Objects Of My Affection (Jamie Holmes / Geoffrey Shawcross, R)
Title: Objects Of My Affection
Author: vensre
Rating: light R
Fandom/Pairing: Jamie/Geoff (Billy Boyd's character from Taggart and Dominic Monaghan's character from Hetty Wainthropp Investigates)
Disclaimer: The way I can imagine is not the true Way.
Summary: Jamie has been on the same antidepressant since he was 16. Now that his psychiatrist has decided he doesn't need it anymore, he is rather startled to realise (with the departure of the side effects) that he is not, in fact, asexual. At all.
Note: Many thanks to my superb beta, ali_jayne. For more Jamie and Geoff, try jgcrossing.
open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
it is no surprise now, what you see is me
--Tell Me What You See
~:
Jamie woke as usual to the sound of a ship's bell ringing, and squinted about, orienting himself, before attempting to shut off his alarm clock. His fingers finally found the right button without much help from his eyes and switched off the recording.
He grimaced at the covered window, at a stinging slice of light that had found its way past the heavy curtains, and reached to try to arrange them but only managed to upset them more. Shielding his eyes from the sunshine with one arm, he slid out of bed and made his way to the dresser to find something to wear. Then to the shower, silently, as usual.
He dried off and got dressed in the washroom as he always did, then opened the medicine cabinet and picked up the lone orange pill bottle on the shelf. He looked at it for a long moment, studying the label, and gave it a shake. No rattle. He had taken the last one the morning before, but had not been able to bring himself to throw it away yet. Jamie could not actually remember the last time he hadn't owned one of these, although intellectually he knew it had begun when he was sixteen. It had been such an easy rhythm after the first few years, with refills every three months and no gap between. He'd come to think of the bottle as something at least as permanent as a shoe or a fork, something that felt strange to get rid of despite its current uselessness. Now and for the foreseeable future - or so said the powers that be - Jamie didn't need those pills anymore.
He uncapped the bottle, recapped it, and placed it back on the shelf in its proper spot. Maybe he'd keep this part of his routine for a little longer. Just in case everything else fell apart.
:~:
All he knew was that they should be kissing. He didn't recognise his lover, but he didn't stop the inevitable touch, his trousers being shoved down or what happened after - no, he had to do this. It was all that mattered.
They kissed again, or still, and he felt hot-mouthed bites to his lip, jaw, neck... Friction where he needed it, fierce hands that felt like no touch he could ever give himself. He was chasing something, straining towards it with everything he was, drenched with sweat, surrounded by another human body and being loved--
Jamie came, and woke, tensed and curling in on himself, still shuddering with pleasure. When it had mostly passed he struggled to sit up, panting and gasping. His pyjamas were soaked, and he had an inane moment of gratitude that the sheets had been spared. He put one hand down the front of his boxers, squeezing himself, shocked at how good it felt.
As he tried to slow his breath, Jamie searched his memory for the last time he'd had a wet dream, but couldn't really recall. He knew it had happened before, but not for several years. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd had an orgasm, now that he considered it. Sometime in the last few months, he thought - probably. For the longest time it had seemed almost useless to touch himself, as he sometimes couldn't even make himself come, and he was never in the mood for it anyway.
He had thought himself a late bloomer when he was younger, but by the time he had turned twenty he was convinced that he would never bloom at all. Sex was something that happened to other people, and Jamie didn't much care what he might be missing. He had his own passions. Since he was a teenager that had been enough. But now...
It had been a little more than a week since he'd stopped the Paxil. Aside from the bouts of tingling dizziness - mostly passed by now - nothing was different, not really. Except everything was. Like a crisper edge on the resolution of life; in the darkness of his room, Jamie felt weirdly dazzled. To his utter astonishment he was getting hard again. He wriggled out of his pyjama bottoms and gripped his cock, his mind reeling, skipping over the faces of friends and strangers, settling on blank physical sensation. He shouldn't think of Geoff - and then he was ashamed for even internally voicing the idea of getting off to the image of his best friend.
He thought of nobody, and if it was ghost-Geoff's lips on his as he came, he wasn't about to admit it.
:~:
Jamie squirmed. He fidgeted. He took a sidelong look at his best friend, and made a tiny sound like a whimper. Geoffrey set down his sandwich; he couldn't ignore Jamie's hijinks anymore.
"What on Earth's got into you today? Ants in your pants?"
Jamie laughed. "Ants in your pants!"
"It's just an expression. Don't change the subject. Why do you keep squiggling around like that?"
"I don't really... Well. Suppose telling you might help get it out of my head."
"Is everything all right?"
