fic: break (and we are here together) (3/3)
...and, at last, part three. Um...yeah, I don't know, I'm impressed if you've made it through part two, I shall go be quietly embarrassed in a corner now...
Title: Break (And We Are Here Together) (3/3) [link to part one here] [link to part two here]
Rating: NC-17; see warnings
Warnings: um…explicit sex, established consensual BDSM relationship, mention of abuse in James’s past, all the hurt/comfort ever, and the magical healing powers of sex with Michael
Word Count: 2,740 (this part); 16,785 total
Disclaimers: boys’re not mine, only doing this for fun; title from Eve 6’s “Lost & Found”: the monster in the closet, when the light’s turned on/ is just a jacket on a hanger and the fear is gone/ and the world keeps turning, sun keeps burning/ we are the lost and found/ gonna make it through another day
Notes/Summary: this was supposed to be a missing scene from in between “ Turn” and “ Touch,” in the Universe of Things With Porn, in which James and Michael have a couple of days off and experiment with some things. It grew into an enormous beast, with all the emotions, cuddling, some rather kinky interludes even for me, some revelations about James’s past, and more cuddling!
When he slid one finger between reddened curves, James sighed. Seemed to relax, even further, with the suggestion of fullness. Michael paused again. Thought about that. And James’s choice of adjectives, a few minutes before.
“Turn over?”
“What? Sorry.”
“On your stomach. Please.”
“Oh…that way? Really? All right…”
“That way eventually. I have something in mind. Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning to…wait, you have what in mind? Not that I’m going to argue.”
“I know you’re not.” He came back. With the lube. And extra towels. James, displaying splendid flexibility, twisted halfway around to stare. “What-”
“Hips up, for a second. I’m just trying to protect the bed. We have to sleep here, later.”
“You-how much of that do you think we need for-oh. Oh. You want to-oh, my god. Michael…”
“Yes? No? Can I try?” James had said weightless, before. Hollow. This might help, with that. Might let James feel tethered to the world, to Michael, again.
“Um,” James said, wide-eyed. “Um, yes, but…you said I should tell you if I wasn’t sure, about anything…”
“You’re not?”
“I…you can try, we can try, but…I’m just not-I’m not that, um, large a person! And you have impressive hands!”
“Impressive?”
“You know what I mean!”
“All right, yes. I do. But I can try?” He mostly just wanted James to keep talking. So that he could listen to James being here, so confidently, with him.
“Yes, you can try…” James sighed again, into the friendly sheets, when Michael slid one finger between his legs, stroking slickness into him, around that tight rim. “That feels…cold. But that’s kind of nice, right now…”
“Oh. Um…how sore are you? Exactly?”
“Not very. This is probably a good time for you to try, actually, I feel all…happy. Tired, but happy. Oh-!”
“Too fast?” Maybe James hadn’t been expecting the second finger quite so soon. He leaned over and kissed James’s back, the small swirl of freckles over one shoulder blade, in penitence.
“No, you’re fine. You can…do more. Sir.”
“…really?”
“Mmm….yes. It does help.”
“Then you can say it whenever you want to.” He eased the third finger in more slowly, deliberately, feeling muscles flutter and give way and accept the intrusion. James’s breathing caught, stuttered, calmed again.
“That…”
“There?” He moved the fingers, carefully. Heard James gasp again. Decidedly there, then.
“More?”
“Yes, sir…”
More movement. More pressure, over that bundle of nerves. Even strokes. James let out a whimpering little cry, something that was almost Michael’s name but shivered off into high-pitched wordlessness. “Please…”
“You can’t, again, can you? This soon?”
“I…don’t know, I don’t think so but I feel-oh, god-”
“You said you were feeling hollow, before. Empty. Is this better?”
“Michael…”
“I love you, James. All of you. Do you believe me?”
“I-yes, yes, I do, I know you love me, please-”
“Please what?”
“I don’t know!”
Michael nearly laughed. Looked at his own hand, for a minute, and then slid fingers back out-heard the correspondingly deprived moan, into the bedclothes-repositioned, spilled out even more lube. Moved them back.
James stopped breathing.
“Is four all right, then?”
James didn’t seem able to talk. The smooth light, from the lamps, poured itself over all that skin, liquid gold and red lines and white cotton sheets and the discarded items of clothing on the floor, and the universe narrowed and expanded, the two of them alone in the bed, the entire world.
