Walking On Eggshells
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Things I learned writing this fic:
1) My wordkink is perhaps even more deeply ingrained than my fightkink.
2) I now have theories about why live-action fandoms are so peripatetic, in comparison to animated or prose-specific ones. It is a special kind of wonderful to have a clear, same-species picture of the characters. Especially when one of them is Tom Hardy. And if that bounces between fandoms, I can totally understand.
3) Glaswegian speech patterns are FUCKING DIFFICULT.
Also, happy Day-After-National-Coming-Out-Day~! The fic, I suppose is rather appropriate.
Title: Walking On Eggshells
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: RocknRolla
Characters: Handsome Bob and One Two, later Mumbles.
Words: 4800
Rating: Somewhere between R and NC-17 but I’m not sure which.
Warning: Given the pairing, this fic deals with homophobia, but in a remedial context. If you can forgive One Two’s reactions in the movie, you can probably forgive them here.
Enticement: Failure to properly administer fellatio. In fact, let’s just up and call it fail-latio.
Summary: It’s gonna take a bit of time for One Two to get over himself. Maybe a couple of bits of time, and this is just one of them. But it’s a big step, you know, actually giving this cocksucking thing a shot.
art by pinstripesuit, who is consistently awesome
Walking On Eggshells
rocknrolla
“Them Russians,” One Two says, like he’s gotta clarify it, ‘cause no one else is up in his head and all. “They was like you.”
Bob just looks at him. Bob spends a lot of time just looking at him. It’s the lighting that’s got him looking heavy in the eyes like they’re trying to say something and it isn’t just what do you mean ‘like me’, but the rest of that look, One Two doesn’t have to be a college boy to know what that look’s looking for. It’s spinning a bit, swelling in and out like a funhouse mirror. The birds think Bob’s a prize. One Two isn’t stupid, he knows they’re right.
“I’m not a commie, One Two.” Bob says, smiling.
“I meant like you,” One Two says again, and he’s clarifying a lot, seems like. “Died with their fucking boots on. Boots for fucking. Buggering.”
“Not dead neither.”
“Buggering.”
Now One Two thought-or thinks a second after-that saying something like that might well get Bob to look away, but it doesn’t, just gets his eyebrows up and wrinkles his forehead all mastiff-like. “Well, yeah,” he says. “With each other, or what?”
“What, do all you homos have a code or something? X-ray vision or-or something,” One Two gives up, drops his head into his hands, looks into the latest pint. He’s got a reflection in it and it spins around. “Did everyone know? There’s something I can’t see, isn’t there.”
“Yeah,” Bob says. “There’s a lot of that.”
“Then you’re gonna fucking well teach me,” One Two says. He looks up. Bob’s still looking, it’s like there’s spinach in One Two’s teeth except it strips him a little raw and he doesn’t like it. “You’re gonna teach me to spot poofs like you so I don’t wind up tied to my fucking bed with-with socks down my throat and all.”
Bob laughs. “They did that to you?”
“Them fucking Russians,” One Two says, because that’s an answer.
He’d think Bob was going to laugh at him, if he went by that smile, but Bob’s not laughing at him, he’s laughing at, well, his pint, maybe. It’s the soft kind of laugh, the kind where he shakes his head and all. Bob does look away, though, closes his eyes a bit and hangs his head and shakes it, side to side, like it’s funny. It’s not fucking funny. One Two tells him so.
“It’s not,” Bob agrees. “Not what they did to you.”
“Tried,” One Two says, because again, it’s true. “They dinna get the chance to do nothing else. Just up and tied me to my own fucking bed and danced around in their pants and fucking commie hats like a couple of queens.”
Bob is definitely laughing. So One Two smacks him in the knuckles, pint to pint, except it isn’t a toast.
“It isna fucking funny,” One Two says, again.
“Not what they did to you,” Bob agrees, again. “Just the image of that fat one. Can’t help laughing, mate, it’s not at you. Never at you.”
“You better not fucking start.” One Two pulls back, leans in his chair. “Last thing I want’s to think about you doing that shit to me.”
Bob says something. The pub’s loud enough that One Two loses it, asks for it again.
“That’s not what I want to do to you,” Bob says. “I mean.”
One Two holds onto his pint. It might slip away or something.
“I mean,” Bob goes on, “the tying you down and all. I don’t want to have to, you know? Or gag you. Means you couldn’t talk, yeah?”
“What, you want to hear me talk?”
