FIC: Fast Fuse (Mint Royale 3/8)
Title: Fast Fuse
Pairing: Bank Robber/Getaway Driver
Summary: Nearly 3 years after their first encounter, robber and driver meet again.
Word count: 4,030 (this part)
Rating: NC-17 overall
Disclaimer: I gave them new names and all, but I don't own Mint Royale, or their video, or Julian and Noel for that matter. No harm is meant.
Author's Notes: (Abridged version from now on!) Massive thanks to the Mint Royale filter on my friends list and to my lovely beta, the_reverand.
Part 1 (Prologue)
Part 2
3.
***
Elliot starts showing up at the pub almost every evening. He seems to have memorized Jon’s schedule because whenever Jon’s tending the bar, Elliot is there, sitting on a bar stool across from him, ordering girly drinks and striking up conversations with whomever’s available and willing. Sometimes he’ll turn up for lunch as well if he’s not working at the shop.
He flirts outrageously with Jon whenever he gets the chance, which seems to be every five minutes - “That’s a nice shirt, goes well with your eyes.” “I’m going to the little boys’ room, coming with?” “I had a dream about you last night, shall I describe it?” - and he seems to get genuine pleasure from Jon’s flustered dismissals and feeble put downs. Embarrassingly enough, Jon doesn’t have to act for those to be convincing; the fact that he knows that the flirting is part of the Alex persona doesn’t do much to quell the butterflies in his stomach every time Elliot comes up with one of his awful chat up lines.
The pub regulars relentlessly take the piss out of Jon - they all clearly find it hilarious that this pretty boy in eyeliner seems to have a crush on him, and after a few days they start nudging each other in anticipation every time Elliot strolls in, eager for the evening’s entertainment.
Jon’s eventually going to have to have a word with Elliot about this before it drives him completely insane, but he’s got to admit that it’s a good strategy. In a matter of days, ‘Alex’ has become a regular fixture in the pub, and he can keep an eye or an ear on most of what’s going on behind the scenes without anyone being remotely suspicious. Alex is impossibly charming, enthusiastic about every subject of conversation, and before long he’s got all the guys in the pub wrapped around his little finger. He even wins Murray over, who was dismissive and cruelly mocking of him at first, by engaging him in a long conversation about grunge and its lasting influence on the current music scene.
“Yeah, you definitely need to drop by the shop then, mate! I’ve got this mint first release of Bleach, it’s a thing of beauty,” Elliot is saying as Jon walks by the corner where the two of them are chatting, and he watches him jot down the address of the shop on the back of a paper serviette. It seems quite strange that these two people, one who knows so much and one who knows so little, should be getting along so well.
Jon knows that he should feel guilty for letting this wolf in idiot’s clothing bamboozle his way in and trick all his mates into trusting him, but it seems like whenever he gets a sliver of doubt, or feels like saying something, Elliot will catch his eye from across the bar and wink at him saucily, or make a point of checking out Jon’s arse. That invariably derails his train of thought, and even though Jon knows that Elliot is doing it on purpose, it always works.
***
Two weeks in, Elliot leaves his customary seat at the bar to play darts with Murray and Ian, in a series of games that last for over an hour. His shots are surprisingly accurate and he’s wiping the floor with the other guys in no time, who both look astonished and grudgingly impressed at the skill of their opponent.
“How the fuck do you have such a steady hand?” he hears Murray saying over in the corner as Elliot sinks in another bullseye.
“Years of applying eyeliner,” Elliot replies with a wink, and Murray just laughs, even though just a week ago a remark like that would’ve earned his scorn.
Elliot is looking especially gorgeous tonight, his black hair artfully mussed to perfection, a skin-tight blue t-shirt that does wonders in bringing out his eyes, and a pair of slate gray drainpipes that do wonders for an entirely different part of his anatomy. He seems quite aware of this, judging by the way he keeps glancing at Jon over his shoulder and the way he toys with the straw of his drink with his tongue in a deliberately suggestive manner.
The three of them seem to be having a grand old time with their game, laughing and placing bets, and after a particularly loud peal of laughter from their corner, Jon suddenly feels sick for allowing this to happen in front of his eyes. He doesn’t really care about Mike, but Murray and Ian, they’re nice guys, sort of. For a couple of crooks. They’ve welcomed Jon to their little circle, they trust him, they’re his mates. What the hell is he thinking?
It takes him a while before he realizes that he’s stopped moving and has been staring fixedly with what has to be a stricken expression, but Elliot is the only one that seems to have noticed. He catches Jon’s eye and flashes him a smile, probably in an attempt to distract him, but Jon immediately looks away.
He’s going to be ill. He dumps his dishcloth on the bar and rushes to the toilets before he loses it completely.
He’s relieved to find the room empty, and immediately locks himself in the furthest stall and starts pacing in the tiny space, trying to force himself to take deep breaths before he has a full blown panic attack. This is insane, this was a bad idea. This was the worst idea in human history. I can’t go through with this, I have to do something, I have to.
