FIC: Truth Telling (Chapter 2 of 2)
Title: Truth Telling
Part: 2 of 2
Author: Esmeralda
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing(s): Mal/Simon
Disclaimer: This is a work of impure fiction.
Warnings: M/M
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Original Date: October 2011
Note: I haven’t written in a long time, but I was inspired by the coming out, at last, of a certain actor without whom this fandom would not be so delicious. So here’s to being brave.
___________________________________________________________
Truth Telling: Chapter 1
I’ve taken the opportunity to ride out alone, over the usual protests.
This world is benign, if wilderness is ever that. Reavers never bother it, no point to raiding without a congregation of potential victims. The horse takes our time and I’m glad for the ease of it, the sun on my face. I’m not going far, you don’t have to go far to be alone out here.
Even on shore leave, I nearly always sleep on board. Someone has to watch my girl while the others play, and they need to play so as to stay fit for the black. But we’re flush for once, and I can take a few days for me knowing Zoe’s got my back.
It’s a powerful understatement to say we’re in for some changes. She’s started to show. Her radiant smile when she told me eased any cause I might have started to have for discomfort. Thank all that’s good in the ‘verse, something of Wash has survived. And the feeling is not solely out of benefit for Zoe. She’s not back to her old self, never will be I reckon, but her new self now smiles a lot like the old one used to. That woman is terrible fierce, but she deserves not to have to be. I want her to know I’ve got her back too, whether she decides to stay on Serenity or settle where she and the child can have a normal life. I’ll see to their coin, even if she fights me on it. Never been a more loyal second than her, she even put Wash after me, which is a regret I’ll always carry. It’s high time someone ‘sides her commanding officer or captain rated first.
This is the life I have chosen. Still, the prospect of not seeing Zoe every day of that life makes me lonesome. It’s a terrible selfish thought, and I’ve been on this streak of truth telling, so I think it prudent to take myself off alone to ponder the solitary state, where shooting my mouth off has no downside.
The smallish cabin is a modern pod-house on the inside with some fine amenities, disguised with stone and thatch on the outside, and a genuine stream burbles through the paddock. There’s a tiny stable so snug and cute it makes me snort louder than the horse when it comes to sight. These cabins are scattered far and wide on this continent, not meant for more than one or two at a time. Peace, quiet, and nakedness. Just the medicine I need.
After I settle the horse, I strip down and head for the hot spring just a short throw from the front door. I haven’t had a soak in I don’t know how long. Shiv’s bites are finally healed and the hot water is nothing but pleasing. A bottle of dark ale and an open sky completes my contentment. It’s full dusk before my stomach makes me go inside to rustle up a meal. I don’t even remember going to sleep.
******
I’m on my feet on the sun-warmed floorboards, gun in hand, when I hear the second whicker and my cobwebby brain gathers that the horses are acquainted. It doesn’t put me to ease. If there was big trouble, it’d be Serenity’s engines howling at my front door, but smaller trouble could ride in. I yank on my trousers one-handed, and with shoulder to the jamb, crack the door enough to peek.
Simon is just loosing his mount in the paddock. He shuts the gate and turns to me as I swing the door wide.
“Please tell me my crew is in one piece.” My heart thunders in my ears with fast awakening and worry.
He starts toward me with a half-smile, hands outspread. “Fine. Everyone’s fine. Jayne even found a shooting range so he and Zoe are in ‘hog heaven’ as he put it.”
I uncock the revolver and set it aside, suddenly over-aware of my shirtless state. There I go running a hand through my hair again. I silently vow not to play poker again until I master that twitch. “Then you’d best have a prime excuse to hand for intruding upon my peacefulness.”
“I hope you’ll find it so.” Simon stops about halfway to the door, reaches up and unbuttons his fancy shirt, slowly, steadily. He occupies a spot just outside the shadow of the peaked roof as it slices the early morning sun, and I come to see that Simon’s pristine skin, as it emerges, is covered with millions of baby-fuzzy-blonde hairs. They pick up the soft, clear light and he glows like those you hear claiming to be psychic say good people do. The shirt falls in a puff of dust on the path and Simon pays it no mind.