“Yeah, I like to hear you talk, you big weegie bastard. It’s a sexy voice, you know that.” Bob’s smiling, tapping his fingers on the wet side of his pint-which means One Two is watching, doesn’t it, if he noticed that. They’re just fingers, fine, he can watch. “So I wouldn’t put a sock in you. Wouldn’t put anything in you at all, unless you wanted it.”
One Two laughs, and then wonders what’s funny. “What, it’s all-all dancing to you?”
“Except the part where I suck your cock, yeah.”
-Oh, right, One Two still has a drink in his hand. He should drink it. That’ll stop him smiling.
Doesn’t stop Bob though, Bob even waits until One Two’s put the pint back on the table, leans in a little closer so that probably no one else in the pub can hear him. “I mean, I’d want to kiss you first, if that’s all right with you, wanted that since I was a kid. But mostly I’d just suck you off. You wouldn’t have to take care of me, I’ve got hands, you know. Has a girl ever done that for you? Touched herself while she got you off?” There’s something shaking a little in Bob’s voice, like back in the car when he said he wanted One Two at all, something like the floor’s gonna crack if he steps it wrong, and One Two thinks, he thinks he’s right about that. “I think about that. ‘Bout your cock, One Two. ‘Bout seeing how much of it I can take.”
Now you’d have to be an extremely heterosexual man to not give that kind of offer a second thought. Actually, you’d have to be a monk. Actually you’d have to be dead. And One Two, despite the efforts of Lenny Cole and his gorillas and them aforementioned buggering Russians, is not dead.
“That’s all it is, then?” he says, softer than he’d like, but then again he shouldn’t be saying this kind of thing loudly, if at all. “Just you, sucking my-”
“Yeah, same as a bird would, I guess, ‘cept I know it better.” Bob takes a pull of beer, just a long sip, and now One Two’s watching Bob’s mouth, lips and throat and all of it, and his tongue where it cups the rim of the pint and all right One Two isn’t dead and isn’t a monk but he’s not a fucking homo, not even for Bob-
-but he’s Bob, and he isn’t asking One Two to be that.
“You know it better,” One Two says, because anything else and he’s gonna be the one to shatter the floor.
“Not yours,” Bob says, a bit contrite. “But yeah.”
“How would you do it?”
“Do you want me to talk, or to you want me to show you?”
One Two gives Bob a tap on the head for that. Or that’s what he means to do. His hand lingers, kind of, like his fingers are wondering why Bob’s damn-near-shaved hair is soft instead of bristly, and then that gets One Two thinking about how when girls do that to him he likes to hold onto their hair and he couldn’t do that with Bob, it’s too short, but it feels nice rubbing up against his palm, like a warm fresh towel or the inside parts of leather or a short-furred cat, and while those aren’t necessarily things that One Two wants anywhere near his dick, especially the cat, they’re all nice things, good things. Things he doesn’t mind thinking about rubbing against his hand at the same time as someone’s blowing him. Except the cat. But it’s not a cat, it’s Bob, Handsome Bob, and Bob wants him. Wants to show him that. Wants to get him off.
“Show me,” One Two says, because damn it, he isn’t dead.
He needs to finish his drink, though.
-
And that would be how they wind up on the couch in Bob’s flat, because it was closest to the pub and even though Bob offered to do him in the car One Two took one look at those clear glass windows and said they could walk, it’s better on a bed, and One Two isn’t averse to a little show and tell when it’s with a lady but this is different, he thinks. This is Handsome Bob hanging up his jacket and shutting and bolting the door and sitting on the back of the couch like he was at that party, his foot nestled right against One Two’s thigh. He does that, One Two’s noticed, it’s not just a move, Bob sits where you can see all of him, and oh can One Two see all of him and it’s not bad to look at. A little fuzzy around the edges, sure, but not bad, all strong and friendly and a little nervous. One Two doesn’t have to like blokes to think that Bob’s a good-looking one, that’s allowed and all, and besides, it’s true.
“So,” Bob says, and it makes One Two look up at him. Aside from the part where he’s having a hard time focusing at all, and seeing upside-down at that, it’s a sight for sore eyes. “Can I kiss you?”
One Two shivers all through, or that might just be the couch creaking.
