FIC: Knowing (David Shepherd/Jack Benjamin); Kings; NC-17
Title: Knowing
Author: Esmeralda (water_from_esmeralda@mac.com)
Fandom: Kings
Pairing(s): David Shepherd/Jack Benjamin
Timeline: shortly after Pilgrimage
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a work of impure fiction.
Feedback: Responses, including constructive criticism, are always welcome.
Original Date: Written November 2009
*******
David knows. It is one of his gifts, the knowing. He doesn’t understand, but that doesn’t matter. Ignoring the signs only leads to ill. He has learned at least that. Jack, across the great hall, his sardonic expression masking something else, sneers at him.
David finds Michelle, draws her away by the elbow to the porch, whispers in her ear what he means to do. Her eyes widen. She frowns, gives her head a little shake. David pulls back, gazes into her eyes, asking permission, and for more than one thing. “I’m worried for him,” he says earnestly, as though that could explain all.
A little anger wells up. “For him. Only for his good? When we can finally be together.”
He shrugs, helplessly. “His good may be mine, may be ours. I only know that I’m supposed to try to help. He saved us from terrible harm. Perhaps I can still save him.”
“He spins webs with the worst of them, David. And I…, the thought of you….” she falters, blushing a little. She bites her lip. “It’s complicated.”
“Is it really so horrible?” he asks, gently.
“Would you ask this of me if I had a sister instead? I’m supposed to stand aside and watch you go off together?”
David is at a loss. The edict of higher powers, it seems, does not guarantee a smooth way. Another test always lurks around a corner. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking of it that way.”
“You aren’t simply carrying a bowl of soup to a sick man. How were you thinking of it?”
David’s brow furrows. “I don’t really know.” His hands are warm, his mind calm; there is no clenching fear like before a sortie or when faced with a choice as to which loved one to hurt in doing the right thing.
“What if he falls in love?”
David snorts. “I think we all agree that mostly, he hates me. That won’t change.”
“What if you do?”
David smiles at her then, a mysterious smile of his heart, the gift of his joy in his face. She can’t help but relent. David kisses her and slips out of the party.
*******
If David were a sophisticated man, he might enjoy the expression on Jack’s face as the door to the kitchen opens. As it is, he is simply nervous, unsure of how exactly to play this part, only sure that he must be here.
“How did you get in?” demands Jack, duly outraged.
David holds up Michelle’s key, slips it back into his pocket.
Jack makes for the scotch already poured and sitting neat for him. “Get out,” he says, offhandedly.
“I can’t do that. Not yet.”
“You are an increasingly presumptuous bit of annoyance, Shepherd. Very well, speak your boon so that I can get on with the important business of throwing myself face down on my feather tick.”
“Jack…”
A swallow of scotch, tossed back. An arched brow, challenging him to spit it out.
“Jack.” The tone of voice is soft, lower now, a benediction.
The glass lowers. “What are you doing, you naïve farm boy.” Jack exhales long and slow. “Here be dragons. Turn back.” He reaches for the bottle and pours. “Run to the bed of my lovely, noble sister before you find yourself irrevocably damaged.”
David lifts a hand, palm open in quiet supplication. “I won’t speak of what you’ve lost. You haven’t confided in me. I’m here on instinct. It’s all I have. I’m here because you’re in need.”
Jack turns away, goes to the window. “How dare you.” It is said without venom, as if by rote, no question in it at all.
David’s voice answers from close to Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t know.” Warm, rough, working hands clasp Jack’s shoulders, calluses snagging the fine fabric as thumbs rub back and forth. “I’m here for comfort, nothing more. No platitudes, no lectures, just whatever you need.”
Jack makes a soft sound, angry and wounded at once. “You can’t be whatever I need.”
“I know,” David replies, sorrowfully.
“I would sooner flay the flesh off your bones with a kitchen knife than lay my grief bare to you.” But Jack doesn’t shake off the hands.
“It’s been a month since the funeral. The engagement can’t be helping. The Queen…” David can’t bring himself to articulate the truth. He knows the loving cruelty of mothers all too well.
David can faintly see both their reflections in the dark window. He meets Jack’s mirror-eyes. Heart pounding, he leans in and places his lips against the side of Jack’s neck, just above the collar of his shirt. He breathes in Jack’s scent, reverently. Jack shakes his head slightly, lifts the glass, takes another swallow. David feels the muscles work, taking the burning liquor down, gathering the bitter, hateful words. But they don’t come. David raises his head, lifting his lips away.
“As much as I enjoy pretty gifts offered me at every turn, I usually prefer the ones that want it. Whether saint or sycophant, you’re not here for your own want. Go home.”
David thinks that the way Jack fails to use the correct ‘who’ is so artfully in character. The big hands slide off Jack’s shoulders. David sees him close his eyes briefly, forgetting the dark mirror. David steps in, his arms going round, pressing just close enough. He sees Jack’s eyes widen in that expression so similar, so familiar. Usually, the brother suppresses it in time.
“Must be nice to know that you could produce an heir even if the bedmate isn’t to your liking,” Jack says dryly.
