Fic: The Drowners

[fanbeatsman]

Title: The Drowners
Pairing: Klavier/Daryan
Word count: c. 10,500
Rating/warnings: explicit sexual content, very strong language, awkward first-time sex
Summary: What this is, is the first time they've ever done anything quite this deliberate.
A/N: This is set within the year after which these two must have first met, but before Klavier's first case as a prosecutor, making them both 17-ish (and, er, therefore perfectly legal to be doing what they're doing in this fic. Or at least in the country I'm writing in, anyway). Bit of timeline dilation in there, probably, but trying to fit how these two became friends/formed the Gavinners/started their careers/became internationally famous in with canon is a hopeless endeavour. Title is taken from the Suede song of the same name. This fic also has a very much optional commentary, hosted here on Dreamwidth (if anyone actually does want to comment on it, anonymous, OpenID and DW account comments are all enabled there, or you can just talk to me about it here). Commentary is rambling and intrusive, so probably not a good version to use for a first read.

***

Klavier's room's got kind of a cheap hotel feel about it. Blinds drawing bars across the window, single bed, furniture that fell off the back of an IKEA truck. That slightly stale warmth of a thermostat that no one ever adjusts, and though it's not spare - au contraire, it's full of junk, mostly records and papers and lever-arch files - all the mess is stuffed in and spilling out of boxes, so it's got that temporary, just-passing-through feeling. Daryan's surprised. Klavier usually manages to leave an impression of himself pretty damn fast on whatever he touches. There's not a lot of him in this room.

Klavier is pretzeled on the floor at Daryan's feet, dithering over the stereo interface with practiced, speculative fingers. Daryan looks at the top of his bent head. So this is Klavier Gavin at home. Daryan's not so sure, himself.

Still. An empty house is an empty house. The familiar beep-whirr-click of Klavier finally making up his mind is loud in the quiet of it.

And an empty house with a fucking awesome sound system, turns out. Better than Daryan's. The speakers warming up around the first track make his hairs lift up in admiration.

Choice of record is smirk-worthy, though. Great record, a favourite record, and the bass is sinking hot and heavy down his throat and spine even sweeter than usual, but: it's Music You Can Screw To - Daryan said so in so many words, one of those nights there's been of late, to Klavier lain back on his bed sketching blueprints for world domination the future of the band. Which makes Klavier putting it on another case of, "Are you trying to seduce me, Mr. Gavin?", like all the other recreations of the kind of scene Daryan fast-forwards in films that Klavier's tried his hand at this evening. Which makes it, like the rest of them, faintly fucking ridiculous.

They both know what they're doing there; no need to make a three-act play about it (and yeah, while you're at it, Klavier, why don't you stop breathing?).

Least he's not said, "Shall we take this to the bedroom?", at any point, or anything like. Daryan would have to laugh, and then Klavier would pull out his It's Not Funny When It's Me face (except it is, oh it is funny, when Klavier is not as artless as he thinks he is), and nothing good ever comes of that.

Daryan decides he should probably stop twiddling his thumbs by the bedroom door, and takes his chance to commandeer Klavier's bed. Not going to give Klavier the chance to say, "Why don't you make yourself comfortable?", either. Klavier owes him the bed, after all those nights Daryan's spent sitting on the floor of his own room. Not that this is exactly the most luxurious bed in the world. Still, it's not as spartan as it looks, and mostly what's uncomfortable is the close heat of the room, and the fact that Daryan's skin is hot and sore where it touches the sheets - and fuck Klavier's stupid fucking beach plan for that, alright for him, but Daryan's colouring can burn through sunblock, and has.

Daryan props himself up on his elbows. Klavier's still dicking pointlessly about with the balance, like he knows what he's doing, except if he did, he'd realise that he wasn't making a blind bit of difference.

Two possible explanations:
1. Keeping him waiting is All Part Of The Effect.
2. Klavier Gavin is not quite as sure of himself as he would like to seem.

Tougher call than it would maybe normally be. Daryan's not reached a conclusion by the time Klavier eventually stands up with an idle stretch, and turns to face him.

Now he's got other things on his mind.

He's not even sure if Klavier's looking at him. The room is too dark for him to see Klavier's face properly from this distance, nothing but cloudy sunset light coming in slats through the window. But all at once, Daryan is very conscious of the angle his legs are making, crooked and stretched against the bed. Of the curve of an arch that hasn't quite happened yet drawn by his neck and back. It makes his skin tighten, and his cheeks get hot and dark (probably can't tell under the sunburn). It turns his swallow into a gulp.

His train of thought sputters and chokes and dies on its ass.

For fuck's sake. It's not like they haven't done this before.

But.

The first time: it's been a pretty wild night out, they're both out of their skulls drunk, Klavier kisses him and Daryan lets him. With hindsight, Daryan knows he saw it coming - at the time, it came as a pretty fucking big shock.

The second time: Daryan's too strung out, euphoria and adrenaline, to know it's happening while it's happening, let alone anything much about it beforehand. Doesn't really sink in until he's standing weak-kneed in that alley with sweat drying cold on his arms and come drying sticky on his hand.

The third time - well, the third time may not even have happened to start with. Seems about as plausible he could have dreamed it as that while he hovered on the edge of sleep in the dark of the morning, crashed out on a friend's sofa after a too-long party, Klavier slid between his legs and sucked him off, fast and almost silent and for no reason other than that apparently he couldn't help himself, not even with a handful of other people strewn sleeping and comatose on the floor of the room.

This time: they are alone, in a house, on a bed, and it is a perfectly respectable hour of the evening. Daryan is wide-awake, stone-cold sober, and well aware of what is about to happen. Klavier has asked for, not taken, what he wants, for a value of asked that's as close as he's ever going to get to straightforwardness: "Do you want to come back to my place?", older than his years and undemanding, as he looks all fake-casual out through his sunglasses at the sun going down over the water. Daryan has understood what's at stake, and consented: "Yeah, alright." There is nothing spontaneous about this; it's been coming from the moment Daryan lay down on the sand beside him when the sky was still blue and endless.

Notice the break in the pattern?

What this is, is the first time they have ever done anything quite this deliberate.

So for the first time, Daryan actually knows that something's going to happen between them. They've meant it to; they've put themselves in this place. And maybe it shouldn't, but that makes things different.