He’s fumbling with his cigarette packet with trembling hands when he hears the sound of someone coming in and he freezes, holding his breath. Sure enough, when the footsteps stop in front of his cubicle, he can see bright blue Cuban-heeled boots in the space below the stall door.
“Jon?”
“Fuck off,” Jon mumbles, changing his mind about having a smoke and shoving the cigarettes back in his shirt pocket.
“I can hear you panicking in there. Open up.”
“Get lost. Go back to your darts.”
“Jon.”
Jon sighs and runs his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands painfully for a second to try and calm himself down. Maybe if he ignores Elliot, he’ll go away. Maybe if he concentrates hard enough, Elliot will disappear from his life entirely and everything can go back to the way it was.
“Jon,” Elliot says again, and he sounds so reasonable that it makes Jon feel like he’s being silly, which in turn just makes him annoyed.
“What?”
“Open the door.”
Against his better judgement, he finally does as he’s told. He knows he must look insane, dishevelled and blotchy, but Elliot doesn’t say anything right away. He squeezes into the toilet stall with Jon and shuts the door behind himself, then leans against the wall opposite from him.
“You need to calm down,” he finally says, voice low and gentle, as though he’s speaking to a wounded animal.
Jon curls his hands into fists, nails digging painfully in his palms, and focuses his eyes on Elliot’s boots - it’s easier than looking at his serious face, “That’s... that’s easy for you to say.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Elliot replies in a soothing whisper, reaching out tentatively to rest a hand on Jon’s shoulder, “They’re going to get arrested anyway. Nothing you do is going to change that, so it’s no use feeling guilty.”
“I could warn them, they could run away.”
“That’s not part of the deal, Jon. Besides, we’d catch them anyway, sooner or later.”
When Jon doesn’t say anything, Elliot takes a step forward and puts his other hand on Jon’s upper arm, craning his neck a bit to try to get Jon to look at him, “Hey, you’ll be fine,” he continues quietly, “I’ve got everything under control, alright? You need to stop worrying so much.”
Jon laughs a bit at that, and the entire situation suddenly seems ludicrous, the two of them standing in a toilet stall, with Elliot trying to talk him down as though he’s behaving like a scared child. Surely he’s allowed to panic a bit, considering the mess he’s got himself into?
Elliot smiles at him, as though he’s reassured himself that Jon isn’t going to have a massive meltdown and ruin everything, and Jon is suddenly very aware of their physical proximity, and of Elliot’s hands on him.
Elliot seems to sense the gears shifting in Jon’s brain because his smile turns from friendly to slightly predatory. He takes one step closer, closing the distance between them so that their chests are brushing together, and he has to tilt his head back a bit so he can keep looking Jon in the eyes, “Well, since we’re here...”
Jon feels a rush of heat slam through his veins and squeezes his eyes shut. He knows this is all part of Elliot’s game, just another way for him to bend Jon to his will, but that doesn’t stop his body from responding to Elliot’s advances. He’s been fantasizing about a moment like this for years.
“Stop it.”
“You say that,” Elliot murmurs, his breath ghosting against Jon’s lips, hips grinding deliberately against Jon’s, “But I don’t think you mean it.”
Jon is disgusted with himself for being so turned on by this, and he can feel whatever self-control he has slipping away at an alarming rate. He can’t let Elliott play him like this, he won’t.
He shoves Elliot away roughly, sending him crashing against the stall wall, but Elliot just puts his hands up and laughs, “Alright, alright, I get it.”
“No, you don’t,” Jon snarls, and slams the stall door open and marches back into the pub with Elliot on his heels.
He doesn’t realize how it’s going to look until it’s too late. As soon as he comes back to the bar, the pub erupts in cat calls and derisive laughter, and Jon can immediately feel himself turning beet red.
“About time,” Murray calls out from the other side of the room, then turns to Ian, “I win, fork over the money.”
Jon doesn’t need to stick around and deal with this shit. He grabs his jacket from behind the bar and storms out of the pub.
“Hey, your shift’s not over!” Murray yells after him, “I’m not covering for you!”
Jon turns around long enough to flip him both middle fingers through the window before stomping down the street, feeling murderous. Suddenly, he doesn’t give a damn that he’s betraying his friends. They can all spend the rest of their lives rotting in jail for all he cares.
***
Jon only manages to get about a quarter of a mile from the pub before Elliot catches up with him, slightly out of breath when he falls into step beside him.
“What do you want now?”
He can see Elliot shrug out of the corner of his eye, even though he makes sure to keep his eyes straight ahead.
“I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
Jon chuckles without much humour, shaking his head, “I’m not angry with you, but I do hate you most of the time.”
Elliot laughs at that, a surprised but genuine burst of laughter, “Fair enough. Come on, I live near here. We can have a talk in private.”
He links his arm with Jon’s and Jon lets him, trying to hold on to his anger while Elliot leads him to his place, bragging all along the way about his recent victory at darts over Murray.
Elliot’s flat is only about 10 minutes away on foot, in one of those ugly high-rise council blocks. The lift is broken, and they have to trudge up to the 6th floor in the stifling hot stairwell, which doesn’t do much to improve Jon’s mood.