“You hate me.” David feels a deep sadness, the light flickering away from him. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” He knows the lie of that. It matters.
“I hate being told what I feel.” Jack sighs. “You would do it all, anything, right?”
David examines the contents of his head for a few moments, feels the light strengthen, then nods.
“Even betray my sister. That, I wouldn’t have seen coming.”
David eases in a slow breath to ward off the storm. “She knows.”
“Oh good God, she’s loaning you.” Jack shakes David off.
“I went to her. It was my request.”
Jack turns then, and without the glass reflecting, David finds it much harder to meet his eyes. “You think I’m so desperate? In need of your mercy, both of you? Or that I want you? Pathetic. I’ve dreamed of you down on your knees kissing my boots, servicing me with that mouth because I ordered you to, because I wield power. Not because you’re important.” The angry revelation takes them both by surprise, creates a little silence as Jack’s gaze challenges David.
David takes a half-step back, giving ground. “You know what surprises me the most,” he says, “is that hearing you say that arouses me.” He squares his shoulders. “It was a mistake, coming here. It isn’t my place to presume to comfort the crown-prince and my superior officer, unasked. I beg your pardon, Jack.” He dips his head once and leaves.
Jack catches him at the flat’s outer door, the one leading to the lift, pins him by a shoulder to the wall. “You are not a comfort-boy, damn you, not a whore or a climber, not one of us outcasts. How did you think I would react?”
“It seems that compared to you and your sister, I suffer from a prodigious lack of thinking,” he replies mildly.
Seemingly finished for the moment with arguing, Jack’s mouth covers David’s as he molds David to the wall with his own body.
Looks from men and clumsy passes notwithstanding, the occasional taunts and gropes of other soldiers aside, David has not known what to expect. Jack, of course, tastes of scotch and desperation, the salt of hasty tears in the car. But his mouth, oh, his mouth is lush and rough, kissing deep, his tongue roving, then softening, gentling David, easing back before turning and moving in again. Matched for a height, there are no secrets. David is breathing as hard as a pack-run uphill might cause. He yields at first, following, trying to answer. Jack bites his neck, grinds against him once, and David moans before he can catch the sound.
“Oh,” Jack breathes against the side of his face, “you stole that from me, before.”
David makes an inquiring noise, half-distracted by wondering whose pulse he feels in his groin.
“When you refused Claudia. She had instructions to turn on the intercom. I wanted to hear you. She’s a good girl; knows when to be quiet herself.”
Instead of being horrified, as he well should be and knows it, David feels more blood pump into his cock, almost painfully.
Jack feels it too. He yanks David away from the wall and pulls him back, stumbling, into the flat. He makes for the couch then checks their momentum and turns for the bedroom. Once there, he starts tearing away clothing and shoes at random, then realizes that David is standing stock-still. He looks up, past trouser buttons undone, a half-ripped shirt, and heaving chest.
“You aren’t wearing boots, and I should be on my knees,” David’s expression is gentle, not taunting. He’s offering.
“This is not that. That is for another day, perhaps, another mood.” Jack falters at the look on David’s face. “Or maybe it’s only for inside my head. You ever fantasize about forcing a girl?”
Slowly, David nods. This is not a time to lie, as much as the fact of it pains him.
“But you know you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t like it if you did. You don’t know why you think about it. It’s some survival impulse from the part of you built before we evolved a forebrain. I shouldn’t have said what I did earlier.”
“I’m glad you did.” David’s hand moves a couple of inches to graze Jack’s jawline.
Jack returns his attention to getting David’s trousers down and off. His hands settle on David’s hips. “I often behave like a man who has a small cock.” He smiles up. “I assure you, I don’t. But this,” he grips David’s sturdy and very focused erection, “this makes my mouth water. I have to suck it.” And then he does.
No novice to the blowjob, David trembles as the force of Jack's enjoyment is communicated very effectively. Distantly, he thinks that girls do it well, but that they can’t translate the joy of receiving it into the joy of giving. He wants to come hard, right away, his belly clenches with the effort of holding off. He touches Jack’s jaw again. “Please, I want to last,” he says through gasping breath.
Jack sits back on his heels, lips glistening, a trail of precome breaking away. “Indeed.”
David pulls him to standing again and this time, initiates the kiss. He’s more gentle than Jack until Jack urges him on, until he learns that his partner is just as strong as he is. It’s a powerful feeling, letting loose when he wants, touching sweetly when he wishes.
“Umm,” Jack says, “you could develop a taste for this, couldn’t you.” His icy eyes narrow. “What if we want to do it again, you and me. Will we have permission? Can I call you to my bed at will?”
David’s ears thud with his pulse. “You move on once you’ve had someone,” he says, “nearly always.” He doesn’t say out loud that it would be a cold day on the devil’s own doorstep when he’d be passed around as a party favor. This is for Jack alone. Perhaps something to be savored once only in a lifetime. “I don’t expect this to be different.”
