His hand has gentled under the touch, and if there is some shift then it's from Flint's other hand moving to touch John's fingers where they have settled. To study the shape they make together—
"I know."
It matters, but not for this. Not to this flickering hesitating thing faltering not over the question of want but the measure of it. He is tired; his pulse is thick in his ears. There is no ridding the room of the things they brought to it with them; but he wouldn't want to.
So his hand is light when it finds John's neck, but when he kisses him it's a sturdier and more fixed thing. I want this, he'd said.
I want this. (Had he not already had it, in some form?) His grip flexes on Flint's hand, one thumb pressing against the ring.
For the moment this seems to mean just this: their bodies turned into each other, the ease of the kiss stretching out without direction. There are things John wants, but exhaustion is nipping at him too. When his hand shifts from Flint's to his knee, it's with the same resolve he'd reached for Flint hours before, the same with which he'd answered Flint's question then.
Levering himself down, hand braced still on Flint's thigh, highlights the aches in his shoulders, his back. But he settles, knee on his crumpled coat, between the splay of Flint's thighs.
"Alright?" he questions.
They are both tired. There are things they both may want that will need to wait. (Are they not used to that?) But certain things are possible, even this early in the morning after no sleep at all.
There is a slow unwinding coil of warmth in him, a jerking uncertain thing that pulls simultaneously in every direction that by becoming the weight bearing support under Silver's hand spikes both sharp and high behind his ribs and so low that it might as well tether him all the way to the ground a floor and a half's worth of narrow switchback stairs away.
That tangled thing in his chest tightens. For a moment, seated there at the edge of the bed, he veers visibly between some purposefully blunted shape and a sharpening edge.
"Yes," obviously. Then— "Wait."
He catches John's face in his hands. This kiss has direction. It pours out all grasping heat and the pulse of his blood and the impossible dark shadow of grief and this fierce loving thing that is too big for this room and too heavy for them to lift tonight but which also has no understanding of restraint. Alright? If he could open his body to show him all the pieces in it, wouldn't he?
"I want you." Is a different thing. He should have said that earlier instead of, be sure.
Certain words are a bond. John has always known this. For a long time he has traded in nothing else but words, so their power is no mystery. These past years, ties have layered over and over. What he said aloud to the Walrus men. What he swore to Madi, over and over, softly as she rested an elbow on his chest and looked into his face. (What he had never been able to echo in writing, no matter how much he wished to.)
Then there is Flint. (James.) This a bond. These words, traded, set against everything else they have created, layered over what they have already forged—
"Alright," is almost an afterthought, repeated back. Has John not chosen him, over and over? The metal of the ring is warm, smooth contrast to the rough of Flint's palms on his face. "I'm here."
The air is cooler in this room, but the weight of this feeling raises it by degrees, warms John's skin. There is a different kind of power here. It bends the world in a different way. John bends with it; Madi and Flint both had taught him that lesson. He's been learning it by turns for years now. He can never unknow this.
They could collapse into bed without this - just sleep shoulder to shoulder with enough bare skin and the understanding that there was an alternative available to them - and it wouldn't be so different. Because this moment is hardly so removed from sharing a table in the Bull's main room hours ago before they had known the true shape of the world around them, and that one is no more distant from turning from an unlit pyre and laughing at the recognition of a dead man. This could happen tomorrow and nothing will have altered. This could have happened six months (a year, two) ago and they would be the exact same people.
(So why not today? They'll be battered regardless of what does or doesn't pass between them now.)
It would be unbearable to leave this thing they already understand undone.
So against his mouth, against the shape of I'm here: a short hitch of breath verging at the edge of saying something, then deciding all at once there is nothing he needs to say because there is nothing left to. His kiss turns fierce. His hands abandon Silver to catch with impatience at the buttons of suddenly unendurable trousers. Nothing changes.
There is something disorienting about an act that feels so familiar even in it's newness. There are scars on Flint's body that John recognizes, can name the origin of. (Just as he can name other wounds, deeper and more lasting.) They have not been here before. But they have been everything else to each other, have been intimate in every other way that matters.