"Everything's better than it has been. Dr. Chon took me off Paxil."
"Geez, haven't you been on that for ten years or something?"
"Nine. They decided to stop me taking it and see what happened."
"That's just like them, isn't it."
"But I'm happy! Nine years... I thought there was something wrong with me."
"A lot of people are depressed. Doesn't mean they're defective."
"No. Not that."
"Then what?"
Jamie slid down in his chair, drawing in his arms nervously.
"...You don't want to tell me? You don't have to."
"I should."
Geoff waited, sipping his drink and watching with interest as the colour rose in Jamie's face.
"I used t' think. Used t' think I was asexual."
"Wow. As in, not attracted to anybody? Not even Scarlett Johanessen?"
"Not anybody."
"Oho. Used to think... And now?"
"It was the Paxil. It's been, I d'nno, suppressing something, I think?"
Geoff was grinning over his whole face. "And now, Jamie?"
"I'm pretty sure I'm not. Asexual."
"Wowww. Quite the revelation. And now nine years of wild oats unsown all built up, is that it?"
Jamie pressed his lips together and looked down. "Worse."
"What? How do you mean?"
"I've... never... That is. 'M a virgin," he muttered, barely audible.
Geoff was regarding Jamie with vast amusement, lips and eyebrows quirked; despite Jamie's habitual reticence on the subject, he wasn't surprised in the least. "Congratulations?"
"Not 'congratulations'! I'm twenty-five!" Jamie nearly shouted, then subsided, shocked at his own outburst. "I was supposed t' do all this in my teens. I think. But maybe... Maybe I'd not've had anyone who wanted me even now, without the drugs."
"I'm sure that's not true!"
"Are you?" Jamie sounded as disturbed as Geoff had ever heard him, outside of things pertaining to his hobbies. "Are you really?"
"Yes. I'm positive. And I'll prove it to you."
"How?"
"Get gussied up, Jamie m'lad. I'm taking you out."
:~:
"She just looked at you. No, don't look. Out of the corner of your eye, can you see?"
"No. And how do you know she looked at me. She could just be looking at me."
"I know. I always know it. It's the bottom-to-top glance, that sort of, just there! She did it again! To me this time, but no worries. You were clearly the primary target."
"It's not a wargame."
"Yes it is. Now shush. There! That bird right across there. You are a sharp-dressed man, after all. You needn't be so shocked that people will look."
"Packaging doesn't matter that much."
"It makes quite a difference, though, on first impressions."
"Not to me."
"Well. Hang about. Don't look, but that bloke just eyed you! You could pull from either side, looks like."
"I hardly think there's evidence--"
"Don't look, I said, c'mon!"
"I wanted to."
"Oh..."
"Geoff?"
"What?"
"You just looked at me."
Geoff sputtered a bit.
"The way the others did. No different."
"So what if I did." Geoff crossed his arms and looked away, scanning the crowd. "I was just assessing."
"Why?"
"'S'not important. Anyway, come on."
:~:
Geoff was still on the alert for anyone who might be checking Jamie out as they sat across from each other in a tiny, cramped booth in the best Chinese restaurant in town.
"It's a bit pointless, though," Jamie said thoughtfully through a mouthful of lo mein. He had found their people-watching excursion less painful than anticipated, but still wide of his idea of a good time.
"Of course it's not! I think I have proved my point: people look at you. Even if you never noticed, they do. Any girl with taste..."
"But I'm not out by myself. They'd have no reason to approach."
Geoff shifted around in his seat. "Not like you were trying t' pick up somebody. Anyway, girls don't mind chatting up a bloke while he's with his mates." He grinned, adopting a teasing tone. "The only ones who might think you were taken 'd be other blokes, seems like. Sorry, was I cramping your style?"
Jamie looked back at him, inscrutable and unlaughing - although the corners of his mouth were turned up slightly - and Geoff's face heated.
"Didn't mean t' seriously imply," he started, but Jamie interrupted gently.
"You should know it's not important to me."
"What?"
"What someone is. Only who."
Geoff stared down at the cluster of crab rangoons on his plate, then back at Jamie. "Jam'e? Are you bi?"
Jamie blinked, watching Geoff's mouth as he spoke, then his own hands as he thought it over carefully. "I don't know," he said. "I think... probably I am."
After several moment of stillness Jamie's face creased in an irrepressible grin, an expression Geoff couldn't help mirroring. "Look at you," he said quietly. "You're so happy."
Jamie glanced off to the side, then down again, and nodded, beaming, beaming.
"Am I the first person you've told?"
"Aye," Jamie said, darting a look at Geoff, mischief in his eyes. "Nosy."
