Title:Summer Occupation
Author:
cog_nomenRating:M
Warnings:m/m, PWP
Prompt:Jack/Rowe; delayed gratification - "For once, he doesn't have something smart to say."
Word count: 1,115
Summary: It's hot in Topeka. Jack encourages his partner to be more optimistic about the heat.
There is a trail of clothes that starts in the hall and leads to the couch. Jack follows a belt, a set of pants, one sock, a rumpled red shirt, the other sock, and he finds their owner laying face down on the couch in nothing but his boxers. It is hot, but Jack finds this a bit excessive - then again Rowe has a bit of a taste for the theatric.
“It’s hot.” Rowe complains, possibly entirely to himself. Jack has approached from the back of the couch, still fully clothed in his usual pristine white suit. His one concession to the heat is the glass of ice-water he carries. Rowe doesn’t look around as Jack approaches, but Jack suspects his presence is known.
“The air conditioning is on.” Jack placates, looking at the wide brown expanse of Rowe’s back, the curve of spine. Rowe is spread eagled like a starfish, attempting to expose as much of his skin as possible to the cool leather of the couch. Jack knows that Rowe will likely stay long enough for the leather to warm and start sticking to his heated skin.
“Is it?” Rowe’s tone is cheerfully sarcastic into the couch. “Well perhaps you might want to turn it up a little. I think we’re sinking somewhere below the internal temperature of the sun.”
Jack only has to consider a minute before he extends his arm over the back of the couch and tilts his wrist. A thin stream of ice water lands exactly where he intends it to, in the indent of Rowe’s spine, where it crawls in a quick line down the center of Rowe’s back.
Rowe’s muscles jerk, and he gives a surge, but even this affront is not enough to convince him to get up and make something useful of himself. The water gathers in the small of his back and Rowe leaves it there, now stubbornly unwilling to move.
“Have I mentioned today how much I hate you.” Rowe says after a moment, as his muscles are starting to unwind again, too heat sick to retaliate. Jack takes a revenge tally here, coup against all the times his partner has taken advantage of him when he’s too sick or tired to resist.
“Not today.” Jack answers, smiling. He reaches down with his index finger and traces a pattern onto Rowe’s back in the water. It starts as a simplified smiling face, but descends into random shapes when Rowe doesn’t complain.
“Jack,” Rowe says after a moment, his nose still pressed into the leather of the couch. Jack isn’t entirely sure how he can breathe, but Rowe hasn’t managed to suffocate himself yet and he often gets like this in the summer. “It’s too hot for anything.”
Fairly certain that Rowe would revise his statement for cigarettes, chocolate, a good cup of coffee, or perhaps even a scrap of shiny paper waved alluringly enough at him, Jack doesn’t bother to respond. He has an idea of how to get Rowe’s mind off the heat. With a sudden motion he tips back the rest of his drink, watching Rowe flinch as the ice settles back down to the bottom of the glass.
The couch barely protests as he settles onto it, Rowe being much more vocal as Jack shifts his legs around to slide his knees underneath them. He hoists Rowe’s hips up over his lap, and Rowe stops mid-complaint. He lifts his head from the couch at last, seems to peel himself up to get his knees underneath him.
“Too hot for anything, did you say?” Jack teases as his hands wander.
“Maybe there are certain exceptions.” Rowe answers, his voice sliding downward into a purr. “Just keep your ice water to yourself, hmm?”
Jack knows the minute he lets Rowe finish, Rowe will be back to complaining. He draws the gentle, teasing touches over the fabric of Rowe’s boxers out as long as he dares. Rowe’s muscles start to jump under his fingers as he teases.
“Jack,” Rowe pleads, just as Jack works his fingers into the open fly of Rowe’s boxers. For once, he doesn’t have anything smart to say.
He leans forward along the length of Rowe’s back, pushing one hand hard against Rowe’s thigh while the fingers of his other work their way along his partner’s length. In the tumble of Rowe’s hair, Jack leans his cheek near Rowe’s ear.
“Not until I say so, right?” His voice is pitched lowly, and Rowe makes a frustrated noise.
“Jack, that’s not fair.”
“I could stop…?”
Rowe can’t form words to reply to that. He’s arching his back against Jack’s chest now, his hands braced wide on the couch in front of him. Jack feels how tense Rowe’s muscles are, feels the faint tremble in his partner’s arms. He’s concentrating, that’s why he’s quiet. Rowe is usually more vocal, but now instead he’s focused.
When Jack begins to speed his pace, Rowe makes a strangled sound that sounds like it’s hitting his clenched teeth. After a few moments of this, he’s lifting his hand to put it over Jack’s, slowing him when he knows he’s nearing his limit.
It’s this sort of communication that makes them an effective team. Jack slows, but doesn’t stop - that would take all the challenge out of it. They alternate pace like this, until Rowe’s arms give and he leans forward in a boneless heap, his forehead pressing into the place where his arms cross above his head. His hips move now, jerkily, with every motion.
He shifts, and bites his own wrist, and that buys him a few moments more before he has to beg.
“Stop, a second or…” He’s almost admitting defeat, but Jack knows too that he wouldn't have been able to hold up long in his place.
“Alright.” Jack says, but in permission, not agreement. Jack is feeling generous today; he won’t force Rowe to keep begging extensions. “Come on now.”
He speeds his pace, and Rowe sits up again, all the way this time so they both are sitting upright. His partner’s hands reach back and claw at Jack’s shirt, using this handhold to push himself into Jack’s hands as he tips over the edge.
“I hope,” Jack says after a moment, tangling his hand on the hem of Rowe’s boxers to clean his fingers as Rowe leans back against his chest and huffs out dazed breaths. “It’s not too hot for you to clean up the mess you’ve left on the couch.”
Rowe is silent for a moment, catching his breath.
“I ought to shove you in it.” He replies, at last.