But John wants—
So much. (It has been three years since he kissed Madi goodbye, and he may never kiss her again.) The enormity of his want builds, spinning out in his mind in a stack of impossibilities; the room is too small, it is too close to dawn, they are both too tired. But they will not always be in this room. That thought lodges in his mind, settles as Flint frees the last button and John draws the fabric down, laying him bare.
In the candlelight, Flint is burnished and shadows by turns. John presses a soft kiss to one knee first as his hand grips the other. All that he could say would be feels insignificant, so John doesn't bother saying anything at all.
The ache in his leg, in his knee, is far off. It will hurt later, another pain to set against the others he carries. He aware of it only in relation to the present moment, the focus of his attention narrowing to the exclusion of everything else. He is careful with his mouth, careful with his hands, learning what makes the muscles of Flint's thigh jump beneath his palm. As clear as John's intent is, his approach is languid, unhurried, with each dip of his mouth sinking lower.
They know everything else of each other. (Almost.) This is one more piece to share, to carry between them.
Something rises and falls in answer to gentle fingers, John Silver's deliberate mouth, and the weight of the hand at his thigh (there is a scar there under it; two inches long and angled up toward his body, the memento he'd brought with him back from Ghislain and the reason he'd taken that horse in the first place—). As with most things, it is easy and aching in turns. The thrum of his pulse in hammering in his ear; how quiet the room is save for the sounds they make together.
He covers that hand on his thigh with his own, thumb and forefinger absently encircling John's wrist. His other hand finds its way to a taut shoulder, to John's neck, tangling absently in his dark hair and pressing fingertips into lines of muscle where there lives some impossible strain.
A few hours from now, he will wake up when the morning sun has risen just high enough to cut through that window and expose them tangled in this shared bed. He will lay for some minutes in a clear summer morning with eyes closed against the touch of the sun and without turning his face to look at the man beside him. The sound of Silver breathing is a familiar kind of rhythm, and somewhere between it and the weariness tugging at him still, he will be lulled back into sleep. For an hour. For half of one. For ten minutes. It will make no difference to what he looks like or to how tired he is, but it will be like a dog-eared page in a book - mattering in part because he took the time to be particular about it.
In this space though, he just grows warmer and sharper Under Silver's attention. The reedy, dragging pull of his breathing thickens. The line of his thigh flexes up into the splay of their joined fingers. He touches Silver's neck, and the angle of his jaw, and sets his thumb against his rough cheek to feel how he moves over and about him.
Each place Flint's hands touch sets off something like a spark, something that flickers and crackles even after his hands move on.
There is nothing to say, even if John cared to break away from him long enough to say it. He is saying it all now, with the dip of his mouth, the tightening clutch of his fingers, the minor shift of his hand in Flint's. There is a way to do this and mean nothing by it. John knows because for a long time (before Madi, before Flint, before all of this) that had been the way of it for him. But there is something honest about the wreck he's making of his own mouth, the ache building in his jaw under the pressure of Flint's thumb.
This is for you, written in every line of his body. Let me do this for you.
The urge towards more is already hooked into his chest. But there is something precious about what he's being given now: this vulnerability, this knowledge, being so close that he can hear the low hitch of Flint's breath as he sinks down over him. His fingers tighten at Flint's knee, encouraging as much as the involuntary urge to hold tightly to this moment, to Flint's hands at his jaw, linked in his own over his thigh.
The sturdy fixture of hands, and the heat of Silver's mouth and the steady sway of his shoulder pierces, latching deep at his center and tugging there in turns both gentle and fierce. The shift of his own fingers mirror it—ceding from gentle to demanding and then back again, repeating in some undefined rhythm ruled only by the thing in his chest that wants everything, all the time, in every hour.
(The thing that when frustrated has lunged in any direction offered to it, including to bite the hand most familiar to it.)
That they are partners has been undeniable, even while coursing away from one another in opposite directions. But there will be no distinguishing between them after this, he thinks. They are two distinct parts laid over each other to such a degree that separating one from the other will be a kind of impossible thing.
"That's—" good, he starts to say, but it just rattles out of him instead. I want nothing more than to finish this and return home, he had once said to Madame de Cedoux. This is not that (far away and empty now, there is a house on an island where someone he loves had lived). But it cuts such a welcome shape as it bores through him until he is half staggered by the pressure of more and also this. He has developed such a firm grip in Silver's dark curling hair.