"Don't give me that! You were dying to say something! Besides, I have to be inquisitive. Contractual obligation or somesuch."
"So why didn't you know before, detective?"
"What!" Comically outraged, Geoff was barely holding in laughter. "You didn't even know! How the fuck was I supposed to?"
"Unobservant. You'll have t' turn in your P. I. license."
They continued this way for some time - all in all, one of Jamie's more successful windups - until the fortune cookies arrived, at which point Geoff intoned that today was a metaphysically significant day and Jamie's fortune would predict his near future, with "in bed" tacked on to the end. In fact, the little slip of paper read your present plants will succeed, and when the hilarity had died down Jamie told Geoff to thank the stars and Mrs. Wainthropp that he wasn't employed as a psychic.
:~:
Jamie considered saying that there was no need to walk him home, but quickly rethought turning down the company of his favourite person.
At the door, Geoff waffled oddly over whether to come in. "I just know if I set foot in there your Playstation is going t' eat my brain or something. I have work in the morning. I really should get home."
"You can go to work as easily from here. You said my sofa's comfortable."
"It is." Geoff scratched his head and sighed. "I guess I will head back, though. See you tomorrow?"
Jamie smiled. "Tomorrow." He watched Geoff linger, thought of all the awkward lovers in movies standing in each others' doorways, thought, Was this a date? But he's straight - at least mostly. Probably. Oh, kiss him, kiss him kisshimkisshim... no. Not yet. (Kiss him!) Straight. Not yet.
Geoff cast a look back over his shoulder as he left, and Jamie hung on the door frame and waved.
He managed to wait until he was in his pyjamas with all the lights out before he shut his eyes and slid his hand into his boxers, but this time he couldn't fool himself as to the subject of his fantasies.
:~:
Jamie opened his eyes, lazily curious as to why his alarm hadn't gone off. Not that he had anywhere to be; his three-hour shift at the library wasn't until late afternoon. He propped up on one elbow and peered at the dim clock face. It showed thirteen minutes until his habitual waking, but, feeling unusually alert, he shut off the alarm and got up. He raided his dresser and wandered out to have his shower, a short walk in his tiny flat.
When he was clean and dressed, he opened the medicine cabinet, picked up the empty pill bottle, and tossed it in the bin without a second's hesitation.
Then he headed out to his computer to email Geoff.
He had better rituals to begin.
:~
Author: vensre
Rating: light R
Fandom/Pairing: Jamie/Geoff (Billy Boyd's character from Taggart and Dominic Monaghan's character from Hetty Wainthropp Investigates)
Disclaimer: The way I can imagine is not the true Way.
Summary: Jamie has been on the same antidepressant since he was 16. Now that his psychiatrist has decided he doesn't need it anymore, he is rather startled to realise (with the departure of the side effects) that he is not, in fact, asexual. At all.
Note: Many thanks to my superb beta, ali_jayne. For more Jamie and Geoff, try jgcrossing.
open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
it is no surprise now, what you see is me
--Tell Me What You See
~:
Jamie woke as usual to the sound of a ship's bell ringing, and squinted about, orienting himself, before attempting to shut off his alarm clock. His fingers finally found the right button without much help from his eyes and switched off the recording.
He grimaced at the covered window, at a stinging slice of light that had found its way past the heavy curtains, and reached to try to arrange them but only managed to upset them more. Shielding his eyes from the sunshine with one arm, he slid out of bed and made his way to the dresser to find something to wear. Then to the shower, silently, as usual.
He dried off and got dressed in the washroom as he always did, then opened the medicine cabinet and picked up the lone orange pill bottle on the shelf. He looked at it for a long moment, studying the label, and gave it a shake. No rattle. He had taken the last one the morning before, but had not been able to bring himself to throw it away yet. Jamie could not actually remember the last time he hadn't owned one of these, although intellectually he knew it had begun when he was sixteen. It had been such an easy rhythm after the first few years, with refills every three months and no gap between. He'd come to think of the bottle as something at least as permanent as a shoe or a fork, something that felt strange to get rid of despite its current uselessness. Now and for the foreseeable future - or so said the powers that be - Jamie didn't need those pills anymore.
He uncapped the bottle, recapped it, and placed it back on the shelf in its proper spot. Maybe he'd keep this part of his routine for a little longer. Just in case everything else fell apart.
:~:
All he knew was that they should be kissing. He didn't recognise his lover, but he didn't stop the inevitable touch, his trousers being shoved down or what happened after - no, he had to do this. It was all that mattered.