Bob waits a bit, looking at One Two a little sideways, and slides down the back of the couch. He doesn’t sit in One Two’s lap or anything but there’s more of them touching now, thigh-to-thigh, shoulder-to-shoulder. It feels somehow closer than they are when they dance, but Bob’s head is higher than usual. He’s got a long torso. That’s it. “Hey, if you don’t-”
“I dinna say I-” One Two stops. Breathes. Looks at his knees and then at the table and then at the wall on the other side of the room with a Sex Pistols poster on it and thinks Sid Vicious’ trousers are awful tight. “Just. Just give me a bit.”
“All right,” Bob says, and starts to get up, “you want some water?” His hips pass right in front of One Two’s eyes and One Two can’t help looking. They aren’t tight. They just seem it, a little, like there’s more in ‘em than usual.
-huh. Right. That.
One Two’s never looked at that, not on another bloke.
He reaches out and catches Bob on the thigh. It makes the front of Bob’s jeans pull tighter, just for the second he stalls. It’s not like One Two can help looking, it’s right there, all the proof he wants that Handsome Bob isn’t joking with him, that he really wants this, like levels of One Two you are the star in what’s going on in my head right now and what’s going on in my head involves you getting off and that’s plain too much to take.
“It’s fine,” One Two says. “I dinna need a drink. Stay.”
Bob nods, and smiles, and gets on his knees. He’s right between One Two’s thighs like this, which puts them on a level again, long torso and thick arms and that generous mouth, turned up all inviting.
“Put your hands on me, One Two,” he says. “We’re just dancing. It’s just me.”
Bob is fucking brave, One Two decides. Bob is fucking brave and fucking strong and a right fucking manipulative bastard when it comes down to it, ‘cause sure he’s saying this on his knees but it’s not the first time he’s put himself all into One Two’s hands like this, and the first time he did it, when he up and came out, it could well have been the last. And he knows that Bob knows all that, knows that there’s still a chance One Two will tell him no. Funny, that that’s what gets One Two to tell him yes, in the end.
So One Two reaches out, and puts his hands against Bob’s skull, rubs his hair, wonders what it would feel like if there was more to hold. Bob makes this sound in his throat that One Two can see the start and finish of, can even feel it a little against the heel of his palms. And then One Two has to bend his elbows if he wants to keep touching because Bob is leaning in, pushing up higher on his knees and bringing his face in.
He doesn’t kiss One Two on the mouth. He goes for the left side of One Two’s neck, high, right where it meets his ear. Either Bob’s plain right about how blokes who like blokes know what turns blokes on, or he’s fucking lucky, because that’s one of the spots with a direct current to One Two’s dick. One Two feels his mouth going slack and something filthy gathering in his throat. “Jesus fuck,” he says, and when his jaw moves he can feel Bob’s tongue following it, “I canna believe I’m doing this.”
Bob laughs, which is a strange thing for One Two to feel on his cheek and under his palms and all. “Hope I can make you believe, then,” he says, whispers really, because they’re too close to say things, and then he looks One Two in the eyes and One Two gets more than a little lost. They’re so pale and so dark at the same time. How does he do that?
Almost, he thinks. Almost. Maybe. I can. “Give me three to get ready.”
“One,” Bob says, all slow, like he’s counting, “Two,” but by then he’s breathing One Two’s air right out from between his lips.
And it’s fine. It’s a kiss, and One Two’s got his eyes closed and all, and Bob’s lips are thick and soft and if there’s more than a little scruff around them it’s no different than kissing a girl somewhere she hasn’t shaved. One Two holds on tight, presses his fingertips into Bob’s hair, and it’s soft and they slide and all right, he’s kissing Bob and it isn’t so bad.
It stops, and it’s like they breathe the same time, like they’re fighting for the same air. When One Two opens his eyes Bob isn’t smiling, not with his lips anyway, but his eyes are as bright as candy in a jar. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” One Two says, because really, he isn’t dead. “Yeah. All right.”
This one’s different, this kiss, it starts all strong and Bob’s tongue swipes over One Two’s teeth before he can get them out of the way, but once it’s started it’s all eggshells again, like Bob’s afraid he’s gonna scare One Two off. Well, nothing scares One Two off, least of all fucking Handsome Bob, and One Two shows him that, opens up and kisses him like you’re supposed to kiss someone who’s gonna put that mouth on your cock once it gets hard enough.
It’s gonna get hard enough.
That thought’s actually kind of surprising.
