clucking open hearts and ears [PG13] Joe Gordon-Levitt/Tom Hardy
Title: clucking open hearts and ears
Author: queenklu
Beta by: the fantastic zolac_no_miko
Fandom: Inception RPF
Pairing: Joe Gordon-Levitt/Tom Hardy
Rating: PG13ish
Word Count: 3800~
Summary: In which life is comforters and phonecuddling and ugly jumpers. Naturally.
A/N: A sequel of sorts to People Around You Smiling Out Loud, but you could probably get away with not reading that first. ;3 Also I have a vague feeling this was meant to be a present for pennyplainknits, so, uh, HAPPY BIRTHMASMUKAH BB! Title yanked from the Weepies' song I've Gotta Have You. ...Yuuuup, I used the line about a chicken.
“Darling!”
“Mr. Eames,” is Joe’s dry but amused reply. “Could you please put my boyfriend on the line?”
Tom’s laugh is all delight-delight at hearing Joe’s voice, delight at the word boyfriend, delight that Tom has finally figured out how to make the different ringtones work on his newfangled American cellphone (and he will never tell Joe what his is).
“’Darling’ was my word for you ages before it was Eames’,” Tom says, wandering to the kitchen to make tea. It’s early evening, for L.A.-really early evening if he’s being honest, he had to sneak out after dinner with some Warrior execs before anyone could invite him clubbing and it’s only half-gone seven-but he would have run from far more important things to be home tonight. He hasn’t been able to speak to Joe directly in nearly a week.
Not that there hasn’t been contact. Tom has been told by many people of authority that he is a fiendish texter, and at first he thought it might be a problem-he’s driven more than one person to block his number due to what one of them politely termed “coming on too strong.”
Still, Tom texts…frequently, and Joe texts…less often, but only marginally less often, which is startling and brilliant and wonderful, that Tom can wake up to Joe’s musings on the pel meni he acquired from an underground midnight café in Brooklyn, or a picture of Joe’s new hipster trainers, or a half-edited song Joe forwarded him to listen to. Sometimes Tom will finish up an interview and find a string of missed texts-all from Joe, each more dear than the last. And sometimes he’ll text I miss you, and Tom has every one of those messages saved, so when he’s feeling low and lonely he can open up that file and say Joe missed me at 10:42am on Saturday, and 6:01pm Sunday night, and three in the morning and precisely at noon, he missed me.
“Tell me everything about your day, don’t spare the details,” Tom orders, grinning shamelessly because he loves getting to ask all the dumb couple-y questions, “You woke up and then what happened?”
“I wished as hard as I could that I could go back to sleep?” Joe offers, and Tom’s smirk vanishes, bottom dropping out of his stomach. He can hear the exhaustion in Joe’s voice clear as day now that he’s paying attention, the barely-there drag of vowels and occasionally tripped-over consonants. He’d thought it might’ve been the time difference, three hours later in New York than it is here.
“Joe,” Tom says, feeling faintly ill and heartsick, “we really, I don’t mind talking later, I would rather you were well and rested- Have you been eating? Sometimes you honest-to-god forget, and it’s not like you’re trapped in the chicken-and-broccoli lifestyle like I am, you get to eat bread, do you know what I would give to eat bread-“
Joe’s laughter finally breaks through Tom’s meandering tirade, a helpless giggle that screams sleep deprived more than anything else, but before Tom can comment Joe says, “No, I wouldn’t-I really wouldn’t miss this for the world. And I get to sleep in tomorrow as late as I like, so.” Joe sighs into Tom’s pointed silence and adds, “And I’m eating, mom, promise I’m eating. Here, I’ll eat something right now. You can even pick what-I have left over Tai food-wow, really left over, maybe not. Um, the makings of toast? Oh hey, I just found a banana.”
“Banana,” Tom says, because the thought of Joe eating bread within earshot is nearly unbearable. Joe snorts. “For the-it’s got vitamins!”
“Vitamins,” Joe repeats, for once pronouncing the word properly. There’s a sound like Joe’s shifted the phone between his ear and shoulder, two hands needed to open a banana. “Tell me about your day while I chew, okay?”
“Well…yesterday I might’ve bought a jumper,” Tom says, scratching at the back of his neck. Considering how much time he spends on the phone corresponding with loved ones he should be better at this by now, but with Joe, he always…isn’t quite sane, or something, because the number of hours he spends planning out their conversations in his head are never at all actually useful.
“You-might have?” Joe prompts with his mouth full when Tom gets too caught up in his own thoughts to continue. “You don’t know for sure?”
“Don’t know if I’m keeping it yet, do I?” Tom makes a face at the fiddly little tea bag he’s been absently fondling, the best he could find in the hotel gift shop. “It’s all-my arms are too bloody big for it right now. But it’s…soft and plaid and yellow and shit-”
Joe makes an amused sound, like he’s swallowing laughter. “So. This is an Eames sweater, then?”