There are lots of misunderstandings that occur in common human dealings, and I’ve taken my part in many. But I’m thinking that this is a clear, unequivocal sort of communication. So do other parts of me than just my brain. I feel that same peculiar welling, breaking, somewhere I can’t name, that happened so long ago in my unrequited boyhood awakening to the appreciation of a fine man.
Making it look easeful, he tugs off his boots and socks. I haven’t moved. Still watching me, perhaps a bit more warily, he unbuttons his trousers. In contrast to his smooth chest, below his navel, dark hair reasserts itself, a tease, a promise. He pauses, trousers clinging stubbornly to his hips. “Have I erred, Captain?” he asks, his voice silky but just hovering on the edge of fear.
“I dropped off the captain in the woods a few miles shy of here,” I manage to reply, letting the doorjamb do most of the work of keeping me standing.
“Oh, I hope not. I’m here for just plain Mal and for Captain Reynolds both,” he says, definitive-like.
The part of me that would have previously enjoyed waiting here, making him cross those last five steps on his own, just died just of spontaneous combustion.
When my mouth slides against his, I’m afraid I’ll shock him into retreat with my hunger but I can’t slow down. His trousers glide off as my hands trace down along the upper curve of his ass. His tongue meets mine and both his hands grip my skull, pulling me down hard. Apparently, he is not a frightened rabbit after all.
Our first time, then, is in the grass in front of that nicely appointed cabin with its big bed and sumptuous sheets.
I regain notice of the outside world and realize that both horses are watching us, which catches me powerful grin-worthy. My left arm is trapped between Simon’s thighs, and his taste dances on my tongue. I think I’m still in his mouth. Ta ma de, he actually swallowed.
I stroke along his waist up to his ribs. As he releases me and I roll to my back, he props himself on his folded arms on my chest. In my head, and only there, I make some trite comparisons between his eyes and the cloudless sky, which I can blame on the endorphins. The grass is a little damp and a little scratchy, and I don’t care, which I can also blame on the endorphins.
“How’s about we move inside?” I murmur.
He smiles down at me, and it’s like no other smile he’s ever given me or anyone else in my experience.
“If you expect any more fun out of me over the course of the day, you’d best not look at me like that.”
Simon frowns a little. I realize he could so easily mistake my meaning. We’re in a place of delicate understanding.
“I’m trying to tell you that smile is like a hand down my britches and you should choose your timing very carefully.”
He instantly brightens again. “You aren’t wearing any.”
That makes me laugh, in the course of which, I find my arms wrapping around him.
“I know you think I’m on the rebound, confused, and you have to be careful with me. I’m an adult, Mal. Let’s just have fun. I don’t have expectations.”
I can’t help but sigh. How can a man go from triple lockdown to springing open without breaking something in the process? “I think you’re discovering country heretofore designated on your map by the phrase, ‘Here be dragons,’ and I should treat that with some respect.”
He studies me for a moment or two. “I can appreciate that logic,” he says, finally. “I should tell you that both River and I tested at the top of the resilience scale. To your point, I adapt quickly to new facts.”
“I see.” I seem to have developed a need to examine the unique loveliness of Simon’s eyes. Those heavy brows have a way of contrasting with the startling blueness, so as you’d never mistake him for feminine. But I am listening, I swear it.
“Before, you spoke to me of freedom, so in that same vein, could you take a rutting day off from protecting all of us and just be that man who was strong enough to tell me how much he wanted my touch? Right after he had what, seven orgasms in one day. With an expert?”
Eight. Not counting the one by myself. But I sense I shouldn’t tell him that. Yet.
“Well, I suppose I have to trust that you know what you’re doing.”
Later, we’ve had food and water, a soak in the hot spring, and enough recovery to seek other sustenance.
I very much enjoy laying him out on his back and testing how to best to touch him everywhere. He indulges me with great patience.