For one thing, Klavier's never just stood and looked at him like this before. Openly and obviously, and in that way that Daryan totally hasn't looked back covertly and reluctantly since they first met [ at the strength in his wrists when he plays, at the bliss on his face when he sings, at the way his thighs fit his jeans ]: at the space between Daryan's legs, at his hands where they're curling slightly in the sheets, at the slight close of Daryan's eyes as he watches him - and letting Daryan see how he Wonders and Speculates [ like Daryan has never been able to, like he always stops himself just short of doing, so the feeling stays latent and amorphous, even late at night when the picture-memories sit before his eyes and dry his mouth as he jerks off ]. So this is the first time Daryan's ever really thought about his body in terms of cause and effect: if I move like this, I can make him think like that.

This is probably what it feels like to be Klavier, all the time. Except a terminally fucking awkward version.

Eventually, Klavier moves. Picks his way around to the side of the bed. Even when he's trying not to trip over all his shit he moves in time with the music, loose and kind of mannered. Daryan stares up at the ineffectual ceiling fan, doesn't think.

It definitely does something to you, all this intention. All the promise in the invitation home, the empty house, the music. Puts your head in a funny place. Clearly, for Klavier, that's bad film territory, which, you know, fair enough. For Daryan, it's more getting ahead of yourself a bit, but at the same time feeling like you're always kind of behind. Like forgetting to talk on the way home, and not noticing because you're too busy thinking about what's going to happen when you get there. And then now, looking sidelong at Klavier and being so sure that there's some kind of script for tonight written in his body language. You just can't read it yet.

Funny thing to say, but surprise, Daryan was starting to get used to. Anticipation is something else.

Maybe he should have come up with some kind of plan of action. Klavier probably has.

Daryan is not a natural overthinker.

Klavier is standing now at his side, looking down at Daryan on the bed. With the light now behind him, his expression is still difficult to make out. It's probably for the best. The moment sits on top of them and between them, still and heavy with expectation. Except it's less a moment than a combined effort to suffocate each other with the power of "you go first". Daryan is not sure that two people have ever taken so long to do so little in the whole universe ever.

Klavier reaches up, pushes his hair back from his face. It's a familiar habit, but made slow and graceless with more self-consciousness (the bad kind - or a different kind of bad kind, maybe) than Daryan would ever have thought Klavier capable of. Daryan's not sure if that's reassuring or not. It carries over into the half-laugh that half-swallows the question Klavier half-asks, some jumble of can I, and do you, and shall we?

For the second time tonight, Daryan tells him, "Yeah, alright", and dies a little inside at the catch in his voice when he does.

He's not much time to dwell on it. Klavier kisses him at the invitation, neat and almost clinical, hands not on his thighs or his hips or his chest, but splayed on his shoulders where the muscles are bunched and straining from how he's sitting. All tied up with the unfamiliar please/wait of expecting it, it's seriously disarming.

Not much time to dwell on that, either, though, because Daryan's been feeling these touches hovering over his skin all day, nerves crawling with all the potential in the way time passed fast-slow and private, in the building sleepy heat of the weather, in all Klavier's weighted movements and the way they sat heavy in Daryan's idiotically slack mouth. Realising it at last is like releasing a breath, except that Daryan collapses under the force of it, arms giving way and head falling back onto the pillows.

Klavier takes this as a sign of encouragement. He's not always totally fucking obtuse.

And then the two of them are on the bed, kissing to the writhe of the music on the stereo, and Daryan's at last on more familiar territory.

New with Klavier, sure - but Daryan wasn't exactly a virgin when they met; had a girlfriend for almost six months when he was fifteen (and spent most of that time screwing her), and this is more like the kind of stuff he used to do with her. Seeing what you can do with just kisses, letting them get slow, and careless, and drawn out like candy between your fingers, sliding in wet and messy over cheeks and chins and jaws, mouths opening wider and tongues pushing deeper, teeth catching and closing on bits to suck on and lick at. Enjoying the weight on your thighs and the constant undertone of sounds murmured into your mouth, the way your lips feel pulpy and overused and the skin around your mouth gets sticky-dry with spit, the damp patch where your girl's straddling your thigh.

No blood trying to escape at your pulse points, no franticness, no loss of control. Just Klavier's mouth on his, over and over again, until Daryan's starting to sweat and prickle, and there's something like an endless sighing groan settling in his bones.

Making out for the sake of making out - almost but not quite.

That not quite's where the problems start to creep in.

Problem #1: If you know that you're doing this, you really need to know what you're doing. This isn't autopilot sex, where you don't have to think about what you're doing because every bit of your body and his is telling you, over and over again until you listen. And so Daryan is on the back foot. Three fumbles that ran mostly on gut instinct have not taught him Klavier Gavin's body (except the way his eyes widen, not close, when he comes, and that he bites when he gets worked up, and makes a lot of noise unless you find a way to shut him up, but none of these things are helpful right now), and though Daryan would like to think he's got moves in his repertoire they're not exactly transferable.

Princess he may be, but Klavier is not a girl. Too many of Daryan's reflexes are embarrassingly and frustratingly useless.

He's reached up to touch tits that aren't there more than once by now (and that's not helping his game, that Klavier has somehow ended up on top for the first time). And then his hands and thighs keep twitching short of sliding up between Klavier's legs - like they forget they're not going to find a cunt there, or they haven't yet decided what they think about that.

Problem #2: Daryan's pretty new to this whole apparently being a bit queer thing. So in the absence of any better ideas he can't even fall back on some burning desire to get a cock in his mouth or a tight ass under his hands. He's not settled on whether he does yet.

[ a sudden crowd of memories: of his leg hooking around Klavier and pulling it closer against him, of Klavier's shoulderblades shifting under his hands, of Klavier's come inbetween his fingers

he knows

because it's Klavier?

and that's the real problem, isn't it, with being here and doing this: the light it casts on every other hour passed unnoticed in Klavier's company, and every other night Daryan's lain awake feeling like an evening sitting two feet away from him has left him thoroughly fucked, and every other time Daryan has said, "yeah, alright", to Klavier Gavin

and how does Daryan look in this light, and who is he, and how should he understand himself ]

Klavier moves on top of him, hand skating up the crook of Daryan's arm. Daryan wakes back up. He must have been lying underneath Klavier like a fucking corpse for who knows how long; embarrassing, and awkward: either he looks like some petrified virgin, or he looks like he's not into it, and that's not fair and not true. It's not that he doesn't want to do this. He wouldn't be here if he didn't want to do this.