“It’s yellow and blue,” Tom defends, because it needs defending, this is an amazing jumper and it’s Kashmir and the colors… “The colors remind me of you.”
Tom thinks it’s because Joe’s shirt was yellow when they first met and the sign for the bagel shop had been blue, and it just stuck in his brain that way. His stupid, fractured brain, that runs around trying to mop up the overflow from his foolish heart like a highly ineffective sponge.
“Why are you so far away,” Joe groans, voice muffled like he has the phone pressed to the front of his face instead of the side bit, where his ear is.
“We’ve both made terrible life choices?” But it’s a weak joke and Joe can’t hear it anyway, so Tom lets it drop. “Joe? Joe?” he says, and waits for Joe’s grunted Yeah to prove he’s listening in. “I, ah. I have an idea.” It’s just a tiny spark of one, barely formed but budding with the promise of mixed metaphors. “It might help you feel a little better.”
“Is it phonesex?” Joe asks warily, “Because, um. I’m really, I’m not very good at it.”
“Not phonesex,” Tom promises, because there’s a faint tone in Joe’s voice that say’s it’s more than not being good at it-he doesn’t like it. Tom can understand; it’s nowhere near as good as the real thing, and often, when he’d tried it with past relationships, left him feeling even lonelier than before.
His new plan might backfire in the same way, but Tom hopes desperately that it helps instead.
“You’re in your apartment, yeah?” Tom says. “The one I’ve been to-with the high ceilings and one wall made entirely of windows?”
“You would remember that,” Joe chuckles, dark and fond, most likely reminiscing on the morning he fucked Tom against it, chest-belly-thighs slip-sliding against the windowpanes for all to see-that is, if ‘all’ had a hot air balloon and a pair of very strong binoculars.
“Why don’t you get in bed, love,” Tom coaxes as the electric kettle finally boils itself to a stop. “This way, if you fall asleep I’ll know you’re somewhere comfortable.”
Joe makes a noise, almost a whine. “If I get in the bed, I won’t-“ he starts, stops with a click in his throat Tom can hear. “The duvet you wandered home with is just, really warm and heavy and you’ve ruined me for all other blankets, you asshole, and sometimes I think it still, ugh, smells like you, feel free to tell me to shut up at any time-“
“Never,” Tom says; swears, even. “But I promise you won’t break my heart if you nod off. I might even do it, too; here, I’m sitting on my sofa with a cup of wretched American tea.” It’s true. He loves this couch for the way it’s big but not massive, wide enough to curl up with someone but not so big that there’s a space where another person should fit. Not like his mattress, the traitorous minx, which suddenly seems big enough to fit in the truck-full of limbs Tom’s been feeling like he’s missing. …Morbid.
“Fine,” Joe says, sounding unsure and a little bit wretched. And then, as Tom’s other words sink in a beat too late, “Hey. America’s got good tea. You’re just not looking in the right places.”
There’s a rustling sound and a soft grunt and sigh that Tom listens for while good-naturedly explaining how that is an outright lie, and he despairs of Joe’s palate; he listens to the noises of Joe settling down and thinks about that time Joe octopus-ed all over him and swore up and down that he wasn’t codependent, and Tom believed him, believes him, he really does. Codependent is not the same as this.
“Are you comfortable?” Tom asks, realizing belatedly that his mug is hot enough to make his fingers sting.
“Um, yes, but-”
“Put me on speaker,” Tom says. His accent is getting thicker and he can hear Joe’s breathing hitch just a little; if he closes his eyes he can picture him perfectly, burrowed in amongst the absurd number of pillows owned by a man who is usually so sparse in his other luxuries, hair all fluffed-up and ridiculous and nothing at all like Arthur, every little thing like Joe.
There’s a whisper of covers over the line as Joe shifts, and then a soft beep. “You do realize this is looking more and more like phonesex,” he drawls, voice just a little bit tinnier.
“It isn’t, but,” Tom falters, suddenly unsure. “If you want to stop, any time, just say so. I’m not even sure it’ll work.”
“Why does this sound like the first time you rimmed me?” Joe asks, voice dark and amused. “I’m good, Tom. What’s the plan?”
Tom takes a breath and lets it out slow, fighting back the sudden jitters racing along his skin. He puts the tea down before he can drop it, says, “Grab one of those massive pillows you love, yeah? Wrap your arms around it, tight.”
“Hang on one sec,” Joe says, and Tom can hear him wriggling around. “Okay, got it.”
“Breathe. Close your eyes. Squeeze that pillow for me, hard as you can.” He listens to the faint huff of static as Joe exhales, and he can see him in his head, eyes shut tight and those beautiful lips parted, forehead buried in the pillow clutched to his chest. “When I say,” Tom murmurs, low, “let go. …Now.”
Joe sighs, the sigh he makes when he gets his feet on solid ground after a day spent doing gravity-defying stunts in a harness, when he gets his first sip of coffee in the morning, when Tom slips free after a rough tumble between the sheets.