He tried moving the fingers, experimentally. James gasped.
“So you do like four…can we do more? Or is this enough for now?” He wasn’t sure he could wait, truthfully. His entire body ached with the need to be inside James, to feel all that pliant warmth, to fill James up with himself and bring them together.
No reply, just unsteady breathing, no rhythm left at all; Michael told himself to breathe, too, failed to listen, and tried, “James? I do want you to talk to me…”
This got a barely audible moan. Encouraging, if not quite what he’d been asking for. But James was still here. Hearing him.
With that thought, he tested the weight of his thumb against that entrance, so stretched and full for him already, James so opened up and submitting to it all, everything Michael asked him to do. Pushed, not hard.
James gasped again. This time there was a word, in the sound. “Wait…”
“Wait? Or stop?”
“I…don’t know. I…okay, you can try again but…oh-oh, god, okay, stop. Um. Pen. At your head. Sorry, sir.”
“Pen,” Michael said, laughing instead of panicking, because James could make him laugh even now, even here, fighting off all the incoming worry before it could begin to gather its weaponry to attack, “you’re fucking perfect, James, I love you. Are you all right?”
“I’m wonderful. You said I should tell you before it hurt, so I did. Or I am right now. I love you, too. Did you want to come here, though? I’d be even more all right with you here.”
“Yes. I-yes.”
“Michael…” James shivered, only once, when Michael slid into him, lying bonelessly across the bed, still on his stomach and pinned between sleek sheets and Michael’s weight. “You feel like…yes.”
“I feel like yes?”
“Exactly.”
“You feel like yes, too.” He did try to be gentle, considering everything they’d just been doing, the soreness he knew James had to be feeling everywhere by now. That resolution failed the instant James moved a hand and tapped fingers against his, and Michael collected those hands under his and pressed them into the mattress above James’s head, and James arched up against him. “That…yours, please…”
“Mine.”
“Yes,” James whispered, “yes,” and Michael heard himself whispering it too, and suddenly the climax was right there, bursting through his whole body in a deluge of sparks, and James gave another tiny cry and tensed around him, and then they both collapsed, shaking, in the aftermath.
No one moved, for a while. Not either of them, not the bed, possibly not even the earth, arrested at the pinnacle of orbit, a moment plucked out of time.
“James,” Michael managed, at last.
“Mmm…”
“You…are you…was that…that was…”
“That was yes.”
“Yes.”
And then more quiet.
Some distant and dreamlike time after that, he remembered that he had legs, and got them to work, and coaxed James onto his feet and out of the collar-setting it carefully on top of James’s suitcase, in case they needed it, later-and into the shower. James wasn’t talking, much, eyes a little far away, euphoric. Michael talked to him, gently, as clearly and undemandingly as he could; touched him, trying to be an anchor, letting James kiss him randomly, or bury his head in Michael’s shoulder, or skim fingers in haphazard patterns over his back.
James did smile at him, after they made it back into the bedroom; Michael smiled back, and brushed the lips, lightly, with one finger. “Better?”
“I think so…”
“Good. Can you…bed? Please?”
James smiled again. Hopped onto the fantastic disaster they’d made of the sheets, and stretched out, and then, when Michael didn’t immediately follow, pushed himself up on an elbow, eyes curious, anxiety starting to creep out from the ocean depths.
“No, you’re fine. Just…sit up, would you?” He crossed the room, too. Settled down in the midst of all the pillows, and folded James into his arms. “Sorry. Not being clear. I want to talk to you. With you. That’s all, okay?”
James considered this for a minute, and then, very obviously, decided that if that was going to be the order, then he wouldn’t mind listening.
“Um…all right. What about?”
Michael sighed, but only inwardly, where those eyes couldn’t tell. “Seriously, James. Please. I mean…yes, I want you, and I do want you, like this, everything we just did…” He knew the lip-lick was coming, that nervous little gesture; kissed that mouth, in the wake of it. “I wanted to ask you something. And I want you to be honest with me. Don’t say what you think I want to hear. Um…not only now. Always. In bed, or out of it. Tell me what you’re really thinking, okay?”
This earned a smile, breathtakingly sudden and clear as the starlight outside. “I already do. I always have. I did, tonight. You know that; you were there. Does that help?”