It's just not easy.

The track changes (7 into 8, christ, they've been there nearly half an hour - probably longer than all the other times put together). In the pause, the only noise is the erratic hum of the fan and the tiny wet noises of kisses, the slow hisses of their breathing and the sound of Daryan's blood in his ears.

Fuck this shit.

How hard can it be?

He's figured out harder shit in his time than how to show Klavier Gavin a good time in bed.

His hands find Klavier's pockets, flat slits against his hips because his jeans are so ridiculously tight. Still room for Daryan's thumbs inside them. He presses them along the blunt spurs of Klavier's hipbones, down in a sweep to the very tops of his thighs. Klavier mumbles something into his mouth that only the hairs on the back of Daryan's neck understand, and Daryan does it again, and again, until Klavier's hips are angling heavily down against him and bending Daryan's fingers in ways they're not supposed to bend.

Daryan moves his hands to Klavier's sides. Thin, lean Klavier is softer than he looks here, or maybe it's just because of the ungainly bend in his back, and Daryan walks his fingers over warm skin and relaxed muscles. This makes Klavier shiver and suck in breaths that Daryan feels beneath his hands, but he's got a feeling he's just tickling him. He stops.

Klavier just kisses him, still, as Daryan tries things. Hands wandering a bit, nothing too purposeful, just the kind of instinctive, unthinking touches typical of his normal complete disregard for personal space.

But he's breathing all shallow and erratic against Daryan's lips, and every now and then his hips bear suddenly down in a convulsive, compulsive movement and a shudder runs all over him.

This is a stage of proceedings that Daryan recognises, and he knows what to do next.

But his hands are hovering, not on the bed and not on Klavier, and his brain is hovering, somewhere just short of that unthinking impulse that drew his hand to Klavier's cock like a magnet that night after the show, and his pulse is a hard sick lurch.

Fucking ridiculous. Daryan can't believe he has to psyche himself up for this. Klavier would be in fits if he knew.

Daryan pushes a hand up the inside of Klavier's leg, firm and not particularly slow, following the inseam of his jeans until his knuckles drag obliquely along where Klavier's cock is starting to strain against them.

Klavier jerks against Daryan's hand and bites down hard on Daryan's bottom lip, and makes a noise that runs through Daryan like he touched him back, leaves him short of breath and draws all his nerves up tight. Daryan remembers, he remembers the other times, remembers the ache that clenched in him every time Klavier moaned, against his neck or around his cock, and shoved himself needily against him, and let his head fall back, remembers how it pushed him over the edge and made him come hard. He remembers it all tangled up in those nights' collisions of feelings, just another part of it. Now it's stripped down to the fact of it: he gets off on getting Klavier off.

A wall breaks in Daryan's head. [ and a couple of new ones come up ]

It lets him be a different kind of aware of where he is and what he's doing. He feels the soft darkness of the room, and its stale warmth, and the thick sweet vacation smell of sunscreen and outdoors coming off them both, and the sleazy twist and surge of the music, all pulled in together around him, and there's a pleasure in that [ uneasy, though: so private and confidential, so easy to lose yourself in ] that winds through and knots into the pleasure of Klavier moving against him, the gestures that show Daryan he wants him, tell him he likes that, make Daryan want him in his turn. He feels how every new trick of Klavier's mouth (and some of the old ones too) pulls more of a reaction from him, reaches down deeper into him and spreads further through him, until just a kiss, just a fucking kiss drags a whine he never wants to hear himself making again from his throat, makes his body gravitate up towards Klavier. Until every sweep of Klavier's tongue feels like it's applied down the side of his neck, and and over the inside of his wrists, and along his inner thighs.

He doesn't think.

He understands that one reason he is so still beneath Klavier, so tensely, strainingly still, though by now he is overhot and restless and sore, sweating, going numb where Klavier's weight is too awkward and too heavy on top of him, is that he does not want to move, and risk breaking the escalating run of kisses, and risk disturbing the incidental pattern of points where his skin is singing because Klavier is touching it. Klavier's hand is on his face, in a spidery cramp over his jaw and ear, fingertips tracing the sharp line of the bone and the soft edge of the lobe.

Maybe he could get used to this.

Klavier has other ideas. Klavier always has other ideas.

Though Daryan's embarrassingly slow on the uptake; by the time he tunes in to Klavier's hands pushing at his t-shirt it's obvious his insistence is impatience. So Klavier thinks it's time for less clothes instead of more kissing, fine; Daryan lets him have his way, contorts himself enough to let Klavier pull the shirt over his head. His hair goes all over the fucking place, so do his arms; it's a miracle he doesn't catch Klavier in the face. He has no idea where his shirt goes.

Klavier sits up, legs slipping out to straddle Daryan's hips like an accidental gymnast, and twists out of his own t-shirt. Daryan's body's clearly not big on this loss of contact idea, arches up a little to follow him like Klavier's knotted strings 'round his ribs.

Lets his head clear a bit, though. Just enough to be thoroughly aware of what an absolute fucking state he's in. He sinks back down against the pillow, blinks up at the ceiling. Fuck only knows what he must look like right now. Mouth overripe like someone punched it; hair like he's already slept on it; too much blood beneath his skin; breathing like he's only just remembered how.

His senses don't feel like they're working right. Half aren't firing on enough cylinders; his vision's hazy-dark like coming inside from the sun, and there's interference in his ears fucking with the music. The other half's working overtime; he's hot like he's back burning on the beach, and he can feel every little place where the sheets, his jeans, his hair, are sticking to him and peeling off when he moves.

He's uncomfortable. After this long he's pretty damn hard, and with his jeans still on that's uncomfortable. The way his mouth feels open and heavy and kind of liquid is uncomfortable. The funny surges where his skin feels like it's trying to crawl off his body towards Klavier are uncomfortable. The fact that hardly any part of him is being touched is uncomfortable.