"Easy." His voice is low, a slanting and crooked thing when he eventually finds it. Breathing hard like he has gone to great effort to catch it. "You'll end me."
Which he wants desperately, however much he can see the use in some alternative.
When John eases back, it's a slow parting, a trade as his hand cedes its grasp on Flint's knee to take hold of him. John doesn't go far. Just enough to look up, just enough not to dislodge the hand in his hair, just enough not to disturb the careful balance and bargain he's struck with his knees. Involuntarily, his grip tightens on Flint's hand as he looks into his face.
"Is that not the point?"
His voice is rough. From this vantage point he can see at least four more places he'd put his mouth if he could. (His thoughts twist, remembering another bed, Madi's chuckle when John kissed the nape of her neck.) The impulse to swipe at his own mouth comes and goes, fades as he marks the flush of Flint's skin, the expression on his face. The sight of him hooks into John, pierces like an arrow.
It sparks some lower, tightening heat in him—how Silver looks there, settled between the shape of his thighs, the exposed desire in the lines of his face and that strung tight shoulder, and how certain his hands are. There is nothing at all in the room worth study beyond him, and it wouldn't matter if there was.
The sounds Flint makes is a low flickering thing, a rumble against the ribs that resolves into, "Come to bed." He tugs gently at his hand and in his hair. "Let me touch you."
The words tug at the hook in his chest. (An echo, Madi's voice, coming softly to him repeating: Come to bed.) If he were planning to protest, the urge is doused by the tone of Flint's voice.
"Alright."
He reluctantly extricates his hand from Flint's grip, lets go of him to brace one hand on Flint's knee, the other on the bed to lever himself up and on to the mattress. It's not graceful, but the motion is fluid, and what does it matter here?
The pain is there already, dull and far off. It's diminished by the places they're touching now, close on the bed.
"Help me with this," he says, though he's already lifted a hand to Flint's shoulder as he works open the buttons of his trousers with the other.
His hands are ready - first to brace him at the elbow as he rises, and then to answer the request. They're clever; he's been doing and undoing fastenings his whole life. Between the two of them they make quick work of it, his freckled shoulder rising and falling under the set of John's palm and his attention rapt on the nearness of his features. In the meager candlelight, they paint a strange singular shadow together.
And then all at once he's there, a heated hand on him. Fingers curling, the firm square of his palm, a gentle sound like he's touching himself instead. His spare hand finds Silver's neck to pull him close, and his kiss is very open.
There is a vulnerability in this too, or there is for John. It is infinitely easier to take someone apart than to allow someone the means to do the same in reverse. The contact judders through him, dragging a low groan from him before he can moderate his response. And then he recalls he does not need to.
But this is not new knowledge between them, just another dimension of it. What is there to hide now? All his soft points have already passed into Flint's hands. (Madi, his magic, now this.) John's fingers dig in hard at Flint's shoulder, making some indistinguishable noise into the kiss. It has been three years. John had not felt that passage of time so keenly until now, not in relation to anything but Madi, her absence. That he hasn't had anyone's hands on him existed in some nebulous space, unconsulted until this moment, remembering that it is good. Or that it is good because of who is touching him, because of what this means.
His hand finds Flint's thigh first, fingers tripping distractedly along the scar there. There is some sense of purpose, delayed by the warmth of Flint's palm and his mouth, his hand at John's neck. It is easy to give over to all of it, without reservation.
Every small thing radiates. He can feel that first low groan in every part of him - lodged behind his ribcage and expanding. Every subsequent sound between them buzzes in his fingertips and feeds into the lowest and warmest parts of him. The catch of their shared breathing is loud and untethered from the space around them. John's touch is like a brand he wants the burn of, searing into his two points.
It's good. It matters. One informs the other like breathing in precedes exhaling
(—hot against his mouth).
I want, is the shape and the slow drag of fingers, his flexing grip, on him is the language. Here, and closer, lives in the sway of his shoulder, the faint rise of his hip, and in how ready he is to dredge him down into bed with. It will be too warm to sleep so tangled together, but it's more than bearable for this.
They are not close enough. The impression sticks in John's head nonsensically, more resolving itself into a particular want as he is touched.
Is there any closer? Are they not already as close as they can possibly be, close enough that there is hardly a breath of space between them? He can hear Flint's pulse hammering in his own ears.
