Two men share a near-empty steam room. A casual conversation turns charged, and a simple question decides who tops and who bottoms before the towels come off. By Harlan Maddox-Powell.

Warning: this story contains scenes of a sexual nature, including: sex between strangers in a semi-public steam room, oral sex, fingering, bareback anal sex, internal ejaculation and dirty talk. This story is written for adults and is not for minors.


Steam hung thick in the room and blurred the edges of the tiled walls, and the air was so hot and heavy with eucalyptus that every breath took a little more effort than usual. Two men sat on opposite benches with towels wrapped round their hips, their skin shining with a sweat that never got the chance to dry.

Tom had come in a few minutes earlier. He was thirty-two, his dark hair stuck damply to his temples, and he sat with his back against the warm tiles and his legs stretched out, letting the heat work the day out of his shoulders. Ben came in shortly after and shut the door with a light click. He looked a few years younger, twenty-nine perhaps, and he moved like he knew the room well.

Their eyes met across the narrow space.

It was more than a glance. It held a full second longer than politeness allowed, and then another. A drop of sweat tracked down Tom’s chest, catching on a nipple before it carried on, and Tom saw Ben’s eyes follow it down before they came back up to his face and stayed there.

Ben shifted on the bench, and the movement brought him a little closer to the middle of the room. Tom noticed the gap narrowing and leaned forward to meet it before he’d really decided to.

“It’s roasting in here,” Tom said. “It always hits harder once you’ve been sitting a few minutes.”

“Always does. It’s a slack hour, though. Nice change from the usual crowd.”

“Yeah. The place feels nearly empty. Afternoons are better for that.”

Ben rested his hands on his thighs and let one knee angle outwards. Tom’s knee answered, and when Ben leaned forward onto his forearms, their knees brushed. It lasted less than a heartbeat, damp skin and a brief press of bone, and then they both eased back a fraction as if nothing had happened. Tom noticed he hadn’t moved very far away.

Condensation ran down the glass in the door. The corridor outside was silent, and in here the only sounds were the hiss of the steam vent and towels shifting against the tile.

“Do you come here often?” Tom asked, then winced inwardly at how much it sounded like a chat-up line.

“Now and then. When I can actually get a seat.” One corner of Ben’s mouth lifted. “You?”

“Same. Fewer people means the steam has time to do its work.”

It came out sounding far more suggestive than he’d meant, and from the look on Ben’s face they’d both heard it. Tom’s gaze dropped to Ben’s shoulders, where the sweat gathered and slid, and Ben let him look. He rolled one shoulder slowly, and his towel slipped a centimetre lower on his hip.

Tom wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. When he lowered his arm, he let his hand settle on the outside of his thigh, closer to Ben, and Ben’s eyes tracked it before returning to his face.

A shared joke about the ancient plumbing, with its pipes complaining louder than the customers, got a short, real laugh out of both of them. The silence afterwards felt different, and they let it sit.

This time Ben’s gaze drifted down to where Tom’s towel clung across his hip. A drop of sweat ran down the V of muscle and disappeared under the edge of the cloth, and Ben watched it vanish, then looked up and found Tom watching him back.

“Feels good, though,” Tom said, his voice quieter now. “Being in here. Clears the head.”

“It does. Leaves you thinking about nothing much. Or everything. Depends on the day.”

Tom leaned back against the wall and stretched his legs out further, until one foot brushed the edge of Ben’s bench and stayed there. It was lighter than the knee and could almost have been an accident, but Ben left his own foot where it was, an inch away.

They talked in bits and pieces about the weather and the light coming through the steam, nothing that needed an answer, and the gaps between the words got longer. Tom turned on the bench so he was facing the room more fully, and now his knee was only a short distance from Ben’s. One casual move would close it.

Ben’s fingers had curled slightly against his thigh, just above the knee. Tom saw the tension there and saw it ease again a moment later, and his pulse kicked up.

Tom took a deep breath, put both hands on the bench and pushed himself to his feet. The knot at his hip held but the towel loosened along one thigh. He stretched with his arms over his head, the whole line of his body on show for a few seconds, then lowered his arms and stood looking down at Ben.

“Mind if I sit a bit closer? It’s better company when you’re not shouting across the room.”

Ben smiled up at him. “Not at all. Plenty of room.”

Tom crossed the short distance and sat on the same bench with only a hand’s width between them, and his towel slipped a fraction lower. Ben stayed exactly where he was.

The steam curled round them, carrying the smell of sweat and the sharper note of eucalyptus from the vent. Their talk drifted from the steam to what it did to a body, the flushing and the loosening, and Tom’s voice dropped further.

“You feel it too.”

It wasn’t a question. Ben nodded and shifted until their knees met, slick and warm, and this time he kept them there.

