FIC: Past and Pending; AU Lorne/Zelenka; NC-17 [1/3]
Title: Past and Pending (1/3) [AU]
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Evan Lorne/Radek Zelenka
Summary: Radek finds Evan Lorne under a tree. A love story. I am no good at summaries.
Notes: It's very important that I take a moment to thank gblvr and kisahawklin , two lovely ladies who acted as my fearless betas for this fic. I can't even begin to say how much work they put into this with me--hours of edits, late-night meltdowns, hand-holding, cheerleading and color-coding. Thank you both so very, very much.
1. najednou
A handful of months after they meet, Evan goes to Boston with Radek for a very tedious weekend of presentations and receptions. Two days in, they’re uncomfortable, wearing suits and ties, in the banquet hall of some pretentious Beantown hotel. Evan has wandered to the bar to fetch more drinks and Radek is left alone with Rodney McKay, who has been engaging Radek in the usual song-and-dance to the tune of "No-No-No-You-Are-WrongWrongWRONG" for the last twenty minutes.
Radek wishes, inside this moment, that he had come alone. He ought to have emphasized what a bore it was all going to be, how much fun Evan wouldn’t be having stuck in physics seminars all day and stuffy cocktail events all night. He might have convinced Evan to stay in New York, and Radek could have suffered through the parties and delighted in the physics and dealt with Dr. Rodney McKay, Ph.D. Ph.D. without Evan having to witness it.
It’s not that he cares if Rodney informs him, loudly and with hand gestures, that he, Radek, possesses an intellect that is painfully and hopelessly beneath that of him, Rodney. Radek had already known how Evan would react to Rodney. Stifled amusement (biting his cheek, notsmiling!notsmiling!not--*snort*), covering his face with his hand, eyes laughing to Radek’s as if to say, Is this guy for real?
It’s more about the fact that Radek knew that Rodney would have no problem whatsoever making a big, vocal, intrusive deal about--
"Jesus, Zelenka," McKay mutters as soon as Evan heads off toward the bar, "Where the hell did you find him?"
And Radek had known that it would come to this, so he volleys back an answer with ease.
"I picked him up. Obviously. In a club on the west side. In the bathroom, would you believe? I believe you would call him a…go-go dancer? Yes, that’s the right word."
Please, Radek thinks, go back to insulting my intelligence. Because Radek can deal with that; he likes the banter, and knows that Rodney knows (somewhere, deep down) that Radek is more his intellectual match than any one of the number of "geniuses" standing around them in formal attire. Also, once Rodney has asserted himself as (marginally) smarter, they can have a real conversation about physics, and Radek enjoys those talks. But no.
"Oh, he is not!" Rodney exclaims, "You idiot, I work for the military-industrial complex. I know what I’m looking at, and I am looking at a man with a crew cut. Who has a crew cut? The apple pie is practically seeping from his pores, and that posture--! God, he has military written all over him. His eyebrows are regulation for Christ’s sake." Rodney pauses for breath and possibly for effect. "So?" he asks conspiratorially, "Marine?"
Rodney is peering at him over the rim of his crystal tumbler and, with a sense of resignation, Radek rolls his eyes before snatching the glass from Rodney’s hand. He drinks the last of the scotch out of it in one swallow before speaking. "Air Force, actually."
"You’re fucking a flyboy?" Rodney sputters, and at least three stuffy physicists and their spouses break their necks whipping around to stare at them.
"Shut up, Rodney," Radek grits through his teeth, eyes flicking to the bar. Evan is leaning forward with his elbows up on the bar, one foot hooked around the leg of a barstool. Radek keeps his eyes on Evan’s broad, black-jacketed back and says, "He’s not, ah, not military anymore--honorable discharge, you see."
"Oh," says Rodney, following Radek’s eyes to where Evan stands and looking thoughtful for a moment before asking, "Any sexy scars, then? Or did he snap? PTSD? Is he really a go-go boy? He wears camo when he dances, doesn’t he? The city has changed you. What are you doing in go-go bars? He could have any number of diseases! Who knows where-"
Radek mutters under his breath, returns Rodney’s empty glass to his hand, and walks off. He waves his hand over his shoulder at Rodney’s protest. One thing Radek knows from experience-you must walk away from Rodney McKay if you can manage it, before things get ugly--or uglier as the case may be. Walk away before you strangle him.
At the bar, Evan smiles with his white, even teeth. Radek smiles back--he can’t help it because yes, Evan is his flyboy, his made-in-America slice of apple pie. Evan’s brows knit together in question; most likely he noticed the scowl on Radek’s face before it melted away. Possibly he knew to stay at the bar and wait for Hurricane McKay to pass. There aren’t any drinks in his hands. Radek shrugs, smiles again.
"Are we done here?"
Radek sighs with relief. "God, yes."
**
Actually, Radek didn’t find Evan so much as stumble over him, and it wasn't even within spitting distance of a go-go bar.
Radek has been at Columbia for just under a year when he meets Evan.
It’s September and he’s walking across campus, journal open in his hands, reading as he goes. Distracted by his thoughts (Well that would be accurate, if you rewrote all the laws of space-time and reordered the universe, but the concepts here…hm. I need to publish again soon, really I should find some time to--), Radek fails to notice the pair of sneakers directly in his path. He also fails to notice that his route has actually meandered off the path and under the trees favored by studying undergrads.
The man who belongs to the sneakers Radek then trips over doesn’t look like an undergrad-a fair bit older than your average grad student, even; too clean cut, actually. Radek regains his equilibrium once both men are standing and brushing dry leaves and grass from their clothing. He doesn’t remember how he came to be upright again, only that strong hands had helped along the way.
"Hey, are you okay? Sorry about that. Sorry. Are you--." The man pauses, shaking his head as though to clear it. "I'm Lorne. Evan. I mean, my name is Evan." He tells Radek, all the while dusting himself off, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck, plucking a brown leaf from Radek’s hair and flicking it away with the other.
Radek fiddles with the earpiece of his glasses, feeling himself flush as he stares blankly down at the journal still clutched in his hand. "Ah, Dr. Zelenka. Radek, that is. It is me who should be sorry for-"
"No worries," says Lorne. Evan. "It was a pleasure to be tripped over by you. Must have been one hell of a read, huh?"
"Ah, sorry, what?"
Evan gestures to the crumpled journal. Radek lifts it and blinks, unable to remember what he had been reading.
"Oh. Not really." A pause, awkward, and Radek isn’t surprised, because he normally isn’t good with people. Now he is flustered and his social competence is compromised even further. He returns his glasses to his face and blinks. Evan is disturbingly attractive, more so now that Radek can see clearly. Radek feels more out of place and jerks his hand in a strange, abortive motion in front of himself. "You, uh…what are you studying?"
"What? Oh! You mean--" Evan gestures vaguely to one of the buildings. His ears are red and he scratches the back of his neck. "Oh, I’m not a student. I, uh…sort of work here. I guess. I do freelance, um…" He coughs, embarrassed. "I model for a drawing class here and there."
"Nude?" Radek blurts and he nearly bites off his tongue, too late to stop the word from spilling out. He must be so red by now, and he knows it’s time to go. It’s definitely time to go. "I mean, no, I didn’t-- Really, I must be going-"
Evan smiles slow, toothy, and says, "Well…sometimes they ask me to go all out, so, yeah."
"Buh-"
"Look, can I get you a coffee or something?"
Radek accepts. Just like that, and he has his very own flyboy.
**
Or, it isn’t really just like that.
There is a good amount of shy smiling and blushing and coffee before Evan becomes anything resembling…his.
That first day, they go to a quirky place downtown-Evan lives in Brooklyn, and he had been about to get up and head downtown to catch the L home when Radek tripped over him. Radek doesn't have any more classes to teach for the day and he doubts he would be of any use in the lab, so he travels further downtown with Evan on the 1. It seems silly to take a twenty-minute train ride just for coffee, but Evan is talkative and handsome and Radek is still flustered, so he hardly notices the press of the subway crowd.
