He still moves as he wants (as he needs to, captive, his own desire like a knife at his throat, on the verge of desperate for how badly he wants the other man), and it's a blessing to want the same thing. There is something divine in the curl of fingers, in the tensing of iliopsoas muscles, in that rasping exhale of fuck.
Thomas' thumb stokes down, curling over the warm weight of James' balls to the skin beneath, pressing with barely-there pressure, a small counter to the abandon with which he sucks him. Taking care only to manage teeth and little else, Thomas pushes forward until he can feel himself choking-- withdrawing in a hurry to drag in a breath, his quiet laugh rough with it. Look at him? He thinks he must look a mess. And deliriously happy.
Pulling off like that means his brain has a second to consider something besides James and his bitter taste and the pulse he can feel, and his own arousal punches into the forefront of his awareness. Fuck, indeed. He shifts up, one hand digging into James's side, lopsided smile on his face. "Kiss me."
He does. As if he even needs the invitation (demand? They have both gotten so good at telling). And God, is it good to taste him - and to taste him -, and to grin roughly into the shape of his mouth instead of kissing him with tongue. "Her busom did expand," he quotes, laughing low and thick and pettish. He has always been good at recall - lines he hardly knows floating to the tip of his tongue at the slightest provocation. And there is his hand between them, catching the silk heat of Thomas' erection in his firm grip like they are boys without any consequence.
(And why should there be?)
"Are you going to fuck me?" James breathes into his mouth. It's not really a question. It's all his most deliriously pleased parts pressed firm against all of Thomas' familiar ones. Like he means to memorize the knots of his knuckles.
This grinning kiss is fine, and good. It means when Thomas closes his teeth to bite James for dredging up that awful muck, he only gets the side of his lower lip. Laughing, lighting up with it, filling every atom. They're enclosed here in jewel-toned candle-lit darkness (where it is safe, where all things happen, whether they're ever brought forth or not), but everything feels bright.
"Mm?" Am I, or am I just going to rut into your hand, like a teenager, like a student, like the fumbling, desperate men we were when the scales first fell off after that stupid dinner. "Of course I am." Another kiss, and he shifts up even further to match him, one knee pressing into the back of James' thigh to nudge him where he wants him - will want him, in a moment. "Permitting--"
Permitting, if all the baubles and jars on the bedside table aren't perfume or things long gone rancid. Pirate or not, spit's not going to do.
The bedside table is within the reach of his arm, so he tries that first - unecessarily coaxing Thomas along with one hand while trying to kiss him and blindly feeling at the assortment of--
"Shit."
It's growled, laced with high spirits and the warmth set deep in his chest, as he twists half out from under Thomas and fumbles with more dedication through their options. If there's nothing here, he'll go out onto that gallery in nothing but his fucking coat and order something be fetched. Fuck pretense; now there is something to win favor with the goddamn crew.
(Thomas' bare side is so warm against the inside of his knee.)
"At least take your trousers off. For fuck's sake." That second part on behalf of a second box of strong smelling cloves and dried citrus peels.
What a sight that would be. Odysseus casts himself instead as Dionysus. Thomas laughs again, low and breathless, and hums in satisfaction at the feeling of James twisting around beneath him. He only hinders his movements a little, hands dragging down his bare sides and around his hips, and then, yes, finally, he rids himself of the rest of his clothes. The both of them left with only decoration; little slips of curved metal and scar tissue.
"Let's see," he sighs, settling atop James's chest like some overgrown housepet unconcerned with his positional comfort, and reaching out to help snag a few vials. He ejects one into the void of the room immediately, denied, pries open the stopper on another to investigate. Pinkish liquid smelling of nothing in particular tips out onto his skin and Thomas rubs fingers through it, over wiry ginger hair, circling one nipple.
There is something specific in the sprawl of Thomas' weight and the points where he's heaviest on top of him that's like clean linens after two months at sea, as warming in to his center as a hungry mouth or pressing fingers. With his chin on his chest, attention only halfway diverted from the inspection of a jar of something that's more paste than liquid, James hums some low sound to acknowledge the wandering touch and the tangle of their bodies and the hard, hot line of Thomas' erection between them.