Daryan looks up at Klavier looking down at him. It doesn't help much.

Klavier says, when he's drunk, when he's honest, when he's shameless, when he's not pretending it's All About the Music, that he wants his face on magazine covers, smiling out a hundred times in neat rows in record stores, flirting in tv interviews. Sometimes Daryan can see it; he's got those poster-boy good looks, Klavier - blond hair, blue eyes, tan, nice proportions - and he's got a gallery of faces that are bland enough, safe enough, blank enough, inane enough.

This isn't one of them. Daryan would like to see the marketing campaign fronted by this picture, lit up seedy-dark and red-tinged against the backdrop of a fuck motel. Legs spread - splayed - and jeans drawn down over his hipbones, so far there's curly pale hair visible over the waistband and you can see the tops of the creases that point like arrows to his half-hard cock. There's a louche sort of attitude in his arms and shoulders, but it reads I want you to do that again not you want to fuck me. The slicks of sweat on him are in odd obscene places: his temples, his collarbones, the crooks of his arms. One kind of feeble bicep is ringed around with livid finger-marks (that Daryan doesn't at all remember making) that look like something only he and the person who made them should ever see. Daryan can't say he's ever seen a guy in an advertisement with his eyes dilated and his mouth twisted like Klavier's are right now.

This is the Klavier that the magazines are never going to get to see. The one who can run on nothing but enthusiasm and self-belief for 48 straight hours. The one who thinks he can reform the legal system after one day as an intern. The one who gets on his knees at 3am for no reason other than he wants to. The one who treats fucking as a vocation. The one who knows he's a star even in a piss-stained venue the size of his own living room. The one who is more vital, more dangerous, than most people are ever going to know.

Daryan has no fucking idea how to look at him right now.

He was getting used to wanting Klavier. But that's the thing: those sudden breathless rushes, those idiotic sentimental floods of warmth, those awful sinking oh shit moments, he'd started to get comfortable with how they're all tied up in that precarious intensity of their still-new friendship, that sympathy that lets them make music together, the rush they both get from doing it. Right here, right now, all that want's undiluted. Unqualified. Unmistakeable.

Daryan thinks he maybe liked sex better when it was all over in a kind of blur.

One of Daryan's hands is clutching painfully at his own hair. The other is somehow on Klavier's thigh, so tight it looks like he's trying to claw through it.

He is shaking with how much he wants Klavier to touch him.

"Fucking hell," he says, uselessly. His voice comes out too high, like he's a kid again, and he colours up. Klavier smiles, but it's slantwise and unexpectedly sweet, so Daryan reckons it's probably about something else.

Daryan closes his eyes, and pulls Klavier towards him by his belt-loops. He swallows the noise that Klavier makes into his mouth, a little incoherent sound of surprise and delight, and fits his hands tight around the marks they left before.

It's probably the most control Daryan's had of the situation all day.

It doesn't last long.

It seems to flip a switch in Klavier, turns his dial up a notch (goes to show he does have more than one setting). His softly softly let's make a night of it plan's going out of the window a bit, and he's shifted into his I mean business gear; no more careful positions and tactical pacing, now it's all movements, implausible twists and writhes that land his mouth and hands in unexpectedly fun places. Klavier's starting to leave him behind, as per usual; all Daryan's doing is reacting: Klavier frames his neck in bites, Daryan presses his hand around the base of his skull; Klavier grinds his hips down, Daryan's lift up; Klavier scrapes his fingertips from Daryan's knee to his hipbone, Daryan just fucking groans. Sometimes he can't even manage to react fast enough: his hands keep flying out in pointless flailing gestures, finding bits of Klavier by accident.

It's not hard. If Klavier was sort of arranged on top of him before, now it feels like he's wrapped around him; Klavier's got a knack for taking up space [ or Daryan's no judge of his proximity: Klavier is always present, and always too close, when he's all you can - ], but this is impressive even for him. All bare skin and denim, Klavier is warm and close like a blanket, and slipping over and around him, so close that when Daryan's eyes come open they can see how the skin is tight around Klavier's half-closed eyes, how the corner of his mouth is bitten and wet, the faint scratched trails that cut across the lines of his face beneath his hair. And when Daryan breathes in, he can smell the familiar cold sweet smell of Klavier's shampoo or cologne or whatever it is, gingery or aniseedy, all soaked in sweat and leather and the smell of concrete baked in the sun, and the thick layer of sex that Klavier likes to leave on for effect. Daryan's tucked in by Klavier's thighs squeezing his hips, so tight it's hard to move.

Daryan's starting to get kind of shivery. It's beginning to feel like they've been there a really fucking long time (though Daryan's frame of reference's probably kind of skewed), and all this pissing about, drawing shit out, holding off and stretching things to breaking point's starting to take its toll on Daryan's body. He's feeling almost feverish: like there's something built up in you that you know's going to have to break, but in the meantime you're sweaty and shaky and hypersensitive. Or almost like he's already come once, and Klavier's just not bothered to stop, where the smallest thing can feel like a sharp twist on your nipples or teeth scraped over your cock, but it all just bleeds into a level stream of sensation; nothing's going to push you over the top any time soon.

Daryan's never thought he was one for instant gratification, but he's pretty sure he's never spent this much time standing on the edge and looking down before.

It's getting frustrating now. Need to fucking go one way or the other.

[ or the other?

which way?

there's only one direction this is headed

except it's too far

ridiculous - he has come: on Klavier's leg, over Klavier's hand, down Klavier's throat

are they going backwards, now, that Daryan wants to run from the point of no return

like some chick saying she doesn't want to go all the way

why is there a part of Daryan that's starting to want to up and fucking bolt? ]

The matter's kind of taken out of his hands.

With a lot of leverage and his weight on one hand, Klavier translates himself so that one knee is positioned in between Daryan's. He drags his thigh up between Daryan's legs, and Daryan comes, abruptly and unexpectedly and in one quick shuddering rush, into his pants.

None of Klavier's skin-prickling, ball-tightening moans. Just a choked sort of grunt. No clutching at Klavier, gouging nail tracks down his back and thighs, leaving bruises on his hips and shoulders. It just happens. One of Daryan's feet flexes out and gets stuck in a cul-de-sac of sheet. His other knee collides with Klavier's.