Tom sits forward, suddenly unable to be still. “Can you feel my arms around you? Can you feel how much I want to hold you?”
Joe makes a sweet little noise, not quite a moan. “Tom-“
“Shh, darling. I’m right here.” Tom pushes himself back on the sofa and closes his eyes, makes his body bend until he’s lying down, works at it until his breathing matches Joe’s. “Your head’s against my chest, can you feel my heartbeat?”
It’s beating near a mile a minute, and he wants to get up and move because this feels suddenly dangerous, not for Joe but for him, for the fragile bits of him sellotaped together-but that’s ultimately why he keeps himself still, because it isn’t for himself; it’s for Joe. Why he manages to get out, “This is what I miss most. When you’re falling asleep in my arms.”
There’s a sleepy mumble on the line, unintelligible aside from a few consonants that could be Tom’s name.
“If I was there with you…” Tom loses the air in his lungs and turns his face toward the couch so he can feel his breath puff up against something. “You have a curl in the nape of your hair.”
“I know,” Joe hums, and there’s a soft shhh of fabric shifting like Joe is reaching up to touch the spot. “You like to kiss me there when you think I’m too out of it to notice.”
Tom swallows around something sharp and holds the phone closer to his ear, until the shell of it starts to ache. “Joe,” he gets out, “if I could be there-“
“Hey, hey,” Joe soothes, less sleepy and somehow-impossibly-even more fond. “Come here.” Tom rolls toward the couch-back without letting himself think about it, curling his legs up to push his knees against the cushions and feel something pushing back.
“Do you want me to tell you what I’d do if you were here?” Joe asks, gentle and honestly curious. “Or would that make it worse?”
“Missing you?” Tom tries to laugh, but not very hard. It shouldn’t surprise him that Joe knows how affected by this he is, it shouldn’t make him ache a little less. “Don’t think it could get worse. Not to be a completely melodramatic sod, but.” He nudges his head against the couch and pretends the drag of fabric on his skin is just one of Joe’s many hitRecord sleep shirts. “Please.”
Because he’s just a little like Eames, just a little bit selfish.
Joe lets out a breath that doesn’t sound entirely steady, but his tone is strong and sure. “Well, first I’d get your shirt off-“
“Mmm, naughty,” Tom says on autopilot, words strangely heavy in his mouth.
“-and count your tattoos,” Joe talks over him, startling a laugh out of a hurting place in Tom’s chest. He can see it now, Joe climbing over him and pinning Tom’s wrists to the bed, gaze raking over Tom’s skin. “Make sure you haven’t gotten anything too strange since I saw you last.”
Tom lets out a deep, amused hum, allowing Joe to come to his own conclusions. The truth is, he’s been feeling the itch for a while-something small, intricate, inked over the vulnerable curve of his ribs-but he wants to take Joe with him, wants to show Joe the process and the beauty and the pure fucking high, wants to hold Joe’s hand as the design is etched permanently into his skin. Wants Joe to fuck him afterwards, while Tom’s pupils are still swallowing his irises whole and he feels like he could float away except for the places Joe is holding him down.
He could probably get hard thinking about it, but at this moment he doesn’t want to. Not when he can have this warm glow of almost and Joe’s voice in his ear.
“Then what?” Tom prompts, dragging the afghan off the floor where he left it last night, wriggling until it’s covering most of his body and part of his head. His toes curl, abandoned in the cooler air, but if he closes his eyes and lies hard enough he can tell himself the blanket smells like Joe.
“I’d just-“ Joe sighs, the sound muffled like he’s rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’d just lie on top of you, I think. You’re all beefed up for Warrior and getting ready for Bane, right? You could take it.”
“Of course,” agrees Tom, feeling enough of himself again that he can fake the rest. “I am but your slab of beef, love; use me as you would use your bed.”
“And I would just sleep forever,” Joe says, knowing just when to ignore him, like he can only hear Tom when he’s wholly himself, “because-you’d let me. And I love the way you smell at the end of the day, so I’d probably-probably sniff you a little bit, hope that’s okay. And we’d watch shitty movies about Nazi zombies and, I don’t know. I’d rub your head, because you love it when I do that-“
Tom can’t help making a noise just at the memory of Joe’s strong fingers sliding through his hair, no matter how short it is, and gets a sweet, pleased sound from Joe in return. “I’d rub your head,” Joe says again, “and I’d let you fall asleep leaning against me, and you’ll tuck your hand in the small of my back when we walk through doors because you think I don’t notice, and I’ll touch the back of your knees whenever I can because you shiver every time I do.”
