Fic: No one is chasing you but me (Jake/Max)
Title: No one is chasing you but me
Fandom: Welcome to the Punch
Pairings/characters: Jacob Sternwood/Max Lewinsky
Rating: R
Words: 2729
Warnings: none
Summary: A few weeks after Jake has broken Max out of prison, he's really starting to get tired of Max's lack of gratitude.
Author's note: Almost forgot to repost my Yuletide fic, written for elle_dritch. Btw, those of you who have seen The Wire should also REALLY read the fic I received for Yuletide because it's absolutely amazing: Games Beyond the Game by Gileonnen.
“Where have you been?”
Sitting by the crackling fire in the small cabin that had served as their hide-out for the past few weeks, Max Lewinsky sounded more like an annoyed wife than Jake's actual wife ever had, back when they had still been together. The thought would have amused him if Lewinsky hadn't been a royal pain ever since they had arrived here. Jake took off his snow-covered boots and his coat, trying his best to ignore the glares that were being aimed at him, when Lewinsky followed the first question up with -
“Robbed any banks on the way?”
Jake bit back an annoyed groan and walked over to face Lewinsky, found himself staring into hostile blue eyes; Lewinsky's jaw was clenched, his lips twisted into an angry sneer. For all that he had spent most of his life around career criminals, Jake had never met anyone who seemed as constantly angry as the man who had almost caught him. Then again, he probably hadn't really got to know him at the best possible time, so Jake forced himself to stay calm, even though his patience was truly wearing thin.
“Why are you still here?” he asked. Lewinsky's frown turned from angry to confused.
“What?”
“Why are you still here?”
“Probably because you kidnapped me from a prison van, dragged me into the middle of nowhere and broke at least a dozen laws in the process.”
Jake shrugged, unimpressed. Somehow Lewinsky still seemed to think that reminding Jake that he was a criminal would get a rise out of him.
“That explains how you got here, not why you stayed.” He pulled his thick sweater over his head, too warm so close to the bright fire, and threw it over the backrest of the armchair Lewinsky was sitting in. That earned him another glare he chose to ignore. “I provided you with a new passport that nobody would ever realise is fake. The wound in your shoulder has healed well enough that you can take care of it yourself now. And I offered to give you enough money to catch a flight to whatever remote tropic island you'd want to go to.”
“I don't want your stolen money,” Lewinsky snapped, but the objection was only half-hearted. After all, as long as he stayed here, he was also living off Jake's stolen money, so Jake decided to ignore the interruption.
“Fact is, you could just leave, if my presence offends you that much.”
Lewinsky was chewing on his bottom lip, and not for the first time Jake thought he really had a damn pretty mouth. Damn pretty everything, really, although he seemed to be doing his best to hide it from the world. Being pretty was probably not a quality that was career-advancing for a police detective.
“Like you'd let me out of your sight.”
“I said I would. I'd have to find a new hide-out because I don't trust you not to send an anonymous tip to your former colleagues about my whereabouts, but … I have better plans for my life than to spend it babysitting you.”
He didn't say that he wasn't really in a hurry to see Lewinsky leave, and not only because he quite liked his new retreat in the North of Finland. He didn't mind being alone - he had spent three years in Iceland in almost complete solitude, and frankly he liked it that way - but he had always enjoyed the thought that there were still people in the world who wanted to see him again some day. Yet after everything that had happened, returning to England was even less of an option than it had been three years ago, and even if he could, his son … Memories flashed before his eyes, and a lump started to form in his throat. He swallowed hard, blinked to keep tears from welling up in his eyes, and made himself focus on the man sitting in front of him now. There were certain things in the world that bound men together, even if they didn't like each other much - war, prison, crimes committed together. Getting fucked over by the same people had a similar effect. Whether Lewinsky liked it or not, they shared things they could never share with anyone else.
Lewinsky was still biting his lip, and he had gone back to staring at the fire. It wasn't that Jake had no sympathy for him - not so much for the limp he had given him, that was just a job hazard for cops, but Lewinsky certainly hadn't deserved to be framed for multiple murders by his own people, and Jake hardly expected him to be happy about the prospect of spending the rest of his life on the run. Still, there were limits to how much sulking and glaring and bitching he was willing to put up with. The way he saw it, life fucked everyone. It fucked some people more than others, sure, but the only thing you could do was to make the best of whatever shitty situation you ended up in. Complaining about how unfair things were had never solved any problems.