The paste, whatever it was, looks like it's gone off. The lid goes back on the jar.
(Here, actually, is when the line of his thoughts might be given to making its way beyond this room and past where Thomas can touch. He could think, What the fuck will the crew say?, to begin with. There will be questions, and not ones that deal with Captain Flint fucking Mr Barlow, but Mr Barlow's association with other crews and what that means for the Walrus and--)
But the room is closed and the roughened pads of Thomas' fingers gone soft and smooth under the viscous liquid inspire a particular breed of myopia.
(What it means is that their uneven unity stretches between ships and crews, what it means is that the tipping point from scrambling individuals making no headway into a nation of thieves draws ever closer, what it means is - we will all just have to grow up, won't we. For the war coming, for something without kings.
They've gotten so good at taking.)
"Is it, or are you just impatient?" His voice, low and velvety, as enchanted as he is instigating. But he has no patience for real teasing; he wants James, badly, and there's plenty of time to draw things out later. The damn door's busted, they're never leaving this bloody room, and right now that suits him fine.
He draws a line with the edge of his fingernail through the neutral oil, watching the way the tiniest sliver of James' skin blanches and returns to normal - giving it a second to result in any strange reaction, all the while shifting to have more contact with him, his body, the wonderful heat and hardness of him. Are they old enough to worry about cramped muscles from certain positions? Fuck, he'll think about that some other time.
"Yes," is the summary answer to both, though he fetches the slim bottle from Thomas and dabs the contents onto his thumb.
It smells like nothing much, tastes like little more, and doesn't immediately sting when rubbed inside his cheek; and there is the line of his hip shifting in small, irregular increments under the insistent press of Thomas' frame - the good sense of being too old to fuck with something that's going to make them both tender waging a losing war with the rationale of being fucked throughly enough to feel it after anyway.
"Give me your hand."
Thomas' wrist isn't delicate, only the discoloration there is, and there is care in how James arranges his hand palm up across his chest but he isn't careful. With thumb at the bottle's mouth to regulate, oil is drizzled into waiting fingers. There is something to the look of it, bright in the low light, that fascinates - burns a real low and melting heat into the center of him.
His attention is very keen, the unabashed tip of his head some awkward angle, but the self-satisfaction is all in the curve of his mouth and how he sounds: "Good enough?"
Thomas doesn't need careful. It's nice, sometimes, but not when they're both basically gagging for it. Which, despite the austere evenness bred into him so thoroughly not even five years in a hole could break him of it, Thomas is. So effortlessly, eagerly aligned with the restless way James pushes against him, the bluntness of that Yes.
He kisses him. Agreement. Good enough.
There are surely erotic ways to describe preparation for anal penetration, with artful fingers and so many nerve endings, but(t) for today - Thomas does that, keen on further reacquainting himself with the most pleasing angles, what pressure makes him gasp, or delicate parts of him twitch. For a fevered moment he considers replacing his fingers with his mouth, because he could happily torture James this way forever, but it passes. Another time. (For sure.)
"--Well?"
If he's said anything about being ready before this instant, Thomas has ignored him on account of Knowing Better, but he'll accept such declarations now.
It all is heat being wound up in any case, strung together in this room and made up of sharp breaths and steadying hands, the encouraging jump of twitching muscle, and the brace of a clenched fist at the absurdly intricate headboard with all its curved leaves and rudimentary finches and
(someone in Kingston probably paid a dowry's worth for it, and here is where it's ended up and who's getting fucked against it).
Well.
"Well what," is not a question. It's a bitten out, flush faced demand and Being Kind of a Pushy Bitch About It.
In some later hour, when some of the sweat has dried and he's kissing the back of Thomas' neck and encouraging him to get hard again with some slow stroke of his hand, there will be time for artful meditations on what they are and this is. In this one, he's going pull something figuring out how to effectively kick Thomas in the ass if he doesn't make good on the promise of his hands. Fucking pirates.