The flat is sparsely furnished; the walls are all bare and painted a boring off-white, the furniture looks like it’s been delivered by IKEA very recently, and if it wasn’t for the dirty dishes piled up in the sink and the small mountain of shoes near the doorway, it would be hard to believe that anyone actually lived there. It gives absolutely nothing away about its occupant, other than he’s not very tidy. It’s stupidly warm in there as well, which Elliot explains is because of a heater that has a mind of its own.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but this week I haven’t been able to turn it down and it’s been like a sauna in here, sorry about that. You want a beer or something?”
“No,” Jon replies shortly, staying where he is by the door. He’s not too sure why he followed Elliot all the way up here, but now that he’s standing there, it seems a very bad idea to be in such close quarters with him.
Elliot rolls his eyes and kicks off his boots, shrugs off his leather jacket and heads towards the kitchen to grab a lager.
“I thought you didn’t like beer.”
“Alex doesn’t like beer. I do,” Elliot replies with a shrug, popping the can open and taking a long draught. Jon watches the movements of Elliot’s throat as he drinks, his own mouth suddenly feeling quite dry.
“Of course.”
They stand there looking at each other long enough for Elliot to finish his beer, Jon still standing awkwardly by the door and Elliot in the middle of the sitting room. Jon doesn’t know why he doesn’t just leave, but he can’t seem to make himself move.
Elliot finally sets down his empty can and steps closer, crossing his arms over his chest with a bit of a smile.
“So, why did you come up here if you’re just going to stand there?”
“I don’t know. You said you wanted to talk.”
“Well, it’s kind of putting me off when you won’t even come in.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
He says it immediately, without hesitation or self-consciousness, and smiles like he knows exactly what effect it has on Jon, how it makes his stomach do summersaults.
Jon tries to keep his face blank of all emotion but he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. It was so fucking stupid to come here, and he should have known better, just as he should’ve known better than to go back to the pub when he could’ve escaped, or to agree to meet Elliot at the café, or to go along with his fucking plan. He just keeps falling into Elliot’s traps over and over again.
“Don’t start with that again.”
“Why?” Elliot says, undaunted as he steps even closer, “Everyone at the pub already thinks we’ve fucked, so we might as well do it.”
“For fuck’s sake, I don’t care about them!” Jon protests, feeling trapped between the door against his back and Elliot, who’s standing inches from him now. It would be so easy to open the door and take off. Any minute now, he’s going to leave.
“What’s the matter, then? I know you want me.”
It would be easier to deny Elliot’s accusation if he wasn’t painfully and obviously aroused, tenting the front of his trousers - and it would be easier to put up a fight if he couldn’t see the bulge in Elliot’s tight jeans.
“Thought so,” Elliot murmurs huskily, reaching a hand out to cup his erection through his trousers. Jon knocks his hand off and tries to move away but Elliot just grabs his shoulder and presses him hard against the door.
“Don’t,” Jon says, but all his resolve has long since crumbled and Elliot knows it.
“What are you gonna do, call the police?” he purrs in Jon’s ear, nudging Jon’s knees apart with his own so he can straddle his leg, pushing his groin against Jon’s thigh.
“You’re not-You can’t use this as a weapon, Elliot.”
Elliot’s only reply is to pull Jon’s face to his and crush their mouths together, and finally, Jon lets go and gives in. It’s futile to resist when this is all he’s wanted to do ever since this whole mess started in the first place.
Elliot’s mouth tastes like beer and cherry lip-gloss, and it’s a strange combination of flavours, but Jon doesn’t care. They kiss messily, urgently, tongues clashing together, with Elliot’s hands tangled in Jon’s hair and Jon’s hands against the smooth skin of Elliot’s back.
Elliot’s hands eventually move down to Jon’s shoulders to push his coat off, leaving it crumpled at their feet, and starts walking backwards towards the bedroom without taking his mouth off of Jon’s. It’s a slow process, trying to navigate around the furniture while kissing and groping and shedding clothes on the way, and when they finally make it past the threshold they’re both down to just trousers and pants. Elliot’s got Jon’s flies open though, rubbing him insistently through his pants, and Jon is dangerously close to falling over the edge before things even get properly started.
“Fuck, slow down,” he says, pulling back and gasping for breath.
Elliot looks at him dazedly for a moment, and the sight of him, half naked, with cheeks flushed, lips parted and eyes glazed over, is almost enough to make Jon come right then and there, never mind the wandering hands.
He smiles then, and seems to come back to his senses enough to give Jon’s cock a last gentle squeeze before taking his hand out, and Jon makes an embarrassingly needy sigh at the loss of contact. He pushes Jon’s jeans and boxers past his hips so they fall down to his feet, then shoves at Jon’s shoulders until the back of his knees hit the edge of the unmade bed, and stands between Jon’s knees, sliding his fingers through Jon’s curly hair.