But instead of either getting over himself or packing his few belongings to leave, Lewinsky just spat out -
“Fuck you, Sternwood.”
Jake moved before he had even consciously made the decision to do so. He grabbed Lewinsky by the collar and pulled him from the armchair, pushed him until his back hit the wooden wall of the cabin, their faces so close that Lewinsky's breath washed over his face when it was squeezed out of his lungs. Lewinsky groaned in pain, probably both from his bad leg and his half-healed shoulder wound, but Jake was done feeling sorry for him.
“Fuck me? Really, that's all you have to say? Just fucking leave if you want, but if you're going to stay, get over yourself already.”
“Which part exactly am I supposed to get over?” Lewinsky snapped back, his voice tense with pain, his body twisting under Jake's grip. “The part where you crippled my leg? Or the one where you made me a wanted fugitive and probably killed a few innocent coppers to break me out?”
“I saved your life because I thought I owed you for letting me go. I gave you a second chance instead of letting you rot in prison for all the things they would have pinned on you.” Jake's fingers tightened on the collar of Lewinsky's shirt. Lewinsky had been the reason Jake had decided to hide out in Iceland, because that brilliant bastard of a detective had been getting too close, and that bullet wound would have hardly stopped him from coming after Jake again, but if anything that had only made Jake respect the man. That, and the fact that Lewinsky hadn't put a bullet in his brain when he'd had the chance.
“If you want to go back to England, be my guest, I'm sure they'd love to lock you back up.” He gave Lewinsky another shove, then let go of him, but when the younger man started to slide down the wall, his face a grimace of pain, Jake grabbed his arm again to support him, feeling more protective than he should. He blamed weeks of tending to his injuries for that. Lewinsky was breathing heavily, his eyes didn't meet Jake's as he licked his bitten lips.
“I don't want to go back,” he said finally, in an almost defeated tone, as if not letting himself be crucified for crimes he hadn't committed was something to be ashamed of. Jake loosened his grasp on Lewinsky's arm, but he stayed close. Lewinsky looked as if his leg was about to give out under him, and now matter how angry Jake was, he had never really enjoyed seeing people in pain. He sighed.
“Then what do you want?”
Lewinsky made a non-committal little sound in the back of his throat, and he started biting his bottom lip again. Jake forced himself to wait patiently, to let him figure out what he wanted now that he had hopefully snapped out of his self-pity.
What he didn't expect was for Lewinsky to reach up and dig his fingers into the back of Jake's neck to pull him down, and Jake tensed up for a fight just as Lewinsky's lips met his in a rough, almost painful kiss, all teeth and hunger and desperation. He was too dumbfounded to react at first - no matter how often Lewinsky had stared at him, no matter how much the tension between them had always felt as promising as it had been threatening, Jake had always put that impression down to wishful thinking. Not to mention that his reluctant partner had always struck him as far too repressed to do anything but punch him in the face, even if he did want to kiss him.
But now Jake's lack of reaction only seemed to encourage Lewinsky, his lips and his hands as angry as his voice and eyes usually were, downright aggressive as they kept Jake close, and it didn't take Jake long to get over his initial shock and return the kiss. He'd wanted to do this for quite some time, maybe since their first fight in that van, or maybe just since they had grudgingly accepted that they needed to work together if they wanted to live. Jake had never liked kissing smokers, and Lewinsky's lips were too chapped to feel soft, but the pent-up hunger with which he was kissing him, the insistent touch of strong fingers that worked their way under Jake's clothes within seconds, more than made up for that.
Jake still wasn't going to fuck an injured man against the wall, so he quickly manhandled him in the direction of the cabin's small bedroom - Lewinsky had been sleeping on the cot by the fire - and onto the bed. Lewinsky was only fighting him half-heartedly, more to make a point than to stop him, and by the time his back hit the bed and Jake knelt over him Lewinsky had closed his eyes instead of glaring up at him, and although his muscles were still tense, he didn't quite feel like a coiled spring anymore.