When I’ve taken every drop of that patience, and he’s caught his breath at last, he asks me very nicely to fuck him. I very nicely decline. “That’s a dish best served hot, not spent,” I tell him, brushing hair off his sweaty forehead. “That’s for later.” Denial doesn’t mean virginity, and I should account for the correct amount of experience. “There’ve been others?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head.
“Battery-driven?”
His eyes widen and I have to laugh. “What? Two months with Kaylee and no mandatory vibrational experiments? Okay, I translate that horrified look as a ‘no.’ So truly, this is not the time.”
He looks so disappointed, mischief wells up in me and bubbles over. It is, after all, an essential quality of myself that doesn’t stand for being repressed long.
“I’m going to lay down the law and absolutely insist that if anything not saddle-broke gets ridden out here, it’s me. No exceptions. Are we clear?” I oh so carefully commit the priceless, once-this-lifetime look on his face to memory.
He swallows convulsively. “You bottom?”
I don’t know whether to feel pride or shame that he asks it that way, with such shock, though it’s a relief that he’s not ignorant of the variations. “Have I not made it abundantly clear to you that I everything?”
That brings out a laugh. His eyes really sparkle to excess when he laughs. Not that I find myself minding.
“Mal, I have to confess that in the infirmary, putting in your stitches, I was so turned on, I thought I was going to come against the table.”
“I always suspected you got off on causing me hurt,” I chide.
“That’s the thing. I don’t. I always feel scared when you’re hurt. I can’t distance myself from it. You’re the toughest man I’ve ever met, bar none. Jayne has his own brand of tough but yours goes deeper. Every time I have to face a new wound you bring me, it’s like being shown the ultimate mortality, that no one’s invulnerable. I thought it was madness that you’d let this… this person do that to you. To treat your flesh that way… on purpose. You let him mark you like he owned you.” He looks pissed all over again.
“I’m failing to see in what way does this bear on you getting riled up in your nethers.”
The angry look fades back. “Your response to me. You got hard when I touched you. You couldn’t stop it.”
“Not the first time,” I reply as matter of fact as I can. “Just the first time you noticed.”
And then his mouth is back and he’s rolling me. I’ve not come a second time and the feel of him sliding hard against me is nearly enough to bring me.
But he pulls away and ducks down to my right knee where he places a soft, open kiss, and then sucks and licks me so gently, like he means to administer an antidote to the violence of my encounter with Shiv. He does this again and again, tracing the faded marks up my body, catching my nipple last of all, lingering. I can feel my own readiness dripping and cooling on my stomach. I reach for his hand and guide it there. “Take this and lube up. You have to hurry or it’ll dry.”
It’s really not enough, but apparently he’s contributing as well, and he manages much more smoothly than I would have thought. As always, there’s a sense of shock, insult to the system, but it’s tempered by Simon’s face and the shudder that goes through him as he seats deep inside me.
I hadn’t wanted Shiv this way that night, no matter the illusionary resemblance. Of course, he knew that without me saying. So it’s been since I’d seen him last year that I’ve let anyone have me, and maybe I’m a little more vulnerable than I’m accustomed to being in the heat of the moment, and that’s what makes it feel so gorram right.
“You okay?” Simon asks.
“Why? I’m fine.”
“That sound you just made was… well...”
I hadn’t realized I’d made any noise. “Wasn’t pain,” is all I say.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible for his pupils to dilate more, but they do. He reaches over and fumbles in a drawer, coming up with a spanking new bottle of lube.
“Oh, hell,” I say, sheepish. Of course a fancy hotel would think of that.
“For what I’m about to do to you, you’ll need it,” Simon threatens, pulling out from me a bit and squeezing the bottle from a foot high onto us both. When he slams home, the world flashes white for a second.
“I don’t think I said earlier,” I gasp, “but you’ve got one inspiring example of male prowess there.” It isn’t an empty compliment or simple dirty talk. Simon is gorgeous in form and function and I’m compelled to tell him. No wonder we all had to stuff pillows over our heads to shut Kaylee out. The girl does appreciate fine workmanship.