Jon obeys the silent command and fumbles with Elliot’s belt with shaking hands, struggling with the stupidly complicated fastenings until Elliot loses patience and helps him, and together they peel Elliot’s ridiculously tight trousers all the way down to his ankles. Immediately, Elliot’s hands are in his hair again and Jon reaches forward with some trepidation, curling his hand around Elliot’s flushed cock. Elliot makes a noise when Jon starts stroking him loosely, a mewling, needy sort of sound, so Jon leans forward to lick a wide, wet stripe up the underside of it before wrapping his lips around the tip. It’s been a long time since he’s done this, years in fact, but any worries about his own inadequacies are squashed by Elliot’s gasping moans and whispered encouragements. He sucks him off slowly, ignoring the growing ache in his jaw, until Elliot shivers a bit and starts scrabbling at his shoulders.
“Fuck, fuck, wait,” he says, pushing insistently at Jon’s shoulders until he pulls back with a wet, obscene sound. He laughs a bit, sounding pleased and breathless and takes a wobbly step backwards, “I don’t wanna come just yet,” he says by way of explanation, stepping out of the jeans and pants pooled around his ankles and moving to the bedside table to retrieve some condoms and a bottle of lube. Just the sight of those items and the implication of their presence is like a tiny orgasm in itself, setting off an explosion of need in Jon’s stomach.
“You-“
“I wanna fuck you,” Elliot says, crawling in bed and tugging at Jon’s arm to pull him towards the middle.
Jon laughs, nervous and amazed and not entirely sure that it’s what he wants, “What makes you think I’m into that?” he asks, because he needs to put up at least the pretence of a fight, even if he already knows that he’ll lose.
“If you’re not, you will be,” Elliot says with a cheeky grin, shoving lightly at Jon’s chest to try to get him where he wants him. They wrestle for a bit, shoves and grabs mixed in with sloppy kisses as Jon tries to push Elliot flat on his back, but he wriggles too much, and he’s deceptively strong. Elliot laughs and pushes up against him, distracting Jon with a bite on his nipple and a brush against his cock, and before Jon knows what’s happened he’s been flipped onto his front and Elliot is straddling the back of his knees.
“What- ...” he gasps, feeling winded and disoriented as Elliot lets out a triumphant breathy giggle from above him.
“I’m a cop. I’m trained at wrestling, you idiot,” he says, and Jon hears the sound of the bottle of lube being flicked open. He thinks about protesting for a moment, but then he feels Elliot’s lips on the small of his back and a sliding, wriggling finger between his arse cheeks and he gives in, just like he knew he would.
Elliot is not gentle, not exactly, but he’s careful, preparing him slowly with generous amounts of lube until Jon is reduced to a whimpering mess of want, too delirious with need to feel any shame about rubbing himself against the mattress and pushing back against Elliot’s probing fingers. Still, despite Elliot’s care, the stretch is more painful than pleasurable when Elliot slowly pushes in, digging his fingers into Jon’s hips. Jon presses his face into the pillow, breathing in ragged pants, but then Elliot drags Jon to his hands and knees and wraps his slick fingers around Jon’s cock, and it’s suddenly much better because he can focus on that sensation until the pain gives way to a burning, simmering sort of pleasure.
His orgasm takes him by surprise, slamming through him with barely any warning when Elliot times a change of angle of his thrusts with a stroke over the head of Jon’s cock. He comes hard, biting on his lip until he can taste copper, and he’s dimly aware of Elliot’s choked moan above him as he follows suit less than a minute later.
Boneless and soaked in sweat, Jon’s trembling arms finally give out and he collapses on the bed face down, with Elliot on top of him. They stay like that for a long time, just breathing.
***
Afterwards they lie together in bed with the windows wide open, to let in some fresh air into Elliot’s stuffy flat. Elliot is laying spread-eagled, taking up most of the bed, smoking a cigarette, and Jon just watches the ceiling, trying not to think too much about what it all means.
Like Elliot said, everyone at the pub already thinks they’re fucking, so it’s not going to change anything there. He’s not entirely sure what Elliot’s motivations are, but he’s pretty sure it’s just another of his manipulation techniques. And if Jon knows that, and Elliot knows that Jon knows it, then it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s just sex, right?
Right.
He glances over at Elliot out of the corner of his eye and Elliot turns on his side to look at him, propping his head up with his palm and smirking a bit, “Alright?”
“Yeah. That was alright.”
Elliot snorts and kicks him lightly in the shin, “Better than alright.” He hands Jon his half-smoked cigarette and Jon takes it, but he starts laughing before he can start smoking it. He’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be finding this funny, but it seems hilarious all of a sudden. He is, quite literally, sleeping with the enemy.
“What?” Elliot asks, smiling as he pokes him in the shoulder.
“Nothing, it’s just...”
“What?”
“Well, I managed to spend two years in jail without getting bummed once, and look what happens after I get out. I get bummed, by a cop.”
Elliot lets out a snort of laughter and takes his cigarette back, “Shut up, you loved it.”
Jon doesn’t dignify that with an answer, so Elliot climbs out of bed, naked and comfortable. He sticks his cigarette between his lips and stretches languidly before heading towards the bathroom.
“I’m starving. You want to go out for pizza?” he calls over his shoulder.
Jon sits up and watches Elliot’s arse until it disappears out of sight around the corner.