The coffee shop is a twenty-four-hour place with wi-fi, a few beaten-up armchairs and trendily scruffy baristas. It's populated by a mixed crowd of newspaper-toting suits, students and your run-of-the-mill Manhattanites with oversized handbags, backpacks and briefcases knocking into their neighbors.
Radek finally gets himself together enough to catalogue and analyze the man sitting across from him. Evan Lorne is broad shouldered and muscular, but not large. He’s actually short by most standards, an inch taller than Radek at most. He is handsome in the way all-American boys are handsome-white teeth, easy smile, eyes a startling shade of ice-blue under dark eyebrows. He leans back in his chair, comfortable, and talks easily. He is polite to the barista, smiles at a diminutive old woman behind them in line, offers a nod and a "Ma’am," as they pass.
He is charming but genuine, gorgeous but doesn’t appear to notice, and Radek likes him. He likes him, right then and there, less than an hour after they meet.
They drink their coffee, and Radek learns that Evan spent two semesters at Pratt, hated it, quit, and now waits tables and does freelance modeling for drawing classes. Radek knows those jobs don’t pay for an apartment--not even one in Brooklyn--but doesn’t press for more information.
"So what do you teach, Dr. Zelenka?" Evan asks.
Radek gets the feeling that Evan calls him "Dr. Zelenka" because he thinks it’s funny. He doesn’t mind it, really. He talks about physics for all of two minutes before he stops himself.
"Very boring, really." He says, waving his hand in front of him as though swatting away the subject.
"No!" Evan protests, "It’s…cool."
Radek smiles weakly, but it turns out Evan means it. Radek talks about the 200-level section on classical mechanics he’s teaching this semester, his frustration with the undergrads, his work with his grad students. Evan asks questions, laughs at Radek’s impression of his department head, and tells Radek he was never very good at science or math.
"I was never very good at anything but," Radek says.
"I somehow doubt that," is what Evan says, and Radek blushes again.
A few minutes and some small talk later, they each make their excuses and depart.
The second coffee happens unexpectedly when Radek, rumpled and dark-eyed with exhaustion, stumbles into the same coffee shop around midnight on a Monday. He has no idea what possessed him to travel so far out of his way for coffee, and he isn't sure if he had expected to find Evan there, but that is exactly what happens. As Radek half-stumbles up the curb to the shop, Evan is on his way out the door behind a group of willowy young women. Radek blinks and wonders if he should just keep walking, avoid the discomfort of trying to talk to an almost-stranger this late at night, after hours and hours in the lab pulling at his hair. He’s not good at talking, really. He doesn’t always have the right words in English, unless he’s in a lab, and sometimes the words are right but he shouldn’t have said them. Like asking a perfect stranger if he sometimes stands naked before twenty undergraduates, and probably sounding like a lecherous twit.
But Evan double takes, waves the girls on and says "Hi! It’s you! You tripped on me the other day. Remember?"
"Ah…yes? That is…I remember. Hello."
They spend the next two hours talking over strong coffee. Evan’s smile flusters Radek, as does the attractive flush that creeps up Evan’s neck to his ears. They talk about places they have been-Evan is well-traveled, it seems-and their families.
"My mother," Evan says, "would absolutely die if she knew I was drinking coffee this late."
"Mine, not so much. She loved it."
"What are you doing tomorrow morning? Are you teaching?"
"Hm, yes. At nine."
"Coffee, in the morning? I’m working a Drawing I class at ten, we could ride up to campus together."
Radek accepts, nearly vibrating out of his skin from caffeine overload and disbelief as he takes the train twenty blocks uptown to his apartment.
2. začalo
Several coffees later, and Evan invites Radek to a movie. It’s Sunday morning, and Radek is drinking his coffee with the paper spread across the "breakfast bar," which is more of a small counter with room enough for a coffee cup and one section of the Times and a single stool in front of it, when Evan calls.
"They’re doing a Czech new wave thing at the Forum." Evan says, and Radek isn’t sure but he thinks, judging by the tentative way Evan speaks, that he’s being offered a date.
"Czech new wave?"
"Well, I figured you might…if you don’t want to, that’s-"
"Yes."
"I mean, we could just go-What?"
"Yes. Yes, okay. Czech new wave. I’m not certain what that is, but yes. We’ll go."
After Radek hangs up five minutes later, he casts a look around his apartment, at a loss for what to do now that he has a date (he thinks), with Evan.
He goes to the window, which looks out across an alley to the back of another building. He keeps a canister on the low table under the window. Radek pushes a stack of science journals off the top and opens the canister, taking out a handful of birdseed. He opens the window and sprinkles the seed over the fire escape, for the pigeons.
**
Czech new wave, it turns out, is an incomprehensible moment in film history. At least, as far as Radek can tell, anyway. Between glimpses of bombings, robotic dialog, strange color flashes, and females in various states of undress, Radek isn’t able to discern much from the film at all. Evan glances at him as they leave the theater. "That was…"
"Very…" Radek fumbles for the right words. "It was, ah…"
"What the fuck did we just see? I mean-"
"I have no idea-"
"I mean what-"
Radek is the first to laugh, snorting indelicately and shoving his hands into his pockets.
They’re walking down Houston, toward 6th. It’s chilly, mid-autumn in New York City, and the sun is almost down, which means Manhattan’s tall buildings make it darker on the street.
"It was about war, I think." Evan says, walking in step beside Radek.
"Yes." Radek agrees, "Communism. Decadence. It made no sense whatsoever, but yes. It was about war-after a war."
"Um. When did you…I mean-"
"I left home for university a very long time ago. I have been back, but my family left also, after I had been working for some time. My sister did go back, ten years ago or so. I don’t have much time to visit her, but when it’s possible, I do." Radek says, "What you saw, at the beginning of the film, it’s not exactly how it was when I was young. It wasn’t quite so…"
"Fucked up?"
"No, it was certainly that. When I was young. After the war, during the regime, and then I left. It’s much different now."
"War changes a place," says Evan, with such certainty, such knowledge behind the words that Radek suddenly knows something he hadn’t known before. Evan has seen a war. This is one of those getting-to-know-you moments, the kind in which years and years of personal history begin to surface and ripple between two people. It’s tricky ground.
"And changes people, too," Radek supplies, watching Evan’s profile.
"Yep," is all Evan says.
Radek changes the subject. "It was an odd film, but it was thoughtful of you to ask me. Thank you."
"No problem."
Evan’s ears turn red.
They walk on and on, making small talk sometimes, keeping quiet at others. Radek wonders in which branch Evan served, and where he had toured. He wants and does not want to ask. He doesn’t know if it’s too forward to just ask. Evan will probably just tell him because that’s how he is-honest, direct.
Their shoulders bump as they pass by crowds on the sidewalk. It’s comfortable, but it zings at the edges. Radek is hyperaware of each brush of arm to arm, each time Evan turns to speak and his breath is warm on the fall air. He’s "got it bad," as that saying goes. He wonders if his face is red. It sometimes happens, even if he’s only thinking something that makes him nervous and shy.
They have been walking in silence for blocks when, on the corner of Spring and Broadway, in the snappy chill of SoHo, Evan stops Radek with a touch to the wrist. He opens his mouth to speak, shuts it, flashes a self-deprecating smile and then he leans down and presses his mouth sweetly to Radek’s.
And then, it’s just like that.
All the things Radek wants to know swirl out and around, and he is sure in the knowledge that he’s going to find out everything there is, all the pieces that make up Evan Lorne, model/waiter/artist/soldier, in due time.
3. zjišťovat
Evan's father is a foreman in a factory, and his mother teaches art to elementary school children. He grew up in the blue collar suburbs, played hockey, football, and baseball as a kid. He painted with his mother on weekends. He tells Radek about joining the Air Force right out of high school, and that he served for nearly fifteen years before he was discharged. His parents still live in the house Evan was raised in, halfway across the country.