Tom’s hand left the bench and settled on Ben’s thigh, just above the knee. He kept the touch light, open and waiting. Ben looked down at it and then up at him, then covered it with his own hand, pressed it firmer for a second and slid it higher up his thigh.

Their faces moved closer until their breath mixed. Tom’s free hand brushed along Ben’s forearm, following the path of a drop that had already run its course. Ben leaned in, but he stopped just short of Tom’s mouth, and Tom realised he was being made to wait.

Water dripped from the ceiling, each drop striking the tile with a small, clear sound.

Tom spread his fingers across the warm muscle of Ben’s thigh, his thumb brushing the edge of the towel. Ben turned fully towards him, drawing one knee up so their bodies angled together, and then their hands were everywhere, slick palms sliding across chests and catching on nipples. A push against a shoulder met equal resistance and a grip on a forearm got a matching hold back. They grinned through it. The contest was light, and they were both in on it.

“Who’s taking it?” Tom asked, so quietly it was nearly lost in the steam.

Ben’s mouth curved. “Depends how you ask. Depends how you want it.”

They pressed closer along the bench until their chests met, muscle sliding on muscle with only the thin towels between them. Hands found hips, then the small of a back, then the firm curve of an ass under damp cloth. They tested each other in short, clear movements, pushing and resisting, giving a little and taking it back, with no real force in any of it.

Ben’s breath caught when Tom’s hand slipped under his towel and closed round his cock. It had started to fill out against the fabric, and Tom wrapped his palm round it and felt its weight. Ben tugged Tom’s towel free at the hip so it fell open, and now they were both on show, only partly risen, the heads flushed.

They stroked each other slowly, thumbs sliding over the tips and gathering the first traces of precum. Tom brushed his lips along Ben’s jaw and tasted salt. Ben’s hand tightened on Tom’s shaft and Tom answered with a slow stroke of his own.

The contest went on a little longer. Tom pushed Ben back against the warm tiles and Ben rolled them sideways until they were both sitting up again, breathing harder, hands on each other the whole time. Only short words passed between them. “Yeah.” “There.”

In the end it was Ben who answered the question. He slid forward off the bench and down onto his knees on the wet tile, water pooling round him, and looked up.

Tom stood over him, rock hard now. He threaded one hand into Ben’s damp hair without pulling and used the other to guide his cock forward, brushing the tip once across Ben’s cheek, then lower, painting a thin line of precum along the edge of his mouth.

Ben opened for him straight away. Tom eased himself in, the head sliding over Ben’s tongue with a long, wet sound, and Ben’s hands rose to Tom’s thighs, his thumbs pressing into the muscle as he took him deeper. That settled the negotiation, for now.

Ben worked him with growing hunger, his lips stretched wide as he took Tom deeper on every stroke. Spit slicked the shaft and ran down over Tom’s balls, and the room filled with long, sliding pulls and a choke each time the head pushed past the back of his tongue. Tom kept a hand in Ben’s hair, only guiding the rhythm, the other on his broad shoulder.

“That’s it. Take it. Fuck, you look good on your knees like that, with your mouth stretched round my cock.”

Ben slid further down until his nose pressed into the short hair at the base, his throat working round him. When he pulled back for air, strings of spit clung from his lip to the head. He licked a stripe up the underside and sank forward again. Tom’s hips gave a short thrust and Ben took it, eyes watering, his thumbs digging into Tom’s thighs to keep him coming.

“Deeper,” Tom said, his voice rough now. “You can take more of it.”

Ben did. His throat opened on the next push and Tom slid home until his balls pressed against Ben’s chin. He held there whilst Ben gripped his ass and pulled him closer. Spit ran down Ben’s chin and dripped onto the tile between his knees. Tom eased back just far enough for Ben to breathe, then pushed in again, each stroke going deeper than the last.

“Fuck, that feels good. Your mouth. Keep going. Suck it just like that.”

Ben pulled off with a wet pop, his lips swollen, licked the leaking head clean and took the full length again. Tom’s breathing had gone short. He watched his cock disappear into Ben’s mouth and come back out shining, and he knew he wasn’t finishing like this.

He pulled Ben up by the shoulders. Ben came up willingly, his towel dropping to the tile, his mouth wet and his own cock jutting hard and leaking against his stomach. Tom turned him and pressed him face first against the slick tiled wall, and Ben braced his hands on it. Tom nudged his feet wider and bent him further, until his chest met the tile and his ass was pushed out towards him.

Tom gathered spit from Ben’s open mouth with two fingers, then brought them back and pressed them against his hole, and Ben pushed back to meet them. One finger slid in to the knuckle, then a second, working him open with short, firm strokes, and Ben groaned against the tile.