"Ah, please—"
The request breaks on a ragged gasp, John's fingers catching at Flint's hip before passing back to touch him, mirror the pull of his fingers. A faint laugh breaks on the thought that they might be better served by the floor than the bed, but the joke never makes it's way to words. His head is so full of this man. Flint has occupied his thoughts in so many different ways, but never this completely. John's attention narrows to the taste of him, the rasp of his breath, and the endless demands of his hands.
He gives himself over. It is easier than he'd once thought. (Before Madi, before he had given himself over to her—)
In that cramped upstairs room, in a secret hour between the end of one long day and the beginning of the next one, they fold into each other until that catching urge for closer and more cedes into a pulsing satisfaction with right now and just this. John's fingers fetch back that palpitating heat in him, and his own either set the pace or follow. It would be hard to say in that moment which is true, or whose want defines it. Just that they are cinched tight to each other - the wrap of an arm around shoulders, the press of a knee -, close enough to allow only for both grasping hands and the sharp buckling of restraint. Anything, he breathes hard against him. It's more succinct than Tell me, and bends more easily into the willing shape of bodies already in motion.
And when it becomes impossible not to - for all this desire of close, he was plenty near from John's mouth -, he gives way into the pull of his fingers with such a low, untangling sound. Tightening fingers. The warmest panting exhale against flushed hot skin in a too small room in a city that has done them no favors in the wrong half of the world.
The plea never resolves itself into a request. Anything wedges beneath John's ribs instead, the sweetness of it better than anything John could have asked for.
Anything stretches out in his mind, spanning more ground than he can manage the words to say now. They are so close. John cannot bring himself to draw back long enough to catch a breath, to try and pluck enough words to demand or encourage. It doesn't matter now, not when they've come to this point, teetering at the limits of their collective endurance.
If John had thought of holding back, it was a useless endeavor. He cannot rightly say whether it is the sound Flint makes or the tight draw of his fingers or the way he leans impossibly closer. It hits all at once. He'd barely let go of Flint before his hand drops to Flint's forearm, fingers digging in as he shudders through the sensation.
They will have to draw apart. At least to get into this bed, John knows. But leaning together, catching their breath, John's mouth opens against Flint's throat. The softness of that kiss speaks more clearly than John is able to in this moment.
In counterpoint, in balance, sits the shape of Flint's hand against John's neck, his pressing fingertips splayed over the drawn tight muscle of his shoulder. It's firm, holding despite the sensitivity elsewhere. Maybe they will leave matches marks on each other, is some distant though - (no they won't; their holds aren't so fierce as all that) - John's vice grip at his forearm, and his thumb latched so hard over his shoulder.
Under that soft mouth, he breathes in. It's a short, swallowing thing, and between them his hand has gone all soft, touch converting into little more the mute scuff of knuckles against bare middle and a turning wrist. Slowly, like coming untied, he twitches back to look down into the narrow slip of space between them and at the wreck they've made of each other. He touches John's hip, John's wrist, and eventually the angle of his arm turns enough that he can slip through the softening pressure of that hold to slip slick stained fingers clumsily into his hand.
He doesn't know how long that lasts, for how long they trade the same air while the twitching animal thing drains free of all their shared skin. Eventually, ragged against the prickle of full beard and the shape of an ear, he asks, "Alright?"
More recedes, quiets as their fingers lace together and John's mouth maps the slowing thud of Flint's pulse. The taste of salt and sweat are still heavy in his mouth, linger when the desperation has ebbed and all that is left is the space they're sharing now.
It is enough.
But the answer to that question comes slowly. John's mouth drags along the join Flint's shoulder before he breaks, drawing in a deep breath. (Along with the familiar ebb of aches in his body comes Madi, her face, the prickle of uncertainty that cannot be answered as quickly as John wishes.)
"Yes," at last, John straightening enough to look into Flint's face. He is weighted down by everything else that should come after, tangled sentiments that they both already know by heart. John leans into kiss him instead, as easy as drawing a breath, before returning, "Are you?"
That hand at his shoulder eases, slides, moving up into the great tangle of Silver's dark hair and gentling there as the base of his skull. It is a soft curl of fingers, the shape of his knuckles as natural as the line of his brow set close through that kiss.