He tells Radek these things in fits and bursts of vague information over coffees in the weeks leading up to the first date and the days following it. Evan doesn’t try to come off as mysterious, but he doesn’t say anything unless Radek asks for the information. Radek is never certain what is his business and what is not, so he is hesitant to pry. So, without meaning to be, Evan is just that-mysterious.
They go to another movie, this time a sci-fi b-movie from the 70's full of bad science and buxom blondes. They have lunch twice between Radek’s classes and office hours. They start to spend the fleeting hours between Radek's classes and Evan's late shift together in Radek's office with the blinds closed. It is on a particularly memorable evening after office hours that Evan leaves a spectacular bite mark just below the collar of Radek's shirt. He touches the purpling circle of half-moons and winks before heading out. Radek shuffles and re-stacks the pile of homework assignments that got shoved aside earlier, and thinks that maybe some things are okay to ask now.
Over tandoori chicken, Radek starts asking and learns that Evan Lorne used to be Major Evan Lorne. He learns that four years ago, Evan fell out of the sky, sustaining broken bones, some nerve damage and a skull fracture. According to the doctors, he's lucky he didn't break his neck.
"Wasn't that bad, tell you the truth," Evan says, focusing mainly on his chicken. Radek is agape across the table. His life has been spent turning the sky into numbers, mapping it out on white boards, and Evan has actually fallen out of it in a ball of flame.
"I…did you. What-"
"Pins in my right arm." Evan supplies, "Good thing I'm left-handed; couldn't paint with the bad arm. Gets achy. I ended up with a pretty badass scar on my thigh, too. Lots of stitches. Lots of...stuff."
Radek shakes his head absently, leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his beer. He watches Evan as he tucks in to his spicy chicken as if he hasn't been talking about his near-death experience and for a moment, Radek's mind stutters over these new details. Air Force. Afghanistan. Broken. Brave. And then the part of his brain that overrides reason and decorum, but feeds off this sudden surge of feeling for the man sitting across from him, chimes in. Radek can feel the heat rise to his face, even while he tries to keep the conversation going.
"And then?" Radek prompts. He isn't hungry anymore, but Evan scrapes up the last of the rice on his plate as though he won't rest until all evidence that there was ever food there is gone.
"Then, they offered me the discharge and I took it. Turns out crashing in the desert really sucks, and I didn't want to ever do it again."
There's more there, but Radek doubts it would qualify as light dinner conversation.
Despite all his best efforts to stay focused, Radek's thoughts go to that scar on Evan's thigh and he suddenly wants to see it. Not just the scar, but Evan's bare thigh. Naked shoulders. The places on his arm where there once were pins holding bone in place. His back. Everything hundreds of undergrad art students have seen, only Radek will get to touch-run his fingers over the ridges of scar, press his palms into muscle and wrap a thumb around hipbone.
It's not as if Radek hasn't thought all of this before.
These are things Radek has thought about since coffee number one, and fantasized about since somewhere around coffee number three, and anticipated ever since two weeks ago when Evan swept his tongue over Radek's bottom lip on a corner in SoHo. Two days after that, they shared a chocolate-mocha-flavored kiss after coffee, leaving Radek flustered for his three o'clock class. Three days ago, pressed against the wall behind the (tightly shut) door to Radek's office at Columbia ("I sat for freshmen today in my skivvies, thought I'd swing by"), Evan sank his teeth into the tender skin of Radek's neck, Radek's fingers digging into his shoulders. The sharp bite of teeth to tendon, the soothing sweep of tongue that followed--all of it is fuel for fantasy, for the nerves that make Radek's hands jump a little more when he speaks as dinner winds down.
The difference between before and right now is that Radek suddenly wants with an intensity that blindsides him. But isn't at all surprising once he takes a moment to regain his footing, watches Evan watching him over his beer. The truth, the whole truth, crystallizes like an equation; like the arguments for a proof sliding and clicking into place. It is more thrilling than feeling like he's understood a new, infinitesimal slice of the universe. The answer to the equation is this: Radek is going to get Evan Lorne naked before the night is over.
Miraculously, he manages not to say so out loud. But for the rest of the meal, he can barely speak through the want. If someone asked him to explain any one of the topics he spends his day teaching to fresh-faced university students, Radek wouldn't know where to begin. If he were to be presented with long division, he couldn't do it. Every synapse in his brain is firing on want, please, touch and it's all in Czech because he's lost his English. Radek finally manages polysyllabic speech as they gather up their jackets after the meal. He says it all quickly, before he can talk himself out of it.
"Would you like to come over, have a drink?"
His face burns and burns. Evan smiles, slow, and nods. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good."
**
Radek struggles with the front door; the lock requires an elaborate push-pull-twist-push and it’s even more of a trial with his thoughts racing as they are. Evan stands behind him, chatting away, while Radek is wondering just how much of a disaster he left the apartment. He wonders if he made up the bed, if the sink is full, if he left the windows open and pigeons got in again.
Radek finally gets the deadbolt open and slides the key into the doorknob, just as he notices the dead silence of the hallway. He pauses and looks over his shoulder. His breath dies in his throat.
Evan is watching him with his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, eyes shadowed in the bad light of the hall. Radek opens his mouth to speak, thinks better of it (how easily he could talk himself into a very bad place just now), and reaches for Evan just as Evan is reaching towards him.
In the blink of an eye, Radek has pulled Evan in and leant back against the door to his tiny apartment. Evan is pressing him back harder, attacking Radek’s mouth with intense enthusiasm and single-minded concentration. He pushes his knee between Radek’s legs and Radek manages to get his hand between them, pressing his palm to the fly of Evan’s jeans.
Evan groans into his mouth and Radek fumbles blindly backward for his keys. There is a jangling, the click of the lock and Radek tries the doorknob three times before the door swings open. He nearly stumbles but Evan holds them up and removes the keys from the lock as he’s shutting the door behind them.
The keys clatter distantly on the floor as they fall backwards onto the sofa. Radek's head nearly smacks into the end table as they go down. Evan laughs against Radek’s throat as he extracts a stray copy of Science from somewhere underneath them and tosses it to the side.
They are at it like teenagers on the couch, hands shoved under shirts and legs tangling to pull their hips together. They can't find the right sort of friction while skin is still hidden under layers of fabric, but every time they manage to push up, press down, and slide just right they exhale together, noises of satisfaction and anticipation thrumming between them.
"This is difficult," says Radek, still fumbling with Evan’s belt buckle in the cramped space allowed by the sofa. Evan leans up on both hands and for the first time in what feels like eons, Radek can see his eyes again. Awareness slams him behind the ribs, and he can’t speak or look away.
How did he end up here, with this man? He fell over him under a tree and now, in a matter of weeks, he is aching, dying to get his hands on every inch of Evan's exposed torso. He isn’t sure if he is in love, or on his way there, or simply lustful-no. He is sure that it isn’t base lust. It’s strange, how easily Evan slid into Radek’s life. Radek has never been one to collect friends. He has friends, scattered at universities and in governments over the globe. But there came a time when he simply stopped going out of his way to meet new people, and as far as romantic relationships go…
He hadn’t even been in the same country the last time he was involved romantically with a man. Radek works, he publishes papers, he plays cut-throat games of chess with old colleagues over the internet, and he feeds the birds from his fire escape. He lives alone, and happily so; he doesn't spare much thought for romances past, and he doesn't look for them to happen in the present. Radek has never been one to concern himself with the future.
And now he lay pinned beneath a man who could only be described as beautiful, who is brave and intelligent, talented, sweet. Radek can feel himself rocketing towards something wonderful and so very different, and he has no idea how it happened. His hands are wrapped around Evan’s forearms, and Evan is smiling, slow and sly.
"What?" Evan asks, rising up to his knees. He holds out a hand and pulls Radek up so that they’re face to face again, wraps an arm behind Radek, holding him up, brushing their chests together.
