Part Six!!
Hello all. I'm back with part six of my tangled saga. Part five is here and it bears links to parts one through four, if you want to catch up.
Title: Coffee Spoons
Author:
bellesreves
Characters: Lockwood, Posner, Irwin, Dakin
Rating: PG-13-ish.
Summary: Posner's a bit of an idiot, Lockwood invokes dramatic irony, and Dakin and Irwin are honest for once.
Words: ~1800
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I'm making no money by writing about them.
Several minutes passed in silence. Eventually, a muscle in Posner’s side began to twitch from leaning against Lockwood’s shoulder for so long. He cursed his thrumming side, loath to sit up and face Lockwood and break the unexpected softness of the moment.
Finally the stretched muscle grew too insistent to be ignored. “Lockwood?” His voice came out thin and brittle. Lockwood’s thumb stopped moving over Posner’s palm.
“Mm.” A few strands of Posner’s hair quivered as Lockwood exhaled.
“My side’s starting to hurt from leaning over,” said Posner timidly.
Posner felt his hair move again, and he suspected Lockwood was chuckling at him. Suddenly, two fingers pinched his waist hard and he jumped with a loud, high yelp. Now Lockwood was really laughing, thrown against the back of his chair and holding his abdomen.
Smoothing his hair and crossing his arms, Posner settled down into his chair again. “That tickled,” he said primly.
Lockwood leaned forward onto the table and wiped his eyes. “I know.”
Posner tilted his head. “You’re not usually like this.”
Lockwood rested his cheek on his forearm, which lay flat on the tabletop. Looking at Posner sideways, he grinned. “No.” His eyes crinkled at the corners as his lips closed over the ‘o’.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
Lockwood gently thumped the table with an open palm. “Because you’re my friend,” he said, deepening his voice grandly, heroically. “And you are sad.”
Posner hesitated. Lockwood’s eyes were even more disconcerting when they were turned horizontally. “Am I your friend?” he asked softly. His eyelids flickered but he kept Lockwood’s gaze. “I’m always sad. You’ve never really talked to me before.”
There was a pause. Posner searched Lockwood’s face, his shoulders, his splayed legs, and found not a single tensed muscle, nothing to suggest the slightest uncertainty. It struck quite a contrast to the way Posner himself felt, wound up like a coiled spring. A television turned on in Posner’s neighbors’ flat.
“You’ve measured out your life in coffee spoons, J. Alfred,” Lockwood said at last.
Posner pulled his knees up to his chin. He couldn’t remember Lockwood ever giving a straight answer in his life. “Gobbits,” he said with a small scoffing noise in his throat. “That one doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does,” Lockwood corrected. “The minutiae. You can’t see anything else.” He punched Posner’s thigh lightly.
Posner fidgeted with the cuffs of his jeans. “I don’t know what you mean,” he finally said.
“’Course not,” said Lockwood.
Dakin sucked gently on Irwin’s lower lip, and Irwin’s arms laced underneath Dakin’s arched back. He hugged Dakin tightly, so that their bodies were pressed flush against one another.
When the kiss ended, Irwin barely moved. His eyes shone impossibly bright. Dakin lay his head back, but their faces were close enough that he could feel the other man’s light breath on his jaw. Dakin barely remembered the bruise and its far-off ache.
“D’you mind if we move to your bedroom?” Dakin asked, his voice low.
“Okay,” Irwin said breathlessly.
Dakin unhooked his ankles from around Irwin’s waist and they both stood up. Irwin made no moves to start walking, so Dakin clasped his hand and pulled.
“Which one is it?” he asked.
Irwin gestured toward the door on the left, and Dakin twisted the knob. Enough light came through the window from the moon and the street that he could make out perfectly tucked pale green sheets on the bed.
Dakin closed the door behind him and turned to Irwin. “It’s the middle of winter,” said Dakin amusedly. “Don’t you own blankets?”
“I-I don’t like heavy blankets,” Irwin said softly. “I toss around too much.”
Dakin smiled. “I’ll remember that,” he said, leaning in.
Irwin flushed. The line of his mouth twisted up as though he was pleased but didn’t want to show it.
Noticing that the hand in his was newly moist, Dakin frowned quizzically. He brushed Irwin’s lips without closing his eyes. Irwin didn’t move.