But damned if it doesn’t go south from there, if when Bob pulls his mouth away from One Two’s and starts kissing him on the chin and neck instead it leaves One Two’s mouth with nothing to do but talk, and oh does he start talking. Yeah, at least once, and all right, and that’s it, and no short share of curses when he realizes that Bob’s in his fucking lap, that his hands are rubbing on his thighs, up and in but not on. Big hands-big hard hands-and a hard voice to go with ‘em, breathing gusts into One Two’s skin. “Thank you,” Bob’s saying, of all the fucking things to say, “thank you, now let me-want to touch you, mate, want to get my hands on that-”
“Do-do as you fucking well please, Bob,” he can’t help saying. It’s all right, he keeps telling himself it’s all right, he’s kissed a man and he could run down all the ways it’s different but nothing’s bad, not yet. It’s kissing. It’s Bob. It’s Bob unbuttoning One Two’s trousers.
It’s.
Ah.
All right it turns him on but of course it turns him on, someone’s touching his dick. And it’s not a Russian. With a machete.
Actually the part about Russians and machetes doesn’t turn him on at all. And that’s the kind of thing that makes One Two want to hit something, which is a bad idea right now because Bob is about a centimeter from touching One Two’s cock which makes him almost everything that could qualify as something. And now the thought that Bob’s hand is about a centimeter from touching One Two’s cock is all tangled up with them Russians and it’s not exactly doing wonders for his erection, oh Jesus Christ he does have an erection. Which Bob’s fingertips are brushing against through One Two’s trousers because he’s holding onto the zipper and about to pull it down and looking at One Two like he wants permission and god if Bob was Babette or something that would be the hottest damned thing in the timezone.
“Want to,” Bob whispers, and his mouth’s on One Two’s neck, still, tonguing it at all.
“Then do it before you lose out on it, I warn you, I’m-ah-thinking about them Russians-”
Bob just tells him, “Don’t,” and then unzips One Two’s trou and pulls them down and that, that feels good, and then even better when he pulls the shorts down too and takes ahold of him like he knows what he’s doing, and Bob does know what he’s doing, doesn’t he, he does this with other blokes, knows how to do it backwards and shit that’s sent up a red flag in One Two’s head.
“Bob-”
Too late. Bob’s, ah. Bob’s got his mouth on One Two’s cock.
For a bit, One Two can’t even feel a damned thing. There’s an image, like he’s outside himself, like he’s in a photograph of this old creaky couch with his hands on Bob’s fuzzy head and Bob’s fuzzy head between One Two’s spread legs sucking his cock. It’s all pictures, you see, just for that couple of seconds it takes the rest of One Two’s brain to catch up with his eyes, and then the rest of his body. There’s a mouth. On his cock. It’s warm and quick and it belongs to Handsome Bob and this is a problem. Feels like it shouldn’t be, feels good, but it is. A problem.
His eyes are shut now, seared red on the other side and rolling back in his head, and Bob’s taken him deep right from the start, shown him just how much he can, and fine, yeah, that’s got One Two going and all the blood rushing down. Something flutters in Bob’s throat, right around the head of One Two’s cock, and One Two swears, holds on right. There isn’t hair for him to grab, just the sides of Bob’s skull, all soft and so good on One Two’s fingers, and maybe it’s fine, maybe it’s bringing him up.
When Bob pulls back, lets One Two out of his mouth enough to breathe and talk and lick him, Jesus Buggering Christ, lick him right up the bottom all the way to the tip and there hasn’t been a bird who knew to do that to One Two in years, when Bob pulls back and lets him go One Two wants it enough to try and push himself right back in. He feels the flats of Bob’s teeth, Bob’s smiling, Bob wants this probably no definitely even more than One Two does and that, that also feels good. “So hard for you,” Bob whispers, damn it right into the slit at the head of One Two’s cock, “so fucking hard for you, One Two, damn it, thank you-wish you could feel it-”
“Show me.” One Two has no idea how those words just shot out of him but they don’t sound wrong, and he keeps on going. “You said you like my voice, fucking make me use it-” and that, that gets cut short when Bob sucks him down hard again, but there’s shifting and sounds and Bob moaning in his throat. One Two cracks his eyes open and looks, sees Bob’s shoulder working up and down and One Two, now, One Two’s never been one to deny anyone the pleasure of thinking of him while throwing one off at the wrist but it’s always been girls and girls don’t move like that.