"Nothing." Radek murmurs, shaking his head slowly absently as he tries to slow his heart, gather his thoughts, get a grip on himself. "It’s…ah, its nothing. Just…I’m surprised."
Evan quirks a dark eyebrow, "Surprised?"
"I'm afraid I don't know how to--You…why you would-and how?" Radek shrugs, sighs, lets his head loll forward to rest on Evan’s shoulder. He is achingly hard, his heart is still racing and his thoughts won’t align with language. He is frustrated with himself, and is about to try again when Evan figures it out-how does Evan figure it out?
He feels Evan shift a bit and lean down. Evan’s breath huffs close, his lips touching Radek’s earlobe when he says, "You’re amazing. That’s why. And how? I dunno, Radek…Jesus, I don’t know. I want to-can we please get up and find your bed, now?"
"Yes-yes, now." Radek pushes up with his hips, and Evan laughs as he trip-stumble-jumps up, pulling Radek with him.
They reach Radek’s cluttered bedroom-slash-office, leaving a trail of denim behind them. Radek is propped up against his dresser, and Evan is on his knees in front of him in a flash of movement and a burst of heat.
Radek thinks wildly of supernovas, of radiation and eradicated galaxies as Evan slides Radek’s underwear off his hips and closes first his hand then his hot mouth around Radek’s cock.
Radek curses fluently, rapidly, his head knocking back and upsetting the piles of books and paper scattered across the top of the dresser. Evan pulls his mouth away and looks up. Radek stares down at him, gulping for air. "That wasn’t English, whatever you just said." Evan says. He grips Radek’s hips with both hands and pushes him back, holding him against the dresser. A drawer pull digs into Radek’s back and he doesn’t care because Evan is murmuring, "It was fucking sexy," and closing his mouth around him again.
Radek tells him, in Czech, how beautiful he looks on his knees, how perfect his mouth is, how he doesn’t know what’s happened to him but…
Radek tells him, in Czech, how he’s not going to last, not going to-"I can’t-"
Evan hums encouragement, tightens one hand around Radek’s hip and trails the other to his ass, squeezing then stroking, then back around to the inside of Radek’s thigh. As vibration hums around him and Evan’s fingers slide between his legs to tease the spot just behind his balls, Radek comes hard with his eyes slammed shut and his head thrown back. Evan's hands stroke Radek's thighs sweetly as his mouth slides away. Radek stares down at Evan's upturned face through a haze and thinks lovely, before his legs give out.
Evan carries him down as his knees buckle, settling him on the floor then covering Radek’s body with his own and licking into Radek’s mouth.
"Oh, my God." Radek manages to pant, tasting himself on Evan’s lips and surging up into the kiss.
"I-" Evan begins, looking down at him with both hands framing Radek’s face, "God."
He gently removes Radek’s glasses, folds them carefully and sets them on the floor beside them. Radek wants to protest-he can’t see as well now and he wants to see everything, but Evan shushes him, "Just for a second I want to-"
Radek subsides, knowing he must look owlish without his glasses. But Evan just sighs and presses his forehead to Radek’s. "Can I…"
"Yes," Radek replies, "Yes."
As Evan helps him up, Radek thinks to make a grab for his glasses. He tosses them on top of the dresser while Evan kisses him again, smoothes his hands over Radek’s chest. Radek pushes him back toward the bed, presses him down so he’s lying back propped up on elbows. Evan’s boxers are soon lying on the floor in a crumpled pile of cotton. Radek leans over him, brushes his lips against one pebbled nipple, and closes his hand around Evan’s cock. They both let out low sounds as Radek squeezes gently and slides his hand up and down slowly, fingers sliding up and over the slick head, then back down to tease velvety skin.
Evan settles back, stretched and liquid under Radek’s hands and mouth. Radek straddles Evan’s thighs, the places where their skin meets hot and slick with sweat. His vision is blurred, so he maps Evan’s body with his hands, finding ridges of scars on his right arm and the jut of hipbone and tautness of muscle over his torso. He keeps one hand stroking Evan’s cock, finds himself murmuring things under his breath-things even he can’t decipher. Eventually Evan stops his hand, grasping his wrist and groaning, "I want to last. I want -in you. Now. Please?"
Radek reaches for the bedside table.
Evan turns him over, all dark eyes and nipping teeth, so that he rests between Radek’s legs, their cocks pressed together-Radek is hard again, and he can’t remember the last time he was able to do that. Evan twists onto his side and in a moment has two slick fingers pressed against Radek's hole and Radek gasps at the feel of him and the cold of the lube. Evan’s fingers circle then push, sliding into him and Radek twitches, adjusts, and fists his hands in the sheets.
"Perfect," Evan says, twisting his fingers, pulling them out then pushing back in and up.
Radek is practically sobbing within two minutes of those sturdy fingers thrusting slowly into him, and he would beg if he didn’t know that Evan is just waiting, for something, for a sign. Evan will know when-he seems to just know, and Radek can just let him. He can let go and-
"Ready?" Evan asks, and his voice is low and it rumbles and he’s sliding his fingers out while he reaches for a condom. He rolls it on, rests on his heels and strokes a lube-slick hand over his own cock.
"God, yes, ano-prosím-please."
Evan is smiling again when he pushes Radek’s knees further apart, presses them up and back against Radek’s chest. "I can’t tell you," he says, gripping Radek with his slippery hand, "how much Czech is starting to turn me on."
Radek huffs out a laugh and pulls Evan down with one hand on his neck to kiss him through the laughter. "That’s good."
"Yeah," Evan says, and pushes into him.
Radek doesn’t think about supernovas, he sees them on the backs of his eyelids in vivid magenta and rolling waves of electric blue. Evan makes a breaking sound and moves and Radek opens his eyes, gasping through the first slow thrust.
"Alright?"
"Yes, yes...Good."
"I--" Evan stills, "You feel like…"
Radek groans, pushes his hands through the short spikes of Evan’s hair. "Please, don’t stop."
Evan moves, rolls his hips and tightens his grip on the backs of Radek's knees. He tilts his head back, exposing his neck and chest. Radek untangles the fingers of one hand from Evans hair, sliding it down to tweak one nipple, pinches to elicit another sound that vibrates through him. Evan’s hips snap involuntarily.
"Radek-"
"Yes."
Radek devotes one hand to skimming over Evan’s skin, across his chest, up to his shoulder to squeeze, into his hair to knot his fingers in the strands. With the other, he strokes himself slowly, matching the slide of his hand with the tempo of Evan's hips. Evan tilts Radek’s hips up, hitching his legs higher and hits an angle that rolls Radek’s eyes up and back, pulls from him sounds he shouldn’t be able to make--he hasn’t the breath to make them. Radek's fingers tighten in Evan’s hair and around his own cock, his mouth falls open, and he comes again. It's almost painful, but not quite. Radek coasts the waves of pleasure and twinges of too-old-for-this, gasping.
Evan lets go of Radek’s legs, uses his shoulders as leverage, hooking Radek's knees over them as he leans forward on his elbows. He bites at Radek’s lower lip as he thrusts harder, moving faster, then erratically. They are tangled, Radek is bent in ways that will ache in the morning, and their foreheads bang together as Evan pushes in deep with a low, bone-deep groan and comes, panting into Radek’s mouth.
**
In the morning, Radek finds Evan in his boxers, sitting up next to him in bed with coffee in hand and one of hundreds of copies of Science that Radek keeps lying around open in his lap. He looks down to see Radek is awake and reaches for a second cup of coffee waiting on the nightstand.
"Morning," he says, smiling brilliantly.
Radek sits up and takes the coffee, wrapping his hands around the mug. He looks down at it, slightly lightened with milk-just the way he likes it. Then he looks up at Evan, who is watching him over the rim of his coffee cup.
I am in love with you, Radek thinks. He says, "Thank you," and takes a sip of coffee.
"Wanna go meet someone today?" Evan asks.