In a way, there is no change, and no before with no division to set apart an after. Thomas never thought that the state of that before would be eternal, with James always but trembling under his hands and being molded into whatever he told him to do. Erotic as it was - and still can be, should they find themselves in a mood - such things as this are not static. What was that unspoken thing, an unbroken line from this bed to the steps of Parliament. They were always going to learn each other to the point of demands. Which is to say: pushy bitch is a good look on him that Thomas likes quite a lot.
Sparks of both frustration and relief at the necessity of touching himself enough to be finished with this business, and to answer that not-question, and push inside of him. Not roughly but a tick past as careful as he usually makes himself, strung tight and also impatient. He can still taste James in his mouth, he can near nothing but the other man's breath, and his own pulse in his ears.
Fuck, finally.
Muscle-memory. Heart-memory. The way the world vanishes to leave only the desire to reach the point where things shatter. Breath dragging in, and out, and feeling paradoxically dizzier for it. He pulls James's knee one way, shoves his own up higher, getting just. There.
There's a sound he makes. He's deaf to its exact shape and volume, but can feel it lingering in his throat like a caught breath after, sunk there like a hook he's relieved to find the point of. That's good. That's what he wanted. He can taste the satisfaction in it, sweet and feverish, as Thomas drives into him. Christ, how vividly bright he is; and how gratifying it is to see and feel how much he wants him poured back into him by Thomas' body and the desire stark in his face.
Pinned between that and his own braced hand, he shakes first like a taut thread and then laughs low and growling and "Fuck."
Which - yes. Clearly, if his inability to be still is any indication. He is all flexing muscle, an encouraging shift of hip, his free hand finding whatever point of leverage (Thomas' bicep) that's worth exploiting. This, this, this, says all the air in the room and that's no different from how it's always been.
That desperate, lush almost-animal sound and the growl in his voice sure does something.
It's ridiculous, the stuff of over-romantic nonsense, but every time is the best time anew. (Except for once, when they were really, really drunk.) Because every time is another explosive chance to stitch together two parts of something that should have been born together. There are a thousand poems like that, and they're all dull and unbelievable, because they don't say anything about the way James carves out the word fuck or the way his eyes look that way, the shade of perfect green. It doesn't occur to him that this, too, is over-romantic nonsense, because it isn't, and because everything feels too good to bother with thoughts any more complicated than yes.
Extra inches are a hazard on a ship, narrowly missing losing the top half of his head to low ceilings and whirling [stick various sails are connected to i'm sorry abby i googled jib and just confused myself with diagrams, i could rework this sentence but i wrote more of the paragraph before i googled, don't ever show this tag to anyone it's TERRIBLE]s, but in bed, they're wonderfully handy for leverage, and Thomas employs every spare inch of himself to fuck into him and chase that lovely sound again, and again. One hand is fixed to his hip, keeping up up, right where he wants (needs) him, but the other he looses to reach up and pry James's from the headboard. In a moment he'll see to his cock and making sure he finds his climax like this, but for right now, it's vital that he grip his hand in his hard enough it has to hurt, and look at him, and breathe the same.
It does - hurt. And anchors him as soundly as that first, more demanding hand secure at his hip does. Where would he be without those two points, the rasp of Thomas' breathing so loud in the half light that he can feel in it his skin, and being looked at. It would be easy to drown in this. Instead it's pain in his fingers and the matching pressure of his thumb digging hard against the line of Thomas's arm, and it is like standing at the edge of something big and broad and clear and being able look all the way down into it so as to actually see the sweet thing they're made of.
Also, significantly: strips him of some of his ability to press into that offer of heat, which if what actually makes it simpler (possible, necessary as breathing) to ask for More or huff There, or just bristle and collapse in turn in answer to being given what he wants.
(If there's some new series of raucous noises from the floor below, they seem especially flat and inessential. Go figure that it takes more than the clatter of what-the-fuck-ever to disturb the intent of being fucked insensible.)
It's a habit he needs to break (holding onto something, forgetting what normalcy feels like, needing to believe something is real after so long spent dissociating to survive), but James doesn't protest and so Thomas doesn't think of it, and he can remember later, and apologize, and things will either be strange for a moment as they contend with the fact that there is a before and an after, or it will be fine; people do odd things even when their lives haven't been destroyed.