He rests along me and works me with his whole body, belly stroking me, feet tangling with mine. “I prefer yours,” he says against my jaw. “Oh, I wanted to touch it that night. Inexplicably shy as you turned, it was right there, begging me, dark and hot and smooth. Not surprisingly, it spoke to me with your voice, ‘Come on, pretty boy, touch me and find out what you want to know.’ But I couldn’t.”
In a haze, I try to remember if I’ve ever called him ‘pretty boy’ to his face. I decide to save apologies for later and opt for more truth. “Afterward, you know, I set a record. I came thinking of you for the ninth time in half a day.”
He stops in mid thrust, and I realize that Simon just did the math and then also realized what else I had said. His eyes lock on mine. “But you were with Shiv.”
“I was with you.” I pause to let it sink in. “Funny thing, he’s a redhead with green eyes, nice build, about your height, given to wearing Ashrazan tunics for easy access-no buttons, you see. Answered his door a dead ringer for you, hair, eyes, jaw, all crisp white shirt, brocade vest, and attitude-triple set of buttons. And I hadn’t drunk any potions yet. I swear to all the gods that might be throughout the ‘verse, Doc, it was you made me come all those other times too.”
He looks fiercely joyful, and then it fades. “But I would never hurt you like that, even if you asked me.”
“With Shiv, you get only what you ask for, even if you don’t ask out loud. Apparently, I needed it.”
“I wouldn’t even if you thought you needed it.” His fingers tug my hair, chastising in his own soft way. “But I need to know… about the seven.”
Not being ready to name names like I did in the blissroot ceremony, I nevertheless feel I owe him some part of this truth too. “I caused seven wrongs this span I couldn’t ignore, including deaths of those as didn’t deserve it, and other things not exclusive to death. Right reasons don’t matter, just the doing leaves a mark.” And twice, I had to see Zoe look at me that way that I hope to never see again.
He nuzzles my neck. I think I know what he’s wanting to ask, but won’t.
“Once I felt purged, I asked for something for me. To be with you just once, like I had imagined it would be-very like we were this morning as a matter of fact. Only then could I face you and do what was needful without taking anything for myself. Or so I opined at the time. Until I got up on your table and you touched me.”
Simon begins moving again. “Mal,” he breathes in my ear. He locks onto my mouth and doesn’t let off until I’ve groaned out my release. And then he bites my shoulder, as he rocks his last few thrusts into me.
******
“You realize that you’ve tipped off everyone to the both of us,” I say, mildly, watching the firelight dance on the ceiling along with the colors of sunset.
“Not if you don’t want them to know about you. My note should cover it.” He traces his own territorial marking on my shoulder with a careful finger. I can tell it isn’t much of a bite, mostly symbolic. I find I’m partial to it.
Then the data processes. I’m slow to follow, probably not far from drifting off to sleep. “Note. You left a note.”
“Yup. ‘Gone fishing.’ Which doesn’t mean the fish wants to get caught,” he hastens to say. “It’s no problem, I’m set to head back yet tonight, it’s less than an hour ride. Either way, I’m not hiding any more.”
That wakes me up. I roll clever, resilient Simon beneath me. “There’s no manner in which you’re leaving here until I’m damn good and ready to go home. Which is not for two more days. That ought to clear up any uncertainty anyone might have developed on the matter of either of our preferences.”
“I’m not asking for steady, you know.” He smiles up at me reassuringly.
I’m finding him increasingly charming. “You keeping your options open?”
“Aren’t you?”
I have to kiss him at that. “I’m content to see what develops. Take is as it comes.”
He studies me. “It’s a big step to show your cards to the others. You’re sure?”
“Are you? I figure I don’t care for any undignified sneaking into your bunk or you into mine. I’ve come to the realization that at my age and station, discretion is overrated. After all, I’m captain. Them as don’t like it can lump it. Long as you’re shiny with it.”