“Nor do I expect you’ll fill the role of my dead love,” Jack says matter-of-factly. “Mostly, I wanted to say that you’re very good at this so far, and I like it. The other words are just in the way, my bitterness getting the better of me as it does more often than not.”
“Oh.” David flushes. He hooks his fingers in Jack’s waistband. “Let me.” Clasps and zipper and briefs and then it’s only Jack under his hands. Silky where David is crisp and curly, longer, perhaps slightly less thick. Of course, he compares to himself, that’s all he knows. He sinks to his knees, wondering, for a moment, if the time will come tonight when pleasure will become pain he can’t endure. Looking at Jack’s cock, it seems likely. He licks, tentatively, then more earnestly, finally drawing in a good bit of length.
Jack doesn’t fight for quiet like David does. He doesn’t babble, but he does give instruction and encouragement. On his own, David curls his fingers around Jack’s balls and presses just behind them in a smooth, circular motion. Jack’s hands slide into David’s hair. “I’ll come twice tonight,” Jack whispers, “will you swallow me this time?”
Because he’s asking, not ordering, David is tempted to shy away from it. He’s sweating with the effort and with fighting the throbbing in his own cock, unrelieved. But then, he can’t imagine breaking the connection between them. He hums his assent.
“It isn’t so much come that you can’t breathe in between and swallow easily,” Jack says, sounding like he’s having trouble stringing together a sentence, “no matter what you see in porn. But are you sure?”
David thinks about how what Jack did to him felt, how badly he wanted to let go before, and how sure he is that had he given in, he wouldn’t rise again that night. But Jack is confident. Sweat rolls down David’s spine and drips off his tailbone. He nods, sweeping his tongue along the underside for emphasis.
“Ah,” Jack sighs, sharply. “You’re a gorgeous sight all by yourself, but with this,” he pushes forward a bit, “God help me it’s all I can do not to fuck your mouth.”
David’s eyes flick up for the first time since he’s had Jack’s cock in his mouth, shy before, but not after words like that.
“That’s it… oh yes, David-the-hero, farm boy gold-as-wheat, make me come for you.” The icy gaze has turned hot.
The old taunts sound like endearments, and David wants this for Jack, wants him to have a moment of light that might call to more light, that might open the way. He swirls his sore tongue, his clasped fingers busy on the shaft and just behind. The bitterness that follows isn’t so much; harsh words are far worse and their absence is a sweetener for the taste. Jack is somehow caressing David’s hair through his climax, gentle and loving.
David almost chokes for lack of timing his breathing, but he manages not to. He feels Jack’s belly relax against his forehead, and after the last delayed pulses subside, he pulls away with a sigh.
“Come up here,” Jack commands.
David stands, his legs shaky. The kisses are light, sampling.
“I never did develop a taste for my own semen,” Jack smiles wryly. “But it seems selfish not to kiss a mouth that gifted, in gratitude.”
David offers his neck.
“Oh, another morsel to taste instead. Well thought, Shepherd.” Jack kisses just below David’s ear, a little behind, a little lower. David shivers. Jack nips his collarbone, moves down, licks his nipple. David finds himself pushed backward onto the bed and doesn’t resist. He accepts all the pleasure, everything. Even startled that Jack presses one leg back and licks his asshole, he concentrates on receiving. It makes him squirm. He doubts he can be so worshipful when it’s his turn.
Jack sits up. “Don’t look so worried. Rimming is an acquired taste and frankly, I don’t like receiving.”
“Sorry,” David says sheepishly at transmitting his thoughts so clearly in his body language, “it felt really good.”
Jack raises both eyebrows. “You mentioned ‘hate’ earlier. I do admit that it rankles to have someone underfoot all the time bent on being good. Reverends are troublesome but useful. Good boys are entirely another sort of curse. I’ve discarded the theory that you’re plotting and planning intrigue. You lead by example and it horrifies me.”
“I don’t mean to lead. I don’t want it.”
“It isn’t a choice. But if it isn’t intrigue, why are you here?”
“For this.”
“Have you needed it?”
David ponders what he has avoided. “Contrary to what people often think, helping is not selfless.” He looks up at Jack. “I know that by telling you more, it can come back over and over to harm me. But it needs to be said. I admire you. Even when I think you do wrong, I see your strength as well as your weaknesses. When you spurn me, it hurts. More than I think it should. When you touch me, even to hit me, I feel excitement, the thrill of the chase. Your anger burns me. Your hate chills me to the bone. The rare tenderness, whether real or artifice, reaches in deep.”
Jack’s face is open, curious. “Careful, I don’t need to tell you what that sounds like.”
David shrugs. “Love is not so narrow as people make it.”
“But this,” Jack traces a line up from David’s navel to his mouth and toys with the curve of his lower lip. “You haven’t needed this. Not like I do.”
“How could I know?”
“Oh, you would have known. At least once, you would have fucked your own hand for want of me, you would have….” Jack’s eyes widen in that telltale expression.