“Yes.” It did. Felt warm, inside his chest. Like happiness, there, surrounding his heart. “All right, then…it’s fine if you don’t want to answer. It’s kind of…personal.”
“More personal than everything we just did? Because I’m not sure you can top that. Possibly ever.”
“Oh…I can probably come up with something.” Which made James laugh, happy and speculative and intrigued. “I could take you shopping again…but seriously, you said, earlier, that you wanted to tell me. About some things. Those things. And I do want to know. You don’t have to tell me who or even what, not if you don’t want to-but you said there were consequences. If he wasn’t happy with you. Are there things I shouldn’t-things we should avoid? Like me leaving you alone? If there is anything, please tell me, all right? I don’t want to-I never want to hurt you. This isn’t about me hurting you. You know that, right?”
The eyes danced at him. “Well, only if I ask you to.”
“James…”
“No, I know what you’re asking. It’s not about you hurting me. I don’t want you to hurt me. I want this-the way this feels, with you, this intense-but I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Good.”
“About the other things…I do want to tell you, I just…” James hesitated. Said one more word, very quietly.
“…what.”
“You do know. You said you’d looked some things up…”
“I-yes, but I-you-you let him-no, I’m sorry, I’m not judging you, I’m not, but, James, you…” He ran out of words. Pictured James, and tried not to picture James, on his knees, vicious whip-marks lacing that cinnamon-cream skin.
“It wasn’t…” James nibbled on one long-suffering lip. Looked away, at the stoic feathery heap of the pillows, the voiceless shine of the lamplight on the walls. “I told you about the knife. In bed. That was when I…left. Before that…with the other things…it wasn’t even what he was doing, so much. He was good at it. At first. And I…it started as something I wanted, or I thought I did. I told you that, too.”
“You did…”
“And that was true. It really was kind of…a relief, to find someone who knew that I needed…to not be in control, sometimes. And I said intense, and it was. I would…I’d trust you with that, if you wanted to. Because you’d stop if it started to hurt, really hurt, I mean. And you’d take care of me, after.”
“Of course I fucking would! But I wouldn’t-James, you know I’d never do that to you, I wouldn’t, I-”
“I know. I love you.” James picked up Michael’s hand, in his. Wound their fingers together. Michael bit into his own lip. Didn’t cry. He had to be there for James. Anything James needed to say.
“I love you, too. Always. You said it started as something you wanted. At first. But he hurt you.”
“He…that was part of the consequences. That you asked about. That I should…stay hurt, because then I’d remember. I was…one time, I was…I wasn’t always tied down, for that, not if he didn’t think I needed it, but that time I was, I don’t remember why, and I asked for water, afterwards, I’d been crying and my throat hurt and…”
“He said no,” Michael whispered. His own voice shook, with anguish, with anger, with James’s pain.
“That was the day before I left. I thought I’d try one more time, one more day, maybe it’d been me and I’d done something that much wrong, but…it wasn’t me. I do know that. I promise you I know that.”
“James, I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. You weren’t there. I didn’t even know you, then.” James leaned a little more weight against him, despite the words; Michael tightened his hold, arms and legs and everything else that might hold James in place, there with him, beside him, in the imperfect and disheveled embrace of the bed.
“If I had been there, I’d’ve rescued you. I would have-”
“Swept in and carried me off in the night?” Amusement, lurking in the bruised-whiskey depths of that voice. “Maybe. I might even have gone with you. But…this is better, I think. I did leave. On my own. And this, what we’re doing, together, this has nothing to do with him. I want this, with you, because I want you. I love you. Um…was that enough of an answer? I think we kind of got away from your original question.”
“You…god. James, you-” He touched one cheek, got James to meet his eyes, ocean-blue looking into lakewater-green. “You’re here. With me. You want me. You love me. James, do you have any idea how strong you are? How lucky I am, to be here, to be the one who gets to hold you?”
“But I love you!” James protested, now looking adorably confused, as if that weren’t precisely Michael’s point.
“And I love you. And you…you trust me. You can trust me. You…I was so fucking scared, James. Earlier. When you said-you were feeling-and all I could think was that I’d failed you. I hadn’t-”
“You what?” James sat up, eyes all enormous. Shock. Bewilderment. They skewered Michael’s heart on pointed lances. Of course he shouldn’t’ve admitted to being scared. James needed him to be strong.