And there’s that smile again. I’m already planning ways to see a whole lot more of it.
******
Part: 2 of 2
Author: Esmeralda
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing(s): Mal/Simon
Disclaimer: This is a work of impure fiction.
Warnings: M/M
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Original Date: October 2011
Note: I haven’t written in a long time, but I was inspired by the coming out, at last, of a certain actor without whom this fandom would not be so delicious. So here’s to being brave.
___________________________________________________________
Truth Telling: Chapter 1
I’ve taken the opportunity to ride out alone, over the usual protests.
This world is benign, if wilderness is ever that. Reavers never bother it, no point to raiding without a congregation of potential victims. The horse takes our time and I’m glad for the ease of it, the sun on my face. I’m not going far, you don’t have to go far to be alone out here.
Even on shore leave, I nearly always sleep on board. Someone has to watch my girl while the others play, and they need to play so as to stay fit for the black. But we’re flush for once, and I can take a few days for me knowing Zoe’s got my back.
It’s a powerful understatement to say we’re in for some changes. She’s started to show. Her radiant smile when she told me eased any cause I might have started to have for discomfort. Thank all that’s good in the ‘verse, something of Wash has survived. And the feeling is not solely out of benefit for Zoe. She’s not back to her old self, never will be I reckon, but her new self now smiles a lot like the old one used to. That woman is terrible fierce, but she deserves not to have to be. I want her to know I’ve got her back too, whether she decides to stay on Serenity or settle where she and the child can have a normal life. I’ll see to their coin, even if she fights me on it. Never been a more loyal second than her, she even put Wash after me, which is a regret I’ll always carry. It’s high time someone ‘sides her commanding officer or captain rated first.
This is the life I have chosen. Still, the prospect of not seeing Zoe every day of that life makes me lonesome. It’s a terrible selfish thought, and I’ve been on this streak of truth telling, so I think it prudent to take myself off alone to ponder the solitary state, where shooting my mouth off has no downside.
The smallish cabin is a modern pod-house on the inside with some fine amenities, disguised with stone and thatch on the outside, and a genuine stream burbles through the paddock. There’s a tiny stable so snug and cute it makes me snort louder than the horse when it comes to sight. These cabins are scattered far and wide on this continent, not meant for more than one or two at a time. Peace, quiet, and nakedness. Just the medicine I need.
After I settle the horse, I strip down and head for the hot spring just a short throw from the front door. I haven’t had a soak in I don’t know how long. Shiv’s bites are finally healed and the hot water is nothing but pleasing. A bottle of dark ale and an open sky completes my contentment. It’s full dusk before my stomach makes me go inside to rustle up a meal. I don’t even remember going to sleep.
******
I’m on my feet on the sun-warmed floorboards, gun in hand, when I hear the second whicker and my cobwebby brain gathers that the horses are acquainted. It doesn’t put me to ease. If there was big trouble, it’d be Serenity’s engines howling at my front door, but smaller trouble could ride in. I yank on my trousers one-handed, and with shoulder to the jamb, crack the door enough to peek.
Simon is just loosing his mount in the paddock. He shuts the gate and turns to me as I swing the door wide.
“Please tell me my crew is in one piece.” My heart thunders in my ears with fast awakening and worry.
He starts toward me with a half-smile, hands outspread. “Fine. Everyone’s fine. Jayne even found a shooting range so he and Zoe are in ‘hog heaven’ as he put it.”
I uncock the revolver and set it aside, suddenly over-aware of my shirtless state. There I go running a hand through my hair again. I silently vow not to play poker again until I master that twitch. “Then you’d best have a prime excuse to hand for intruding upon my peacefulness.”
“I hope you’ll find it so.” Simon stops about halfway to the door, reaches up and unbuttons his fancy shirt, slowly, steadily. He occupies a spot just outside the shadow of the peaked roof as it slices the early morning sun, and I come to see that Simon’s pristine skin, as it emerges, is covered with millions of baby-fuzzy-blonde hairs. They pick up the soft, clear light and he glows like those you hear claiming to be psychic say good people do. The shirt falls in a puff of dust on the path and Simon pays it no mind.