**
On to Part Two
Chapter titles: 1. all at the same time 2. it began 3. find out
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Evan Lorne/Radek Zelenka
Summary: Radek finds Evan Lorne under a tree. A love story. I am no good at summaries.
Notes: It's very important that I take a moment to thank gblvr and kisahawklin , two lovely ladies who acted as my fearless betas for this fic. I can't even begin to say how much work they put into this with me--hours of edits, late-night meltdowns, hand-holding, cheerleading and color-coding. Thank you both so very, very much.
1. najednou
A handful of months after they meet, Evan goes to Boston with Radek for a very tedious weekend of presentations and receptions. Two days in, they’re uncomfortable, wearing suits and ties, in the banquet hall of some pretentious Beantown hotel. Evan has wandered to the bar to fetch more drinks and Radek is left alone with Rodney McKay, who has been engaging Radek in the usual song-and-dance to the tune of "No-No-No-You-Are-WrongWrongWRONG" for the last twenty minutes.
Radek wishes, inside this moment, that he had come alone. He ought to have emphasized what a bore it was all going to be, how much fun Evan wouldn’t be having stuck in physics seminars all day and stuffy cocktail events all night. He might have convinced Evan to stay in New York, and Radek could have suffered through the parties and delighted in the physics and dealt with Dr. Rodney McKay, Ph.D. Ph.D. without Evan having to witness it.
It’s not that he cares if Rodney informs him, loudly and with hand gestures, that he, Radek, possesses an intellect that is painfully and hopelessly beneath that of him, Rodney. Radek had already known how Evan would react to Rodney. Stifled amusement (biting his cheek, notsmiling!notsmiling!not--*snort*), covering his face with his hand, eyes laughing to Radek’s as if to say, Is this guy for real?
It’s more about the fact that Radek knew that Rodney would have no problem whatsoever making a big, vocal, intrusive deal about--
"Jesus, Zelenka," McKay mutters as soon as Evan heads off toward the bar, "Where the hell did you find him?"
And Radek had known that it would come to this, so he volleys back an answer with ease.
"I picked him up. Obviously. In a club on the west side. In the bathroom, would you believe? I believe you would call him a…go-go dancer? Yes, that’s the right word."
Please, Radek thinks, go back to insulting my intelligence. Because Radek can deal with that; he likes the banter, and knows that Rodney knows (somewhere, deep down) that Radek is more his intellectual match than any one of the number of "geniuses" standing around them in formal attire. Also, once Rodney has asserted himself as (marginally) smarter, they can have a real conversation about physics, and Radek enjoys those talks. But no.
"Oh, he is not!" Rodney exclaims, "You idiot, I work for the military-industrial complex. I know what I’m looking at, and I am looking at a man with a crew cut. Who has a crew cut? The apple pie is practically seeping from his pores, and that posture--! God, he has military written all over him. His eyebrows are regulation for Christ’s sake." Rodney pauses for breath and possibly for effect. "So?" he asks conspiratorially, "Marine?"
Rodney is peering at him over the rim of his crystal tumbler and, with a sense of resignation, Radek rolls his eyes before snatching the glass from Rodney’s hand. He drinks the last of the scotch out of it in one swallow before speaking. "Air Force, actually."
"You’re fucking a flyboy?" Rodney sputters, and at least three stuffy physicists and their spouses break their necks whipping around to stare at them.
"Shut up, Rodney," Radek grits through his teeth, eyes flicking to the bar. Evan is leaning forward with his elbows up on the bar, one foot hooked around the leg of a barstool. Radek keeps his eyes on Evan’s broad, black-jacketed back and says, "He’s not, ah, not military anymore--honorable discharge, you see."
"Oh," says Rodney, following Radek’s eyes to where Evan stands and looking thoughtful for a moment before asking, "Any sexy scars, then? Or did he snap? PTSD? Is he really a go-go boy? He wears camo when he dances, doesn’t he? The city has changed you. What are you doing in go-go bars? He could have any number of diseases! Who knows where-"
Radek mutters under his breath, returns Rodney’s empty glass to his hand, and walks off. He waves his hand over his shoulder at Rodney’s protest. One thing Radek knows from experience-you must walk away from Rodney McKay if you can manage it, before things get ugly--or uglier as the case may be. Walk away before you strangle him.
At the bar, Evan smiles with his white, even teeth. Radek smiles back--he can’t help it because yes, Evan is his flyboy, his made-in-America slice of apple pie. Evan’s brows knit together in question; most likely he noticed the scowl on Radek’s face before it melted away. Possibly he knew to stay at the bar and wait for Hurricane McKay to pass. There aren’t any drinks in his hands. Radek shrugs, smiles again.
"Are we done here?"
Radek sighs with relief. "God, yes."
**
Actually, Radek didn’t find Evan so much as stumble over him, and it wasn't even within spitting distance of a go-go bar.
Radek has been at Columbia for just under a year when he meets Evan.
It’s September and he’s walking across campus, journal open in his hands, reading as he goes. Distracted by his thoughts (Well that would be accurate, if you rewrote all the laws of space-time and reordered the universe, but the concepts here…hm. I need to publish again soon, really I should find some time to--), Radek fails to notice the pair of sneakers directly in his path. He also fails to notice that his route has actually meandered off the path and under the trees favored by studying undergrads.
The man who belongs to the sneakers Radek then trips over doesn’t look like an undergrad-a fair bit older than your average grad student, even; too clean cut, actually. Radek regains his equilibrium once both men are standing and brushing dry leaves and grass from their clothing. He doesn’t remember how he came to be upright again, only that strong hands had helped along the way.
"Hey, are you okay? Sorry about that. Sorry. Are you--." The man pauses, shaking his head as though to clear it. "I'm Lorne. Evan. I mean, my name is Evan." He tells Radek, all the while dusting himself off, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck, plucking a brown leaf from Radek’s hair and flicking it away with the other.
Radek fiddles with the earpiece of his glasses, feeling himself flush as he stares blankly down at the journal still clutched in his hand. "Ah, Dr. Zelenka. Radek, that is. It is me who should be sorry for-"
"No worries," says Lorne. Evan. "It was a pleasure to be tripped over by you. Must have been one hell of a read, huh?"
"Ah, sorry, what?"
Evan gestures to the crumpled journal. Radek lifts it and blinks, unable to remember what he had been reading.
"Oh. Not really." A pause, awkward, and Radek isn’t surprised, because he normally isn’t good with people. Now he is flustered and his social competence is compromised even further. He returns his glasses to his face and blinks. Evan is disturbingly attractive, more so now that Radek can see clearly. Radek feels more out of place and jerks his hand in a strange, abortive motion in front of himself. "You, uh…what are you studying?"
"What? Oh! You mean--" Evan gestures vaguely to one of the buildings. His ears are red and he scratches the back of his neck. "Oh, I’m not a student. I, uh…sort of work here. I guess. I do freelance, um…" He coughs, embarrassed. "I model for a drawing class here and there."
"Nude?" Radek blurts and he nearly bites off his tongue, too late to stop the word from spilling out. He must be so red by now, and he knows it’s time to go. It’s definitely time to go. "I mean, no, I didn’t-- Really, I must be going-"
Evan smiles slow, toothy, and says, "Well…sometimes they ask me to go all out, so, yeah."
"Buh-"
"Look, can I get you a coffee or something?"
Radek accepts. Just like that, and he has his very own flyboy.
**
Or, it isn’t really just like that.
There is a good amount of shy smiling and blushing and coffee before Evan becomes anything resembling…his.
That first day, they go to a quirky place downtown-Evan lives in Brooklyn, and he had been about to get up and head downtown to catch the L home when Radek tripped over him. Radek doesn't have any more classes to teach for the day and he doubts he would be of any use in the lab, so he travels further downtown with Evan on the 1. It seems silly to take a twenty-minute train ride just for coffee, but Evan is talkative and handsome and Radek is still flustered, so he hardly notices the press of the subway crowd.