Some of the real magic in fucking when it's as good as this is that time becomes exquisitely meaningless. What takes an age isn't long enough and heartbeats last an eternity. Entropy erodes the ability for Thomas to hold their hands that way, leverage vs sweat demanding a shift, and when he does, he kisses him, panting and messy and delirious and in love with him with everything, everything. Curled closer, hips digging in, buried, Thomas holds James' cock in his hand and strokes him (not hard enough to hurt), uncoordinated but learned.
If no-one hears the screaming chorus emanating from the lower floor of the building, did any of them actually make any noise. Does the moon exist without anyone to look at it. Does anything at all matter if it doesn't occur in this room, between these two bodies?
It's a question someone else would have to answer. They are uniquely unqualified, as even the before to the after is still set between them; and there is that line leading here and everything of significance still falls somewhere along it.
(Maybe Mrs Barlow knows something of the answer. But if he doesn't think it while in her company, he certainly doesn't while out of it, and under these circumstances.)
Thomas kisses him, or James kisses him with his hands hot at the back of Thomas' neck and his fingers all grasping in his pale burnished hair. It doesn't really matter which is which, just that it happens. Like all of Thomas's raw breathing pressed into his mouth happens, like his able hands on him and his driving heat in him does. Never mind who knows it or what gets written down. If it's like Isaiah said, - that God formed the earth and he created it to be inhabited, - then this must be what he meant by it.
And at some point, when the combination everything that Thomas is gets too bright to hold, he can pant Easy, easy, let me feel you, into his mouth like its own devotional, so he can recognize his place in the world and all the pleasantly heavy ways Thomas pins him in it before coming undone in it.
Is there something else you feel? is not asked, and it'd be rhetorical, anyway. Thomas gives him everything he asks for, whether he does so with words or the strain in his body where Thomas feels him every-which-way.
"I'm here," he says instead, pointlessly, mindlessly, still so close to him. "We're here."
And it's real.
James in pleasure is the most beautiful thing Thomas has ever seen. Horribly cliche and impossible to rationally believe, as all humans go inelegantly funny in the moment, but he feels it somewhere metaphysical, a bright flame that baptizes for the other side. And an animal satisfaction that's so deep it almost distracts him from his own-- almost. Nobody gets to come at the same time except in drunken tales of debauchery, and that suits him wonderfully, because who'd want to miss watching a lover. Not him. Especially not James, flushed and perfect, in pieces, each of which he knows down to the blood and bone.
Close enough. And good thing, he should probably give James's knee a rest after the angle he's had them tweaked at.
It's all brittle and brilliant, the most pleasant kind of ache unraveling into something more real
(the line of his leg shifting warrants a low, absent noise)
and satisfyingly blunt.
And he laughs - at himself, at Thomas' pale hair forced in uneven angles by the twist of his fingers, at all the small parts of them. "Come here," is not the most absurd thing he's ever said, but as Thomas is present in every sense of the word, it's nearly useles except as a precursor to James kissing him wanton and slow.
As far as nonsense uttered in the heat of the moment goes, they're on the very low end of potentially embarrassing. Surely even in far less appropriate settings - (He's not used to so much, still, and while a note on that list is sleeping in cramped crew hammocks without Gwen's sometimes-suffocating weight, the real kicker is waking in the dark and forgetting where he is. Thomas gets three hours at a time at best, and as a guest on the Walrus, finds himself on the deck playing cards by lamplight with a young man whose first language he can't quite make out. He loses on purpose, talks a little about dark holes. When he leans back on the railing to breathe in cool air, reorient himself, he finds himself observed. Could you tell I wasn't where I should be? Did you wake when I did, pulled by some invisible tide? Do you know what might help me sleep?) - more ridiculous things have been gasped.