As a release, it's somewhat disproportionate to the build-up.

Klavier is still shifting restlessly against him, almost twitching, as Daryan sinks useless into the mattress underneath him. Daryan stares up past his shoulder, at nothing in particular. The room is very dark now, and quiet; the record's long since wound to a close. The only sounds are the crackling signs of life from the unused speakers, and Klavier's little clamours for attention against his hair. Daryan's pulse rings loud in his ears. Now his hands twist tight and sweaty in the sheets.

Klavier's face is buried in his neck, murmuring something that Daryan's not inclined to listen to and following it up with kisses that prickle shiver-sickly and too-much into the front of his head. The furious colour in Daryan's cheeks burns out unnoticed.

Klavier sits up again, this time heavy and unbalanced across one of Daryan's thighs. Daryan brings his eyes back to him. Klavier's wound up so tight he's almost trembling, and he's staring at Daryan with that bright terrible look that says I want, and if I don't get, then -

Of course. After all that, there's still Klavier to take care of.

Another fucking thing to throw Daryan for a loop. Because Daryan would have been just too fucking lucky, wouldn't he, if somewhere in the last fuck knows how long Klavier had managed to get off.

[ as if that wasn't awful enough, when he opened his eyes out of a ground-back cry with his head in the sky and all his nerves lit up and burning and Klavier blinked back at him with big drug-heavy eyes and blood pushing at his skin and a lost sort of smile

as if the absolute fucking enormity of that didn't cut the breath right out of him again, didn't make him want to vomit until the bile burns his throat and punch something until his knuckles hurt and run until his legs won't hold him

it's nothing compared to this ]

He needs to pull himself together. This isn't all about him, is it? He's not some jerk only in it for what he can get out of it; that's not his style.

Time to get on with it. Wouldn't do to keep Klavier waiting, after all.

Daryan releases his grip on the sheets. Runs his fingers through his hair, lifting it where it's sticking and clumping.

If he's got any bright ideas in him, they're struggling to get past a big dark blank wall stretching round and across his head.

Godfuckingdamnit. This should be easier now, easier than it was before, now it's not like his own body's got any demands left to make on his attention, now all he has to focus on is Klavier, and all Klavier's doing is waiting.

Daryan is starting to feel an unexpected nostalgia for those old kinds of not knowing what the fuck he's supposed to be doing.

Klavier clears his throat, the noise huge and heavy in the near-silence of the room, and Daryan's eyes slide up to his mouth. It's open in an arrested kind of way, like he's about to say something. Like for the third time tonight (one for each of the other three times he didn't?) he's going to ask. (That he doesn't often ask is no surprise, but funny that Klavier doesn't talk much; Daryan's always had him down as a dirty talker, figured given half a chance he'd make like a porn soundtrack, all god please and I need and fuck me, but though he's got the moans and groans down pat like his lyrics he says hardly anything, not even now there's no worry of anyone hearing, if there ever was for him.)

Part of Daryan is curled up hot and tight and squirming.

[ part of him says yes, tell me, please, help me ]

Part of him feels a little bit sick.

That's the part of him that figures there's only one thing that Klavier would want from him that not even he would just assume he could have, that knows before Klavier speaks what those lips are parted around.

"I want to fuck you."

Klavier sounds old again when he says it at last, like he did before on the beach, even though his voice is thin and breathless like the horny hormonal teenager that he is. Something about the focus in it, maybe, the purpose. Klavier has always been precociously driven.

This is probably where things have been supposed to be building up to the whole time. The Next Step. The next thing on the checklist.

And Daryan's actually almost impressed at the weight Klavier's managed to get behind his proclamation, into the silence where it's now sitting obscenely; it's a gift, to make it seem as momentous as it does, in the hot thick darkness of this piece of shit room in the house of the brother he's mooching off after the last hour or so of kind of awkward fooling around. He's not exactly got much to work with; no candles or rose petals or four-poster beds, just tangled sweaty sheets and streetlights bleeding in through the windows.

Does it drive him mad?

Or is it sweeter to pull it off regardless?

The words are sitting high in Daryan's chest, over the base of his throat. His eyes have fallen shut, and he's breathing in sighs. He is very still, but there's movement latent in him, from his fingertips to his toes.

Most of him is saying, in whatever way it has to do it, well, tough shit, Klavier.

This is not high on the list of sexual experiences that Daryan has ever hoped he would have.

It's not that he's worried about it Magically Turning Him Gay or anything like that, it's just -

People naturally resist new shit, and this would be new shit; like if Klavier had wanted him to suck his cock, he'd have been kind of apprehensive too, because he's never done it before and he doesn't know what it would be like or if he'd like it. Normal reaction. Same with this.

And it's not that he's worried about it hurting, either, it's just -

He knows, more or less, the mechanics of what Klavier wants. And you can't just sort of think, hey, I want to take it up the ass now, and then get stuck in. You've got to actually work at it.

He has been painfully aware of everything he's been doing for the last hour, and it was fucking agonising. Add to that the time - and the concentration - and the mess - and fuck it the general unattractiveness of even getting started on this -

Yeah.

And it's not that this Next Step is one step too far -

[ along what road?

the relationship they don't have?

trust?

intimacy?

what he, in the final reckoning, will do for Klavier Gavin?

fuck this; it's just fucking; it's not -

it doesn't mean -

it's just - ]

It's just that Daryan can't seem to bring himself to take it.

But he hasn't told Klavier to fuck off yet.

He opens his eyes, looks up at him. There's no conflict on Klavier's face. There's not much of anything, really, beyond what he's already said: I want to fuck you, spelled out in languid blinks and shaky breaths, and an odd kind of settled-ness that adds and now I've told you, what are you going to do about it?

Daryan realises that he honestly does not know.

He's not capable of knowing. Certain key faculties have all of a sudden shut down: his ability to process his surroundings, his ability to make sense out of a string of events, his ability to reason out the consequences of his decisions. He's stuck in right now; he's stuck in feeling.

He doesn't know where his answer's going to come from when it comes.

"If you're not - " Klavier starts.

The fingers of the hand he's balancing with, dug into the bone of Daryan's thigh, are making absent, coercive little movements.