“Michael-no. Just…no. You-look at me. Come on. Please.”
He looked, because James was asking. Tried not to flinch, at all the love and fierceness and worry reflected there.
“You didn’t fail-you know, that’s kind of a horrible verb, we’re not going to use it, all right?-you didn’t. You were there. You held on to me when I needed that-you’re still holding me, and I still want that, not because I’m hurting, just because I like you touching me, that’s all-and then you gave me what I’m pretty sure were the most impressive orgasms of my life, and yes I did use the plural, and then you took care of me, after. And you listened, when I said I might need to throw a hypothetical pen at your head.”
“Of course I-”
“You were careful, with me. You’re always careful. Because you’re you, you’re not him, you love me and I love you. And if something doesn’t work, then we know, and we won’t try it again, but I’m all right and so are you and we’re both still here. Understand?”
Michael stared. Couldn’t talk, absolutely breathless, captured by all the intensity, the astonishing passion, in the endless blue.
“Tell me you understand.” James kept looking at him, unwaveringly. Michael managed, a little weakly, to say, “Yes…”
“So you’re not ever saying that, or thinking it, again, then.”
“Um…no?”
“Good.”
“I…James?”
“Yes?”
“You…can you…use that voice in bed, sometime?”
James blinked, stared at him, then tipped his head back and laughed, joyously, sound echoing into the night. “You…oh, god, you want…I suppose I did say we could, on special occasions…yes, all right, if you’re asking, yes. Next time. I love you. Michael?”
“I love you, too…” Talking’d continued to be difficult. Might be the laughter. Or the tears.
James eyed him, grinned, flung both arms around him, and pulled them both down onto the bed, scattering all the pillows. They bounced away merrily, tumbling off the bed, and James held onto him, looking up at him, hands curling around his shoulders, legs entwined. Every inch of that compact frame was laughing, but the eyes were even warmer, something sweet and hot and private and true drifting to the surface for Michael to read.
“You told me you would’ve rescued me,” James said. “You would have saved me, if you’d been there. But you’re here now, and you do save me. Every day, every time I look at you, you do.”
“James,” Michael whispered, and kissed him, through lamplight and starlight and happiness, “I think you’re saving me, too.”
Title: Break (And We Are Here Together) (3/3) [link to part one here] [link to part two here]
Rating: NC-17; see warnings
Warnings: um…explicit sex, established consensual BDSM relationship, mention of abuse in James’s past, all the hurt/comfort ever, and the magical healing powers of sex with Michael
Word Count: 2,740 (this part); 16,785 total
Disclaimers: boys’re not mine, only doing this for fun; title from Eve 6’s “Lost & Found”: the monster in the closet, when the light’s turned on/ is just a jacket on a hanger and the fear is gone/ and the world keeps turning, sun keeps burning/ we are the lost and found/ gonna make it through another day
Notes/Summary: this was supposed to be a missing scene from in between “ Turn” and “ Touch,” in the Universe of Things With Porn, in which James and Michael have a couple of days off and experiment with some things. It grew into an enormous beast, with all the emotions, cuddling, some rather kinky interludes even for me, some revelations about James’s past, and more cuddling!
When he slid one finger between reddened curves, James sighed. Seemed to relax, even further, with the suggestion of fullness. Michael paused again. Thought about that. And James’s choice of adjectives, a few minutes before.
“Turn over?”
“What? Sorry.”
“On your stomach. Please.”
“Oh…that way? Really? All right…”
“That way eventually. I have something in mind. Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning to…wait, you have what in mind? Not that I’m going to argue.”
“I know you’re not.” He came back. With the lube. And extra towels. James, displaying splendid flexibility, twisted halfway around to stare. “What-”
“Hips up, for a second. I’m just trying to protect the bed. We have to sleep here, later.”
“You-how much of that do you think we need for-oh. Oh. You want to-oh, my god. Michael…”
“Yes? No? Can I try?” James had said weightless, before. Hollow. This might help, with that. Might let James feel tethered to the world, to Michael, again.
“Um,” James said, wide-eyed. “Um, yes, but…you said I should tell you if I wasn’t sure, about anything…”
“You’re not?”
“I…you can try, we can try, but…I’m just not-I’m not that, um, large a person! And you have impressive hands!”