And Jake found out quite a few things that night which he had never expected to find out about Lewinsky - about Max, really. How quiet he was in bed, how he'd bite his bottom lip in sullen determination even when Jake's lips wrapped around his cock, how his fingers would tighten on the sheets rather than just grab him, how his moans when he finally failed to stay quiet sounded almost like a growl, rough and deep up until he came and they finally turned soft and so sweet it made Jake kiss him breathless while he still had the taste of Max's come on his tongue.
How hard it was for Max to find a comfortable position because of his constantly aching leg, how, even post-coital, he was not above reminding Jake that it was his own damn fault and “couldn't you have shot me somewhere else” (“I might have if I'd known I'd ever want to fuck you” and that had earned him a pretty painful punch in the side before Max grabbed his throat as if to strangle him and pulled him into another kiss). He found out how bad Max was at letting go, but that he really seemed to love Jake's hands, all over him and inside of him, how pretty his lips looked wrapped around Jake's fingers, licking and nibbling and even biting him when the fingers of Jake's other hand twisted and curled in just the right place. That Max only relaxed fully after Jake had fucked him, that a sated little smile found its way onto his pretty mouth then, that the frown lines on his forehead finally smoothed out.
As soon as Jake rolled off him Max pulled one of the blankets up to his hip, more to cover up the scars on his leg, Jake suspected, than anything else. Still sitting up he bent down to grab his jeans and rummage through the pockets, from which he pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. Jake sighed when he saw what Max was doing, wrinkled his nose when the first waft of smoke filled the air.
“I hate it when you smoke inside,” he said, without any real hope that it would make Max stop. To his surprise, Max actually laughed. It didn't quite sound happy or light-hearted, but … genuine. Apparently his mood had at least improved a little.
“You're going to have to get used to it.”
“So you're staying?” Jake asked, trying to keep the surprise from his voice. If anything he had only expected Lewinsky to want to leave even more after this.
“With you or in your bed?” It was hard to be sure with the cigarette stuck between his lips, but it almost looked as if Max was grinning.
“Both?”
Max laughed again and sank back onto the bed, propped up against a pillow while he smoked. Jake watched him quietly - the soft ginger beard, the way his full lips closed almost tenderly around the filter, the strong lines of his body under pale skin. He really wouldn't mind keeping him, despite that awful stench Lewinsky's cigarettes had been filling up the cabin with.
“What happens now?” Max finally asked when he stubbed out the cigarette.
“What do you mean?”
“I'd be bored out of my mind if I ran off to a tropical island. I don't want to spend my life stuck in the snow either, even though that seems to be your idea of a good time.” For once it sounded more like a friendly barb than an actual attempt at an insult. “And I'm most certainly not going to be your partner-in-crime. If you want me to stay, no more robbing banks and shooting people.”
“Even though we made a good team?” Jake asked with a smile. Hell, the part of him that had loved nothing more than the rush of a well executed scheme would kill for a partner like Lewinsky - smart, dependable, not to mention his knowledge about how the police worked. But Jake knew him well enough to be sure that would never happen. If he had been about to forget, Max's glare would have reminded him.
“All right, all right.” Jake moved closer again, kept his eyes on Max's to see if he was still welcome, but when there was no objection he ran his fingertips over Max's chest. His skin was soft and just a little bit sweaty, and Jake decided he really hadn't kissed him in enough places. “We'll find something else to do. Something more or less legal. P. I. work maybe, something like that.”
“In Finland?” Max replied sceptically, but he didn't push Jake's hand away as his fingers curled gently around the side of Max's neck.
“Obviously not, but we should stay here until your shoulder is fully healed, don't you think?” Jake kissed his throat instead of waiting for a reply, and he smiled when he felt warm fingers trail over his back, pulling him closer.
“I haven't forgiven you, you know?” Max said suddenly. He sounded like he was trying to justify himself for what had just happened. “For any of this.”
No, but you know that you owe me your life, and you don't hate me as much as you think you should, and even if you did, you don't have anyone else in the world.
He didn't say that, because he knew it would ruin their precarious little truce. Instead he only looked up to meet Max's eyes, and he pretended not to see the pain and vulnerability in them, pretended not to notice how damn young Lewinsky was, and didn't point out that they were either stuck with each other or all alone, whether they liked it or not. Some things were better left unsaid, especially when they both knew too well how true they were, and Jake had never made a habit of stating the obvious. He kissed Max instead, and despite his renewed frown and the tension that had seeped back into his body, Max at least seemed to be able to accept that. It was a start.