They kissed again, or still, and he felt hot-mouthed bites to his lip, jaw, neck... Friction where he needed it, fierce hands that felt like no touch he could ever give himself. He was chasing something, straining towards it with everything he was, drenched with sweat, surrounded by another human body and being loved--
Jamie came, and woke, tensed and curling in on himself, still shuddering with pleasure. When it had mostly passed he struggled to sit up, panting and gasping. His pyjamas were soaked, and he had an inane moment of gratitude that the sheets had been spared. He put one hand down the front of his boxers, squeezing himself, shocked at how good it felt.
As he tried to slow his breath, Jamie searched his memory for the last time he'd had a wet dream, but couldn't really recall. He knew it had happened before, but not for several years. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd had an orgasm, now that he considered it. Sometime in the last few months, he thought - probably. For the longest time it had seemed almost useless to touch himself, as he sometimes couldn't even make himself come, and he was never in the mood for it anyway.
He had thought himself a late bloomer when he was younger, but by the time he had turned twenty he was convinced that he would never bloom at all. Sex was something that happened to other people, and Jamie didn't much care what he might be missing. He had his own passions. Since he was a teenager that had been enough. But now...
It had been a little more than a week since he'd stopped the Paxil. Aside from the bouts of tingling dizziness - mostly passed by now - nothing was different, not really. Except everything was. Like a crisper edge on the resolution of life; in the darkness of his room, Jamie felt weirdly dazzled. To his utter astonishment he was getting hard again. He wriggled out of his pyjama bottoms and gripped his cock, his mind reeling, skipping over the faces of friends and strangers, settling on blank physical sensation. He shouldn't think of Geoff - and then he was ashamed for even internally voicing the idea of getting off to the image of his best friend.
He thought of nobody, and if it was ghost-Geoff's lips on his as he came, he wasn't about to admit it.
:~:
Jamie squirmed. He fidgeted. He took a sidelong look at his best friend, and made a tiny sound like a whimper. Geoffrey set down his sandwich; he couldn't ignore Jamie's hijinks anymore.
"What on Earth's got into you today? Ants in your pants?"
Jamie laughed. "Ants in your pants!"
"It's just an expression. Don't change the subject. Why do you keep squiggling around like that?"
"I don't really... Well. Suppose telling you might help get it out of my head."
"Is everything all right?"
"Everything's better than it has been. Dr. Chon took me off Paxil."
"Geez, haven't you been on that for ten years or something?"
"Nine. They decided to stop me taking it and see what happened."
"That's just like them, isn't it."
"But I'm happy! Nine years... I thought there was something wrong with me."
"A lot of people are depressed. Doesn't mean they're defective."
"No. Not that."
"Then what?"
Jamie slid down in his chair, drawing in his arms nervously.
"...You don't want to tell me? You don't have to."
"I should."
Geoff waited, sipping his drink and watching with interest as the colour rose in Jamie's face.
"I used t' think. Used t' think I was asexual."
"Wow. As in, not attracted to anybody? Not even Scarlett Johanessen?"
"Not anybody."
"Oho. Used to think... And now?"
"It was the Paxil. It's been, I d'nno, suppressing something, I think?"
Geoff was grinning over his whole face. "And now, Jamie?"
"I'm pretty sure I'm not. Asexual."
"Wowww. Quite the revelation. And now nine years of wild oats unsown all built up, is that it?"
Jamie pressed his lips together and looked down. "Worse."
"What? How do you mean?"
"I've... never... That is. 'M a virgin," he muttered, barely audible.
Geoff was regarding Jamie with vast amusement, lips and eyebrows quirked; despite Jamie's habitual reticence on the subject, he wasn't surprised in the least. "Congratulations?"
"Not 'congratulations'! I'm twenty-five!" Jamie nearly shouted, then subsided, shocked at his own outburst. "I was supposed t' do all this in my teens. I think. But maybe... Maybe I'd not've had anyone who wanted me even now, without the drugs."
"I'm sure that's not true!"
"Are you?" Jamie sounded as disturbed as Geoff had ever heard him, outside of things pertaining to his hobbies. "Are you really?"
"Yes. I'm positive. And I'll prove it to you."
"How?"
"Get gussied up, Jamie m'lad. I'm taking you out."
:~:
"She just looked at you. No, don't look. Out of the corner of your eye, can you see?"
"No. And how do you know she looked at me. She could just be looking at me."
"I know. I always know it. It's the bottom-to-top glance, that sort of, just there! She did it again! To me this time, but no worries. You were clearly the primary target."
"It's not a wargame."
"Yes it is. Now shush. There! That bird right across there. You are a sharp-dressed man, after all. You needn't be so shocked that people will look."