“Yeah, okay.”
Next part
Pairing: Bank Robber/Getaway Driver
Summary: Nearly 3 years after their first encounter, robber and driver meet again.
Word count: 4,030 (this part)
Rating: NC-17 overall
Disclaimer: I gave them new names and all, but I don't own Mint Royale, or their video, or Julian and Noel for that matter. No harm is meant.
Author's Notes: (Abridged version from now on!) Massive thanks to the Mint Royale filter on my friends list and to my lovely beta, the_reverand.
Part 1 (Prologue)
Part 2
3.
***
Elliot starts showing up at the pub almost every evening. He seems to have memorized Jon’s schedule because whenever Jon’s tending the bar, Elliot is there, sitting on a bar stool across from him, ordering girly drinks and striking up conversations with whomever’s available and willing. Sometimes he’ll turn up for lunch as well if he’s not working at the shop.
He flirts outrageously with Jon whenever he gets the chance, which seems to be every five minutes - “That’s a nice shirt, goes well with your eyes.” “I’m going to the little boys’ room, coming with?” “I had a dream about you last night, shall I describe it?” - and he seems to get genuine pleasure from Jon’s flustered dismissals and feeble put downs. Embarrassingly enough, Jon doesn’t have to act for those to be convincing; the fact that he knows that the flirting is part of the Alex persona doesn’t do much to quell the butterflies in his stomach every time Elliot comes up with one of his awful chat up lines.
The pub regulars relentlessly take the piss out of Jon - they all clearly find it hilarious that this pretty boy in eyeliner seems to have a crush on him, and after a few days they start nudging each other in anticipation every time Elliot strolls in, eager for the evening’s entertainment.
Jon’s eventually going to have to have a word with Elliot about this before it drives him completely insane, but he’s got to admit that it’s a good strategy. In a matter of days, ‘Alex’ has become a regular fixture in the pub, and he can keep an eye or an ear on most of what’s going on behind the scenes without anyone being remotely suspicious. Alex is impossibly charming, enthusiastic about every subject of conversation, and before long he’s got all the guys in the pub wrapped around his little finger. He even wins Murray over, who was dismissive and cruelly mocking of him at first, by engaging him in a long conversation about grunge and its lasting influence on the current music scene.
“Yeah, you definitely need to drop by the shop then, mate! I’ve got this mint first release of Bleach, it’s a thing of beauty,” Elliot is saying as Jon walks by the corner where the two of them are chatting, and he watches him jot down the address of the shop on the back of a paper serviette. It seems quite strange that these two people, one who knows so much and one who knows so little, should be getting along so well.
Jon knows that he should feel guilty for letting this wolf in idiot’s clothing bamboozle his way in and trick all his mates into trusting him, but it seems like whenever he gets a sliver of doubt, or feels like saying something, Elliot will catch his eye from across the bar and wink at him saucily, or make a point of checking out Jon’s arse. That invariably derails his train of thought, and even though Jon knows that Elliot is doing it on purpose, it always works.
***
Two weeks in, Elliot leaves his customary seat at the bar to play darts with Murray and Ian, in a series of games that last for over an hour. His shots are surprisingly accurate and he’s wiping the floor with the other guys in no time, who both look astonished and grudgingly impressed at the skill of their opponent.
“How the fuck do you have such a steady hand?” he hears Murray saying over in the corner as Elliot sinks in another bullseye.
“Years of applying eyeliner,” Elliot replies with a wink, and Murray just laughs, even though just a week ago a remark like that would’ve earned his scorn.
Elliot is looking especially gorgeous tonight, his black hair artfully mussed to perfection, a skin-tight blue t-shirt that does wonders in bringing out his eyes, and a pair of slate gray drainpipes that do wonders for an entirely different part of his anatomy. He seems quite aware of this, judging by the way he keeps glancing at Jon over his shoulder and the way he toys with the straw of his drink with his tongue in a deliberately suggestive manner.
The three of them seem to be having a grand old time with their game, laughing and placing bets, and after a particularly loud peal of laughter from their corner, Jon suddenly feels sick for allowing this to happen in front of his eyes. He doesn’t really care about Mike, but Murray and Ian, they’re nice guys, sort of. For a couple of crooks. They’ve welcomed Jon to their little circle, they trust him, they’re his mates. What the hell is he thinking?
It takes him a while before he realizes that he’s stopped moving and has been staring fixedly with what has to be a stricken expression, but Elliot is the only one that seems to have noticed. He catches Jon’s eye and flashes him a smile, probably in an attempt to distract him, but Jon immediately looks away.
He’s going to be ill. He dumps his dishcloth on the bar and rushes to the toilets before he loses it completely.
He’s relieved to find the room empty, and immediately locks himself in the furthest stall and starts pacing in the tiny space, trying to force himself to take deep breaths before he has a full blown panic attack. This is insane, this was a bad idea. This was the worst idea in human history. I can’t go through with this, I have to do something, I have to.
He’s fumbling with his cigarette packet with trembling hands when he hears the sound of someone coming in and he freezes, holding his breath. Sure enough, when the footsteps stop in front of his cubicle, he can see bright blue Cuban-heeled boots in the space below the stall door.