There are lots of misunderstandings that occur in common human dealings, and I’ve taken my part in many. But I’m thinking that this is a clear, unequivocal sort of communication. So do other parts of me than just my brain. I feel that same peculiar welling, breaking, somewhere I can’t name, that happened so long ago in my unrequited boyhood awakening to the appreciation of a fine man.
Making it look easeful, he tugs off his boots and socks. I haven’t moved. Still watching me, perhaps a bit more warily, he unbuttons his trousers. In contrast to his smooth chest, below his navel, dark hair reasserts itself, a tease, a promise. He pauses, trousers clinging stubbornly to his hips. “Have I erred, Captain?” he asks, his voice silky but just hovering on the edge of fear.
“I dropped off the captain in the woods a few miles shy of here,” I manage to reply, letting the doorjamb do most of the work of keeping me standing.
“Oh, I hope not. I’m here for just plain Mal and for Captain Reynolds both,” he says, definitive-like.
The part of me that would have previously enjoyed waiting here, making him cross those last five steps on his own, just died just of spontaneous combustion.
When my mouth slides against his, I’m afraid I’ll shock him into retreat with my hunger but I can’t slow down. His trousers glide off as my hands trace down along the upper curve of his ass. His tongue meets mine and both his hands grip my skull, pulling me down hard. Apparently, he is not a frightened rabbit after all.
Our first time, then, is in the grass in front of that nicely appointed cabin with its big bed and sumptuous sheets.
I regain notice of the outside world and realize that both horses are watching us, which catches me powerful grin-worthy. My left arm is trapped between Simon’s thighs, and his taste dances on my tongue. I think I’m still in his mouth. Ta ma de, he actually swallowed.
I stroke along his waist up to his ribs. As he releases me and I roll to my back, he props himself on his folded arms on my chest. In my head, and only there, I make some trite comparisons between his eyes and the cloudless sky, which I can blame on the endorphins. The grass is a little damp and a little scratchy, and I don’t care, which I can also blame on the endorphins.
“How’s about we move inside?” I murmur.
He smiles down at me, and it’s like no other smile he’s ever given me or anyone else in my experience.
“If you expect any more fun out of me over the course of the day, you’d best not look at me like that.”
Simon frowns a little. I realize he could so easily mistake my meaning. We’re in a place of delicate understanding.
“I’m trying to tell you that smile is like a hand down my britches and you should choose your timing very carefully.”
He instantly brightens again. “You aren’t wearing any.”
That makes me laugh, in the course of which, I find my arms wrapping around him.
“I know you think I’m on the rebound, confused, and you have to be careful with me. I’m an adult, Mal. Let’s just have fun. I don’t have expectations.”
I can’t help but sigh. How can a man go from triple lockdown to springing open without breaking something in the process? “I think you’re discovering country heretofore designated on your map by the phrase, ‘Here be dragons,’ and I should treat that with some respect.”
He studies me for a moment or two. “I can appreciate that logic,” he says, finally. “I should tell you that both River and I tested at the top of the resilience scale. To your point, I adapt quickly to new facts.”
“I see.” I seem to have developed a need to examine the unique loveliness of Simon’s eyes. Those heavy brows have a way of contrasting with the startling blueness, so as you’d never mistake him for feminine. But I am listening, I swear it.
“Before, you spoke to me of freedom, so in that same vein, could you take a rutting day off from protecting all of us and just be that man who was strong enough to tell me how much he wanted my touch? Right after he had what, seven orgasms in one day. With an expert?”
Eight. Not counting the one by myself. But I sense I shouldn’t tell him that. Yet.
“Well, I suppose I have to trust that you know what you’re doing.”
Later, we’ve had food and water, a soak in the hot spring, and enough recovery to seek other sustenance.
I very much enjoy laying him out on his back and testing how to best to touch him everywhere. He indulges me with great patience.