“Impressive?”
“You know what I mean!”
“All right, yes. I do. But I can try?” He mostly just wanted James to keep talking. So that he could listen to James being here, so confidently, with him.
“Yes, you can try…” James sighed again, into the friendly sheets, when Michael slid one finger between his legs, stroking slickness into him, around that tight rim. “That feels…cold. But that’s kind of nice, right now…”
“Oh. Um…how sore are you? Exactly?”
“Not very. This is probably a good time for you to try, actually, I feel all…happy. Tired, but happy. Oh-!”
“Too fast?” Maybe James hadn’t been expecting the second finger quite so soon. He leaned over and kissed James’s back, the small swirl of freckles over one shoulder blade, in penitence.
“No, you’re fine. You can…do more. Sir.”
“…really?”
“Mmm….yes. It does help.”
“Then you can say it whenever you want to.” He eased the third finger in more slowly, deliberately, feeling muscles flutter and give way and accept the intrusion. James’s breathing caught, stuttered, calmed again.
“That…”
“There?” He moved the fingers, carefully. Heard James gasp again. Decidedly there, then.
“More?”
“Yes, sir…”
More movement. More pressure, over that bundle of nerves. Even strokes. James let out a whimpering little cry, something that was almost Michael’s name but shivered off into high-pitched wordlessness. “Please…”
“You can’t, again, can you? This soon?”
“I…don’t know, I don’t think so but I feel-oh, god-”
“You said you were feeling hollow, before. Empty. Is this better?”
“Michael…”
“I love you, James. All of you. Do you believe me?”
“I-yes, yes, I do, I know you love me, please-”
“Please what?”
“I don’t know!”
Michael nearly laughed. Looked at his own hand, for a minute, and then slid fingers back out-heard the correspondingly deprived moan, into the bedclothes-repositioned, spilled out even more lube. Moved them back.
James stopped breathing.
“Is four all right, then?”
James didn’t seem able to talk. The smooth light, from the lamps, poured itself over all that skin, liquid gold and red lines and white cotton sheets and the discarded items of clothing on the floor, and the universe narrowed and expanded, the two of them alone in the bed, the entire world.
He tried moving the fingers, experimentally. James gasped.
“So you do like four…can we do more? Or is this enough for now?” He wasn’t sure he could wait, truthfully. His entire body ached with the need to be inside James, to feel all that pliant warmth, to fill James up with himself and bring them together.
No reply, just unsteady breathing, no rhythm left at all; Michael told himself to breathe, too, failed to listen, and tried, “James? I do want you to talk to me…”
This got a barely audible moan. Encouraging, if not quite what he’d been asking for. But James was still here. Hearing him.
With that thought, he tested the weight of his thumb against that entrance, so stretched and full for him already, James so opened up and submitting to it all, everything Michael asked him to do. Pushed, not hard.
James gasped again. This time there was a word, in the sound. “Wait…”
“Wait? Or stop?”
“I…don’t know. I…okay, you can try again but…oh-oh, god, okay, stop. Um. Pen. At your head. Sorry, sir.”
“Pen,” Michael said, laughing instead of panicking, because James could make him laugh even now, even here, fighting off all the incoming worry before it could begin to gather its weaponry to attack, “you’re fucking perfect, James, I love you. Are you all right?”
“I’m wonderful. You said I should tell you before it hurt, so I did. Or I am right now. I love you, too. Did you want to come here, though? I’d be even more all right with you here.”
“Yes. I-yes.”
“Michael…” James shivered, only once, when Michael slid into him, lying bonelessly across the bed, still on his stomach and pinned between sleek sheets and Michael’s weight. “You feel like…yes.”
“I feel like yes?”
“Exactly.”
“You feel like yes, too.” He did try to be gentle, considering everything they’d just been doing, the soreness he knew James had to be feeling everywhere by now. That resolution failed the instant James moved a hand and tapped fingers against his, and Michael collected those hands under his and pressed them into the mattress above James’s head, and James arched up against him. “That…yours, please…”
“Mine.”
“Yes,” James whispered, “yes,” and Michael heard himself whispering it too, and suddenly the climax was right there, bursting through his whole body in a deluge of sparks, and James gave another tiny cry and tensed around him, and then they both collapsed, shaking, in the aftermath.