The ache in his chest feels like it might tear him apart, like that one film Joe made him watch where aliens punched their way through peoples’ breastbones, like he might cry, which is embarrassing, he can’t remember the last time he cried that wasn’t being filmed. He is a big bad motherfucker and he’s near tears because his boyfriend is away, how-
His breathing has gone horribly wrong, and Joe must be able to hear it, takes a breath like he’s about to say something and Tom can’t hear it, he’ll shatter, blurts, “I-”
And Joe says anyway, “I love you. You know that, right?” He sounds desperate, shaky. “I mean-fuck, Tom, say something, please?”
“Jesus bloody Christ,” Tom gasps when he can. “Is that-Is that why you don’t do phonesex, because you can bring a man to-to-to emotional orgasm, my god…” He drags a hand over his face, shoving the afghan off as he moves because he needs more air, feels flayed open in a really, really good way, impossibly, somehow. His skin is tingling; one leg falls off the couch with a bewildered, helpless thump. He almost drops the phone.
“Um,” Joe starts, voice strange, “Well, that’s…new, I guess?”
“I love you,” Tom says, and it feels like he’s said it a million times to Joe before now, so easy and natural and right. “God, Joseph, Joe, I do. I bought you a jumper,” he blurts because suddenly it’s quite obvious that’s what he did, the same way he ‘wandered home with a comforter’ when he caught Joe shivering in the middle of the night and oh, Christ, he just thought of Joe’s apartment as home, how did he not realize this sooner?
Tom can hear Joe grinning, smiling out loud. “I-wow,” Joe says, words still stretched around the curve of his lips and his dimples and the corners of his eyes, “Okay, that’s-really, really good. I didn’t-I meant to tell you in person when you visit next week-“
“Fuck next week, I’ll be on a plane to you tonight,” Tom is already scrambling upright, looking around at things to pack as soon as his vision stops spinning-it doesn’t, he has to sit down. “Fuck, was that unthinkingly codependent? I was thinking about that word earlier and, and Joe I might be, I think I’m codependent for you, if that’s a thing that makes grammatical sense.” He has to put his head between his knees for a moment, arm bent awkwardly to keep the phone to his ear so he can hear Joe’s breath keep hitching.
“Fuck,” Joe gets out, breathless and shaky. “Okay, I see what you mean with the emotional, yeah. Um.”
“You?” Tom asks, because if that’s all it took, Tom will use the word ‘codependent’ on a more regular basis.
“Not-um, but if you don’t stop, maybe?” He can almost see Joe shake his head at the absurdity of their conversation. “No, I-listen, you shouldn’t just drop everything-“
“Want to,” Tom says, “I’ll call in a bloody family emergency if I have to, it’s just interviews for the next three days and at least two of them I should be able to reschedule in New York. Please, let me.”
Joe is almost panting, it’s beautiful, he keeps catching himself and stifling his gasps, biting them back with tiny little groans. “Only,” he says like he’s pinching the bridge of his nose, “Only if your agent doesn’t threaten to kill you, and just this one time, okay, I don’t want to hurt your career-”
“I have a feeling this is a once in a lifetime event,” Tom says, and hopes Joe understands; he hiccups a moan like he does, or wants to. Which is good enough for now.
“Darling, I have to go,” he says, endlessly sorry and giddy all at once, “I need both hands for packing and I need to make calls and I need to find a sufficiently ugly bow to wrap your jumper with.”
“Right, yeah,” Joe says, still breathlessly unsteady, “Shit, I have to clean.”
“Don’t you dare,” Tom warns in his deepest, most affectionate growl, “I meant it when I said I want you well-rested. Wank before bed and don’t so much as hoover. I’ll text you with my flight details as soon as I get them,” he adds, amused by Joe’s near-petulant huff.
“No promises,” Joe says, “to ‘hoovering.’”
His tone makes Tom shudder, but he really has to go. “I love you,” he says, because it feels good to say it, and it’s going to feel so much better when he can see the words light up Joe’s face.
“I love you too,” Joe says. It really doesn’t pack any less of a punch.
Later, when Tom is up to his elbows in half-folded laundry and his agent’s voice is abusing the tender Joe-coated canals of his inner ear, he hears a little blip-blip of two incoming text messages. He puts Maggie on speaker to check it, and it’s from Joe, and they say:
If you pick me up and twirl me in the airport I will not be responsible for my actions.
And also: I miss you.
“Maggie, I’m getting on a plane whether you book a seat for me or not,” Tom says, “If I have to do it myself I’m purchasing an extra ticket for an ugly yellow jumper just to spite you.”
Maggie lets out a pained, whining growl that means she’ll do it but he owes her one, and that is fine, that is gloriously fine, he will gladly owe her a hundred million favors if he can see Joe’s face in the morning.
Because Joe said I love you at 10:43 in New York and 7:43 in L.A. and when Tom sees him Tom will say I love you in all the time zones in the world, in all the languages, with his mouth and his hands. And Joe will wear the jumper-because he has to-and Tom’s hand will hover in the small of his back when they walk through the doors, fingertips brushing the Kashmir that’s touching Joe’s skin, and everything will be alright.