When I’ve taken every drop of that patience, and he’s caught his breath at last, he asks me very nicely to fuck him. I very nicely decline. “That’s a dish best served hot, not spent,” I tell him, brushing hair off his sweaty forehead. “That’s for later.” Denial doesn’t mean virginity, and I should account for the correct amount of experience. “There’ve been others?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head.
“Battery-driven?”
His eyes widen and I have to laugh. “What? Two months with Kaylee and no mandatory vibrational experiments? Okay, I translate that horrified look as a ‘no.’ So truly, this is not the time.”
He looks so disappointed, mischief wells up in me and bubbles over. It is, after all, an essential quality of myself that doesn’t stand for being repressed long.
“I’m going to lay down the law and absolutely insist that if anything not saddle-broke gets ridden out here, it’s me. No exceptions. Are we clear?” I oh so carefully commit the priceless, once-this-lifetime look on his face to memory.
He swallows convulsively. “You bottom?”
I don’t know whether to feel pride or shame that he asks it that way, with such shock, though it’s a relief that he’s not ignorant of the variations. “Have I not made it abundantly clear to you that I everything?”
That brings out a laugh. His eyes really sparkle to excess when he laughs. Not that I find myself minding.
“Mal, I have to confess that in the infirmary, putting in your stitches, I was so turned on, I thought I was going to come against the table.”
“I always suspected you got off on causing me hurt,” I chide.
“That’s the thing. I don’t. I always feel scared when you’re hurt. I can’t distance myself from it. You’re the toughest man I’ve ever met, bar none. Jayne has his own brand of tough but yours goes deeper. Every time I have to face a new wound you bring me, it’s like being shown the ultimate mortality, that no one’s invulnerable. I thought it was madness that you’d let this… this person do that to you. To treat your flesh that way… on purpose. You let him mark you like he owned you.” He looks pissed all over again.
“I’m failing to see in what way does this bear on you getting riled up in your nethers.”
The angry look fades back. “Your response to me. You got hard when I touched you. You couldn’t stop it.”
“Not the first time,” I reply as matter of fact as I can. “Just the first time you noticed.”
And then his mouth is back and he’s rolling me. I’ve not come a second time and the feel of him sliding hard against me is nearly enough to bring me.
But he pulls away and ducks down to my right knee where he places a soft, open kiss, and then sucks and licks me so gently, like he means to administer an antidote to the violence of my encounter with Shiv. He does this again and again, tracing the faded marks up my body, catching my nipple last of all, lingering. I can feel my own readiness dripping and cooling on my stomach. I reach for his hand and guide it there. “Take this and lube up. You have to hurry or it’ll dry.”
It’s really not enough, but apparently he’s contributing as well, and he manages much more smoothly than I would have thought. As always, there’s a sense of shock, insult to the system, but it’s tempered by Simon’s face and the shudder that goes through him as he seats deep inside me.
I hadn’t wanted Shiv this way that night, no matter the illusionary resemblance. Of course, he knew that without me saying. So it’s been since I’d seen him last year that I’ve let anyone have me, and maybe I’m a little more vulnerable than I’m accustomed to being in the heat of the moment, and that’s what makes it feel so gorram right.
“You okay?” Simon asks.
“Why? I’m fine.”
“That sound you just made was… well...”
I hadn’t realized I’d made any noise. “Wasn’t pain,” is all I say.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible for his pupils to dilate more, but they do. He reaches over and fumbles in a drawer, coming up with a spanking new bottle of lube.
“Oh, hell,” I say, sheepish. Of course a fancy hotel would think of that.
“For what I’m about to do to you, you’ll need it,” Simon threatens, pulling out from me a bit and squeezing the bottle from a foot high onto us both. When he slams home, the world flashes white for a second.
“I don’t think I said earlier,” I gasp, “but you’ve got one inspiring example of male prowess there.” It isn’t an empty compliment or simple dirty talk. Simon is gorgeous in form and function and I’m compelled to tell him. No wonder we all had to stuff pillows over our heads to shut Kaylee out. The girl does appreciate fine workmanship.