The coffee shop is a twenty-four-hour place with wi-fi, a few beaten-up armchairs and trendily scruffy baristas. It's populated by a mixed crowd of newspaper-toting suits, students and your run-of-the-mill Manhattanites with oversized handbags, backpacks and briefcases knocking into their neighbors.
Radek finally gets himself together enough to catalogue and analyze the man sitting across from him. Evan Lorne is broad shouldered and muscular, but not large. He’s actually short by most standards, an inch taller than Radek at most. He is handsome in the way all-American boys are handsome-white teeth, easy smile, eyes a startling shade of ice-blue under dark eyebrows. He leans back in his chair, comfortable, and talks easily. He is polite to the barista, smiles at a diminutive old woman behind them in line, offers a nod and a "Ma’am," as they pass.
He is charming but genuine, gorgeous but doesn’t appear to notice, and Radek likes him. He likes him, right then and there, less than an hour after they meet.
They drink their coffee, and Radek learns that Evan spent two semesters at Pratt, hated it, quit, and now waits tables and does freelance modeling for drawing classes. Radek knows those jobs don’t pay for an apartment--not even one in Brooklyn--but doesn’t press for more information.
"So what do you teach, Dr. Zelenka?" Evan asks.
Radek gets the feeling that Evan calls him "Dr. Zelenka" because he thinks it’s funny. He doesn’t mind it, really. He talks about physics for all of two minutes before he stops himself.
"Very boring, really." He says, waving his hand in front of him as though swatting away the subject.
"No!" Evan protests, "It’s…cool."
Radek smiles weakly, but it turns out Evan means it. Radek talks about the 200-level section on classical mechanics he’s teaching this semester, his frustration with the undergrads, his work with his grad students. Evan asks questions, laughs at Radek’s impression of his department head, and tells Radek he was never very good at science or math.
"I was never very good at anything but," Radek says.
"I somehow doubt that," is what Evan says, and Radek blushes again.
A few minutes and some small talk later, they each make their excuses and depart.
The second coffee happens unexpectedly when Radek, rumpled and dark-eyed with exhaustion, stumbles into the same coffee shop around midnight on a Monday. He has no idea what possessed him to travel so far out of his way for coffee, and he isn't sure if he had expected to find Evan there, but that is exactly what happens. As Radek half-stumbles up the curb to the shop, Evan is on his way out the door behind a group of willowy young women. Radek blinks and wonders if he should just keep walking, avoid the discomfort of trying to talk to an almost-stranger this late at night, after hours and hours in the lab pulling at his hair. He’s not good at talking, really. He doesn’t always have the right words in English, unless he’s in a lab, and sometimes the words are right but he shouldn’t have said them. Like asking a perfect stranger if he sometimes stands naked before twenty undergraduates, and probably sounding like a lecherous twit.
But Evan double takes, waves the girls on and says "Hi! It’s you! You tripped on me the other day. Remember?"
"Ah…yes? That is…I remember. Hello."
They spend the next two hours talking over strong coffee. Evan’s smile flusters Radek, as does the attractive flush that creeps up Evan’s neck to his ears. They talk about places they have been-Evan is well-traveled, it seems-and their families.
"My mother," Evan says, "would absolutely die if she knew I was drinking coffee this late."
"Mine, not so much. She loved it."
"What are you doing tomorrow morning? Are you teaching?"
"Hm, yes. At nine."
"Coffee, in the morning? I’m working a Drawing I class at ten, we could ride up to campus together."
Radek accepts, nearly vibrating out of his skin from caffeine overload and disbelief as he takes the train twenty blocks uptown to his apartment.
2. začalo
Several coffees later, and Evan invites Radek to a movie. It’s Sunday morning, and Radek is drinking his coffee with the paper spread across the "breakfast bar," which is more of a small counter with room enough for a coffee cup and one section of the Times and a single stool in front of it, when Evan calls.
"They’re doing a Czech new wave thing at the Forum." Evan says, and Radek isn’t sure but he thinks, judging by the tentative way Evan speaks, that he’s being offered a date.
"Czech new wave?"
"Well, I figured you might…if you don’t want to, that’s-"
"Yes."
"I mean, we could just go-What?"
"Yes. Yes, okay. Czech new wave. I’m not certain what that is, but yes. We’ll go."
After Radek hangs up five minutes later, he casts a look around his apartment, at a loss for what to do now that he has a date (he thinks), with Evan.
He goes to the window, which looks out across an alley to the back of another building. He keeps a canister on the low table under the window. Radek pushes a stack of science journals off the top and opens the canister, taking out a handful of birdseed. He opens the window and sprinkles the seed over the fire escape, for the pigeons.
**
Czech new wave, it turns out, is an incomprehensible moment in film history. At least, as far as Radek can tell, anyway. Between glimpses of bombings, robotic dialog, strange color flashes, and females in various states of undress, Radek isn’t able to discern much from the film at all. Evan glances at him as they leave the theater. "That was…"
"Very…" Radek fumbles for the right words. "It was, ah…"
"What the fuck did we just see? I mean-"
"I have no idea-"
"I mean what-"
Radek is the first to laugh, snorting indelicately and shoving his hands into his pockets.
They’re walking down Houston, toward 6th. It’s chilly, mid-autumn in New York City, and the sun is almost down, which means Manhattan’s tall buildings make it darker on the street.
"It was about war, I think." Evan says, walking in step beside Radek.
"Yes." Radek agrees, "Communism. Decadence. It made no sense whatsoever, but yes. It was about war-after a war."
"Um. When did you…I mean-"
"I left home for university a very long time ago. I have been back, but my family left also, after I had been working for some time. My sister did go back, ten years ago or so. I don’t have much time to visit her, but when it’s possible, I do." Radek says, "What you saw, at the beginning of the film, it’s not exactly how it was when I was young. It wasn’t quite so…"
"Fucked up?"
"No, it was certainly that. When I was young. After the war, during the regime, and then I left. It’s much different now."
"War changes a place," says Evan, with such certainty, such knowledge behind the words that Radek suddenly knows something he hadn’t known before. Evan has seen a war. This is one of those getting-to-know-you moments, the kind in which years and years of personal history begin to surface and ripple between two people. It’s tricky ground.
"And changes people, too," Radek supplies, watching Evan’s profile.
"Yep," is all Evan says.
Radek changes the subject. "It was an odd film, but it was thoughtful of you to ask me. Thank you."
"No problem."
Evan’s ears turn red.
They walk on and on, making small talk sometimes, keeping quiet at others. Radek wonders in which branch Evan served, and where he had toured. He wants and does not want to ask. He doesn’t know if it’s too forward to just ask. Evan will probably just tell him because that’s how he is-honest, direct.
Their shoulders bump as they pass by crowds on the sidewalk. It’s comfortable, but it zings at the edges. Radek is hyperaware of each brush of arm to arm, each time Evan turns to speak and his breath is warm on the fall air. He’s "got it bad," as that saying goes. He wonders if his face is red. It sometimes happens, even if he’s only thinking something that makes him nervous and shy.
They have been walking in silence for blocks when, on the corner of Spring and Broadway, in the snappy chill of SoHo, Evan stops Radek with a touch to the wrist. He opens his mouth to speak, shuts it, flashes a self-deprecating smile and then he leans down and presses his mouth sweetly to Radek’s.
And then, it’s just like that.
All the things Radek wants to know swirl out and around, and he is sure in the knowledge that he’s going to find out everything there is, all the pieces that make up Evan Lorne, model/waiter/artist/soldier, in due time.
3. zjišťovat
Evan's father is a foreman in a factory, and his mother teaches art to elementary school children. He grew up in the blue collar suburbs, played hockey, football, and baseball as a kid. He painted with his mother on weekends. He tells Radek about joining the Air Force right out of high school, and that he served for nearly fifteen years before he was discharged. His parents still live in the house Evan was raised in, halfway across the country.