David feels himself flushing all over. There is no covering it. He closes his eyes. In the recurring nightmares of the gun going off, the shot to save Jack, the gun burning in his hand, a very dead man in the leaves, there had once been a hazy aftermath of a conversation about a choice, and about debt. In that dream, Jack hadn’t turned away, he had pressed a kiss to David’s lips, and David had awoken not in terror, but in heat. Heat that persisted and was only relieved in the shower with the liberal application of soap.
“God be praised,” Jack sighs, relaxing down next to David. “I’m going to fuck you,” he says low and filthy into David’s ear. “But there’s a surprise here too.” David turns his head in curiosity. Jack rummages one-handed in a box above the headboard and pulls out several condoms. “First, you’re going to fuck me.”
David couldn’t be more surprised. It shows.
“As the unquestioned alpha I choose tonight to place my bed off-limits to power struggles. For one night. No games of dominance and submission, just raw pleasure. If you tell anyone, even sweet Michelle, I’ll simply have you killed,” he says it lightly, a packet between his fingers, offered.
David knows that he isn’t joking. The statement frames all the pillow talk into proper perspective. This is the future king, who sees David as a rival. Jack has plotted more than once to do away with David. David could leave now. It would be safer, perhaps. He pays attention to his body, and he isn’t really less excited. He’s disappointed at Jack’s coldness. But light needs time to make things grow that have been trapped in the dark.
Jack is stretched out along him, propped on an elbow, looking for all the world like a painting of a forest god, wily and decadent, likely as not to use those ripe lips to flute an unsuspecting mortal straight to the wolves. True to his promise, Jack is ready again. David takes the packet and cracks it. Jack’s answering smile speaks directly to David’s cock.
Jack moves underneath David in a highly educational way. David’s worry about hurting, about finding “the right spot” vanishes in Jack’s enthusiasm. David finds himself almost attacking in his vigor and once again becomes concerned about lasting because Jack meets his rhythm thrust for thrust.
“Oh, God,” Jack moans, “I can’t stop. Don’t you fucking dare stop.”
David obeys, sweat slick between them, and Jack arches, amazingly silent, as he floods their bellies and draws David out in long pulses along with him. It is David who cries out at the end.
He is falling asleep hard. “I thought…”
“Shhh.”
He awakens in the blue light before dawn to the sound of a wrapper. He blinks and yawns a little.
“Good, you’re awake,” Jack says quietly, “I couldn’t wait.” David feels Jack move to lay all along his back, one leg thrown over his. “I thought it would feel better if you were sleepy.” Lubed and cool, his hard cock slides back and forth, teasing. “Nod if you still want it.” David nods. “Now, grab your cock, David, just like when you thought of me when you were alone.”
David shivers whether from hearing his name or the other words, he doesn’t know, and he complies, feeling the first jolt run between his cock and where Jack is rubbing. Jack is speaking directly into his ear, so softly, and then he tweaks a nipple hard and before David can properly react, he’s pressing in with a smooth, long movement that would be terrifying if David thought about it. Somehow, he isn’t clenching or fighting. It feels weird, alien. And there is a small spike of shrapnel that hurts in a place he can’t readily identify. But Jack is happy, so happy, David can hear that ecstatic quality in his voice as he starts to move and croons the divinity of being inside another person, trusted, whole together. Jack explaining his need to have this with a man, a physical equal. He doesn’t say with you and maybe he wouldn’t mean it if he did say it. In a blinding flash, the pleasure manifests.
“Oh, God,” David says suddenly. He moves back, awkwardly, against Jack. Jack caresses his thigh and hip, the nipple he can reach, his throat. David loses track. He forgets to stroke himself. Jack takes over and David just braces himself on the mattress.
“Feel me, inside you,” Jack murmurs. “Most men never feel this, they never understand the pleasure of receptivity. They think women, and men like me, want to be filled because we’re empty and weak.”
“Even the replete want to be filled with light,” David whispers just before plunging over.
“Exactly.” It’s the last thing either of them hears for hours.
*******
David drives to his apartment in a somber mood. The city is still quiet.
When they had awakened in the true dawn, Jack dismissed him with a sardonic smile and a flick of his hand before turning over and going back to sleep. The service man had nodded at him as he left, showing respect without a hint of undertone.
Exhausted, David opens his apartment door and immediately sees Michelle sitting clothed on the bed, reading. She smiles at him, radiant if nervous. “Mission accomplished?”
He nods, worried; he wasn’t prepared for talk yet. “Keeping vigil for me?”
“I didn’t exactly sleep soundly last night but I just got here a half hour ago. Figured I should see if you were okay. Jack is… often cruel. And sometimes wonderful. So I hear.”
“Both,” David admits. “Does that make you feel badly? I don’t want you to be hurt.”
She holds out her hand to him. “Come, love, and just sleep for awhile where it’s safe. You look like you need it.”
“I want to, but you’ll be offended if I don’t take a shower first.”
Her eyes widen at his bluntness in that way she shares with her brother. There’s a hint of something sparked off that’s usually banked unless they’re far along in bed together. David raises a brow. She shakes her head, flustered, and turns a page. “Go take your shower, silly.”
As he does, he wonders what this knowing, followed, can have in store for him besides danger and pain and risk of heartache for them all. But he trusts the light.