He rests along me and works me with his whole body, belly stroking me, feet tangling with mine. “I prefer yours,” he says against my jaw. “Oh, I wanted to touch it that night. Inexplicably shy as you turned, it was right there, begging me, dark and hot and smooth. Not surprisingly, it spoke to me with your voice, ‘Come on, pretty boy, touch me and find out what you want to know.’ But I couldn’t.”
In a haze, I try to remember if I’ve ever called him ‘pretty boy’ to his face. I decide to save apologies for later and opt for more truth. “Afterward, you know, I set a record. I came thinking of you for the ninth time in half a day.”
He stops in mid thrust, and I realize that Simon just did the math and then also realized what else I had said. His eyes lock on mine. “But you were with Shiv.”
“I was with you.” I pause to let it sink in. “Funny thing, he’s a redhead with green eyes, nice build, about your height, given to wearing Ashrazan tunics for easy access-no buttons, you see. Answered his door a dead ringer for you, hair, eyes, jaw, all crisp white shirt, brocade vest, and attitude-triple set of buttons. And I hadn’t drunk any potions yet. I swear to all the gods that might be throughout the ‘verse, Doc, it was you made me come all those other times too.”
He looks fiercely joyful, and then it fades. “But I would never hurt you like that, even if you asked me.”
“With Shiv, you get only what you ask for, even if you don’t ask out loud. Apparently, I needed it.”
“I wouldn’t even if you thought you needed it.” His fingers tug my hair, chastising in his own soft way. “But I need to know… about the seven.”
Not being ready to name names like I did in the blissroot ceremony, I nevertheless feel I owe him some part of this truth too. “I caused seven wrongs this span I couldn’t ignore, including deaths of those as didn’t deserve it, and other things not exclusive to death. Right reasons don’t matter, just the doing leaves a mark.” And twice, I had to see Zoe look at me that way that I hope to never see again.
He nuzzles my neck. I think I know what he’s wanting to ask, but won’t.
“Once I felt purged, I asked for something for me. To be with you just once, like I had imagined it would be-very like we were this morning as a matter of fact. Only then could I face you and do what was needful without taking anything for myself. Or so I opined at the time. Until I got up on your table and you touched me.”
Simon begins moving again. “Mal,” he breathes in my ear. He locks onto my mouth and doesn’t let off until I’ve groaned out my release. And then he bites my shoulder, as he rocks his last few thrusts into me.
******
“You realize that you’ve tipped off everyone to the both of us,” I say, mildly, watching the firelight dance on the ceiling along with the colors of sunset.
“Not if you don’t want them to know about you. My note should cover it.” He traces his own territorial marking on my shoulder with a careful finger. I can tell it isn’t much of a bite, mostly symbolic. I find I’m partial to it.
Then the data processes. I’m slow to follow, probably not far from drifting off to sleep. “Note. You left a note.”
“Yup. ‘Gone fishing.’ Which doesn’t mean the fish wants to get caught,” he hastens to say. “It’s no problem, I’m set to head back yet tonight, it’s less than an hour ride. Either way, I’m not hiding any more.”
That wakes me up. I roll clever, resilient Simon beneath me. “There’s no manner in which you’re leaving here until I’m damn good and ready to go home. Which is not for two more days. That ought to clear up any uncertainty anyone might have developed on the matter of either of our preferences.”
“I’m not asking for steady, you know.” He smiles up at me reassuringly.
I’m finding him increasingly charming. “You keeping your options open?”
“Aren’t you?”
I have to kiss him at that. “I’m content to see what develops. Take is as it comes.”
He studies me. “It’s a big step to show your cards to the others. You’re sure?”
“Are you? I figure I don’t care for any undignified sneaking into your bunk or you into mine. I’ve come to the realization that at my age and station, discretion is overrated. After all, I’m captain. Them as don’t like it can lump it. Long as you’re shiny with it.”
And there’s that smile again. I’m already planning ways to see a whole lot more of it.
******