No one moved, for a while. Not either of them, not the bed, possibly not even the earth, arrested at the pinnacle of orbit, a moment plucked out of time.
“James,” Michael managed, at last.
“Mmm…”
“You…are you…was that…that was…”
“That was yes.”
“Yes.”
And then more quiet.
Some distant and dreamlike time after that, he remembered that he had legs, and got them to work, and coaxed James onto his feet and out of the collar-setting it carefully on top of James’s suitcase, in case they needed it, later-and into the shower. James wasn’t talking, much, eyes a little far away, euphoric. Michael talked to him, gently, as clearly and undemandingly as he could; touched him, trying to be an anchor, letting James kiss him randomly, or bury his head in Michael’s shoulder, or skim fingers in haphazard patterns over his back.
James did smile at him, after they made it back into the bedroom; Michael smiled back, and brushed the lips, lightly, with one finger. “Better?”
“I think so…”
“Good. Can you…bed? Please?”
James smiled again. Hopped onto the fantastic disaster they’d made of the sheets, and stretched out, and then, when Michael didn’t immediately follow, pushed himself up on an elbow, eyes curious, anxiety starting to creep out from the ocean depths.
“No, you’re fine. Just…sit up, would you?” He crossed the room, too. Settled down in the midst of all the pillows, and folded James into his arms. “Sorry. Not being clear. I want to talk to you. With you. That’s all, okay?”
James considered this for a minute, and then, very obviously, decided that if that was going to be the order, then he wouldn’t mind listening.
“Um…all right. What about?”
Michael sighed, but only inwardly, where those eyes couldn’t tell. “Seriously, James. Please. I mean…yes, I want you, and I do want you, like this, everything we just did…” He knew the lip-lick was coming, that nervous little gesture; kissed that mouth, in the wake of it. “I wanted to ask you something. And I want you to be honest with me. Don’t say what you think I want to hear. Um…not only now. Always. In bed, or out of it. Tell me what you’re really thinking, okay?”
This earned a smile, breathtakingly sudden and clear as the starlight outside. “I already do. I always have. I did, tonight. You know that; you were there. Does that help?”
“Yes.” It did. Felt warm, inside his chest. Like happiness, there, surrounding his heart. “All right, then…it’s fine if you don’t want to answer. It’s kind of…personal.”
“More personal than everything we just did? Because I’m not sure you can top that. Possibly ever.”
“Oh…I can probably come up with something.” Which made James laugh, happy and speculative and intrigued. “I could take you shopping again…but seriously, you said, earlier, that you wanted to tell me. About some things. Those things. And I do want to know. You don’t have to tell me who or even what, not if you don’t want to-but you said there were consequences. If he wasn’t happy with you. Are there things I shouldn’t-things we should avoid? Like me leaving you alone? If there is anything, please tell me, all right? I don’t want to-I never want to hurt you. This isn’t about me hurting you. You know that, right?”
The eyes danced at him. “Well, only if I ask you to.”
“James…”
“No, I know what you’re asking. It’s not about you hurting me. I don’t want you to hurt me. I want this-the way this feels, with you, this intense-but I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Good.”
“About the other things…I do want to tell you, I just…” James hesitated. Said one more word, very quietly.
“…what.”
“You do know. You said you’d looked some things up…”
“I-yes, but I-you-you let him-no, I’m sorry, I’m not judging you, I’m not, but, James, you…” He ran out of words. Pictured James, and tried not to picture James, on his knees, vicious whip-marks lacing that cinnamon-cream skin.
“It wasn’t…” James nibbled on one long-suffering lip. Looked away, at the stoic feathery heap of the pillows, the voiceless shine of the lamplight on the walls. “I told you about the knife. In bed. That was when I…left. Before that…with the other things…it wasn’t even what he was doing, so much. He was good at it. At first. And I…it started as something I wanted, or I thought I did. I told you that, too.”
“You did…”
“And that was true. It really was kind of…a relief, to find someone who knew that I needed…to not be in control, sometimes. And I said intense, and it was. I would…I’d trust you with that, if you wanted to. Because you’d stop if it started to hurt, really hurt, I mean. And you’d take care of me, after.”
“Of course I fucking would! But I wouldn’t-James, you know I’d never do that to you, I wouldn’t, I-”
“I know. I love you.” James picked up Michael’s hand, in his. Wound their fingers together. Michael bit into his own lip. Didn’t cry. He had to be there for James. Anything James needed to say.