Fandom: Welcome to the Punch
Pairings/characters: Jacob Sternwood/Max Lewinsky
Rating: R
Words: 2729
Warnings: none
Summary: A few weeks after Jake has broken Max out of prison, he's really starting to get tired of Max's lack of gratitude.
Author's note: Almost forgot to repost my Yuletide fic, written for elle_dritch. Btw, those of you who have seen The Wire should also REALLY read the fic I received for Yuletide because it's absolutely amazing: Games Beyond the Game by Gileonnen.
“Where have you been?”
Sitting by the crackling fire in the small cabin that had served as their hide-out for the past few weeks, Max Lewinsky sounded more like an annoyed wife than Jake's actual wife ever had, back when they had still been together. The thought would have amused him if Lewinsky hadn't been a royal pain ever since they had arrived here. Jake took off his snow-covered boots and his coat, trying his best to ignore the glares that were being aimed at him, when Lewinsky followed the first question up with -
“Robbed any banks on the way?”
Jake bit back an annoyed groan and walked over to face Lewinsky, found himself staring into hostile blue eyes; Lewinsky's jaw was clenched, his lips twisted into an angry sneer. For all that he had spent most of his life around career criminals, Jake had never met anyone who seemed as constantly angry as the man who had almost caught him. Then again, he probably hadn't really got to know him at the best possible time, so Jake forced himself to stay calm, even though his patience was truly wearing thin.
“Why are you still here?” he asked. Lewinsky's frown turned from angry to confused.
“What?”
“Why are you still here?”
“Probably because you kidnapped me from a prison van, dragged me into the middle of nowhere and broke at least a dozen laws in the process.”
Jake shrugged, unimpressed. Somehow Lewinsky still seemed to think that reminding Jake that he was a criminal would get a rise out of him.
“That explains how you got here, not why you stayed.” He pulled his thick sweater over his head, too warm so close to the bright fire, and threw it over the backrest of the armchair Lewinsky was sitting in. That earned him another glare he chose to ignore. “I provided you with a new passport that nobody would ever realise is fake. The wound in your shoulder has healed well enough that you can take care of it yourself now. And I offered to give you enough money to catch a flight to whatever remote tropic island you'd want to go to.”
“I don't want your stolen money,” Lewinsky snapped, but the objection was only half-hearted. After all, as long as he stayed here, he was also living off Jake's stolen money, so Jake decided to ignore the interruption.
“Fact is, you could just leave, if my presence offends you that much.”
Lewinsky was chewing on his bottom lip, and not for the first time Jake thought he really had a damn pretty mouth. Damn pretty everything, really, although he seemed to be doing his best to hide it from the world. Being pretty was probably not a quality that was career-advancing for a police detective.
“Like you'd let me out of your sight.”
“I said I would. I'd have to find a new hide-out because I don't trust you not to send an anonymous tip to your former colleagues about my whereabouts, but … I have better plans for my life than to spend it babysitting you.”
He didn't say that he wasn't really in a hurry to see Lewinsky leave, and not only because he quite liked his new retreat in the North of Finland. He didn't mind being alone - he had spent three years in Iceland in almost complete solitude, and frankly he liked it that way - but he had always enjoyed the thought that there were still people in the world who wanted to see him again some day. Yet after everything that had happened, returning to England was even less of an option than it had been three years ago, and even if he could, his son … Memories flashed before his eyes, and a lump started to form in his throat. He swallowed hard, blinked to keep tears from welling up in his eyes, and made himself focus on the man sitting in front of him now. There were certain things in the world that bound men together, even if they didn't like each other much - war, prison, crimes committed together. Getting fucked over by the same people had a similar effect. Whether Lewinsky liked it or not, they shared things they could never share with anyone else.
Lewinsky was still biting his lip, and he had gone back to staring at the fire. It wasn't that Jake had no sympathy for him - not so much for the limp he had given him, that was just a job hazard for cops, but Lewinsky certainly hadn't deserved to be framed for multiple murders by his own people, and Jake hardly expected him to be happy about the prospect of spending the rest of his life on the run. Still, there were limits to how much sulking and glaring and bitching he was willing to put up with. The way he saw it, life fucked everyone. It fucked some people more than others, sure, but the only thing you could do was to make the best of whatever shitty situation you ended up in. Complaining about how unfair things were had never solved any problems.