Fuck him. [ look at him ]

Fuck him for thinking that Daryan's scared. [ look at him waiting ]

Fuck him for knowing how to get what he wants. [ look at how badly he wants this ]

Fuck him for getting it. [ look at what Daryan can give him ]

Daryan is consumed by his attempts to control his own breathing.

"Go on, then," he says.

Klavier doesn't ask if he's sure. And he doesn't thank him, or kiss him, or groan with relief; he just smiles, slow and delighted and only a little smug, the sort of smile that goes to Daryan's cock and his fist in equal measures, then vaults off the bed (using his hand on Daryan's leg for leverage; Daryan almost kicks him from the reflexive pain).

Leaving Daryan alone again, and waiting, with nothing to do except think about where he is and what he's doing.

And so it begins.

Klavier flicks the music back on as he rummages around his room. Small mercies, etc. Daryan lets it run through him, lets his fingers itch through its chord progressions. He watches Klavier out of the corner of his eye. He's sorting through a shopping bag sitting on the surface of the mess, a pile of hair products mounting up next to him as he searches for what he's after. So he did plan this. Or expected it, at least.

Daryan had better get on with his side of things, then. What's left of his clothes is going to have to come off, and he can't leave everything to Klavier.

His jeans and underwear are sticky with sweat and come; they peel, rather than slide, off, and cling round his ankles as he tries to push them free with his feet. He kicks them off the bed and out of sight once he's able.

His body stretches out in front of him, a narrow naked streak down the centre of the bed. He stares at the dips under his ribs, at his limp cock, at his bare legs. His legs look even longer and skinnier than usual, and very pale against the dark sheets. They're imprinted with a faint design from the seams of his trousers, where Klavier was pressing against them, where they were tight and stretched against his skin. There is an uneven stripe of sunburn running along the welt marked by the waistband, where his shirt rode up this afternoon and he didn't notice.

Getting his trousers off has dragged traces of come across his cock, through the hair above it and down where his thighs meet beneath it. Daryan scrapes his fingers through it, tries to wipe it off. It's gritty where it's almost at his stomach, from the sand, Daryan realises, that every now and then he feels grinding into his sunscreen-greasy skin when he shifts. He really needs to shower.

Does he?

Would Klavier expect - ?

Is he supposed to - ?

Daryan screws up his eyes and his fists, and does not let himself panic.

"Daryan - " Daryan's never heard Klavier so inarticulate. His name breaks off Klavier's tongue, evaporates into the air between them.

His head turns like a reflex. Klavier's closer than he was expecting, and Daryan's eyes find his hand, first, white-knuckled, denting and crumpling strange-familiar packets that make Daryan sweat. He follows the tension in Klavier's arm up to his face, through the fall of hair that's caught and turned the cold bright gold of streetlights. Klavier is staring, at him, at something Daryan can't make out. This is the first time, Daryan realises, that Klavier has ever seen him naked.

That feeling settles in Daryan like you usually only get in dreams, like every cell of your body is on the brink of bolting but you can't move a goddamn inch. His skin is burning off his face, and he can't swallow right. He feels like he's about to be sick.

"You - " Klavier falters again. He shakes his head, a little pointless convulsion, and flicks his hair out of his face. His gaze strays up to meet Daryan's, and Daryan nearly chokes on it. "You'll want to turn over," he says, at last.

Actually, no, Daryan's not sure he does. He's not sure he's too keen on the idea of not being able to see Klavier.

Klavier breaks eye contact, tosses what he's holding onto the bed between Daryan's legs. "It's more comfortable that way, the first time," he says, back in that old-beyond-his-years voice. With time, Daryan thinks, he's going to grow to hate that voice. Or it's going to bring him to his knees every time he hears it.

As he always does, as he always will, he turns over. He presses his face into the pillow, buries himself in a hundred ways that Klavier might have learned that it's more comfortable this way, the first time. A hundred vague impressions of schoolfriends and workmates and random guys picked up at bars, of hotel rooms and club toilets and back seats of cars, drawn from memory of the stories, casual and inappropriate, that Klavier tells and writes and sings for Daryan to swallow and taste and spit out. Each one feels like picking a scab, like someone reading your diary, like jerking off.

He breathes the same breath over and over again, out against the pillow and back through his nose, the air spreading hot and stale across his face. He is light-headed, and starting to get hard again, even though Klavier's not touching him. His pulse is skittering, rapid and shallow.

Like this, Daryan has no idea what Klavier is about to do, beyond what he can put together from sounds: a zipper coming down, the crackle of foil and unfolding of a cardboard box; from the way the weight on the bed shifts in sudden imbalanced lurches and settles into dips; from Klavier's hands on his right leg, guiding it up towards his chest into a taut and straining right-angle. He has no idea what Klavier is looking at, beyond what he can put together from the way his fingers track over the muscles of Daryan's thighs and ass like they move over his records and hover over a rhyme he hasn't found yet. [ he has no idea what Klavier is looking like, beyond what he can hardly even let himself imagine from the thin halting noises that break the beat of the music in clumsy erratic patterns ]

Like this, Daryan is going slowly insane from not knowing what is about to happen and not being able to not think about what is about to happen.

Like this, Daryan is not only naked, he is spread out and stretched out and arranged exactly how Klavier wants him. Klavier is looking at him in a way that Daryan has never looked at himself.

Daryan's not sure what the fuck's supposed to be comfortable about this.

And now Klavier has stopped again, dragging the time out. Fuck that; no, not this time. Daryan is not playing that game, not now. He struggles up on his elbows, tries to look over his shoulder.

"For fuck's sake," he starts [ though he doesn't know where he's going with it, and all the endings that come to his tongue scare him, in what they say ].

He doesn't have to finish. There's a hand, all at once, over his mouth (a hand; Klavier can be such a fucking cunt sometimes). Daryan is very tempted to bite it. And then once Klavier pulls his fingers away, ask him what the fuck he thinks he's doing.

Then he hears it too. Floating in from the other side of the bedroom door, just about audible over the music, a faint call: "Klavier?"

Klavier's brother was supposed to be away for the weekend. At a conference, Klavier said. Flying back tomorrow.

Daryan is not supposed to be here. Klavier's brother doesn't like having guests in his house; that's why this is the first time Daryan's ever seen where Klavier lives.