He tells Radek these things in fits and bursts of vague information over coffees in the weeks leading up to the first date and the days following it. Evan doesn’t try to come off as mysterious, but he doesn’t say anything unless Radek asks for the information. Radek is never certain what is his business and what is not, so he is hesitant to pry. So, without meaning to be, Evan is just that-mysterious.
They go to another movie, this time a sci-fi b-movie from the 70's full of bad science and buxom blondes. They have lunch twice between Radek’s classes and office hours. They start to spend the fleeting hours between Radek's classes and Evan's late shift together in Radek's office with the blinds closed. It is on a particularly memorable evening after office hours that Evan leaves a spectacular bite mark just below the collar of Radek's shirt. He touches the purpling circle of half-moons and winks before heading out. Radek shuffles and re-stacks the pile of homework assignments that got shoved aside earlier, and thinks that maybe some things are okay to ask now.
Over tandoori chicken, Radek starts asking and learns that Evan Lorne used to be Major Evan Lorne. He learns that four years ago, Evan fell out of the sky, sustaining broken bones, some nerve damage and a skull fracture. According to the doctors, he's lucky he didn't break his neck.
"Wasn't that bad, tell you the truth," Evan says, focusing mainly on his chicken. Radek is agape across the table. His life has been spent turning the sky into numbers, mapping it out on white boards, and Evan has actually fallen out of it in a ball of flame.
"I…did you. What-"
"Pins in my right arm." Evan supplies, "Good thing I'm left-handed; couldn't paint with the bad arm. Gets achy. I ended up with a pretty badass scar on my thigh, too. Lots of stitches. Lots of...stuff."
Radek shakes his head absently, leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his beer. He watches Evan as he tucks in to his spicy chicken as if he hasn't been talking about his near-death experience and for a moment, Radek's mind stutters over these new details. Air Force. Afghanistan. Broken. Brave. And then the part of his brain that overrides reason and decorum, but feeds off this sudden surge of feeling for the man sitting across from him, chimes in. Radek can feel the heat rise to his face, even while he tries to keep the conversation going.
"And then?" Radek prompts. He isn't hungry anymore, but Evan scrapes up the last of the rice on his plate as though he won't rest until all evidence that there was ever food there is gone.
"Then, they offered me the discharge and I took it. Turns out crashing in the desert really sucks, and I didn't want to ever do it again."
There's more there, but Radek doubts it would qualify as light dinner conversation.
Despite all his best efforts to stay focused, Radek's thoughts go to that scar on Evan's thigh and he suddenly wants to see it. Not just the scar, but Evan's bare thigh. Naked shoulders. The places on his arm where there once were pins holding bone in place. His back. Everything hundreds of undergrad art students have seen, only Radek will get to touch-run his fingers over the ridges of scar, press his palms into muscle and wrap a thumb around hipbone.
It's not as if Radek hasn't thought all of this before.
These are things Radek has thought about since coffee number one, and fantasized about since somewhere around coffee number three, and anticipated ever since two weeks ago when Evan swept his tongue over Radek's bottom lip on a corner in SoHo. Two days after that, they shared a chocolate-mocha-flavored kiss after coffee, leaving Radek flustered for his three o'clock class. Three days ago, pressed against the wall behind the (tightly shut) door to Radek's office at Columbia ("I sat for freshmen today in my skivvies, thought I'd swing by"), Evan sank his teeth into the tender skin of Radek's neck, Radek's fingers digging into his shoulders. The sharp bite of teeth to tendon, the soothing sweep of tongue that followed--all of it is fuel for fantasy, for the nerves that make Radek's hands jump a little more when he speaks as dinner winds down.
The difference between before and right now is that Radek suddenly wants with an intensity that blindsides him. But isn't at all surprising once he takes a moment to regain his footing, watches Evan watching him over his beer. The truth, the whole truth, crystallizes like an equation; like the arguments for a proof sliding and clicking into place. It is more thrilling than feeling like he's understood a new, infinitesimal slice of the universe. The answer to the equation is this: Radek is going to get Evan Lorne naked before the night is over.
Miraculously, he manages not to say so out loud. But for the rest of the meal, he can barely speak through the want. If someone asked him to explain any one of the topics he spends his day teaching to fresh-faced university students, Radek wouldn't know where to begin. If he were to be presented with long division, he couldn't do it. Every synapse in his brain is firing on want, please, touch and it's all in Czech because he's lost his English. Radek finally manages polysyllabic speech as they gather up their jackets after the meal. He says it all quickly, before he can talk himself out of it.
"Would you like to come over, have a drink?"
His face burns and burns. Evan smiles, slow, and nods. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good."
**
Radek struggles with the front door; the lock requires an elaborate push-pull-twist-push and it’s even more of a trial with his thoughts racing as they are. Evan stands behind him, chatting away, while Radek is wondering just how much of a disaster he left the apartment. He wonders if he made up the bed, if the sink is full, if he left the windows open and pigeons got in again.
Radek finally gets the deadbolt open and slides the key into the doorknob, just as he notices the dead silence of the hallway. He pauses and looks over his shoulder. His breath dies in his throat.
Evan is watching him with his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, eyes shadowed in the bad light of the hall. Radek opens his mouth to speak, thinks better of it (how easily he could talk himself into a very bad place just now), and reaches for Evan just as Evan is reaching towards him.
In the blink of an eye, Radek has pulled Evan in and leant back against the door to his tiny apartment. Evan is pressing him back harder, attacking Radek’s mouth with intense enthusiasm and single-minded concentration. He pushes his knee between Radek’s legs and Radek manages to get his hand between them, pressing his palm to the fly of Evan’s jeans.
Evan groans into his mouth and Radek fumbles blindly backward for his keys. There is a jangling, the click of the lock and Radek tries the doorknob three times before the door swings open. He nearly stumbles but Evan holds them up and removes the keys from the lock as he’s shutting the door behind them.
The keys clatter distantly on the floor as they fall backwards onto the sofa. Radek's head nearly smacks into the end table as they go down. Evan laughs against Radek’s throat as he extracts a stray copy of Science from somewhere underneath them and tosses it to the side.
They are at it like teenagers on the couch, hands shoved under shirts and legs tangling to pull their hips together. They can't find the right sort of friction while skin is still hidden under layers of fabric, but every time they manage to push up, press down, and slide just right they exhale together, noises of satisfaction and anticipation thrumming between them.
"This is difficult," says Radek, still fumbling with Evan’s belt buckle in the cramped space allowed by the sofa. Evan leans up on both hands and for the first time in what feels like eons, Radek can see his eyes again. Awareness slams him behind the ribs, and he can’t speak or look away.
How did he end up here, with this man? He fell over him under a tree and now, in a matter of weeks, he is aching, dying to get his hands on every inch of Evan's exposed torso. He isn’t sure if he is in love, or on his way there, or simply lustful-no. He is sure that it isn’t base lust. It’s strange, how easily Evan slid into Radek’s life. Radek has never been one to collect friends. He has friends, scattered at universities and in governments over the globe. But there came a time when he simply stopped going out of his way to meet new people, and as far as romantic relationships go…
He hadn’t even been in the same country the last time he was involved romantically with a man. Radek works, he publishes papers, he plays cut-throat games of chess with old colleagues over the internet, and he feeds the birds from his fire escape. He lives alone, and happily so; he doesn't spare much thought for romances past, and he doesn't look for them to happen in the present. Radek has never been one to concern himself with the future.
And now he lay pinned beneath a man who could only be described as beautiful, who is brave and intelligent, talented, sweet. Radek can feel himself rocketing towards something wonderful and so very different, and he has no idea how it happened. His hands are wrapped around Evan’s forearms, and Evan is smiling, slow and sly.
"What?" Evan asks, rising up to his knees. He holds out a hand and pulls Radek up so that they’re face to face again, wraps an arm behind Radek, holding him up, brushing their chests together.