Now, he gasps something else, lost in between their mouths, whatever silly affection happily obscured by returning that kiss, befuddled in the aftermath and more than happy to stay right here in this mood for an eternity. The world around them threatens to creep back in, cries of laughter and someone's poor playing on an instrument too abused to be properly identified, but they are things far out of focus, an unfinished watercolor. Everything here, this bed, James beneath him, everything sweat-slick and breathless, is vibrant, broad strokes of an oil painting, saturated to last a thousand years.
Edited (four hours too normal on reflection ) 2020-02-28 01:25 (UTC)
They are Thomas' breathing, how sharp and heavy he is. They are James' fingers curling through his pale hair, blunted nails over a scalp no longer tender from being sunburned. They are two bodies in a bed in a closed room above a crows of people. They are obscure shapes on an island that no one feels compelled to know, but that the sand will remember no matter what anyone else thinks. The room is paid for. Their place in it is secured. Thomas is James' aching knee, and James is Thomas' mouth trying to grin and kiss all at once. Nevermind what is or isn't remembered by anyone else. The point is that it would be absurd to deny any of it. Look at all the things they are on paper, and know that all of then are at best some partial rendition.
He wraps his arm loosely behind Thomas's neck, which he knows to be freckled above the line worn by shirt collars. He says soft, shapeless things into his mouth. Later, despite himself, he will have forgotten the bright pleasure of the impulse and recall only the sharp prickle of irritation and fear; but for minutes here and now, he thinks he would like to leave this bed, this room, and looks at some other person while the marks Thomas has pressed into him are still bright on his skin, because he wants someone else to know.
It is the best of things sliding sideways into them the worst of them, and this is what loving is like: he wants to delight in both versions of those things - this room and the ones outside it - like Thomas can read even the worst book and find some true thing in it.
He presses kisses to Thomas' mouth. He says, I want you, like he doesn't have him even when his cock isn't involved, like he hasn't had him. But he finds no harm in the redundancy.
Is that so, breathed out against him; like they don't always want each other and don't always have each other. They had each other even when they didn't. They had each other before, when they were doing nothing but playing verbal chess, sending biting tests back and forth. They had each other in the dark, when they mourned so blindly.
They have each other - now, sticky and weak and comical, and Thomas doesn't think there's a happier moment in a thousand lifetimes than sweaty post-coital cuddling with someone you love so incandescently. He shifts over, putting them side by side facing each other with limbs still tangled enough to qualify as unnecessarily (vitally) smothering each other.
(Someone else will know. Does know. Money has already changed hands from at least one betting pool. That headache is not for this moment.)
"On your ship," yours, no matter who built it or paid for it or who else has ever been voted in charge of it, "you had blood in your mouth after a fight, and I wondered if you would taste the same, because I always thought something about you had that iron undercurrent. Beneath all the sea-salt I think is just part of your .. cosmic makeup, down throughout the center of your bones. You are the most.. perfectly elemental being and I," am laughing at myself now at this addle-brained rambling, "love you so completely."
It's the breed of supremely absurd thing that Thomas Hamilton- Thomas Barlow - just Thomas, first names and loosened collars and and now the sunburned backs of his ears, can make sound true because he believes it when he says it. In anyone else's mouth, it would be cloyingly sweet, overwrought. No one thinks that's true. But Thomas does, and so James believes it; that he could be all iron tang, the metal and smoke smell of gunpowder not just in his clothes but of his skin. Tell him anything, as long as Thomas is saying it.
"If you wrote that down," James says. His mouth is twitching behind his mustache. "It might almost be worth the paper you put it on."
He laughs then, low and full. In the tangle of their bodies, he kisses Thomas while grinning.
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Thomas' thumb stokes down, curling over the warm weight of James' balls to the skin beneath, pressing with barely-there pressure, a small counter to the abandon with which he sucks him. Taking care only to manage teeth and little else, Thomas pushes forward until he can feel himself choking-- withdrawing in a hurry to drag in a breath, his quiet laugh rough with it. Look at him? He thinks he must look a mess. And deliriously happy.
Pulling off like that means his brain has a second to consider something besides James and his bitter taste and the pulse he can feel, and his own arousal punches into the forefront of his awareness. Fuck, indeed. He shifts up, one hand digging into James's side, lopsided smile on his face. "Kiss me."