“Are you not feeling well?” Dakin asked.
Irwin’s eyes glowed in the low light. “I’m feeling nervous.” He sounded surprised at himself.
Dakin chuckled appreciatively. “I’m scared shitless, but I’m not about to let on.”
Irwin gave a small smile. He released Dakin’s hand and ran a tentative finger down from Dakin’s earlobe to the neckline of his t-shirt. Dakin’s abdomen nearly imploded. His hands flew to Irwin’s belt buckle, pulled him so that there was only enough room between them for his deft fingers.
Irwin let Dakin’s hands untuck his shirt and move along the buttons, undoing them from the bottom up. They didn’t break eye contact. Dakin’s knuckles felt like feathers tickling a line up Irwin’s chest. When the shirt and undershirt had both fallen to the floor, Dakin took his own t-shirt in his fingers and pulled.
Irwin put his palms flat on Dakin’s bare stomach, and Dakin’s eyes widened. Irwin’s hands on his bare skin set his skin tingling more violently than he could have predicted. Color rose hotly in his cheeks as Irwin slowly ran his hands around Dakin’s waist, up his back, into his hair, and around to his face. With the pads of his fingers, Irwin traced from Dakin’s temple to his chin, and then rested two fingers against Dakin’s lips as if to make sure they were real.
Dakin opened his mouth and eased Irwin’s fingertips onto his tongue. He sucked as lightly as he could and watched Irwin’s eyes slide shut. Taking this to be sufficient invitation, he took off Irwin’s belt in a few deft pulls and let the baggy trousers fall to the floor. He wrapped a hand around Irwin’s wrist and placed it at his waist.
“Will you do that again?” he whispered.
Posner rose and moved to the sofa. It only took a few steps, as the flat was very small. He unfurled himself over the armrest, and the only part of him Lockwood could still see were his legs from the knee down, dangling over the armrest. “Well, thank you,” came Posner’s voice. “For being nice to me, even though I can’t make sense of it at all.”
“You’re welcome.” Lockwood appeared at the opposite end of the sofa. Posner looked up at him, his blue eyes particularly pronounced amid the cool hues of his shirt and the navy sofa. Lockwood turned and mirrored Posner’s position, ending with his head next to Posner’s, their ears almost touching. Lockwood wriggled a bit, playfully, like a puppy snuggling into a cushion, and closed his eyes. His face tilted very slightly toward Posner’s, and a breeze brushed the tip of Posner’s ear every time he exhaled.
Posner cursed his body. Small thrills were shooting in quick succession from the base of his spine. It was the same feeling he still sometimes got when Dakin’s glance took him by surprise, only this time the cause of it was much, much closer.
Don’t be stupid, Posner silently chided himself, trying to shake the feeling away. Just because he, unlike Dakin, will come near you.
Lockwood’s breathing was slow and regular. “Oi, Pos,” he said said, not opening his eyes.
“What?” Posner responded, relieved to be given something to take his mind off of the air slipping softly over his ear.
“What sort of in love are you with Dakin?”
“What?” Posner repeated.
“Are you the sort of in love with Dakin that gets published about in your biography as the grand love of a lifetime? Or a different sort?”
The corner of Posner’s mouth twisted in bemusement at Lockwood’s bluntness. “I don’t think it’s that first sort, anyway,” he told the boy next to him, staring straight up at the ceiling tiles. “After getting to Oxford I realized that Dakin’s never going to turn around and start quoting Auden in my ear.”
“He’s a fool.”
“And don’t I know it,” Posner said, allowing himself a small laugh.
Grinning, Lockwood opened his eyes and studied a freckle on Posner’s cheek. “Do you like other blokes, then?”
“I suppose,” Posner responded, thinking of his earlobe and feeling very naked beneath Lockwood’s gaze. “Cautiously,” he added.
Lockwood nodded. Posner let the silence settle, considering. A burst of gunfire issued from the television on the other side of the wall. He waited for it to subside.
“How come you always seem to understand what I say better than I do myself?” One of the ceiling tiles was a slightly paler white than its fellows. Posner studied this intently, trying to ignore the weight of Lockwood’s head dipping into the cushion so close to his own.
“Coffee spoons,” was Lockwood’s murmured response.