No.
That isn't a thing he can say. No, only not because of this. No, though it doesn't change anything. No, but you're not either.
(A few hours from this point, he will wake when the morning sun rises just high enough to expose them together in this shared bed. For some minutes while he lies listening to the shape of Silver breathing, he will miss Thomas so much that it threatens to break him.
Sometimes he thinks he has become enough of a different person, and so entrenched in things that neither Thomas or Miranda would easily recognize, that it shouldn't still catch him by the throat. But it does, rising and falling in him. The world around a small boat in a predawn sea.
What comes after this part? He doesn't know. How does he begin to get to after? How is anyone meant to recover?)
"For right now," he says. It's a soft shape against Silver's mouth and it feels near enough to the truth.
Edited (typos my way into hell) 2020-08-17 07:15 (UTC)
The meaning is understood, adds dimension to what John hadn't quite said. Yes, he is alright now. Yes, the wound has been staunched. But they both know that what staves off agony in the moment doesn't put it off forever.
The pain comes sooner or later. And then they'll both have to live with it. (Madi's voice comes back to him: Maybe to go to such a place, one needs another to hold the tether and to find a way out.) His thumb drags along Flint's knuckles, marking out the shape of it, the way their fingers fit together so securely.
"Lay down with me," John entreats finally. Flint's hand feels good in his hair, held in his own, and the soft exchange of breath is so intimate that John's entire being aches with it. Parting becomes a trade off in his mind, considering how they fit back together in a new configuration.
That has an easy answer. He doesn't need to say it though, just shifts and begins to unravel how they are wound together.
It seems unlikely they he'll ever rise again (not tonight), and so somewhere in the process of rearrangement he pauses to strip the rest of the way out of his trousers and leaves just softer, whiter drawers behind. Laces at the knee and the small of his back are summarily undone or eased, and there is something in this simple thing done with John so near that settles at last a frayed end. When he does finally move to lay beside him, there is no ragged part left to question the shape of it; he simply bends to what seems most reasonable and allows him to easily catch John's hand, to draw it up and press his mouth to the curving palm and feel the shape of his fingers at his day worn cheek.
"It can be better," he says, without specification. This. The thing they've committed themselves to. The tilt of the world in motion. Not today, but eventually—for someone.
This too is a kind of familiar ground. They have slept alongside each other before, so often that this new layer fit seamlessly over what has already been between them for years.
There is a moment, braced on the edge of the bed, where John kneads the heel of his palm down his thigh, soothing the pain kindling there. It will pass. And it eases once he's laid down, diminishes in his attention when Flint fits himself alongside him.
"I know," John answers. Flint's mouth at his palm sticks in his mind, catches his breath for a moment. "It will be."
There can be no alternative now. It's cost them too much for John to entertain otherwise. His hand slips to cup Flint's cheek, thumb at the corner of his mouth. (Thinks again of the way the air shuddered with the force of Flint's voice, how his own blood had sparked to that tremor.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"I know."
It matters, but not for this. Not to this flickering hesitating thing faltering not over the question of want but the measure of it. He is tired; his pulse is thick in his ears. There is no ridding the room of the things they brought to it with them; but he wouldn't want to.
So his hand is light when it finds John's neck, but when he kisses him it's a sturdier and more fixed thing. I want this, he'd said.
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For the moment this seems to mean just this: their bodies turned into each other, the ease of the kiss stretching out without direction. There are things John wants, but exhaustion is nipping at him too. When his hand shifts from Flint's to his knee, it's with the same resolve he'd reached for Flint hours before, the same with which he'd answered Flint's question then.
Levering himself down, hand braced still on Flint's thigh, highlights the aches in his shoulders, his back. But he settles, knee on his crumpled coat, between the splay of Flint's thighs.
"Alright?" he questions.
They are both tired. There are things they both may want that will need to wait. (Are they not used to that?) But certain things are possible, even this early in the morning after no sleep at all.
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That tangled thing in his chest tightens. For a moment, seated there at the edge of the bed, he veers visibly between some purposefully blunted shape and a sharpening edge.
"Yes," obviously. Then— "Wait."