"Nothing." Radek murmurs, shaking his head slowly absently as he tries to slow his heart, gather his thoughts, get a grip on himself. "It’s…ah, its nothing. Just…I’m surprised."
Evan quirks a dark eyebrow, "Surprised?"
"I'm afraid I don't know how to--You…why you would-and how?" Radek shrugs, sighs, lets his head loll forward to rest on Evan’s shoulder. He is achingly hard, his heart is still racing and his thoughts won’t align with language. He is frustrated with himself, and is about to try again when Evan figures it out-how does Evan figure it out?
He feels Evan shift a bit and lean down. Evan’s breath huffs close, his lips touching Radek’s earlobe when he says, "You’re amazing. That’s why. And how? I dunno, Radek…Jesus, I don’t know. I want to-can we please get up and find your bed, now?"
"Yes-yes, now." Radek pushes up with his hips, and Evan laughs as he trip-stumble-jumps up, pulling Radek with him.
They reach Radek’s cluttered bedroom-slash-office, leaving a trail of denim behind them. Radek is propped up against his dresser, and Evan is on his knees in front of him in a flash of movement and a burst of heat.
Radek thinks wildly of supernovas, of radiation and eradicated galaxies as Evan slides Radek’s underwear off his hips and closes first his hand then his hot mouth around Radek’s cock.
Radek curses fluently, rapidly, his head knocking back and upsetting the piles of books and paper scattered across the top of the dresser. Evan pulls his mouth away and looks up. Radek stares down at him, gulping for air. "That wasn’t English, whatever you just said." Evan says. He grips Radek’s hips with both hands and pushes him back, holding him against the dresser. A drawer pull digs into Radek’s back and he doesn’t care because Evan is murmuring, "It was fucking sexy," and closing his mouth around him again.
Radek tells him, in Czech, how beautiful he looks on his knees, how perfect his mouth is, how he doesn’t know what’s happened to him but…
Radek tells him, in Czech, how he’s not going to last, not going to-"I can’t-"
Evan hums encouragement, tightens one hand around Radek’s hip and trails the other to his ass, squeezing then stroking, then back around to the inside of Radek’s thigh. As vibration hums around him and Evan’s fingers slide between his legs to tease the spot just behind his balls, Radek comes hard with his eyes slammed shut and his head thrown back. Evan's hands stroke Radek's thighs sweetly as his mouth slides away. Radek stares down at Evan's upturned face through a haze and thinks lovely, before his legs give out.
Evan carries him down as his knees buckle, settling him on the floor then covering Radek’s body with his own and licking into Radek’s mouth.
"Oh, my God." Radek manages to pant, tasting himself on Evan’s lips and surging up into the kiss.
"I-" Evan begins, looking down at him with both hands framing Radek’s face, "God."
He gently removes Radek’s glasses, folds them carefully and sets them on the floor beside them. Radek wants to protest-he can’t see as well now and he wants to see everything, but Evan shushes him, "Just for a second I want to-"
Radek subsides, knowing he must look owlish without his glasses. But Evan just sighs and presses his forehead to Radek’s. "Can I…"
"Yes," Radek replies, "Yes."
As Evan helps him up, Radek thinks to make a grab for his glasses. He tosses them on top of the dresser while Evan kisses him again, smoothes his hands over Radek’s chest. Radek pushes him back toward the bed, presses him down so he’s lying back propped up on elbows. Evan’s boxers are soon lying on the floor in a crumpled pile of cotton. Radek leans over him, brushes his lips against one pebbled nipple, and closes his hand around Evan’s cock. They both let out low sounds as Radek squeezes gently and slides his hand up and down slowly, fingers sliding up and over the slick head, then back down to tease velvety skin.
Evan settles back, stretched and liquid under Radek’s hands and mouth. Radek straddles Evan’s thighs, the places where their skin meets hot and slick with sweat. His vision is blurred, so he maps Evan’s body with his hands, finding ridges of scars on his right arm and the jut of hipbone and tautness of muscle over his torso. He keeps one hand stroking Evan’s cock, finds himself murmuring things under his breath-things even he can’t decipher. Eventually Evan stops his hand, grasping his wrist and groaning, "I want to last. I want -in you. Now. Please?"
Radek reaches for the bedside table.
Evan turns him over, all dark eyes and nipping teeth, so that he rests between Radek’s legs, their cocks pressed together-Radek is hard again, and he can’t remember the last time he was able to do that. Evan twists onto his side and in a moment has two slick fingers pressed against Radek's hole and Radek gasps at the feel of him and the cold of the lube. Evan’s fingers circle then push, sliding into him and Radek twitches, adjusts, and fists his hands in the sheets.
"Perfect," Evan says, twisting his fingers, pulling them out then pushing back in and up.
Radek is practically sobbing within two minutes of those sturdy fingers thrusting slowly into him, and he would beg if he didn’t know that Evan is just waiting, for something, for a sign. Evan will know when-he seems to just know, and Radek can just let him. He can let go and-
"Ready?" Evan asks, and his voice is low and it rumbles and he’s sliding his fingers out while he reaches for a condom. He rolls it on, rests on his heels and strokes a lube-slick hand over his own cock.
"God, yes, ano-prosím-please."
Evan is smiling again when he pushes Radek’s knees further apart, presses them up and back against Radek’s chest. "I can’t tell you," he says, gripping Radek with his slippery hand, "how much Czech is starting to turn me on."
Radek huffs out a laugh and pulls Evan down with one hand on his neck to kiss him through the laughter. "That’s good."
"Yeah," Evan says, and pushes into him.
Radek doesn’t think about supernovas, he sees them on the backs of his eyelids in vivid magenta and rolling waves of electric blue. Evan makes a breaking sound and moves and Radek opens his eyes, gasping through the first slow thrust.
"Alright?"
"Yes, yes...Good."
"I--" Evan stills, "You feel like…"
Radek groans, pushes his hands through the short spikes of Evan’s hair. "Please, don’t stop."
Evan moves, rolls his hips and tightens his grip on the backs of Radek's knees. He tilts his head back, exposing his neck and chest. Radek untangles the fingers of one hand from Evans hair, sliding it down to tweak one nipple, pinches to elicit another sound that vibrates through him. Evan’s hips snap involuntarily.
"Radek-"
"Yes."
Radek devotes one hand to skimming over Evan’s skin, across his chest, up to his shoulder to squeeze, into his hair to knot his fingers in the strands. With the other, he strokes himself slowly, matching the slide of his hand with the tempo of Evan's hips. Evan tilts Radek’s hips up, hitching his legs higher and hits an angle that rolls Radek’s eyes up and back, pulls from him sounds he shouldn’t be able to make--he hasn’t the breath to make them. Radek's fingers tighten in Evan’s hair and around his own cock, his mouth falls open, and he comes again. It's almost painful, but not quite. Radek coasts the waves of pleasure and twinges of too-old-for-this, gasping.
Evan lets go of Radek’s legs, uses his shoulders as leverage, hooking Radek's knees over them as he leans forward on his elbows. He bites at Radek’s lower lip as he thrusts harder, moving faster, then erratically. They are tangled, Radek is bent in ways that will ache in the morning, and their foreheads bang together as Evan pushes in deep with a low, bone-deep groan and comes, panting into Radek’s mouth.
**
In the morning, Radek finds Evan in his boxers, sitting up next to him in bed with coffee in hand and one of hundreds of copies of Science that Radek keeps lying around open in his lap. He looks down to see Radek is awake and reaches for a second cup of coffee waiting on the nightstand.
"Morning," he says, smiling brilliantly.
Radek sits up and takes the coffee, wrapping his hands around the mug. He looks down at it, slightly lightened with milk-just the way he likes it. Then he looks up at Evan, who is watching him over the rim of his coffee cup.
I am in love with you, Radek thinks. He says, "Thank you," and takes a sip of coffee.
"Wanna go meet someone today?" Evan asks.
**
On to Part Two
Chapter titles: 1. all at the same time 2. it began 3. find out