“Jon?”
“Fuck off,” Jon mumbles, changing his mind about having a smoke and shoving the cigarettes back in his shirt pocket.
“I can hear you panicking in there. Open up.”
“Get lost. Go back to your darts.”
“Jon.”
Jon sighs and runs his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands painfully for a second to try and calm himself down. Maybe if he ignores Elliot, he’ll go away. Maybe if he concentrates hard enough, Elliot will disappear from his life entirely and everything can go back to the way it was.
“Jon,” Elliot says again, and he sounds so reasonable that it makes Jon feel like he’s being silly, which in turn just makes him annoyed.
“What?”
“Open the door.”
Against his better judgement, he finally does as he’s told. He knows he must look insane, dishevelled and blotchy, but Elliot doesn’t say anything right away. He squeezes into the toilet stall with Jon and shuts the door behind himself, then leans against the wall opposite from him.
“You need to calm down,” he finally says, voice low and gentle, as though he’s speaking to a wounded animal.
Jon curls his hands into fists, nails digging painfully in his palms, and focuses his eyes on Elliot’s boots - it’s easier than looking at his serious face, “That’s... that’s easy for you to say.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Elliot replies in a soothing whisper, reaching out tentatively to rest a hand on Jon’s shoulder, “They’re going to get arrested anyway. Nothing you do is going to change that, so it’s no use feeling guilty.”
“I could warn them, they could run away.”
“That’s not part of the deal, Jon. Besides, we’d catch them anyway, sooner or later.”
When Jon doesn’t say anything, Elliot takes a step forward and puts his other hand on Jon’s upper arm, craning his neck a bit to try to get Jon to look at him, “Hey, you’ll be fine,” he continues quietly, “I’ve got everything under control, alright? You need to stop worrying so much.”
Jon laughs a bit at that, and the entire situation suddenly seems ludicrous, the two of them standing in a toilet stall, with Elliot trying to talk him down as though he’s behaving like a scared child. Surely he’s allowed to panic a bit, considering the mess he’s got himself into?
Elliot smiles at him, as though he’s reassured himself that Jon isn’t going to have a massive meltdown and ruin everything, and Jon is suddenly very aware of their physical proximity, and of Elliot’s hands on him.
Elliot seems to sense the gears shifting in Jon’s brain because his smile turns from friendly to slightly predatory. He takes one step closer, closing the distance between them so that their chests are brushing together, and he has to tilt his head back a bit so he can keep looking Jon in the eyes, “Well, since we’re here...”
Jon feels a rush of heat slam through his veins and squeezes his eyes shut. He knows this is all part of Elliot’s game, just another way for him to bend Jon to his will, but that doesn’t stop his body from responding to Elliot’s advances. He’s been fantasizing about a moment like this for years.
“Stop it.”
“You say that,” Elliot murmurs, his breath ghosting against Jon’s lips, hips grinding deliberately against Jon’s, “But I don’t think you mean it.”
Jon is disgusted with himself for being so turned on by this, and he can feel whatever self-control he has slipping away at an alarming rate. He can’t let Elliott play him like this, he won’t.
He shoves Elliot away roughly, sending him crashing against the stall wall, but Elliot just puts his hands up and laughs, “Alright, alright, I get it.”
“No, you don’t,” Jon snarls, and slams the stall door open and marches back into the pub with Elliot on his heels.
He doesn’t realize how it’s going to look until it’s too late. As soon as he comes back to the bar, the pub erupts in cat calls and derisive laughter, and Jon can immediately feel himself turning beet red.
“About time,” Murray calls out from the other side of the room, then turns to Ian, “I win, fork over the money.”
Jon doesn’t need to stick around and deal with this shit. He grabs his jacket from behind the bar and storms out of the pub.
“Hey, your shift’s not over!” Murray yells after him, “I’m not covering for you!”
Jon turns around long enough to flip him both middle fingers through the window before stomping down the street, feeling murderous. Suddenly, he doesn’t give a damn that he’s betraying his friends. They can all spend the rest of their lives rotting in jail for all he cares.
***
Jon only manages to get about a quarter of a mile from the pub before Elliot catches up with him, slightly out of breath when he falls into step beside him.
“What do you want now?”
He can see Elliot shrug out of the corner of his eye, even though he makes sure to keep his eyes straight ahead.
“I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
Jon chuckles without much humour, shaking his head, “I’m not angry with you, but I do hate you most of the time.”
Elliot laughs at that, a surprised but genuine burst of laughter, “Fair enough. Come on, I live near here. We can have a talk in private.”
He links his arm with Jon’s and Jon lets him, trying to hold on to his anger while Elliot leads him to his place, bragging all along the way about his recent victory at darts over Murray.
Elliot’s flat is only about 10 minutes away on foot, in one of those ugly high-rise council blocks. The lift is broken, and they have to trudge up to the 6th floor in the stifling hot stairwell, which doesn’t do much to improve Jon’s mood.