He catches John's face in his hands. This kiss has direction. It pours out all grasping heat and the pulse of his blood and the impossible dark shadow of grief and this fierce loving thing that is too big for this room and too heavy for them to lift tonight but which also has no understanding of restraint. Alright? If he could open his body to show him all the pieces in it, wouldn't he?
"I want you." Is a different thing. He should have said that earlier instead of, be sure.
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Then there is Flint. (James.) This a bond. These words, traded, set against everything else they have created, layered over what they have already forged—
"Alright," is almost an afterthought, repeated back. Has John not chosen him, over and over? The metal of the ring is warm, smooth contrast to the rough of Flint's palms on his face. "I'm here."
The air is cooler in this room, but the weight of this feeling raises it by degrees, warms John's skin. There is a different kind of power here. It bends the world in a different way. John bends with it; Madi and Flint both had taught him that lesson. He's been learning it by turns for years now. He can never unknow this.
Unspoken: You have me.
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(So why not today? They'll be battered regardless of what does or doesn't pass between them now.)
It would be unbearable to leave this thing they already understand undone.
So against his mouth, against the shape of I'm here: a short hitch of breath verging at the edge of saying something, then deciding all at once there is nothing he needs to say because there is nothing left to. His kiss turns fierce. His hands abandon Silver to catch with impatience at the buttons of suddenly unendurable trousers. Nothing changes.
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But John wants—
So much. (It has been three years since he kissed Madi goodbye, and he may never kiss her again.) The enormity of his want builds, spinning out in his mind in a stack of impossibilities; the room is too small, it is too close to dawn, they are both too tired. But they will not always be in this room. That thought lodges in his mind, settles as Flint frees the last button and John draws the fabric down, laying him bare.
In the candlelight, Flint is burnished and shadows by turns. John presses a soft kiss to one knee first as his hand grips the other. All that he could say would be feels insignificant, so John doesn't bother saying anything at all.
The ache in his leg, in his knee, is far off. It will hurt later, another pain to set against the others he carries. He aware of it only in relation to the present moment, the focus of his attention narrowing to the exclusion of everything else. He is careful with his mouth, careful with his hands, learning what makes the muscles of Flint's thigh jump beneath his palm. As clear as John's intent is, his approach is languid, unhurried, with each dip of his mouth sinking lower.
They know everything else of each other. (Almost.) This is one more piece to share, to carry between them.
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He covers that hand on his thigh with his own, thumb and forefinger absently encircling John's wrist. His other hand finds its way to a taut shoulder, to John's neck, tangling absently in his dark hair and pressing fingertips into lines of muscle where there lives some impossible strain.
A few hours from now, he will wake up when the morning sun has risen just high enough to cut through that window and expose them tangled in this shared bed. He will lay for some minutes in a clear summer morning with eyes closed against the touch of the sun and without turning his face to look at the man beside him. The sound of Silver breathing is a familiar kind of rhythm, and somewhere between it and the weariness tugging at him still, he will be lulled back into sleep. For an hour. For half of one. For ten minutes. It will make no difference to what he looks like or to how tired he is, but it will be like a dog-eared page in a book - mattering in part because he took the time to be particular about it.
In this space though, he just grows warmer and sharper Under Silver's attention. The reedy, dragging pull of his breathing thickens. The line of his thigh flexes up into the splay of their joined fingers. He touches Silver's neck, and the angle of his jaw, and sets his thumb against his rough cheek to feel how he moves over and about him.
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There is nothing to say, even if John cared to break away from him long enough to say it. He is saying it all now, with the dip of his mouth, the tightening clutch of his fingers, the minor shift of his hand in Flint's. There is a way to do this and mean nothing by it. John knows because for a long time (before Madi, before Flint, before all of this) that had been the way of it for him. But there is something honest about the wreck he's making of his own mouth, the ache building in his jaw under the pressure of Flint's thumb.
This is for you, written in every line of his body. Let me do this for you.
The urge towards more is already hooked into his chest. But there is something precious about what he's being given now: this vulnerability, this knowledge, being so close that he can hear the low hitch of Flint's breath as he sinks down over him. His fingers tighten at Flint's knee, encouraging as much as the involuntary urge to hold tightly to this moment, to Flint's hands at his jaw, linked in his own over his thigh.