“Please tell me what you mean by that,” Posner requested. He felt so uncertain, faced with Lockwood’s laconic, perpetually amused responses.
“Okay,” said Lockwood. “Why aren’t we friends?” He said it like a tutor helping Posner study for an exam.
“You said we are friends.”
“You seemed skeptical,” Lockwood shot back.
“Only because you’ve never spoken to me!” Posner exclaimed, exasperated.
“Why would I speak to you?” Lockwood queried in that calm, tutorial tone again. He answered it himself when Posner only made an indignant noise. “I’m only ever around you when Dakin’s there, too. Why should I distract you?”
Posner pursed his lips. He felt he must be missing something. “We’ve never been friends because you’ve wanted to let me alone with Dakin?”
“No,” corrected Lockwood, “we’ve always been friends because I know how much you like him.”
“You’re very strange,” Posner remarked, fussing with the hem of his shirt, wrapping his fingers up in it. “So that’s what you mean by coffee spoons? The minutiae I can’t see past?”
Lockwood shrugged. “Yeah. Sort of.” He started to speak again, stopped, and shifted his hips on the sofa. “I don’t much like to see you with him anyway.”
Posner’s gaze momentarily left the ceiling and he eyed Lockwood without turning his head.
“He just likes that you love him,” Lockwood went on. “I hate it.”
Posner returned to studying the ceiling. “I don’t think I love him still,” he said quietly. “I think that now it’s just force of habit.”
Lockwood chuckled.
“What? Am I seeing past the cutlery now?” Posner asked sardonically.
“A bit, yeah.”
A crescendo of muffled theme music bled through the thin wall.
“Next,” Lockwood continued over the music, “you’ll be learning how to tell when somebody fancies you.”
This elicited a large sigh. “I’d wager all my savings that I’ll never learn that.”
A pregnant pause followed. Posner felt rather than heard Lockwood almost speak next to him, but then fall silent.
Lockwood was occupied with the freckle again. It was perfectly round, a sweet little brown dot floating on Posner’s pale, smooth skin. Lockwood’s lips felt as though they’d been glued shut, and so, forsaking speech, he raised his head a few inches and planted a kiss directly atop the seductive freckle on Posner’s slim cheek.
part seven...
Title: Coffee Spoons
Author:
bellesreves
Characters: Lockwood, Posner, Irwin, Dakin
Rating: PG-13-ish.
Summary: Posner's a bit of an idiot, Lockwood invokes dramatic irony, and Dakin and Irwin are honest for once.
Words: ~1800
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I'm making no money by writing about them.
Several minutes passed in silence. Eventually, a muscle in Posner’s side began to twitch from leaning against Lockwood’s shoulder for so long. He cursed his thrumming side, loath to sit up and face Lockwood and break the unexpected softness of the moment.
Finally the stretched muscle grew too insistent to be ignored. “Lockwood?” His voice came out thin and brittle. Lockwood’s thumb stopped moving over Posner’s palm.
“Mm.” A few strands of Posner’s hair quivered as Lockwood exhaled.
“My side’s starting to hurt from leaning over,” said Posner timidly.
Posner felt his hair move again, and he suspected Lockwood was chuckling at him. Suddenly, two fingers pinched his waist hard and he jumped with a loud, high yelp. Now Lockwood was really laughing, thrown against the back of his chair and holding his abdomen.
Smoothing his hair and crossing his arms, Posner settled down into his chair again. “That tickled,” he said primly.
Lockwood leaned forward onto the table and wiped his eyes. “I know.”
Posner tilted his head. “You’re not usually like this.”
Lockwood rested his cheek on his forearm, which lay flat on the tabletop. Looking at Posner sideways, he grinned. “No.” His eyes crinkled at the corners as his lips closed over the ‘o’.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
Lockwood gently thumped the table with an open palm. “Because you’re my friend,” he said, deepening his voice grandly, heroically. “And you are sad.”
Posner hesitated. Lockwood’s eyes were even more disconcerting when they were turned horizontally. “Am I your friend?” he asked softly. His eyelids flickered but he kept Lockwood’s gaze. “I’m always sad. You’ve never really talked to me before.”