*******
Author: Esmeralda (water_from_esmeralda@mac.com)
Fandom: Kings
Pairing(s): David Shepherd/Jack Benjamin
Timeline: shortly after Pilgrimage
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a work of impure fiction.
Feedback: Responses, including constructive criticism, are always welcome.
Original Date: Written November 2009
*******
David knows. It is one of his gifts, the knowing. He doesn’t understand, but that doesn’t matter. Ignoring the signs only leads to ill. He has learned at least that. Jack, across the great hall, his sardonic expression masking something else, sneers at him.
David finds Michelle, draws her away by the elbow to the porch, whispers in her ear what he means to do. Her eyes widen. She frowns, gives her head a little shake. David pulls back, gazes into her eyes, asking permission, and for more than one thing. “I’m worried for him,” he says earnestly, as though that could explain all.
A little anger wells up. “For him. Only for his good? When we can finally be together.”
He shrugs, helplessly. “His good may be mine, may be ours. I only know that I’m supposed to try to help. He saved us from terrible harm. Perhaps I can still save him.”
“He spins webs with the worst of them, David. And I…, the thought of you….” she falters, blushing a little. She bites her lip. “It’s complicated.”
“Is it really so horrible?” he asks, gently.
“Would you ask this of me if I had a sister instead? I’m supposed to stand aside and watch you go off together?”
David is at a loss. The edict of higher powers, it seems, does not guarantee a smooth way. Another test always lurks around a corner. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking of it that way.”
“You aren’t simply carrying a bowl of soup to a sick man. How were you thinking of it?”
David’s brow furrows. “I don’t really know.” His hands are warm, his mind calm; there is no clenching fear like before a sortie or when faced with a choice as to which loved one to hurt in doing the right thing.
“What if he falls in love?”
David snorts. “I think we all agree that mostly, he hates me. That won’t change.”
“What if you do?”
David smiles at her then, a mysterious smile of his heart, the gift of his joy in his face. She can’t help but relent. David kisses her and slips out of the party.
*******
If David were a sophisticated man, he might enjoy the expression on Jack’s face as the door to the kitchen opens. As it is, he is simply nervous, unsure of how exactly to play this part, only sure that he must be here.
“How did you get in?” demands Jack, duly outraged.
David holds up Michelle’s key, slips it back into his pocket.
Jack makes for the scotch already poured and sitting neat for him. “Get out,” he says, offhandedly.
“I can’t do that. Not yet.”
“You are an increasingly presumptuous bit of annoyance, Shepherd. Very well, speak your boon so that I can get on with the important business of throwing myself face down on my feather tick.”
“Jack…”
A swallow of scotch, tossed back. An arched brow, challenging him to spit it out.
“Jack.” The tone of voice is soft, lower now, a benediction.
The glass lowers. “What are you doing, you naïve farm boy.” Jack exhales long and slow. “Here be dragons. Turn back.” He reaches for the bottle and pours. “Run to the bed of my lovely, noble sister before you find yourself irrevocably damaged.”
David lifts a hand, palm open in quiet supplication. “I won’t speak of what you’ve lost. You haven’t confided in me. I’m here on instinct. It’s all I have. I’m here because you’re in need.”
Jack turns away, goes to the window. “How dare you.” It is said without venom, as if by rote, no question in it at all.
David’s voice answers from close to Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t know.” Warm, rough, working hands clasp Jack’s shoulders, calluses snagging the fine fabric as thumbs rub back and forth. “I’m here for comfort, nothing more. No platitudes, no lectures, just whatever you need.”
Jack makes a soft sound, angry and wounded at once. “You can’t be whatever I need.”
“I know,” David replies, sorrowfully.
“I would sooner flay the flesh off your bones with a kitchen knife than lay my grief bare to you.” But Jack doesn’t shake off the hands.
“It’s been a month since the funeral. The engagement can’t be helping. The Queen…” David can’t bring himself to articulate the truth. He knows the loving cruelty of mothers all too well.
David can faintly see both their reflections in the dark window. He meets Jack’s mirror-eyes. Heart pounding, he leans in and places his lips against the side of Jack’s neck, just above the collar of his shirt. He breathes in Jack’s scent, reverently. Jack shakes his head slightly, lifts the glass, takes another swallow. David feels the muscles work, taking the burning liquor down, gathering the bitter, hateful words. But they don’t come. David raises his head, lifting his lips away.
“As much as I enjoy pretty gifts offered me at every turn, I usually prefer the ones that want it. Whether saint or sycophant, you’re not here for your own want. Go home.”
David thinks that the way Jack fails to use the correct ‘who’ is so artfully in character. The big hands slide off Jack’s shoulders. David sees him close his eyes briefly, forgetting the dark mirror. David steps in, his arms going round, pressing just close enough. He sees Jack’s eyes widen in that expression so similar, so familiar. Usually, the brother suppresses it in time.
“Must be nice to know that you could produce an heir even if the bedmate isn’t to your liking,” Jack says dryly.