The End
comments are ♥
eta: there is now a coda/threequel to this 'verse that can be found here!
Author: queenklu
Beta by: the fantastic zolac_no_miko
Fandom: Inception RPF
Pairing: Joe Gordon-Levitt/Tom Hardy
Rating: PG13ish
Word Count: 3800~
Summary: In which life is comforters and phonecuddling and ugly jumpers. Naturally.
A/N: A sequel of sorts to People Around You Smiling Out Loud, but you could probably get away with not reading that first. ;3 Also I have a vague feeling this was meant to be a present for pennyplainknits, so, uh, HAPPY BIRTHMASMUKAH BB! Title yanked from the Weepies' song I've Gotta Have You. ...Yuuuup, I used the line about a chicken.
“Darling!”
“Mr. Eames,” is Joe’s dry but amused reply. “Could you please put my boyfriend on the line?”
Tom’s laugh is all delight-delight at hearing Joe’s voice, delight at the word boyfriend, delight that Tom has finally figured out how to make the different ringtones work on his newfangled American cellphone (and he will never tell Joe what his is).
“’Darling’ was my word for you ages before it was Eames’,” Tom says, wandering to the kitchen to make tea. It’s early evening, for L.A.-really early evening if he’s being honest, he had to sneak out after dinner with some Warrior execs before anyone could invite him clubbing and it’s only half-gone seven-but he would have run from far more important things to be home tonight. He hasn’t been able to speak to Joe directly in nearly a week.
Not that there hasn’t been contact. Tom has been told by many people of authority that he is a fiendish texter, and at first he thought it might be a problem-he’s driven more than one person to block his number due to what one of them politely termed “coming on too strong.”
Still, Tom texts…frequently, and Joe texts…less often, but only marginally less often, which is startling and brilliant and wonderful, that Tom can wake up to Joe’s musings on the pel meni he acquired from an underground midnight café in Brooklyn, or a picture of Joe’s new hipster trainers, or a half-edited song Joe forwarded him to listen to. Sometimes Tom will finish up an interview and find a string of missed texts-all from Joe, each more dear than the last. And sometimes he’ll text I miss you, and Tom has every one of those messages saved, so when he’s feeling low and lonely he can open up that file and say Joe missed me at 10:42am on Saturday, and 6:01pm Sunday night, and three in the morning and precisely at noon, he missed me.
“Tell me everything about your day, don’t spare the details,” Tom orders, grinning shamelessly because he loves getting to ask all the dumb couple-y questions, “You woke up and then what happened?”
“I wished as hard as I could that I could go back to sleep?” Joe offers, and Tom’s smirk vanishes, bottom dropping out of his stomach. He can hear the exhaustion in Joe’s voice clear as day now that he’s paying attention, the barely-there drag of vowels and occasionally tripped-over consonants. He’d thought it might’ve been the time difference, three hours later in New York than it is here.
“Joe,” Tom says, feeling faintly ill and heartsick, “we really, I don’t mind talking later, I would rather you were well and rested- Have you been eating? Sometimes you honest-to-god forget, and it’s not like you’re trapped in the chicken-and-broccoli lifestyle like I am, you get to eat bread, do you know what I would give to eat bread-“
Joe’s laughter finally breaks through Tom’s meandering tirade, a helpless giggle that screams sleep deprived more than anything else, but before Tom can comment Joe says, “No, I wouldn’t-I really wouldn’t miss this for the world. And I get to sleep in tomorrow as late as I like, so.” Joe sighs into Tom’s pointed silence and adds, “And I’m eating, mom, promise I’m eating. Here, I’ll eat something right now. You can even pick what-I have left over Tai food-wow, really left over, maybe not. Um, the makings of toast? Oh hey, I just found a banana.”
“Banana,” Tom says, because the thought of Joe eating bread within earshot is nearly unbearable. Joe snorts. “For the-it’s got vitamins!”
“Vitamins,” Joe repeats, for once pronouncing the word properly. There’s a sound like Joe’s shifted the phone between his ear and shoulder, two hands needed to open a banana. “Tell me about your day while I chew, okay?”
“Well…yesterday I might’ve bought a jumper,” Tom says, scratching at the back of his neck. Considering how much time he spends on the phone corresponding with loved ones he should be better at this by now, but with Joe, he always…isn’t quite sane, or something, because the number of hours he spends planning out their conversations in his head are never at all actually useful.
“You-might have?” Joe prompts with his mouth full when Tom gets too caught up in his own thoughts to continue. “You don’t know for sure?”
“Don’t know if I’m keeping it yet, do I?” Tom makes a face at the fiddly little tea bag he’s been absently fondling, the best he could find in the hotel gift shop. “It’s all-my arms are too bloody big for it right now. But it’s…soft and plaid and yellow and shit-”
Joe makes an amused sound, like he’s swallowing laughter. “So. This is an Eames sweater, then?”