"Packaging doesn't matter that much."
"It makes quite a difference, though, on first impressions."
"Not to me."
"Well. Hang about. Don't look, but that bloke just eyed you! You could pull from either side, looks like."
"I hardly think there's evidence--"
"Don't look, I said, c'mon!"
"I wanted to."
"Oh..."
"Geoff?"
"What?"
"You just looked at me."
Geoff sputtered a bit.
"The way the others did. No different."
"So what if I did." Geoff crossed his arms and looked away, scanning the crowd. "I was just assessing."
"Why?"
"'S'not important. Anyway, come on."
:~:
Geoff was still on the alert for anyone who might be checking Jamie out as they sat across from each other in a tiny, cramped booth in the best Chinese restaurant in town.
"It's a bit pointless, though," Jamie said thoughtfully through a mouthful of lo mein. He had found their people-watching excursion less painful than anticipated, but still wide of his idea of a good time.
"Of course it's not! I think I have proved my point: people look at you. Even if you never noticed, they do. Any girl with taste..."
"But I'm not out by myself. They'd have no reason to approach."
Geoff shifted around in his seat. "Not like you were trying t' pick up somebody. Anyway, girls don't mind chatting up a bloke while he's with his mates." He grinned, adopting a teasing tone. "The only ones who might think you were taken 'd be other blokes, seems like. Sorry, was I cramping your style?"
Jamie looked back at him, inscrutable and unlaughing - although the corners of his mouth were turned up slightly - and Geoff's face heated.
"Didn't mean t' seriously imply," he started, but Jamie interrupted gently.
"You should know it's not important to me."
"What?"
"What someone is. Only who."
Geoff stared down at the cluster of crab rangoons on his plate, then back at Jamie. "Jam'e? Are you bi?"
Jamie blinked, watching Geoff's mouth as he spoke, then his own hands as he thought it over carefully. "I don't know," he said. "I think... probably I am."
After several moment of stillness Jamie's face creased in an irrepressible grin, an expression Geoff couldn't help mirroring. "Look at you," he said quietly. "You're so happy."
Jamie glanced off to the side, then down again, and nodded, beaming, beaming.
"Am I the first person you've told?"
"Aye," Jamie said, darting a look at Geoff, mischief in his eyes. "Nosy."
"Don't give me that! You were dying to say something! Besides, I have to be inquisitive. Contractual obligation or somesuch."
"So why didn't you know before, detective?"
"What!" Comically outraged, Geoff was barely holding in laughter. "You didn't even know! How the fuck was I supposed to?"
"Unobservant. You'll have t' turn in your P. I. license."
They continued this way for some time - all in all, one of Jamie's more successful windups - until the fortune cookies arrived, at which point Geoff intoned that today was a metaphysically significant day and Jamie's fortune would predict his near future, with "in bed" tacked on to the end. In fact, the little slip of paper read your present plants will succeed, and when the hilarity had died down Jamie told Geoff to thank the stars and Mrs. Wainthropp that he wasn't employed as a psychic.
:~:
Jamie considered saying that there was no need to walk him home, but quickly rethought turning down the company of his favourite person.
At the door, Geoff waffled oddly over whether to come in. "I just know if I set foot in there your Playstation is going t' eat my brain or something. I have work in the morning. I really should get home."
"You can go to work as easily from here. You said my sofa's comfortable."
"It is." Geoff scratched his head and sighed. "I guess I will head back, though. See you tomorrow?"
Jamie smiled. "Tomorrow." He watched Geoff linger, thought of all the awkward lovers in movies standing in each others' doorways, thought, Was this a date? But he's straight - at least mostly. Probably. Oh, kiss him, kiss him kisshimkisshim... no. Not yet. (Kiss him!) Straight. Not yet.
Geoff cast a look back over his shoulder as he left, and Jamie hung on the door frame and waved.
He managed to wait until he was in his pyjamas with all the lights out before he shut his eyes and slid his hand into his boxers, but this time he couldn't fool himself as to the subject of his fantasies.
:~:
Jamie opened his eyes, lazily curious as to why his alarm hadn't gone off. Not that he had anywhere to be; his three-hour shift at the library wasn't until late afternoon. He propped up on one elbow and peered at the dim clock face. It showed thirteen minutes until his habitual waking, but, feeling unusually alert, he shut off the alarm and got up. He raided his dresser and wandered out to have his shower, a short walk in his tiny flat.
When he was clean and dressed, he opened the medicine cabinet, picked up the empty pill bottle, and tossed it in the bin without a second's hesitation.
Then he headed out to his computer to email Geoff.
He had better rituals to begin.
:~