The flat is sparsely furnished; the walls are all bare and painted a boring off-white, the furniture looks like it’s been delivered by IKEA very recently, and if it wasn’t for the dirty dishes piled up in the sink and the small mountain of shoes near the doorway, it would be hard to believe that anyone actually lived there. It gives absolutely nothing away about its occupant, other than he’s not very tidy. It’s stupidly warm in there as well, which Elliot explains is because of a heater that has a mind of its own.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but this week I haven’t been able to turn it down and it’s been like a sauna in here, sorry about that. You want a beer or something?”
“No,” Jon replies shortly, staying where he is by the door. He’s not too sure why he followed Elliot all the way up here, but now that he’s standing there, it seems a very bad idea to be in such close quarters with him.
Elliot rolls his eyes and kicks off his boots, shrugs off his leather jacket and heads towards the kitchen to grab a lager.
“I thought you didn’t like beer.”
“Alex doesn’t like beer. I do,” Elliot replies with a shrug, popping the can open and taking a long draught. Jon watches the movements of Elliot’s throat as he drinks, his own mouth suddenly feeling quite dry.
“Of course.”
They stand there looking at each other long enough for Elliot to finish his beer, Jon still standing awkwardly by the door and Elliot in the middle of the sitting room. Jon doesn’t know why he doesn’t just leave, but he can’t seem to make himself move.
Elliot finally sets down his empty can and steps closer, crossing his arms over his chest with a bit of a smile.
“So, why did you come up here if you’re just going to stand there?”
“I don’t know. You said you wanted to talk.”
“Well, it’s kind of putting me off when you won’t even come in.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
He says it immediately, without hesitation or self-consciousness, and smiles like he knows exactly what effect it has on Jon, how it makes his stomach do summersaults.
Jon tries to keep his face blank of all emotion but he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. It was so fucking stupid to come here, and he should have known better, just as he should’ve known better than to go back to the pub when he could’ve escaped, or to agree to meet Elliot at the café, or to go along with his fucking plan. He just keeps falling into Elliot’s traps over and over again.
“Don’t start with that again.”
“Why?” Elliot says, undaunted as he steps even closer, “Everyone at the pub already thinks we’ve fucked, so we might as well do it.”
“For fuck’s sake, I don’t care about them!” Jon protests, feeling trapped between the door against his back and Elliot, who’s standing inches from him now. It would be so easy to open the door and take off. Any minute now, he’s going to leave.
“What’s the matter, then? I know you want me.”
It would be easier to deny Elliot’s accusation if he wasn’t painfully and obviously aroused, tenting the front of his trousers - and it would be easier to put up a fight if he couldn’t see the bulge in Elliot’s tight jeans.
“Thought so,” Elliot murmurs huskily, reaching a hand out to cup his erection through his trousers. Jon knocks his hand off and tries to move away but Elliot just grabs his shoulder and presses him hard against the door.
“Don’t,” Jon says, but all his resolve has long since crumbled and Elliot knows it.
“What are you gonna do, call the police?” he purrs in Jon’s ear, nudging Jon’s knees apart with his own so he can straddle his leg, pushing his groin against Jon’s thigh.
“You’re not-You can’t use this as a weapon, Elliot.”
Elliot’s only reply is to pull Jon’s face to his and crush their mouths together, and finally, Jon lets go and gives in. It’s futile to resist when this is all he’s wanted to do ever since this whole mess started in the first place.
Elliot’s mouth tastes like beer and cherry lip-gloss, and it’s a strange combination of flavours, but Jon doesn’t care. They kiss messily, urgently, tongues clashing together, with Elliot’s hands tangled in Jon’s hair and Jon’s hands against the smooth skin of Elliot’s back.
Elliot’s hands eventually move down to Jon’s shoulders to push his coat off, leaving it crumpled at their feet, and starts walking backwards towards the bedroom without taking his mouth off of Jon’s. It’s a slow process, trying to navigate around the furniture while kissing and groping and shedding clothes on the way, and when they finally make it past the threshold they’re both down to just trousers and pants. Elliot’s got Jon’s flies open though, rubbing him insistently through his pants, and Jon is dangerously close to falling over the edge before things even get properly started.
“Fuck, slow down,” he says, pulling back and gasping for breath.
Elliot looks at him dazedly for a moment, and the sight of him, half naked, with cheeks flushed, lips parted and eyes glazed over, is almost enough to make Jon come right then and there, never mind the wandering hands.
He smiles then, and seems to come back to his senses enough to give Jon’s cock a last gentle squeeze before taking his hand out, and Jon makes an embarrassingly needy sigh at the loss of contact. He pushes Jon’s jeans and boxers past his hips so they fall down to his feet, then shoves at Jon’s shoulders until the back of his knees hit the edge of the unmade bed, and stands between Jon’s knees, sliding his fingers through Jon’s curly hair.