“It’s yellow and blue,” Tom defends, because it needs defending, this is an amazing jumper and it’s Kashmir and the colors… “The colors remind me of you.”
Tom thinks it’s because Joe’s shirt was yellow when they first met and the sign for the bagel shop had been blue, and it just stuck in his brain that way. His stupid, fractured brain, that runs around trying to mop up the overflow from his foolish heart like a highly ineffective sponge.
“Why are you so far away,” Joe groans, voice muffled like he has the phone pressed to the front of his face instead of the side bit, where his ear is.
“We’ve both made terrible life choices?” But it’s a weak joke and Joe can’t hear it anyway, so Tom lets it drop. “Joe? Joe?” he says, and waits for Joe’s grunted Yeah to prove he’s listening in. “I, ah. I have an idea.” It’s just a tiny spark of one, barely formed but budding with the promise of mixed metaphors. “It might help you feel a little better.”
“Is it phonesex?” Joe asks warily, “Because, um. I’m really, I’m not very good at it.”
“Not phonesex,” Tom promises, because there’s a faint tone in Joe’s voice that say’s it’s more than not being good at it-he doesn’t like it. Tom can understand; it’s nowhere near as good as the real thing, and often, when he’d tried it with past relationships, left him feeling even lonelier than before.
His new plan might backfire in the same way, but Tom hopes desperately that it helps instead.
“You’re in your apartment, yeah?” Tom says. “The one I’ve been to-with the high ceilings and one wall made entirely of windows?”
“You would remember that,” Joe chuckles, dark and fond, most likely reminiscing on the morning he fucked Tom against it, chest-belly-thighs slip-sliding against the windowpanes for all to see-that is, if ‘all’ had a hot air balloon and a pair of very strong binoculars.
“Why don’t you get in bed, love,” Tom coaxes as the electric kettle finally boils itself to a stop. “This way, if you fall asleep I’ll know you’re somewhere comfortable.”
Joe makes a noise, almost a whine. “If I get in the bed, I won’t-“ he starts, stops with a click in his throat Tom can hear. “The duvet you wandered home with is just, really warm and heavy and you’ve ruined me for all other blankets, you asshole, and sometimes I think it still, ugh, smells like you, feel free to tell me to shut up at any time-“
“Never,” Tom says; swears, even. “But I promise you won’t break my heart if you nod off. I might even do it, too; here, I’m sitting on my sofa with a cup of wretched American tea.” It’s true. He loves this couch for the way it’s big but not massive, wide enough to curl up with someone but not so big that there’s a space where another person should fit. Not like his mattress, the traitorous minx, which suddenly seems big enough to fit in the truck-full of limbs Tom’s been feeling like he’s missing. …Morbid.
“Fine,” Joe says, sounding unsure and a little bit wretched. And then, as Tom’s other words sink in a beat too late, “Hey. America’s got good tea. You’re just not looking in the right places.”
There’s a rustling sound and a soft grunt and sigh that Tom listens for while good-naturedly explaining how that is an outright lie, and he despairs of Joe’s palate; he listens to the noises of Joe settling down and thinks about that time Joe octopus-ed all over him and swore up and down that he wasn’t codependent, and Tom believed him, believes him, he really does. Codependent is not the same as this.
“Are you comfortable?” Tom asks, realizing belatedly that his mug is hot enough to make his fingers sting.
“Um, yes, but-”
“Put me on speaker,” Tom says. His accent is getting thicker and he can hear Joe’s breathing hitch just a little; if he closes his eyes he can picture him perfectly, burrowed in amongst the absurd number of pillows owned by a man who is usually so sparse in his other luxuries, hair all fluffed-up and ridiculous and nothing at all like Arthur, every little thing like Joe.
There’s a whisper of covers over the line as Joe shifts, and then a soft beep. “You do realize this is looking more and more like phonesex,” he drawls, voice just a little bit tinnier.
“It isn’t, but,” Tom falters, suddenly unsure. “If you want to stop, any time, just say so. I’m not even sure it’ll work.”
“Why does this sound like the first time you rimmed me?” Joe asks, voice dark and amused. “I’m good, Tom. What’s the plan?”
Tom takes a breath and lets it out slow, fighting back the sudden jitters racing along his skin. He puts the tea down before he can drop it, says, “Grab one of those massive pillows you love, yeah? Wrap your arms around it, tight.”
“Hang on one sec,” Joe says, and Tom can hear him wriggling around. “Okay, got it.”
“Breathe. Close your eyes. Squeeze that pillow for me, hard as you can.” He listens to the faint huff of static as Joe exhales, and he can see him in his head, eyes shut tight and those beautiful lips parted, forehead buried in the pillow clutched to his chest. “When I say,” Tom murmurs, low, “let go. …Now.”
Joe sighs, the sigh he makes when he gets his feet on solid ground after a day spent doing gravity-defying stunts in a harness, when he gets his first sip of coffee in the morning, when Tom slips free after a rough tumble between the sheets.