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(And why should there be?)
"Are you going to fuck me?" James breathes into his mouth. It's not really a question. It's all his most deliriously pleased parts pressed firm against all of Thomas' familiar ones. Like he means to memorize the knots of his knuckles.
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"Mm?" Am I, or am I just going to rut into your hand, like a teenager, like a student, like the fumbling, desperate men we were when the scales first fell off after that stupid dinner. "Of course I am." Another kiss, and he shifts up even further to match him, one knee pressing into the back of James' thigh to nudge him where he wants him - will want him, in a moment. "Permitting--"
Permitting, if all the baubles and jars on the bedside table aren't perfume or things long gone rancid. Pirate or not, spit's not going to do.
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"Shit."
It's growled, laced with high spirits and the warmth set deep in his chest, as he twists half out from under Thomas and fumbles with more dedication through their options. If there's nothing here, he'll go out onto that gallery in nothing but his fucking coat and order something be fetched. Fuck pretense; now there is something to win favor with the goddamn crew.
(Thomas' bare side is so warm against the inside of his knee.)
"At least take your trousers off. For fuck's sake." That second part on behalf of a second box of strong smelling cloves and dried citrus peels.
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"Let's see," he sighs, settling atop James's chest like some overgrown housepet unconcerned with his positional comfort, and reaching out to help snag a few vials. He ejects one into the void of the room immediately, denied, pries open the stopper on another to investigate. Pinkish liquid smelling of nothing in particular tips out onto his skin and Thomas rubs fingers through it, over wiry ginger hair, circling one nipple.
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The paste, whatever it was, looks like it's gone off. The lid goes back on the jar.
(Here, actually, is when the line of his thoughts might be given to making its way beyond this room and past where Thomas can touch. He could think, What the fuck will the crew say?, to begin with. There will be questions, and not ones that deal with Captain Flint fucking Mr Barlow, but Mr Barlow's association with other crews and what that means for the Walrus and--)
But the room is closed and the roughened pads of Thomas' fingers gone soft and smooth under the viscous liquid inspire a particular breed of myopia.
"Good enough."
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They've gotten so good at taking.)
"Is it, or are you just impatient?" His voice, low and velvety, as enchanted as he is instigating. But he has no patience for real teasing; he wants James, badly, and there's plenty of time to draw things out later. The damn door's busted, they're never leaving this bloody room, and right now that suits him fine.
He draws a line with the edge of his fingernail through the neutral oil, watching the way the tiniest sliver of James' skin blanches and returns to normal - giving it a second to result in any strange reaction, all the while shifting to have more contact with him, his body, the wonderful heat and hardness of him. Are they old enough to worry about cramped muscles from certain positions? Fuck, he'll think about that some other time.
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It smells like nothing much, tastes like little more, and doesn't immediately sting when rubbed inside his cheek; and there is the line of his hip shifting in small, irregular increments under the insistent press of Thomas' frame - the good sense of being too old to fuck with something that's going to make them both tender waging a losing war with the rationale of being fucked throughly enough to feel it after anyway.
"Give me your hand."
Thomas' wrist isn't delicate, only the discoloration there is, and there is care in how James arranges his hand palm up across his chest but he isn't careful. With thumb at the bottle's mouth to regulate, oil is drizzled into waiting fingers. There is something to the look of it, bright in the low light, that fascinates - burns a real low and melting heat into the center of him.
His attention is very keen, the unabashed tip of his head some awkward angle, but the self-satisfaction is all in the curve of his mouth and how he sounds: "Good enough?"
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He kisses him. Agreement. Good enough.
There are surely erotic ways to describe preparation for anal penetration, with artful fingers and so many nerve endings, but(t) for today - Thomas does that, keen on further reacquainting himself with the most pleasing angles, what pressure makes him gasp, or delicate parts of him twitch. For a fevered moment he considers replacing his fingers with his mouth, because he could happily torture James this way forever, but it passes. Another time. (For sure.)
"--Well?"
