found Rhys in his small, utilitarian office off the main hall. He was meticulously cleaning his boots with a rag and a small tin of polish. The ritual was hypnotic. The slow, circular rub of the cloth, the way his powerful hands gentled to a caress around the ankle, the focused silence of the act. Auden stood in the doorway, unseen, watching. The scent of polish and leather filled the small room, a narcotic blend.
“You can come in, you know,” Rhys said without looking up. “I don’t bite. Unless asked.”
Auden jumped, mortified. “I’m sorry, I was just—”
“Curious,” Rhys finished, finally looking at him. A small, knowing smile played on his lips. “It’s okay. Most people are. It’s just maintenance.”
“It doesn’t look like maintenance,” Auden heard himself say, stepping inside. “It looks like worship.”
Rhys held his gaze, the smile deepening. He set the boot down. “Maybe it is. To care for something that protects you… that’s a kind of covenant.” He stood up, and the movement made his jacket sigh again. He was close now, the scent enveloping Auden. “You live in a world of pretty, fragile things, Auden. Does anything in your collection have a covenant like this?”
The challenge was gentle, but it cut to the core. Auden’s world was preservation behind glass. Rhys’s world was preservation through use. “No,” Auden whispered. “Nothing.”
Rhys nodded, as if that was the expected, the only answer. “Softness has its place. But there’s a truth in toughness. A honesty in wear.” He reached out, and for a dizzying second, Auden thought he would touch his face. Instead, he flicked a bit of lint from Auden’s cashmere sweater. The contrast was exquisite: the worn, working-man’s finger against the impossibly soft, virgin wool. “You should feel it sometime. From the inside.”
The invitation hung in the air, thick and palpable as the scent of leather.
It took a week for Auden to gather the courage. He found Rhys after hours, in the workshop, stitching a torn packing blanket. “Your offer,” Auden began, his voice unsteady. “To feel it from the inside. Did you mean…?”
Rhys put down his awl. “I meant whatever you’re ready for.”
What Auden was ready for, it turned out, was not sex. Not yet. It was an apprenticeship. Rhys, with a patience that belied his rugged exterior, began to teach him. He started by giving Auden a pair of his own old gloves—driver’s gloves, the leather soft and shiny from years of steering wheels. “Put them on. Just feel them. Don’t think.”
Auden slid them on. They were too big, but the interior was cool, then quickly warm. The leather conformed to the shape of his hands, but it also imposed its own memory—the ghost of Rhys’s broader palms, the press of his fingers. It was an intimacy more profound than a handshake. He wore them for an hour, doing nothing, just feeling the whisper of grain against his skin.
The next lesson was care. Rhys showed him how to condition a belt, working a rich, waxy balm into the leather with the heat of his fingertips. Auden mimicked him, his own slender fingers working the balm into the hide of Rhys’s spare belt. The process was sensual, slow. The leather drank in the oil, darkening, becoming pliable under his touch. He imagined it was skin. Rhys watched, his eyes dark.
“It comes alive, doesn’t it?” Rhys murmured. “When you give it what it needs.”
The culmination came on a rainy night in Rhys’s apartment. It was a sparse space, dominated by a large, well-worn leather sofa and shelves of tools and tins. The air was a symphony of leather smells. Rhys didn’t speak. He simply went to a closet and pulled out a jacket. It was a classic motorcycle jacket, but simpler, cleaner. It was old, but impeccably kept.
“This was my first,” he said, holding it out. “It’s been retired. Try it on.”
With trembling hands, Auden shed his soft cardigan. The cool weight of the leather jacket settled on his shoulders. It was heavy. Substantial. It smelled overwhelmingly of Rhys—of his history, his smoke, his skin. As he slid his arms into the sleeves, he felt the ghost of Rhys’s movements in the set of the shoulders, the bend of the elbows. He buttoned it up. It was too broad for him, the waist flaring out, but it was a mantle. A transformation.
Rhys looked at him, a flame igniting in his honey-coloured eyes. “Now you know the weight,” he said, his voice rough. “The protection.” He stepped close. “Now, let me show you the constraint.”
From a drawer, he produced a set of wide leather cuffs. They were simple, lined with soft suede. Without a word, he took Auden’s right wrist, encased in the too-long sleeve of the jacket, and fastened a cuff around it. The buckle clicked shut with a finality that made Auden’s breath catch. He did the same with the left wrist. The leather was firm, unyielding. It was not painful, but it was utterly present. It defined a boundary for his body he had never felt before.
Rhys attached the cuffs together with a short, sturdy connector. Auden’s hands were brought together, resting against his own stomach, inside the jacket. He was pinned within Rhys’s scent, Rhys’s history, now bound by Rhys’s will. A helpless, thrilling sound escaped him.
“Shhh,” Rhys said, his lips close to Auden’s ear. “Feel it. The jacket holds you. The cuffs focus you. You’re safe. You’re… contained.”
He guided Auden to the sofa, laying him back against the cool, buttery leather. The sensation was everywhere: the jacket encasing his torso, the cuffs defining his wrists, the sofa beneath him. He was swimming in leather, drowning in its truth. Rhys knelt beside him, his hands, now bare, began to explore the only exposed skin—Auden’s throat, his face, the strip of his collarbone above the jacket’s zipper.
Every touch was amplified by the contrast. The softness of Rhys’s calloused fingers on his neck felt electric against the unyielding embrace of the jacket. Rhys kissed him, and the kiss was deep and tasted of coffee and the same rich balm they used on the leather. Auden could not move his hands to touch him back. He could only receive. And in that receiving, in that total surrender to the sensation of being held and bound by this honest, tough material, he found a freedom he’d never known.
Rhys worshipped him through the leather. He mouthed at the zipper pull. He bit gently at the epaulet on the shoulder. He nuzzled the collar, inhaling the mingled scent of his own past and Auden’s present excitement. When he finally unzipped the jacket and peeled it back, revealing Auden’s flushed, trembling skin, the cool air was a shock. But Rhys replaced it with his mouth, his hands, his own warm, leather-clad body pressing down.
Auden came still wearing the cuffs, his fingers scrabbling against the old sofa’s hide, his cry muffled by Rhys’s shoulder, where his face was pressed against the worn cowhide of Rhys’s own jacket. It was the scent, the sound, the feel of it all that pushed him over the edge—not just the physical friction, but the profound sensory poetry of it.
After, as they lay tangled, Rhys undid the cuffs. He rubbed Auden’s wrists where the leather had left a faint, beloved impression. “See?” he said softly. “It leaves a mark. A good one. A memory in the skin.”
Auden, nestled in the cradle of leather and muscle, understood. His fetish wasn’t for an object. It was for the narrative of strength, care, and lived truth that the leather embodied. It was for the covenant. And as Rhys drew the heavy jacket back over them both like a living blanket, Auden knew he had finally found a texture that didn’t just comfort, but transformed. He had traded his world of softness for one of sublime, scuffed, and glorious truth.