Tom sits forward, suddenly unable to be still. “Can you feel my arms around you? Can you feel how much I want to hold you?”
Joe makes a sweet little noise, not quite a moan. “Tom-“
“Shh, darling. I’m right here.” Tom pushes himself back on the sofa and closes his eyes, makes his body bend until he’s lying down, works at it until his breathing matches Joe’s. “Your head’s against my chest, can you feel my heartbeat?”
It’s beating near a mile a minute, and he wants to get up and move because this feels suddenly dangerous, not for Joe but for him, for the fragile bits of him sellotaped together-but that’s ultimately why he keeps himself still, because it isn’t for himself; it’s for Joe. Why he manages to get out, “This is what I miss most. When you’re falling asleep in my arms.”
There’s a sleepy mumble on the line, unintelligible aside from a few consonants that could be Tom’s name.
“If I was there with you…” Tom loses the air in his lungs and turns his face toward the couch so he can feel his breath puff up against something. “You have a curl in the nape of your hair.”
“I know,” Joe hums, and there’s a soft shhh of fabric shifting like Joe is reaching up to touch the spot. “You like to kiss me there when you think I’m too out of it to notice.”
Tom swallows around something sharp and holds the phone closer to his ear, until the shell of it starts to ache. “Joe,” he gets out, “if I could be there-“
“Hey, hey,” Joe soothes, less sleepy and somehow-impossibly-even more fond. “Come here.” Tom rolls toward the couch-back without letting himself think about it, curling his legs up to push his knees against the cushions and feel something pushing back.
“Do you want me to tell you what I’d do if you were here?” Joe asks, gentle and honestly curious. “Or would that make it worse?”
“Missing you?” Tom tries to laugh, but not very hard. It shouldn’t surprise him that Joe knows how affected by this he is, it shouldn’t make him ache a little less. “Don’t think it could get worse. Not to be a completely melodramatic sod, but.” He nudges his head against the couch and pretends the drag of fabric on his skin is just one of Joe’s many hitRecord sleep shirts. “Please.”
Because he’s just a little like Eames, just a little bit selfish.
Joe lets out a breath that doesn’t sound entirely steady, but his tone is strong and sure. “Well, first I’d get your shirt off-“
“Mmm, naughty,” Tom says on autopilot, words strangely heavy in his mouth.
“-and count your tattoos,” Joe talks over him, startling a laugh out of a hurting place in Tom’s chest. He can see it now, Joe climbing over him and pinning Tom’s wrists to the bed, gaze raking over Tom’s skin. “Make sure you haven’t gotten anything too strange since I saw you last.”
Tom lets out a deep, amused hum, allowing Joe to come to his own conclusions. The truth is, he’s been feeling the itch for a while-something small, intricate, inked over the vulnerable curve of his ribs-but he wants to take Joe with him, wants to show Joe the process and the beauty and the pure fucking high, wants to hold Joe’s hand as the design is etched permanently into his skin. Wants Joe to fuck him afterwards, while Tom’s pupils are still swallowing his irises whole and he feels like he could float away except for the places Joe is holding him down.
He could probably get hard thinking about it, but at this moment he doesn’t want to. Not when he can have this warm glow of almost and Joe’s voice in his ear.
“Then what?” Tom prompts, dragging the afghan off the floor where he left it last night, wriggling until it’s covering most of his body and part of his head. His toes curl, abandoned in the cooler air, but if he closes his eyes and lies hard enough he can tell himself the blanket smells like Joe.
“I’d just-“ Joe sighs, the sound muffled like he’s rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’d just lie on top of you, I think. You’re all beefed up for Warrior and getting ready for Bane, right? You could take it.”
“Of course,” agrees Tom, feeling enough of himself again that he can fake the rest. “I am but your slab of beef, love; use me as you would use your bed.”
“And I would just sleep forever,” Joe says, knowing just when to ignore him, like he can only hear Tom when he’s wholly himself, “because-you’d let me. And I love the way you smell at the end of the day, so I’d probably-probably sniff you a little bit, hope that’s okay. And we’d watch shitty movies about Nazi zombies and, I don’t know. I’d rub your head, because you love it when I do that-“
Tom can’t help making a noise just at the memory of Joe’s strong fingers sliding through his hair, no matter how short it is, and gets a sweet, pleased sound from Joe in return. “I’d rub your head,” Joe says again, “and I’d let you fall asleep leaning against me, and you’ll tuck your hand in the small of my back when we walk through doors because you think I don’t notice, and I’ll touch the back of your knees whenever I can because you shiver every time I do.”
The ache in his chest feels like it might tear him apart, like that one film Joe made him watch where aliens punched their way through peoples’ breastbones, like he might cry, which is embarrassing, he can’t remember the last time he cried that wasn’t being filmed. He is a big bad motherfucker and he’s near tears because his boyfriend is away, how-
His breathing has gone horribly wrong, and Joe must be able to hear it, takes a breath like he’s about to say something and Tom can’t hear it, he’ll shatter, blurts, “I-”
And Joe says anyway, “I love you. You know that, right?” He sounds desperate, shaky. “I mean-fuck, Tom, say something, please?”