If he's said anything about being ready before this instant, Thomas has ignored him on account of Knowing Better, but he'll accept such declarations now.
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(someone in Kingston probably paid a dowry's worth for it, and here is where it's ended up and who's getting fucked against it).
Well.
"Well what," is not a question. It's a bitten out, flush faced demand and Being Kind of a Pushy Bitch About It.
In some later hour, when some of the sweat has dried and he's kissing the back of Thomas' neck and encouraging him to get hard again with some slow stroke of his hand, there will be time for artful meditations on what they are and this is. In this one, he's going pull something figuring out how to effectively kick Thomas in the ass if he doesn't make good on the promise of his hands. Fucking pirates.
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Sparks of both frustration and relief at the necessity of touching himself enough to be finished with this business, and to answer that not-question, and push inside of him. Not roughly but a tick past as careful as he usually makes himself, strung tight and also impatient. He can still taste James in his mouth, he can near nothing but the other man's breath, and his own pulse in his ears.
Fuck, finally.
Muscle-memory. Heart-memory. The way the world vanishes to leave only the desire to reach the point where things shatter. Breath dragging in, and out, and feeling paradoxically dizzier for it. He pulls James's knee one way, shoves his own up higher, getting just. There.
is.qq
Pinned between that and his own braced hand, he shakes first like a taut thread and then laughs low and growling and "Fuck."
Which - yes. Clearly, if his inability to be still is any indication. He is all flexing muscle, an encouraging shift of hip, his free hand finding whatever point of leverage (Thomas' bicep) that's worth exploiting. This, this, this, says all the air in the room and that's no different from how it's always been.
pp
It's ridiculous, the stuff of over-romantic nonsense, but every time is the best time anew. (Except for once, when they were really, really drunk.) Because every time is another explosive chance to stitch together two parts of something that should have been born together. There are a thousand poems like that, and they're all dull and unbelievable, because they don't say anything about the way James carves out the word fuck or the way his eyes look that way, the shade of perfect green. It doesn't occur to him that this, too, is over-romantic nonsense, because it isn't, and because everything feels too good to bother with thoughts any more complicated than yes.
Extra inches are a hazard on a ship, narrowly missing losing the top half of his head to low ceilings and whirling [stick various sails are connected to i'm sorry abby i googled jib and just confused myself with diagrams, i could rework this sentence but i wrote more of the paragraph before i googled, don't ever show this tag to anyone it's TERRIBLE]s, but in bed, they're wonderfully handy for leverage, and Thomas employs every spare inch of himself to fuck into him and chase that lovely sound again, and again. One hand is fixed to his hip, keeping up up, right where he wants (needs) him, but the other he looses to reach up and pry James's from the headboard. In a moment he'll see to his cock and making sure he finds his climax like this, but for right now, it's vital that he grip his hand in his hard enough it has to hurt, and look at him, and breathe the same.
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Also, significantly: strips him of some of his ability to press into that offer of heat, which if what actually makes it simpler (possible, necessary as breathing) to ask for More or huff There, or just bristle and collapse in turn in answer to being given what he wants.
(If there's some new series of raucous noises from the floor below, they seem especially flat and inessential. Go figure that it takes more than the clatter of what-the-fuck-ever to disturb the intent of being fucked insensible.)
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Some of the real magic in fucking when it's as good as this is that time becomes exquisitely meaningless. What takes an age isn't long enough and heartbeats last an eternity. Entropy erodes the ability for Thomas to hold their hands that way, leverage vs sweat demanding a shift, and when he does, he kisses him, panting and messy and delirious and in love with him with everything, everything. Curled closer, hips digging in, buried, Thomas holds James' cock in his hand and strokes him (not hard enough to hurt), uncoordinated but learned.
If no-one hears the screaming chorus emanating from the lower floor of the building, did any of them actually make any noise. Does the moon exist without anyone to look at it. Does anything at all matter if it doesn't occur in this room, between these two bodies?
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(Maybe Mrs Barlow knows something of the answer. But if he doesn't think it while in her company, he certainly doesn't while out of it, and under these circumstances.)