“Yeah. Open me up. Give me another.”

Tom added a third and kept going, scissoring and stretching the rim until the resistance eased. Then he slid his fingers out, lined up the flushed head of his cock and pressed forward.

The first push dragged a long, broken sound out of Ben. The stretch burned for a second, then settled into a deep fullness as Tom sank in, slow and controlled, until his hips met Ben’s ass. He held himself there, buried, letting Ben adjust. Ben’s hole clenched hard round him, then relaxed in stages, sweat running down both their backs.

“Fuck. So deep. You’re all the way in.”

Tom began to move, pulling nearly all the way out so the head stretched the rim, then sliding back in to the base. Wet skin slapped against wet skin. Ben braced harder against the tile, spreading his fingers for grip and pushing back to meet every stroke, and his body gave Tom the answer to the question better than words could.

“Harder,” Ben said. “Don’t stop. Give it to me harder.”

Tom gave him exactly that. His thrusts turned harder and wetter and the sound of his cock driving into Ben filled the steam room. He gripped Ben’s hips and fucked him with short, powerful strokes that pushed Ben’s chest flat against the tile. Sweat pooled in the small of Ben’s back. His cock swung untouched between his legs, a string of precum dripping onto the wet floor.

“Your hole’s so tight. Feel that? Feel how deep I’m getting?”

Ben answered with a broken moan and drove himself back onto him. Tom reached round and wrapped a hand round Ben’s cock, stroking in time with his thrusts, and Ben’s legs trembled as his hole clenched harder, greedy round him.

They climbed together. Tom’s rhythm fell apart as his hips snapped forward with more and more force, and Ben’s moans got shorter and higher on every deep thrust. Water from the ceiling dripped onto their shoulders, and the steam smelled of sweat and sex.

“I’m going to cum,” Tom warned against Ben’s ear. “Fuck, I’m close.”

“Fill me. Shoot inside me. Don’t pull out.”

Tom buried himself to the base and shot hard. His cock pulsed deep inside Ben as he pumped thick ropes into him, his hips jerking through the last of it. Ben followed a few strokes later with Tom’s hand working him in urgent tugs, spilling his load across the tile in heavy spurts, his whole body shuddering and his hole clamping down on the cock inside him. His legs nearly went, but Tom’s grip on his hip held him up.

They stayed joined for several long breaths, Tom’s forehead against Ben’s shoulder, both of them panting in the steam. Then Tom eased out with a wet sound, and cum started to leak from Ben and trail down the inside of one thigh. Lazy touches followed, a hand along a sweat-slick back and a squeeze of a hip that asked for nothing.

Ben turned enough to look over his shoulder. “Fuck, that was good. You fucked me just right.”

Tom laughed. “Yeah, it was. You took every bit of it.”

They stayed close a little longer. Ben reached back once and brushed his palm over Tom’s thigh, and then they headed for the door together.

They rinsed off under the nearest shower outside the steam room, the cooler water washing the sweat and cum from their skin, and their hands brushed once more under the spray. When they stepped out into the corridor with their towels wrapped round them again, they swapped one last grin, then went off in different directions.


Thank you so much for reading. If you have any capacity to share, comment or review, please do so as I am so so so grateful to anyone who can help get my writing in front of more people.

Please also visit my website www.hardmanpod.com to find out more about all of my work and how to keep in touch. Find my latest stories here, or via my website, or follow me on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/hardmanpod.bsky.social

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If you’d like to commission a story or have a suggestion, or just want to say hi, please reach out to me at hardmanpod@gmail.com – I’ll consider ideas and if they excite me I’ll give them a go. Paid options are available, but if you can’t afford it don’t let that put you off – I’m always keen to hear what people are wanting to read about and would love to play a part in bringing your fantasies to life. I’ve got a lot of stuff in the pipeline beyond just stories, so please watch this space.

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© 2026 Harlan Maddox-Powell. All rights reserved. This story is the intellectual property of the author. No part of it may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews or other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This and all stories are works of fantasy. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. All characters depicted are consenting adults. Some works may be inspired by other creators, but all work is entirely original and written by Harlan Maddox-Powell. All characters are adults and have fully consented to the depicted roleplay scenario. In real life, always practise safe sex and enthusiastic consent.

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3 responses to “Do gay men decide who’s the top and who’s the bottom? The filthy negotiation that always ends the same way”

  1. Gorgeous! I’m rock hard leaking precum into my shorts from my cut cock…

  2. vivid and so real. i was watching from the glass door, the traces of steam, heat and the muffled sounds of passion.

  3. […] tops. The question of roles becomes the tension itself. Do gay men decide who’s the top and who’s the bottom? answers it in a steam […]

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