“You hate me.” David feels a deep sadness, the light flickering away from him. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” He knows the lie of that. It matters.
“I hate being told what I feel.” Jack sighs. “You would do it all, anything, right?”
David examines the contents of his head for a few moments, feels the light strengthen, then nods.
“Even betray my sister. That, I wouldn’t have seen coming.”
David eases in a slow breath to ward off the storm. “She knows.”
“Oh good God, she’s loaning you.” Jack shakes David off.
“I went to her. It was my request.”
Jack turns then, and without the glass reflecting, David finds it much harder to meet his eyes. “You think I’m so desperate? In need of your mercy, both of you? Or that I want you? Pathetic. I’ve dreamed of you down on your knees kissing my boots, servicing me with that mouth because I ordered you to, because I wield power. Not because you’re important.” The angry revelation takes them both by surprise, creates a little silence as Jack’s gaze challenges David.
David takes a half-step back, giving ground. “You know what surprises me the most,” he says, “is that hearing you say that arouses me.” He squares his shoulders. “It was a mistake, coming here. It isn’t my place to presume to comfort the crown-prince and my superior officer, unasked. I beg your pardon, Jack.” He dips his head once and leaves.
Jack catches him at the flat’s outer door, the one leading to the lift, pins him by a shoulder to the wall. “You are not a comfort-boy, damn you, not a whore or a climber, not one of us outcasts. How did you think I would react?”
“It seems that compared to you and your sister, I suffer from a prodigious lack of thinking,” he replies mildly.
Seemingly finished for the moment with arguing, Jack’s mouth covers David’s as he molds David to the wall with his own body.
Looks from men and clumsy passes notwithstanding, the occasional taunts and gropes of other soldiers aside, David has not known what to expect. Jack, of course, tastes of scotch and desperation, the salt of hasty tears in the car. But his mouth, oh, his mouth is lush and rough, kissing deep, his tongue roving, then softening, gentling David, easing back before turning and moving in again. Matched for a height, there are no secrets. David is breathing as hard as a pack-run uphill might cause. He yields at first, following, trying to answer. Jack bites his neck, grinds against him once, and David moans before he can catch the sound.
“Oh,” Jack breathes against the side of his face, “you stole that from me, before.”
David makes an inquiring noise, half-distracted by wondering whose pulse he feels in his groin.
“When you refused Claudia. She had instructions to turn on the intercom. I wanted to hear you. She’s a good girl; knows when to be quiet herself.”
Instead of being horrified, as he well should be and knows it, David feels more blood pump into his cock, almost painfully.
Jack feels it too. He yanks David away from the wall and pulls him back, stumbling, into the flat. He makes for the couch then checks their momentum and turns for the bedroom. Once there, he starts tearing away clothing and shoes at random, then realizes that David is standing stock-still. He looks up, past trouser buttons undone, a half-ripped shirt, and heaving chest.
“You aren’t wearing boots, and I should be on my knees,” David’s expression is gentle, not taunting. He’s offering.
“This is not that. That is for another day, perhaps, another mood.” Jack falters at the look on David’s face. “Or maybe it’s only for inside my head. You ever fantasize about forcing a girl?”
Slowly, David nods. This is not a time to lie, as much as the fact of it pains him.
“But you know you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t like it if you did. You don’t know why you think about it. It’s some survival impulse from the part of you built before we evolved a forebrain. I shouldn’t have said what I did earlier.”
“I’m glad you did.” David’s hand moves a couple of inches to graze Jack’s jawline.
Jack returns his attention to getting David’s trousers down and off. His hands settle on David’s hips. “I often behave like a man who has a small cock.” He smiles up. “I assure you, I don’t. But this,” he grips David’s sturdy and very focused erection, “this makes my mouth water. I have to suck it.” And then he does.
No novice to the blowjob, David trembles as the force of Jack's enjoyment is communicated very effectively. Distantly, he thinks that girls do it well, but that they can’t translate the joy of receiving it into the joy of giving. He wants to come hard, right away, his belly clenches with the effort of holding off. He touches Jack’s jaw again. “Please, I want to last,” he says through gasping breath.
Jack sits back on his heels, lips glistening, a trail of precome breaking away. “Indeed.”
David pulls him to standing again and this time, initiates the kiss. He’s more gentle than Jack until Jack urges him on, until he learns that his partner is just as strong as he is. It’s a powerful feeling, letting loose when he wants, touching sweetly when he wishes.
“Umm,” Jack says, “you could develop a taste for this, couldn’t you.” His icy eyes narrow. “What if we want to do it again, you and me. Will we have permission? Can I call you to my bed at will?”
David’s ears thud with his pulse. “You move on once you’ve had someone,” he says, “nearly always.” He doesn’t say out loud that it would be a cold day on the devil’s own doorstep when he’d be passed around as a party favor. This is for Jack alone. Perhaps something to be savored once only in a lifetime. “I don’t expect this to be different.”
“Nor do I expect you’ll fill the role of my dead love,” Jack says matter-of-factly. “Mostly, I wanted to say that you’re very good at this so far, and I like it. The other words are just in the way, my bitterness getting the better of me as it does more often than not.”