Jon obeys the silent command and fumbles with Elliot’s belt with shaking hands, struggling with the stupidly complicated fastenings until Elliot loses patience and helps him, and together they peel Elliot’s ridiculously tight trousers all the way down to his ankles. Immediately, Elliot’s hands are in his hair again and Jon reaches forward with some trepidation, curling his hand around Elliot’s flushed cock. Elliot makes a noise when Jon starts stroking him loosely, a mewling, needy sort of sound, so Jon leans forward to lick a wide, wet stripe up the underside of it before wrapping his lips around the tip. It’s been a long time since he’s done this, years in fact, but any worries about his own inadequacies are squashed by Elliot’s gasping moans and whispered encouragements. He sucks him off slowly, ignoring the growing ache in his jaw, until Elliot shivers a bit and starts scrabbling at his shoulders.
“Fuck, fuck, wait,” he says, pushing insistently at Jon’s shoulders until he pulls back with a wet, obscene sound. He laughs a bit, sounding pleased and breathless and takes a wobbly step backwards, “I don’t wanna come just yet,” he says by way of explanation, stepping out of the jeans and pants pooled around his ankles and moving to the bedside table to retrieve some condoms and a bottle of lube. Just the sight of those items and the implication of their presence is like a tiny orgasm in itself, setting off an explosion of need in Jon’s stomach.
“You-“
“I wanna fuck you,” Elliot says, crawling in bed and tugging at Jon’s arm to pull him towards the middle.
Jon laughs, nervous and amazed and not entirely sure that it’s what he wants, “What makes you think I’m into that?” he asks, because he needs to put up at least the pretence of a fight, even if he already knows that he’ll lose.
“If you’re not, you will be,” Elliot says with a cheeky grin, shoving lightly at Jon’s chest to try to get him where he wants him. They wrestle for a bit, shoves and grabs mixed in with sloppy kisses as Jon tries to push Elliot flat on his back, but he wriggles too much, and he’s deceptively strong. Elliot laughs and pushes up against him, distracting Jon with a bite on his nipple and a brush against his cock, and before Jon knows what’s happened he’s been flipped onto his front and Elliot is straddling the back of his knees.
“What- ...” he gasps, feeling winded and disoriented as Elliot lets out a triumphant breathy giggle from above him.
“I’m a cop. I’m trained at wrestling, you idiot,” he says, and Jon hears the sound of the bottle of lube being flicked open. He thinks about protesting for a moment, but then he feels Elliot’s lips on the small of his back and a sliding, wriggling finger between his arse cheeks and he gives in, just like he knew he would.
Elliot is not gentle, not exactly, but he’s careful, preparing him slowly with generous amounts of lube until Jon is reduced to a whimpering mess of want, too delirious with need to feel any shame about rubbing himself against the mattress and pushing back against Elliot’s probing fingers. Still, despite Elliot’s care, the stretch is more painful than pleasurable when Elliot slowly pushes in, digging his fingers into Jon’s hips. Jon presses his face into the pillow, breathing in ragged pants, but then Elliot drags Jon to his hands and knees and wraps his slick fingers around Jon’s cock, and it’s suddenly much better because he can focus on that sensation until the pain gives way to a burning, simmering sort of pleasure.
His orgasm takes him by surprise, slamming through him with barely any warning when Elliot times a change of angle of his thrusts with a stroke over the head of Jon’s cock. He comes hard, biting on his lip until he can taste copper, and he’s dimly aware of Elliot’s choked moan above him as he follows suit less than a minute later.
Boneless and soaked in sweat, Jon’s trembling arms finally give out and he collapses on the bed face down, with Elliot on top of him. They stay like that for a long time, just breathing.
***
Afterwards they lie together in bed with the windows wide open, to let in some fresh air into Elliot’s stuffy flat. Elliot is laying spread-eagled, taking up most of the bed, smoking a cigarette, and Jon just watches the ceiling, trying not to think too much about what it all means.
Like Elliot said, everyone at the pub already thinks they’re fucking, so it’s not going to change anything there. He’s not entirely sure what Elliot’s motivations are, but he’s pretty sure it’s just another of his manipulation techniques. And if Jon knows that, and Elliot knows that Jon knows it, then it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s just sex, right?
Right.
He glances over at Elliot out of the corner of his eye and Elliot turns on his side to look at him, propping his head up with his palm and smirking a bit, “Alright?”
“Yeah. That was alright.”
Elliot snorts and kicks him lightly in the shin, “Better than alright.” He hands Jon his half-smoked cigarette and Jon takes it, but he starts laughing before he can start smoking it. He’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be finding this funny, but it seems hilarious all of a sudden. He is, quite literally, sleeping with the enemy.
“What?” Elliot asks, smiling as he pokes him in the shoulder.
“Nothing, it’s just...”
“What?”
“Well, I managed to spend two years in jail without getting bummed once, and look what happens after I get out. I get bummed, by a cop.”
Elliot lets out a snort of laughter and takes his cigarette back, “Shut up, you loved it.”
Jon doesn’t dignify that with an answer, so Elliot climbs out of bed, naked and comfortable. He sticks his cigarette between his lips and stretches languidly before heading towards the bathroom.
“I’m starving. You want to go out for pizza?” he calls over his shoulder.
Jon sits up and watches Elliot’s arse until it disappears out of sight around the corner.
“Yeah, okay.”
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