But instead of either getting over himself or packing his few belongings to leave, Lewinsky just spat out -
“Fuck you, Sternwood.”
Jake moved before he had even consciously made the decision to do so. He grabbed Lewinsky by the collar and pulled him from the armchair, pushed him until his back hit the wooden wall of the cabin, their faces so close that Lewinsky's breath washed over his face when it was squeezed out of his lungs. Lewinsky groaned in pain, probably both from his bad leg and his half-healed shoulder wound, but Jake was done feeling sorry for him.
“Fuck me? Really, that's all you have to say? Just fucking leave if you want, but if you're going to stay, get over yourself already.”
“Which part exactly am I supposed to get over?” Lewinsky snapped back, his voice tense with pain, his body twisting under Jake's grip. “The part where you crippled my leg? Or the one where you made me a wanted fugitive and probably killed a few innocent coppers to break me out?”
“I saved your life because I thought I owed you for letting me go. I gave you a second chance instead of letting you rot in prison for all the things they would have pinned on you.” Jake's fingers tightened on the collar of Lewinsky's shirt. Lewinsky had been the reason Jake had decided to hide out in Iceland, because that brilliant bastard of a detective had been getting too close, and that bullet wound would have hardly stopped him from coming after Jake again, but if anything that had only made Jake respect the man. That, and the fact that Lewinsky hadn't put a bullet in his brain when he'd had the chance.
“If you want to go back to England, be my guest, I'm sure they'd love to lock you back up.” He gave Lewinsky another shove, then let go of him, but when the younger man started to slide down the wall, his face a grimace of pain, Jake grabbed his arm again to support him, feeling more protective than he should. He blamed weeks of tending to his injuries for that. Lewinsky was breathing heavily, his eyes didn't meet Jake's as he licked his bitten lips.
“I don't want to go back,” he said finally, in an almost defeated tone, as if not letting himself be crucified for crimes he hadn't committed was something to be ashamed of. Jake loosened his grasp on Lewinsky's arm, but he stayed close. Lewinsky looked as if his leg was about to give out under him, and now matter how angry Jake was, he had never really enjoyed seeing people in pain. He sighed.
“Then what do you want?”
Lewinsky made a non-committal little sound in the back of his throat, and he started biting his bottom lip again. Jake forced himself to wait patiently, to let him figure out what he wanted now that he had hopefully snapped out of his self-pity.
What he didn't expect was for Lewinsky to reach up and dig his fingers into the back of Jake's neck to pull him down, and Jake tensed up for a fight just as Lewinsky's lips met his in a rough, almost painful kiss, all teeth and hunger and desperation. He was too dumbfounded to react at first - no matter how often Lewinsky had stared at him, no matter how much the tension between them had always felt as promising as it had been threatening, Jake had always put that impression down to wishful thinking. Not to mention that his reluctant partner had always struck him as far too repressed to do anything but punch him in the face, even if he did want to kiss him.
But now Jake's lack of reaction only seemed to encourage Lewinsky, his lips and his hands as angry as his voice and eyes usually were, downright aggressive as they kept Jake close, and it didn't take Jake long to get over his initial shock and return the kiss. He'd wanted to do this for quite some time, maybe since their first fight in that van, or maybe just since they had grudgingly accepted that they needed to work together if they wanted to live. Jake had never liked kissing smokers, and Lewinsky's lips were too chapped to feel soft, but the pent-up hunger with which he was kissing him, the insistent touch of strong fingers that worked their way under Jake's clothes within seconds, more than made up for that.
Jake still wasn't going to fuck an injured man against the wall, so he quickly manhandled him in the direction of the cabin's small bedroom - Lewinsky had been sleeping on the cot by the fire - and onto the bed. Lewinsky was only fighting him half-heartedly, more to make a point than to stop him, and by the time his back hit the bed and Jake knelt over him Lewinsky had closed his eyes instead of glaring up at him, and although his muscles were still tense, he didn't quite feel like a coiled spring anymore.
And Jake found out quite a few things that night which he had never expected to find out about Lewinsky - about Max, really. How quiet he was in bed, how he'd bite his bottom lip in sullen determination even when Jake's lips wrapped around his cock, how his fingers would tighten on the sheets rather than just grab him, how his moans when he finally failed to stay quiet sounded almost like a growl, rough and deep up until he came and they finally turned soft and so sweet it made Jake kiss him breathless while he still had the taste of Max's come on his tongue.