“Jesus bloody Christ,” Tom gasps when he can. “Is that-Is that why you don’t do phonesex, because you can bring a man to-to-to emotional orgasm, my god…” He drags a hand over his face, shoving the afghan off as he moves because he needs more air, feels flayed open in a really, really good way, impossibly, somehow. His skin is tingling; one leg falls off the couch with a bewildered, helpless thump. He almost drops the phone.
“Um,” Joe starts, voice strange, “Well, that’s…new, I guess?”
“I love you,” Tom says, and it feels like he’s said it a million times to Joe before now, so easy and natural and right. “God, Joseph, Joe, I do. I bought you a jumper,” he blurts because suddenly it’s quite obvious that’s what he did, the same way he ‘wandered home with a comforter’ when he caught Joe shivering in the middle of the night and oh, Christ, he just thought of Joe’s apartment as home, how did he not realize this sooner?
Tom can hear Joe grinning, smiling out loud. “I-wow,” Joe says, words still stretched around the curve of his lips and his dimples and the corners of his eyes, “Okay, that’s-really, really good. I didn’t-I meant to tell you in person when you visit next week-“
“Fuck next week, I’ll be on a plane to you tonight,” Tom is already scrambling upright, looking around at things to pack as soon as his vision stops spinning-it doesn’t, he has to sit down. “Fuck, was that unthinkingly codependent? I was thinking about that word earlier and, and Joe I might be, I think I’m codependent for you, if that’s a thing that makes grammatical sense.” He has to put his head between his knees for a moment, arm bent awkwardly to keep the phone to his ear so he can hear Joe’s breath keep hitching.
“Fuck,” Joe gets out, breathless and shaky. “Okay, I see what you mean with the emotional, yeah. Um.”
“You?” Tom asks, because if that’s all it took, Tom will use the word ‘codependent’ on a more regular basis.
“Not-um, but if you don’t stop, maybe?” He can almost see Joe shake his head at the absurdity of their conversation. “No, I-listen, you shouldn’t just drop everything-“
“Want to,” Tom says, “I’ll call in a bloody family emergency if I have to, it’s just interviews for the next three days and at least two of them I should be able to reschedule in New York. Please, let me.”
Joe is almost panting, it’s beautiful, he keeps catching himself and stifling his gasps, biting them back with tiny little groans. “Only,” he says like he’s pinching the bridge of his nose, “Only if your agent doesn’t threaten to kill you, and just this one time, okay, I don’t want to hurt your career-”
“I have a feeling this is a once in a lifetime event,” Tom says, and hopes Joe understands; he hiccups a moan like he does, or wants to. Which is good enough for now.
“Darling, I have to go,” he says, endlessly sorry and giddy all at once, “I need both hands for packing and I need to make calls and I need to find a sufficiently ugly bow to wrap your jumper with.”
“Right, yeah,” Joe says, still breathlessly unsteady, “Shit, I have to clean.”
“Don’t you dare,” Tom warns in his deepest, most affectionate growl, “I meant it when I said I want you well-rested. Wank before bed and don’t so much as hoover. I’ll text you with my flight details as soon as I get them,” he adds, amused by Joe’s near-petulant huff.
“No promises,” Joe says, “to ‘hoovering.’”
His tone makes Tom shudder, but he really has to go. “I love you,” he says, because it feels good to say it, and it’s going to feel so much better when he can see the words light up Joe’s face.
“I love you too,” Joe says. It really doesn’t pack any less of a punch.
Later, when Tom is up to his elbows in half-folded laundry and his agent’s voice is abusing the tender Joe-coated canals of his inner ear, he hears a little blip-blip of two incoming text messages. He puts Maggie on speaker to check it, and it’s from Joe, and they say:
If you pick me up and twirl me in the airport I will not be responsible for my actions.
And also: I miss you.
“Maggie, I’m getting on a plane whether you book a seat for me or not,” Tom says, “If I have to do it myself I’m purchasing an extra ticket for an ugly yellow jumper just to spite you.”
Maggie lets out a pained, whining growl that means she’ll do it but he owes her one, and that is fine, that is gloriously fine, he will gladly owe her a hundred million favors if he can see Joe’s face in the morning.
Because Joe said I love you at 10:43 in New York and 7:43 in L.A. and when Tom sees him Tom will say I love you in all the time zones in the world, in all the languages, with his mouth and his hands. And Joe will wear the jumper-because he has to-and Tom’s hand will hover in the small of his back when they walk through the doors, fingertips brushing the Kashmir that’s touching Joe’s skin, and everything will be alright.
The End
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eta: there is now a coda/threequel to this 'verse that can be found here!