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(The thing that when frustrated has lunged in any direction offered to it, including to bite the hand most familiar to it.)
That they are partners has been undeniable, even while coursing away from one another in opposite directions. But there will be no distinguishing between them after this, he thinks. They are two distinct parts laid over each other to such a degree that separating one from the other will be a kind of impossible thing.
"That's—" good, he starts to say, but it just rattles out of him instead. I want nothing more than to finish this and return home, he had once said to Madame de Cedoux. This is not that (far away and empty now, there is a house on an island where someone he loves had lived). But it cuts such a welcome shape as it bores through him until he is half staggered by the pressure of more and also this. He has developed such a firm grip in Silver's dark curling hair.
"Easy." His voice is low, a slanting and crooked thing when he eventually finds it. Breathing hard like he has gone to great effort to catch it. "You'll end me."
Which he wants desperately, however much he can see the use in some alternative.
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"Is that not the point?"
His voice is rough. From this vantage point he can see at least four more places he'd put his mouth if he could. (His thoughts twist, remembering another bed, Madi's chuckle when John kissed the nape of her neck.) The impulse to swipe at his own mouth comes and goes, fades as he marks the flush of Flint's skin, the expression on his face. The sight of him hooks into John, pierces like an arrow.
You, he thinks again. I want—
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The sounds Flint makes is a low flickering thing, a rumble against the ribs that resolves into, "Come to bed." He tugs gently at his hand and in his hair. "Let me touch you."
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"Alright."
He reluctantly extricates his hand from Flint's grip, lets go of him to brace one hand on Flint's knee, the other on the bed to lever himself up and on to the mattress. It's not graceful, but the motion is fluid, and what does it matter here?
The pain is there already, dull and far off. It's diminished by the places they're touching now, close on the bed.
"Help me with this," he says, though he's already lifted a hand to Flint's shoulder as he works open the buttons of his trousers with the other.
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And then all at once he's there, a heated hand on him. Fingers curling, the firm square of his palm, a gentle sound like he's touching himself instead. His spare hand finds Silver's neck to pull him close, and his kiss is very open.
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But this is not new knowledge between them, just another dimension of it. What is there to hide now? All his soft points have already passed into Flint's hands. (Madi, his magic, now this.) John's fingers dig in hard at Flint's shoulder, making some indistinguishable noise into the kiss. It has been three years. John had not felt that passage of time so keenly until now, not in relation to anything but Madi, her absence. That he hasn't had anyone's hands on him existed in some nebulous space, unconsulted until this moment, remembering that it is good. Or that it is good because of who is touching him, because of what this means.
His hand finds Flint's thigh first, fingers tripping distractedly along the scar there. There is some sense of purpose, delayed by the warmth of Flint's palm and his mouth, his hand at John's neck. It is easy to give over to all of it, without reservation.
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It's good. It matters. One informs the other like breathing in precedes exhaling
(—hot against his mouth).
I want, is the shape and the slow drag of fingers, his flexing grip, on him is the language. Here, and closer, lives in the sway of his shoulder, the faint rise of his hip, and in how ready he is to dredge him down into bed with. It will be too warm to sleep so tangled together, but it's more than bearable for this.
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Is there any closer? Are they not already as close as they can possibly be, close enough that there is hardly a breath of space between them? He can hear Flint's pulse hammering in his own ears.
"Ah, please—"
The request breaks on a ragged gasp, John's fingers catching at Flint's hip before passing back to touch him, mirror the pull of his fingers. A faint laugh breaks on the thought that they might be better served by the floor than the bed, but the joke never makes it's way to words. His head is so full of this man. Flint has occupied his thoughts in so many different ways, but never this completely. John's attention narrows to the taste of him, the rasp of his breath, and the endless demands of his hands.
He gives himself over. It is easier than he'd once thought. (Before Madi, before he had given himself over to her—)
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And when it becomes impossible not to - for all this desire of close, he was plenty near from John's mouth -, he gives way into the pull of his fingers with such a low, untangling sound. Tightening fingers. The warmest panting exhale against flushed hot skin in a too small room in a city that has done them no favors in the wrong half of the world.
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Anything stretches out in his mind, spanning more ground than he can manage the words to say now. They are so close. John cannot bring himself to draw back long enough to catch a breath, to try and pluck enough words to demand or encourage. It doesn't matter now, not when they've come to this point, teetering at the limits of their collective endurance.