“I love you, too. Always. You said it started as something you wanted. At first. But he hurt you.”
“He…that was part of the consequences. That you asked about. That I should…stay hurt, because then I’d remember. I was…one time, I was…I wasn’t always tied down, for that, not if he didn’t think I needed it, but that time I was, I don’t remember why, and I asked for water, afterwards, I’d been crying and my throat hurt and…”
“He said no,” Michael whispered. His own voice shook, with anguish, with anger, with James’s pain.
“That was the day before I left. I thought I’d try one more time, one more day, maybe it’d been me and I’d done something that much wrong, but…it wasn’t me. I do know that. I promise you I know that.”
“James, I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. You weren’t there. I didn’t even know you, then.” James leaned a little more weight against him, despite the words; Michael tightened his hold, arms and legs and everything else that might hold James in place, there with him, beside him, in the imperfect and disheveled embrace of the bed.
“If I had been there, I’d’ve rescued you. I would have-”
“Swept in and carried me off in the night?” Amusement, lurking in the bruised-whiskey depths of that voice. “Maybe. I might even have gone with you. But…this is better, I think. I did leave. On my own. And this, what we’re doing, together, this has nothing to do with him. I want this, with you, because I want you. I love you. Um…was that enough of an answer? I think we kind of got away from your original question.”
“You…god. James, you-” He touched one cheek, got James to meet his eyes, ocean-blue looking into lakewater-green. “You’re here. With me. You want me. You love me. James, do you have any idea how strong you are? How lucky I am, to be here, to be the one who gets to hold you?”
“But I love you!” James protested, now looking adorably confused, as if that weren’t precisely Michael’s point.
“And I love you. And you…you trust me. You can trust me. You…I was so fucking scared, James. Earlier. When you said-you were feeling-and all I could think was that I’d failed you. I hadn’t-”
“You what?” James sat up, eyes all enormous. Shock. Bewilderment. They skewered Michael’s heart on pointed lances. Of course he shouldn’t’ve admitted to being scared. James needed him to be strong.
“Michael-no. Just…no. You-look at me. Come on. Please.”
He looked, because James was asking. Tried not to flinch, at all the love and fierceness and worry reflected there.
“You didn’t fail-you know, that’s kind of a horrible verb, we’re not going to use it, all right?-you didn’t. You were there. You held on to me when I needed that-you’re still holding me, and I still want that, not because I’m hurting, just because I like you touching me, that’s all-and then you gave me what I’m pretty sure were the most impressive orgasms of my life, and yes I did use the plural, and then you took care of me, after. And you listened, when I said I might need to throw a hypothetical pen at your head.”
“Of course I-”
“You were careful, with me. You’re always careful. Because you’re you, you’re not him, you love me and I love you. And if something doesn’t work, then we know, and we won’t try it again, but I’m all right and so are you and we’re both still here. Understand?”
Michael stared. Couldn’t talk, absolutely breathless, captured by all the intensity, the astonishing passion, in the endless blue.
“Tell me you understand.” James kept looking at him, unwaveringly. Michael managed, a little weakly, to say, “Yes…”
“So you’re not ever saying that, or thinking it, again, then.”
“Um…no?”
“Good.”
“I…James?”
“Yes?”
“You…can you…use that voice in bed, sometime?”
James blinked, stared at him, then tipped his head back and laughed, joyously, sound echoing into the night. “You…oh, god, you want…I suppose I did say we could, on special occasions…yes, all right, if you’re asking, yes. Next time. I love you. Michael?”
“I love you, too…” Talking’d continued to be difficult. Might be the laughter. Or the tears.
James eyed him, grinned, flung both arms around him, and pulled them both down onto the bed, scattering all the pillows. They bounced away merrily, tumbling off the bed, and James held onto him, looking up at him, hands curling around his shoulders, legs entwined. Every inch of that compact frame was laughing, but the eyes were even warmer, something sweet and hot and private and true drifting to the surface for Michael to read.
“You told me you would’ve rescued me,” James said. “You would have saved me, if you’d been there. But you’re here now, and you do save me. Every day, every time I look at you, you do.”
“James,” Michael whispered, and kissed him, through lamplight and starlight and happiness, “I think you’re saving me, too.”