How hard it was for Max to find a comfortable position because of his constantly aching leg, how, even post-coital, he was not above reminding Jake that it was his own damn fault and “couldn't you have shot me somewhere else” (“I might have if I'd known I'd ever want to fuck you” and that had earned him a pretty painful punch in the side before Max grabbed his throat as if to strangle him and pulled him into another kiss). He found out how bad Max was at letting go, but that he really seemed to love Jake's hands, all over him and inside of him, how pretty his lips looked wrapped around Jake's fingers, licking and nibbling and even biting him when the fingers of Jake's other hand twisted and curled in just the right place. That Max only relaxed fully after Jake had fucked him, that a sated little smile found its way onto his pretty mouth then, that the frown lines on his forehead finally smoothed out.
As soon as Jake rolled off him Max pulled one of the blankets up to his hip, more to cover up the scars on his leg, Jake suspected, than anything else. Still sitting up he bent down to grab his jeans and rummage through the pockets, from which he pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. Jake sighed when he saw what Max was doing, wrinkled his nose when the first waft of smoke filled the air.
“I hate it when you smoke inside,” he said, without any real hope that it would make Max stop. To his surprise, Max actually laughed. It didn't quite sound happy or light-hearted, but … genuine. Apparently his mood had at least improved a little.
“You're going to have to get used to it.”
“So you're staying?” Jake asked, trying to keep the surprise from his voice. If anything he had only expected Lewinsky to want to leave even more after this.
“With you or in your bed?” It was hard to be sure with the cigarette stuck between his lips, but it almost looked as if Max was grinning.
“Both?”
Max laughed again and sank back onto the bed, propped up against a pillow while he smoked. Jake watched him quietly - the soft ginger beard, the way his full lips closed almost tenderly around the filter, the strong lines of his body under pale skin. He really wouldn't mind keeping him, despite that awful stench Lewinsky's cigarettes had been filling up the cabin with.
“What happens now?” Max finally asked when he stubbed out the cigarette.
“What do you mean?”
“I'd be bored out of my mind if I ran off to a tropical island. I don't want to spend my life stuck in the snow either, even though that seems to be your idea of a good time.” For once it sounded more like a friendly barb than an actual attempt at an insult. “And I'm most certainly not going to be your partner-in-crime. If you want me to stay, no more robbing banks and shooting people.”
“Even though we made a good team?” Jake asked with a smile. Hell, the part of him that had loved nothing more than the rush of a well executed scheme would kill for a partner like Lewinsky - smart, dependable, not to mention his knowledge about how the police worked. But Jake knew him well enough to be sure that would never happen. If he had been about to forget, Max's glare would have reminded him.
“All right, all right.” Jake moved closer again, kept his eyes on Max's to see if he was still welcome, but when there was no objection he ran his fingertips over Max's chest. His skin was soft and just a little bit sweaty, and Jake decided he really hadn't kissed him in enough places. “We'll find something else to do. Something more or less legal. P. I. work maybe, something like that.”
“In Finland?” Max replied sceptically, but he didn't push Jake's hand away as his fingers curled gently around the side of Max's neck.
“Obviously not, but we should stay here until your shoulder is fully healed, don't you think?” Jake kissed his throat instead of waiting for a reply, and he smiled when he felt warm fingers trail over his back, pulling him closer.
“I haven't forgiven you, you know?” Max said suddenly. He sounded like he was trying to justify himself for what had just happened. “For any of this.”
No, but you know that you owe me your life, and you don't hate me as much as you think you should, and even if you did, you don't have anyone else in the world.
He didn't say that, because he knew it would ruin their precarious little truce. Instead he only looked up to meet Max's eyes, and he pretended not to see the pain and vulnerability in them, pretended not to notice how damn young Lewinsky was, and didn't point out that they were either stuck with each other or all alone, whether they liked it or not. Some things were better left unsaid, especially when they both knew too well how true they were, and Jake had never made a habit of stating the obvious. He kissed Max instead, and despite his renewed frown and the tension that had seeped back into his body, Max at least seemed to be able to accept that. It was a start.