Thomas kisses him, or James kisses him with his hands hot at the back of Thomas' neck and his fingers all grasping in his pale burnished hair. It doesn't really matter which is which, just that it happens. Like all of Thomas's raw breathing pressed into his mouth happens, like his able hands on him and his driving heat in him does. Never mind who knows it or what gets written down. If it's like Isaiah said, - that God formed the earth and he created it to be inhabited, - then this must be what he meant by it.
And at some point, when the combination everything that Thomas is gets too bright to hold, he can pant Easy, easy, let me feel you, into his mouth like its own devotional, so he can recognize his place in the world and all the pleasantly heavy ways Thomas pins him in it before coming undone in it.
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"I'm here," he says instead, pointlessly, mindlessly, still so close to him. "We're here."
And it's real.
James in pleasure is the most beautiful thing Thomas has ever seen. Horribly cliche and impossible to rationally believe, as all humans go inelegantly funny in the moment, but he feels it somewhere metaphysical, a bright flame that baptizes for the other side. And an animal satisfaction that's so deep it almost distracts him from his own-- almost. Nobody gets to come at the same time except in drunken tales of debauchery, and that suits him wonderfully, because who'd want to miss watching a lover. Not him. Especially not James, flushed and perfect, in pieces, each of which he knows down to the blood and bone.
Close enough. And good thing, he should probably give James's knee a rest after the angle he's had them tweaked at.
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(the line of his leg shifting warrants a low, absent noise)
and satisfyingly blunt.
And he laughs - at himself, at Thomas' pale hair forced in uneven angles by the twist of his fingers, at all the small parts of them. "Come here," is not the most absurd thing he's ever said, but as Thomas is present in every sense of the word, it's nearly useles except as a precursor to James kissing him wanton and slow.
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Now, he gasps something else, lost in between their mouths, whatever silly affection happily obscured by returning that kiss, befuddled in the aftermath and more than happy to stay right here in this mood for an eternity. The world around them threatens to creep back in, cries of laughter and someone's poor playing on an instrument too abused to be properly identified, but they are things far out of focus, an unfinished watercolor. Everything here, this bed, James beneath him, everything sweat-slick and breathless, is vibrant, broad strokes of an oil painting, saturated to last a thousand years.
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He wraps his arm loosely behind Thomas's neck, which he knows to be freckled above the line worn by shirt collars. He says soft, shapeless things into his mouth. Later, despite himself, he will have forgotten the bright pleasure of the impulse and recall only the sharp prickle of irritation and fear; but for minutes here and now, he thinks he would like to leave this bed, this room, and looks at some other person while the marks Thomas has pressed into him are still bright on his skin, because he wants someone else to know.
It is the best of things sliding sideways into them the worst of them, and this is what loving is like: he wants to delight in both versions of those things - this room and the ones outside it - like Thomas can read even the worst book and find some true thing in it.
He presses kisses to Thomas' mouth. He says, I want you, like he doesn't have him even when his cock isn't involved, like he hasn't had him. But he finds no harm in the redundancy.
It's good - to be rewarded.
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They have each other - now, sticky and weak and comical, and Thomas doesn't think there's a happier moment in a thousand lifetimes than sweaty post-coital cuddling with someone you love so incandescently. He shifts over, putting them side by side facing each other with limbs still tangled enough to qualify as unnecessarily (vitally) smothering each other.
(Someone else will know. Does know. Money has already changed hands from at least one betting pool. That headache is not for this moment.)
"On your ship," yours, no matter who built it or paid for it or who else has ever been voted in charge of it, "you had blood in your mouth after a fight, and I wondered if you would taste the same, because I always thought something about you had that iron undercurrent. Beneath all the sea-salt I think is just part of your .. cosmic makeup, down throughout the center of your bones. You are the most.. perfectly elemental being and I," am laughing at myself now at this addle-brained rambling, "love you so completely."
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"If you wrote that down," James says. His mouth is twitching behind his mustache. "It might almost be worth the paper you put it on."
He laughs then, low and full. In the tangle of their bodies, he kisses Thomas while grinning.