If John had thought of holding back, it was a useless endeavor. He cannot rightly say whether it is the sound Flint makes or the tight draw of his fingers or the way he leans impossibly closer. It hits all at once. He'd barely let go of Flint before his hand drops to Flint's forearm, fingers digging in as he shudders through the sensation.
They will have to draw apart. At least to get into this bed, John knows. But leaning together, catching their breath, John's mouth opens against Flint's throat. The softness of that kiss speaks more clearly than John is able to in this moment.
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Under that soft mouth, he breathes in. It's a short, swallowing thing, and between them his hand has gone all soft, touch converting into little more the mute scuff of knuckles against bare middle and a turning wrist. Slowly, like coming untied, he twitches back to look down into the narrow slip of space between them and at the wreck they've made of each other. He touches John's hip, John's wrist, and eventually the angle of his arm turns enough that he can slip through the softening pressure of that hold to slip slick stained fingers clumsily into his hand.
He doesn't know how long that lasts, for how long they trade the same air while the twitching animal thing drains free of all their shared skin. Eventually, ragged against the prickle of full beard and the shape of an ear, he asks, "Alright?"
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It is enough.
But the answer to that question comes slowly. John's mouth drags along the join Flint's shoulder before he breaks, drawing in a deep breath. (Along with the familiar ebb of aches in his body comes Madi, her face, the prickle of uncertainty that cannot be answered as quickly as John wishes.)
"Yes," at last, John straightening enough to look into Flint's face. He is weighted down by everything else that should come after, tangled sentiments that they both already know by heart. John leans into kiss him instead, as easy as drawing a breath, before returning, "Are you?"
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No.
That isn't a thing he can say. No, only not because of this. No, though it doesn't change anything. No, but you're not either.
(A few hours from this point, he will wake when the morning sun rises just high enough to expose them together in this shared bed. For some minutes while he lies listening to the shape of Silver breathing, he will miss Thomas so much that it threatens to break him.
Sometimes he thinks he has become enough of a different person, and so entrenched in things that neither Thomas or Miranda would easily recognize, that it shouldn't still catch him by the throat. But it does, rising and falling in him. The world around a small boat in a predawn sea.
What comes after this part? He doesn't know. How does he begin to get to after? How is anyone meant to recover?)
"For right now," he says. It's a soft shape against Silver's mouth and it feels near enough to the truth.
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The pain comes sooner or later. And then they'll both have to live with it. (Madi's voice comes back to him: Maybe to go to such a place, one needs another to hold the tether and to find a way out.) His thumb drags along Flint's knuckles, marking out the shape of it, the way their fingers fit together so securely.
"Lay down with me," John entreats finally. Flint's hand feels good in his hair, held in his own, and the soft exchange of breath is so intimate that John's entire being aches with it. Parting becomes a trade off in his mind, considering how they fit back together in a new configuration.
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It seems unlikely they he'll ever rise again (not tonight), and so somewhere in the process of rearrangement he pauses to strip the rest of the way out of his trousers and leaves just softer, whiter drawers behind. Laces at the knee and the small of his back are summarily undone or eased, and there is something in this simple thing done with John so near that settles at last a frayed end. When he does finally move to lay beside him, there is no ragged part left to question the shape of it; he simply bends to what seems most reasonable and allows him to easily catch John's hand, to draw it up and press his mouth to the curving palm and feel the shape of his fingers at his day worn cheek.
"It can be better," he says, without specification. This. The thing they've committed themselves to. The tilt of the world in motion. Not today, but eventually—for someone.
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There is a moment, braced on the edge of the bed, where John kneads the heel of his palm down his thigh, soothing the pain kindling there. It will pass. And it eases once he's laid down, diminishes in his attention when Flint fits himself alongside him.
"I know," John answers. Flint's mouth at his palm sticks in his mind, catches his breath for a moment. "It will be."
There can be no alternative now. It's cost them too much for John to entertain otherwise. His hand slips to cup Flint's cheek, thumb at the corner of his mouth. (Thinks again of the way the air shuddered with the force of Flint's voice, how his own blood had sparked to that tremor.)
What is really being said: I believe you.