“Oh.” David flushes. He hooks his fingers in Jack’s waistband. “Let me.” Clasps and zipper and briefs and then it’s only Jack under his hands. Silky where David is crisp and curly, longer, perhaps slightly less thick. Of course, he compares to himself, that’s all he knows. He sinks to his knees, wondering, for a moment, if the time will come tonight when pleasure will become pain he can’t endure. Looking at Jack’s cock, it seems likely. He licks, tentatively, then more earnestly, finally drawing in a good bit of length.
Jack doesn’t fight for quiet like David does. He doesn’t babble, but he does give instruction and encouragement. On his own, David curls his fingers around Jack’s balls and presses just behind them in a smooth, circular motion. Jack’s hands slide into David’s hair. “I’ll come twice tonight,” Jack whispers, “will you swallow me this time?”
Because he’s asking, not ordering, David is tempted to shy away from it. He’s sweating with the effort and with fighting the throbbing in his own cock, unrelieved. But then, he can’t imagine breaking the connection between them. He hums his assent.
“It isn’t so much come that you can’t breathe in between and swallow easily,” Jack says, sounding like he’s having trouble stringing together a sentence, “no matter what you see in porn. But are you sure?”
David thinks about how what Jack did to him felt, how badly he wanted to let go before, and how sure he is that had he given in, he wouldn’t rise again that night. But Jack is confident. Sweat rolls down David’s spine and drips off his tailbone. He nods, sweeping his tongue along the underside for emphasis.
“Ah,” Jack sighs, sharply. “You’re a gorgeous sight all by yourself, but with this,” he pushes forward a bit, “God help me it’s all I can do not to fuck your mouth.”
David’s eyes flick up for the first time since he’s had Jack’s cock in his mouth, shy before, but not after words like that.
“That’s it… oh yes, David-the-hero, farm boy gold-as-wheat, make me come for you.” The icy gaze has turned hot.
The old taunts sound like endearments, and David wants this for Jack, wants him to have a moment of light that might call to more light, that might open the way. He swirls his sore tongue, his clasped fingers busy on the shaft and just behind. The bitterness that follows isn’t so much; harsh words are far worse and their absence is a sweetener for the taste. Jack is somehow caressing David’s hair through his climax, gentle and loving.
David almost chokes for lack of timing his breathing, but he manages not to. He feels Jack’s belly relax against his forehead, and after the last delayed pulses subside, he pulls away with a sigh.
“Come up here,” Jack commands.
David stands, his legs shaky. The kisses are light, sampling.
“I never did develop a taste for my own semen,” Jack smiles wryly. “But it seems selfish not to kiss a mouth that gifted, in gratitude.”
David offers his neck.
“Oh, another morsel to taste instead. Well thought, Shepherd.” Jack kisses just below David’s ear, a little behind, a little lower. David shivers. Jack nips his collarbone, moves down, licks his nipple. David finds himself pushed backward onto the bed and doesn’t resist. He accepts all the pleasure, everything. Even startled that Jack presses one leg back and licks his asshole, he concentrates on receiving. It makes him squirm. He doubts he can be so worshipful when it’s his turn.
Jack sits up. “Don’t look so worried. Rimming is an acquired taste and frankly, I don’t like receiving.”
“Sorry,” David says sheepishly at transmitting his thoughts so clearly in his body language, “it felt really good.”
Jack raises both eyebrows. “You mentioned ‘hate’ earlier. I do admit that it rankles to have someone underfoot all the time bent on being good. Reverends are troublesome but useful. Good boys are entirely another sort of curse. I’ve discarded the theory that you’re plotting and planning intrigue. You lead by example and it horrifies me.”
“I don’t mean to lead. I don’t want it.”
“It isn’t a choice. But if it isn’t intrigue, why are you here?”
“For this.”
“Have you needed it?”
David ponders what he has avoided. “Contrary to what people often think, helping is not selfless.” He looks up at Jack. “I know that by telling you more, it can come back over and over to harm me. But it needs to be said. I admire you. Even when I think you do wrong, I see your strength as well as your weaknesses. When you spurn me, it hurts. More than I think it should. When you touch me, even to hit me, I feel excitement, the thrill of the chase. Your anger burns me. Your hate chills me to the bone. The rare tenderness, whether real or artifice, reaches in deep.”
Jack’s face is open, curious. “Careful, I don’t need to tell you what that sounds like.”
David shrugs. “Love is not so narrow as people make it.”
“But this,” Jack traces a line up from David’s navel to his mouth and toys with the curve of his lower lip. “You haven’t needed this. Not like I do.”
“How could I know?”
“Oh, you would have known. At least once, you would have fucked your own hand for want of me, you would have….” Jack’s eyes widen in that telltale expression.
David feels himself flushing all over. There is no covering it. He closes his eyes. In the recurring nightmares of the gun going off, the shot to save Jack, the gun burning in his hand, a very dead man in the leaves, there had once been a hazy aftermath of a conversation about a choice, and about debt. In that dream, Jack hadn’t turned away, he had pressed a kiss to David’s lips, and David had awoken not in terror, but in heat. Heat that persisted and was only relieved in the shower with the liberal application of soap.