Daryan is not supposed to be in Kristoph Gavin's fucking house, and he is about to be fucked on the guy's goddamn guest bed by his little brother. And he is standing right outside the door.

Daryan's panic level goes from mild to abject.

He twists violently round and stares helplessly at Klavier. Klavier's eyes are wide and fixed on the door handle. He is chewing on his bottom lip. He looks utterly horrified.

That makes two of them, then.

"Kristoph?" Klavier replies, at last. His raised voice is clear, if not completely steady. You can always rely on Klavier to be able to turn something on when he needs to.

Daryan wishes he could remember where he took his shoes and socks off. Or if he even touched anything as he made his way to Klavier's room; the rest of the house was scrupulously, obsessively neat, and Daryan's got a feeling that someone who keeps their house like that is the sort of person who'd notice if you left even the slightest trace of your presence on it.

"You're home early," Klavier says, lightly. Daryan doesn't hear Kristoph's reply; he's too busy taking a quick inventory of the room, of likely hiding places in the event of an emergency. Because as he's just realised, following Klavier's eyes to the door, this room has no fucking lock.

Any minute now, Klavier's brother could turn that handle and walk in on the pair of them.

Daryan hates everything in the entire world.

"Just finishing off a little work," Klavier says, in answer to a question that Daryan missed, on account of being too busy trying not to hyperventilate. He catches Daryan's eye as he says it - and unbelievably, unfuckingbelievably, he smiles, a faint, lopsided smile with his lip still caught between his teeth.

Even more unbelievably, Daryan finds himself smiling back.

All of a sudden, he's struggling not to laugh. Because it's awful, oh it is awful, and Daryan can only imagine what kind of deep shit they're going to be in if they get found out, and it's so goddamn wrong that Klavier's sitting there talking to his brother with a raging hard-on and somewhere to put it spread out in front of him, but fuck, at the same time it's so completely ridiculous that you have to laugh, you just have to. At Klavier, trying to carry on a conversation stark fucking naked and with his blood struggling to get back up to his brain, at the thought of Daryan shutting himself in the wardrobe with the sheets around his waist like the other man of a woman whose husband just walked in.

It's a hysterical kind of laughter.

It's strangled when Klavier suddenly scrambles off the bed, by cold hard fear rising in his throat - but the door stays shut; "Of course," Klavier is calling, "is this better?", he is asking, and all he is doing is turning the music down, presumably at Kristoph's request.

There is one last moment where all Daryan can do is will the door handle not to turn. Then - "Guten nacht, Kristoph," and the sound of footsteps moving away down the hall.

Was there ever a sweeter sound.

The thread of tension pulling Daryan's body into a twist snaps, and he drops back down onto his stomach. Klavier follows him - literally, jumps back onto the bed and lands in a sprawl of heat and weight across Daryan's back, almost winding him. His mouth lands against Daryan's ear, and Daryan can feel his shoulders shaking against him and hear his hiccuping gasping breaths and useless dissolving shushes, and Daryan wants to point out it's not me making all the fucking noise here but he can't, all he can do is shake his head and smile as he lets Klavier silence himself in his hair, lets him hook and grasp at Daryan's fingers with his own, and fills his mouth with pillow as all that pent-up laughter starts trying to get out again, as relief and adrenaline pools and runs out where their skin meets.

Of course, when there's none of that left -

They're back where they were. Except now you've got the extra major turn-off of Klavier's brother a couple of rooms away, and the extra fucking stress of making sure he never finds out that Daryan's even here [ and the extra horror of knowing that if he wants to leave, if it turns out he can't take it, it's going to be pretty fucking difficult ].

Except -

Daryan breathes deeply, feels the changes in the plane on which he's touching Klavier as his chest rises and falls. Something's different in the way Daryan's body's responding, to the aimless movements of Klavier's tongue through the sweat in the hollows of his neck, to the interlacing of their fingers, to the press of Klavier's cock against the small of his back; they still crawl over his skin in prickles and sit hot and dark in his head, but it feels less like watching Klavier get off with a chick in the toilets of a club and more like watching him get off behind his microphone as Daryan feeds him riff after riff.

Klavier still wants to do this. That's obvious enough; his hips are starting to shift and slide, and he's let his leg slip back down between Daryan's thighs. Even though his brother's back in the house; even though there's no lock on the door; even though they'll both be screwed if they get caught; even though Daryan's going to have to be silent as the grave underneath him the whole time.

Klavier still wants to fuck him. And Daryan finds the thought creeping in, that for once, maybe, there's actually not much more to it than that.

Daryan closes his eyes, and lets it happen.

It starts with three lines, drawn down Daryan's body: the first wide and broken, marked by the drags and catches of Klavier's skin on his as he moves over him down the bed; the second a thin wavering streak, left by the leaking slickness of Klavier's cock sliding against Daryan's thigh.

The third is a warm wet trace of open-mouthed kisses, all tongue and teeth, that begins in the mat of his hair at the nape of his neck and continues even and methodical along the path of his spine -

- and Daryan has a good brain for patterns and should see where this one's going but disbelief is a powerful thing -

- and it is shocking, when Klavier's fingertips press into the thin curls straying down the creases at the tops of his thighs and he licks at him, experimentally and unceremoniously [ though maybe not surprising; has the shape of Klavier ever been better defined than by this line of his tongue from Daryan's ear to his ass? ].

It's awful; Daryan pushes at Klavier with his feet and tries to squirm his hips out of reach [ because he can't let Klavier do that; it's just so -

and oh god what if he - ].

Or:

It's the hottest fucking thing; Daryan bites down on his wrist and lifts his hips to Klavier's mouth when he's not just fucking them into the sheets [ and he has never, nothing Klavier has ever done to him has felt like this

has brought maps of nerves he didn't know he had into livid, aching relief

and Klavier's grip on him is skin-breakingly tight and Daryan can feel the moans that he's not making in the heaviness of his breathing ].

It's messy. The sheets are a mess, where Daryan has caught them in his flexing feet and dragged them into lumps and twists, where spit and sweat have run down Klavier's jaw and between Daryan's legs, where Daryan has ground his cock into the mattress. Klavier has made a mess of him, slicked up his skin, filled his mouth with bruising flesh, left his muscles strained and limp and his nerves screaming.