There was a pause. Posner searched Lockwood’s face, his shoulders, his splayed legs, and found not a single tensed muscle, nothing to suggest the slightest uncertainty. It struck quite a contrast to the way Posner himself felt, wound up like a coiled spring. A television turned on in Posner’s neighbors’ flat.
“You’ve measured out your life in coffee spoons, J. Alfred,” Lockwood said at last.
Posner pulled his knees up to his chin. He couldn’t remember Lockwood ever giving a straight answer in his life. “Gobbits,” he said with a small scoffing noise in his throat. “That one doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does,” Lockwood corrected. “The minutiae. You can’t see anything else.” He punched Posner’s thigh lightly.
Posner fidgeted with the cuffs of his jeans. “I don’t know what you mean,” he finally said.
“’Course not,” said Lockwood.
Dakin sucked gently on Irwin’s lower lip, and Irwin’s arms laced underneath Dakin’s arched back. He hugged Dakin tightly, so that their bodies were pressed flush against one another.
When the kiss ended, Irwin barely moved. His eyes shone impossibly bright. Dakin lay his head back, but their faces were close enough that he could feel the other man’s light breath on his jaw. Dakin barely remembered the bruise and its far-off ache.
“D’you mind if we move to your bedroom?” Dakin asked, his voice low.
“Okay,” Irwin said breathlessly.
Dakin unhooked his ankles from around Irwin’s waist and they both stood up. Irwin made no moves to start walking, so Dakin clasped his hand and pulled.
“Which one is it?” he asked.
Irwin gestured toward the door on the left, and Dakin twisted the knob. Enough light came through the window from the moon and the street that he could make out perfectly tucked pale green sheets on the bed.
Dakin closed the door behind him and turned to Irwin. “It’s the middle of winter,” said Dakin amusedly. “Don’t you own blankets?”
“I-I don’t like heavy blankets,” Irwin said softly. “I toss around too much.”
Dakin smiled. “I’ll remember that,” he said, leaning in.
Irwin flushed. The line of his mouth twisted up as though he was pleased but didn’t want to show it.
Noticing that the hand in his was newly moist, Dakin frowned quizzically. He brushed Irwin’s lips without closing his eyes. Irwin didn’t move.
“Are you not feeling well?” Dakin asked.
Irwin’s eyes glowed in the low light. “I’m feeling nervous.” He sounded surprised at himself.
Dakin chuckled appreciatively. “I’m scared shitless, but I’m not about to let on.”
Irwin gave a small smile. He released Dakin’s hand and ran a tentative finger down from Dakin’s earlobe to the neckline of his t-shirt. Dakin’s abdomen nearly imploded. His hands flew to Irwin’s belt buckle, pulled him so that there was only enough room between them for his deft fingers.
Irwin let Dakin’s hands untuck his shirt and move along the buttons, undoing them from the bottom up. They didn’t break eye contact. Dakin’s knuckles felt like feathers tickling a line up Irwin’s chest. When the shirt and undershirt had both fallen to the floor, Dakin took his own t-shirt in his fingers and pulled.
Irwin put his palms flat on Dakin’s bare stomach, and Dakin’s eyes widened. Irwin’s hands on his bare skin set his skin tingling more violently than he could have predicted. Color rose hotly in his cheeks as Irwin slowly ran his hands around Dakin’s waist, up his back, into his hair, and around to his face. With the pads of his fingers, Irwin traced from Dakin’s temple to his chin, and then rested two fingers against Dakin’s lips as if to make sure they were real.
Dakin opened his mouth and eased Irwin’s fingertips onto his tongue. He sucked as lightly as he could and watched Irwin’s eyes slide shut. Taking this to be sufficient invitation, he took off Irwin’s belt in a few deft pulls and let the baggy trousers fall to the floor. He wrapped a hand around Irwin’s wrist and placed it at his waist.
“Will you do that again?” he whispered.
Posner rose and moved to the sofa. It only took a few steps, as the flat was very small. He unfurled himself over the armrest, and the only part of him Lockwood could still see were his legs from the knee down, dangling over the armrest. “Well, thank you,” came Posner’s voice. “For being nice to me, even though I can’t make sense of it at all.”