“God be praised,” Jack sighs, relaxing down next to David. “I’m going to fuck you,” he says low and filthy into David’s ear. “But there’s a surprise here too.” David turns his head in curiosity. Jack rummages one-handed in a box above the headboard and pulls out several condoms. “First, you’re going to fuck me.”
David couldn’t be more surprised. It shows.
“As the unquestioned alpha I choose tonight to place my bed off-limits to power struggles. For one night. No games of dominance and submission, just raw pleasure. If you tell anyone, even sweet Michelle, I’ll simply have you killed,” he says it lightly, a packet between his fingers, offered.
David knows that he isn’t joking. The statement frames all the pillow talk into proper perspective. This is the future king, who sees David as a rival. Jack has plotted more than once to do away with David. David could leave now. It would be safer, perhaps. He pays attention to his body, and he isn’t really less excited. He’s disappointed at Jack’s coldness. But light needs time to make things grow that have been trapped in the dark.
Jack is stretched out along him, propped on an elbow, looking for all the world like a painting of a forest god, wily and decadent, likely as not to use those ripe lips to flute an unsuspecting mortal straight to the wolves. True to his promise, Jack is ready again. David takes the packet and cracks it. Jack’s answering smile speaks directly to David’s cock.
Jack moves underneath David in a highly educational way. David’s worry about hurting, about finding “the right spot” vanishes in Jack’s enthusiasm. David finds himself almost attacking in his vigor and once again becomes concerned about lasting because Jack meets his rhythm thrust for thrust.
“Oh, God,” Jack moans, “I can’t stop. Don’t you fucking dare stop.”
David obeys, sweat slick between them, and Jack arches, amazingly silent, as he floods their bellies and draws David out in long pulses along with him. It is David who cries out at the end.
He is falling asleep hard. “I thought…”
“Shhh.”
He awakens in the blue light before dawn to the sound of a wrapper. He blinks and yawns a little.
“Good, you’re awake,” Jack says quietly, “I couldn’t wait.” David feels Jack move to lay all along his back, one leg thrown over his. “I thought it would feel better if you were sleepy.” Lubed and cool, his hard cock slides back and forth, teasing. “Nod if you still want it.” David nods. “Now, grab your cock, David, just like when you thought of me when you were alone.”
David shivers whether from hearing his name or the other words, he doesn’t know, and he complies, feeling the first jolt run between his cock and where Jack is rubbing. Jack is speaking directly into his ear, so softly, and then he tweaks a nipple hard and before David can properly react, he’s pressing in with a smooth, long movement that would be terrifying if David thought about it. Somehow, he isn’t clenching or fighting. It feels weird, alien. And there is a small spike of shrapnel that hurts in a place he can’t readily identify. But Jack is happy, so happy, David can hear that ecstatic quality in his voice as he starts to move and croons the divinity of being inside another person, trusted, whole together. Jack explaining his need to have this with a man, a physical equal. He doesn’t say with you and maybe he wouldn’t mean it if he did say it. In a blinding flash, the pleasure manifests.
“Oh, God,” David says suddenly. He moves back, awkwardly, against Jack. Jack caresses his thigh and hip, the nipple he can reach, his throat. David loses track. He forgets to stroke himself. Jack takes over and David just braces himself on the mattress.
“Feel me, inside you,” Jack murmurs. “Most men never feel this, they never understand the pleasure of receptivity. They think women, and men like me, want to be filled because we’re empty and weak.”
“Even the replete want to be filled with light,” David whispers just before plunging over.
“Exactly.” It’s the last thing either of them hears for hours.
*******
David drives to his apartment in a somber mood. The city is still quiet.
When they had awakened in the true dawn, Jack dismissed him with a sardonic smile and a flick of his hand before turning over and going back to sleep. The service man had nodded at him as he left, showing respect without a hint of undertone.
Exhausted, David opens his apartment door and immediately sees Michelle sitting clothed on the bed, reading. She smiles at him, radiant if nervous. “Mission accomplished?”
He nods, worried; he wasn’t prepared for talk yet. “Keeping vigil for me?”
“I didn’t exactly sleep soundly last night but I just got here a half hour ago. Figured I should see if you were okay. Jack is… often cruel. And sometimes wonderful. So I hear.”
“Both,” David admits. “Does that make you feel badly? I don’t want you to be hurt.”
She holds out her hand to him. “Come, love, and just sleep for awhile where it’s safe. You look like you need it.”
“I want to, but you’ll be offended if I don’t take a shower first.”
Her eyes widen at his bluntness in that way she shares with her brother. There’s a hint of something sparked off that’s usually banked unless they’re far along in bed together. David raises a brow. She shakes her head, flustered, and turns a page. “Go take your shower, silly.”
As he does, he wonders what this knowing, followed, can have in store for him besides danger and pain and risk of heartache for them all. But he trusts the light.
*******