It's clever. Keeps Daryan open and weak, and already a few stages past utterly fucking mortified, so when Klavier replaces his tongue with shaking slippery fingers it barely registers. There's a burn, and a stretch, but all tangled up in the blur of violent sensation still hammering through him.

It gets more awkward. Oh, it gets every bit as awkward as Daryan knew it would, once he's come down from the shock and pleasure of Klavier's party trick. Once all he's doing is lying like a book with its spine cracked, weighted down by the heel of Klavier's hand lodged at the small of his back, swallowing his hair and the sweat on the inside of his wrists as Klavier's fingers push and rub in graceless thrusts over and inside him, and make noises [ oh god the noises ] that make Daryan sort of want to kill himself every time he hears them.

And Klavier is taking his sweet time. He's not careful; his nails are too long and sometimes his hand slips too fast and too hard. But he is thorough; he doesn't stop until his wrist is making nauseous clicking cramp noises and the movement of his fingers is almost smooth and easy, like they're supposed to be up there and he didn't have to spend fuck only knows how long and what feels like an entire tube of lubricant getting them to stop getting stuck.

And though it doesn't feel bad it's too slow, too much like work for there to be anything other than the quiet hum of skin-on-skin stimulation to distract him [ from the quiet private shame of his own physicality

and the quiet private wonder at the gut-clenching intimacy of the touch ].

An interlude, once Klavier extracts his fingers, in three parts:

The relaxing of stretches: the lock of Daryan's jaw around his arm; the inverse hunch of his shoulders; the perpendicular angles of his thigh; his ass around Klavier's fingers (and the realisation that he is not fully elastic, that the effects of Klavier bending and pulling him out of shape linger in residues, burns and aches and tingles like a patch of skin that's just been scratched).

A conversation that never has to happen (and thank the fucking lord for that), in the crackle of Klavier fumbling with a condom.

A conversation that can't happen, even under cover of the music:

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah, I am."

It doesn't hurt, not too much. The problem's mostly that despite Klavier's best efforts, it's still kind of a matter of forcing things, at least at first - and plus Daryan's not comfortable, Klavier be damned; his legs are really starting to hurt, and he's sweating so much you could probably wring it out of the sheets, and he hasn't breathed fresh air in a very long time. And there's no room between his hips and the bed for a hand on his cock, to take the edge off it.

[ and Klavier curved over him, eyes wide open and hair all over his face, is just a picture drawn by his screwed-eyes and swallows against the pillow ]

The silence, too, is driving him mad, that all he's got to say stop, wait, shift your legs, you're going to dislocate my hip is a hand scrabbling across the bed for Klavier's, and a foot hooked around Klavier's ankle that he can only move in weak sorts of pokes and caresses.

[ and that he can't say yes, fuck, keep going

and he can't hear Klavier tell him, what he wants, if it's good, what it's like ]

Daryan's not sold on it, not quite. Maybe it'll get better with practice, but he can't see himself ever desperate for it, like he gets for a mouth or a hand or a cunt, like he needs Klavier's cock in him right now. He wonders what it is that girls like about it, being fucked, that Klavier likes about it enough to have done it more than once.

[ and then he wonders what it would be like to fuck Klavier

to see him biting his hand and curling his toes

does he fuck face to face?

would he arch his back and throw back his head or cling with damp hands and damp thighs?

what would he look like stretched out like Daryan is, drained and laid open?

and then he wonders what Klavier sees

looking down at him now ]

It's not earthshattering. It feels like scratching an itch, that same kind of satisfaction without relief. But it's sex; it's skin and friction and warmth and limbs and movement, and Daryan is enjoying it [ and it's sex with Klavier, who trails his fingertips from the pit of Daryan's knee to tracing the circle Daryan's making around his cock, whose rhythm hiccups and falters when Daryan flexes his hips or his thighs or his fingers, whose jaw is aching and wet, and Daryan would do this again, oh he would ].

It doesn't last long enough for Daryan to come again from it. But when Klavier's thrusts go shallow and ineffectual, when he tenses and shudders and lurches forward to bite so hard at Daryan's shoulder he'll be covering it for a month, it sort of feels like he does anyway - and when he does come, when he's let Klavier rearrange him enough to jerk him off with a hand still tacky with lube, it's weak and drawn-out, like an aftershock.

That's it, then.

So what now?

Klavier's Bad Film version: Daryan turns over; they kiss; Klavier drapes himself over Daryan's chest; thank you and was it good for you and falling into boneless sleep.

But Daryan thinks they've fallen off the edge of the film scene (or maybe into a different film). Into the bits that don't make a story: where you wipe yourself clean with the sheets or on your thigh, where you rub out the pins and needles in your feet, where you have to go looking for your clothes with your ass aching and your cock flapping about and lube smeared down your thighs, where you pick up talking about all the pointless unromantic crap you were talking about before you decided to have sex, where you drag your trousers on over all the sex that's clinging to you and walk home on legs that feel like overcooked noodles, and you're crossing your fingers the whole time there's going to be nobody up at home to see you turn up looking like - well, like you've just been thoroughly fucked.

[ and at the same time -

as Daryan lies there, letting the fuck burn out of him and his heart-rate calm and quiet, Klavier half-on half-off him and with his hand still stuck between the mattress and Daryan's cock, he can feel a narrative start to resolve itself from tonight

backwards, back through the last almost a year now, ordering:
another hour with liquid exhausted eyes in front of a chat window, even though it's 3am
the knot that drew up tight on first sight of a kid drowning in too-big sunglasses and a too-heavy leather jacket
the numbness in his foot where he wouldn't move his leg because Klavier had laid his head on it
every single time they've played together
a catalogue of stares: at Klavier under stage lights, at Klavier outlining his Plans, at Klavier telling him about That Time When, at Klavier dancing and drinking and writing and falling asleep on his bed
and laughter
and sudden unexpected confidences, when Daryan told him about his sister, when Klavier admitted he was being treated like shit at work

into something that makes an awful kind of sense

and indistinctly forwards, too, as far as Daryan is prepared to look ]

Daryan doesn't know what's going to happen next.

But he figures he should probably start trying to get out.