“You’re welcome.” Lockwood appeared at the opposite end of the sofa. Posner looked up at him, his blue eyes particularly pronounced amid the cool hues of his shirt and the navy sofa. Lockwood turned and mirrored Posner’s position, ending with his head next to Posner’s, their ears almost touching. Lockwood wriggled a bit, playfully, like a puppy snuggling into a cushion, and closed his eyes. His face tilted very slightly toward Posner’s, and a breeze brushed the tip of Posner’s ear every time he exhaled.
Posner cursed his body. Small thrills were shooting in quick succession from the base of his spine. It was the same feeling he still sometimes got when Dakin’s glance took him by surprise, only this time the cause of it was much, much closer.
Don’t be stupid, Posner silently chided himself, trying to shake the feeling away. Just because he, unlike Dakin, will come near you.
Lockwood’s breathing was slow and regular. “Oi, Pos,” he said said, not opening his eyes.
“What?” Posner responded, relieved to be given something to take his mind off of the air slipping softly over his ear.
“What sort of in love are you with Dakin?”
“What?” Posner repeated.
“Are you the sort of in love with Dakin that gets published about in your biography as the grand love of a lifetime? Or a different sort?”
The corner of Posner’s mouth twisted in bemusement at Lockwood’s bluntness. “I don’t think it’s that first sort, anyway,” he told the boy next to him, staring straight up at the ceiling tiles. “After getting to Oxford I realized that Dakin’s never going to turn around and start quoting Auden in my ear.”
“He’s a fool.”
“And don’t I know it,” Posner said, allowing himself a small laugh.
Grinning, Lockwood opened his eyes and studied a freckle on Posner’s cheek. “Do you like other blokes, then?”
“I suppose,” Posner responded, thinking of his earlobe and feeling very naked beneath Lockwood’s gaze. “Cautiously,” he added.
Lockwood nodded. Posner let the silence settle, considering. A burst of gunfire issued from the television on the other side of the wall. He waited for it to subside.
“How come you always seem to understand what I say better than I do myself?” One of the ceiling tiles was a slightly paler white than its fellows. Posner studied this intently, trying to ignore the weight of Lockwood’s head dipping into the cushion so close to his own.
“Coffee spoons,” was Lockwood’s murmured response.
“Please tell me what you mean by that,” Posner requested. He felt so uncertain, faced with Lockwood’s laconic, perpetually amused responses.
“Okay,” said Lockwood. “Why aren’t we friends?” He said it like a tutor helping Posner study for an exam.
“You said we are friends.”
“You seemed skeptical,” Lockwood shot back.
“Only because you’ve never spoken to me!” Posner exclaimed, exasperated.
“Why would I speak to you?” Lockwood queried in that calm, tutorial tone again. He answered it himself when Posner only made an indignant noise. “I’m only ever around you when Dakin’s there, too. Why should I distract you?”
Posner pursed his lips. He felt he must be missing something. “We’ve never been friends because you’ve wanted to let me alone with Dakin?”
“No,” corrected Lockwood, “we’ve always been friends because I know how much you like him.”
“You’re very strange,” Posner remarked, fussing with the hem of his shirt, wrapping his fingers up in it. “So that’s what you mean by coffee spoons? The minutiae I can’t see past?”
Lockwood shrugged. “Yeah. Sort of.” He started to speak again, stopped, and shifted his hips on the sofa. “I don’t much like to see you with him anyway.”
Posner’s gaze momentarily left the ceiling and he eyed Lockwood without turning his head.
“He just likes that you love him,” Lockwood went on. “I hate it.”
Posner returned to studying the ceiling. “I don’t think I love him still,” he said quietly. “I think that now it’s just force of habit.”
Lockwood chuckled.
“What? Am I seeing past the cutlery now?” Posner asked sardonically.
“A bit, yeah.”
A crescendo of muffled theme music bled through the thin wall.
“Next,” Lockwood continued over the music, “you’ll be learning how to tell when somebody fancies you.”
This elicited a large sigh. “I’d wager all my savings that I’ll never learn that.”
A pregnant pause followed. Posner felt rather than heard Lockwood almost speak next to him, but then fall silent.
Lockwood was occupied with the freckle again. It was perfectly round, a sweet little brown dot floating on Posner’s pale, smooth skin. Lockwood’s lips felt as though they’d been glued shut, and so, forsaking speech, he raised his head a few inches and planted a kiss directly atop the seductive freckle on Posner’s slim cheek.
part seven...