He can’t hold Bob by the hair, but he can stroke it, run his fingers over it and it’s like all those short bristles are picking his palms apart, like Bob’s hot tongue is picking the rest of him apart and making him swell. He fills that throat right up and fucks it, lets his mouth speak his mind and asks Bob if that’s what he likes, if that’s what he wanted, me filling you up, is that it, that’s what you wanted, what you’re after when we dance and you’re grabbing my arse like the poof you are, Bob-that’s what gets you hard, “is it-fuck-Jesus, Bob, Jesus fucking-Christ-you-oh god do that again-”
He does. He does, and there goes One Two’s ability to think about anything else. That’s it. There’s the throb of Bob’s tongue and the tightness of his throat and the pulse of his shoulder, pushing on One Two’s knee as he jerks himself off. Like he said. Like he promised. Like he’s brave, Handsome Bob is, the bravest man One Two will probably ever know.
One Two probably made a mistake right then, remembering Bob’s a man, and all. Because that makes him a man, in another man’s flat, on another man’s couch, with his cock in another man’s mouth.
Now, One Two isn’t a man to panic. But he is a man. And he doesn’t want to think about what he looks like when he’s scrambling up the couch with his pants down like a flopping fucking spider and letting off Bob no matter how good his head feels. His head. Oh god. He was just-getting another man’s head-
“One Two-”
“Bob, I-” -fuck, bollocks, did the first fucking thing he sees after getting blown like a poof have to be Sid Vicious’ crotch? “Oh god. Oh Christ.”
Bob’s on his knees. Still. Bob’s on his knees and his pants are down too and his dick’s all flushed and hard against his shirt shining slick from jerking off and One Two stares. Not at Bob’s face. He can’t look at Bob’s face right now.
“I,” he starts, and then no, what he’s gonna say is wrong, everything’s wrong. “Just. A bit. Give me a bit.”
Bob doesn’t say anything, just nods until his forehead hits the couch and doesn’t look up again.
One Two’s been here before, knows where the bathroom is and trips over the XBox on the way there. He gets in, shuts the door, turns the light on, and that’s another fucking mistake, hurts him right in the eyes like ice cream too fast. And thinking about ice cream is bad, worse, ‘cause he’s remembering what he and his friends used to say about the bloke who drove the ice cream truck in the town he grew up in being a paedo. Thinking hurts. Seeing hurts. His dick hurts, its so hard, and having one off’s what you do then no matter what’s done it to you. He jerks off into the toilet like he’s a goddamned teenager, it even takes about as long, which is fucking embarrassing, and if he’s thinking about Bob when he comes it’s because he’s trying not to think about Bob.
After, he washes up, splashes his face and tries not to take that much more of a look but it’s damned near impossible to wash your face blind. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he says to his reflection. His reflection doesn’t seem to hear him, so he says it again, louder.
But after that, it’s so quiet that he can hear Bob outside, just breathing, heaving and awful like it was in the car, when he first came out.
One Two shuts the lights, and opens the bathroom door. Bob’s still there, kneeling right where One Two left him, pillowing his head on the couch. He’s not crying, his breath’s too steady for that, and One Two’s not sure what he would think of himself if he made Handsome Bob cry again. It’s better that he isn’t, he decides, but he knows Bob’s hurting, and that it’s his fault. Again.
“Bob,” he says, and goes to the couch, sits down-not where he’d been sitting before, Bob’s head’s there, and his elbows and most o f his chest. “Bob, I’m sorry. And you-you dinna have to say you’re sorry even if you are, this one’s all on me, all right?”
Bob lifts his head, only to shake it a bit, tossed once side-to-side like he’s making himself comfortable. The way he’s draped One Two can’t see if he’s still hard or if he’s done himself one, and One Two decides not to think about it.
“It-it was good,” One Two says. He thinks he wants the couch to open up and eat him, but he says it. “It. It felt good, Bob. You felt good. I just-I couldna handle it, all right? It’s still in my head. Them fucking Russians. And you being a poof and all. But it’s my head, it isna you.”
Even after that, Bob’s not moving, except to breathe, and the breathing’s got his back spreading at the shoulders. One Two reaches down and puts his hand on that, on Bob’s shoulder-bone, feels the skin over it shifting.
The floor’s gonna shatter, he thinks, if it hasn’t already. But he can’t tread so carefully any more.
“It was good,” he says, again. “And we can try it again. Maybe. Just-not tonight. More time. Maybe a little less to drink. But I do-I-you’re my best mate, Bob, and I’ll do anything I can for you. Well. Except give up on girls,” he adds, because, well, he isn’t dead. “Or let the Russians bugger me. Or cats.”
But it gets Bob laughing, even if the couch cushions muffle it, and that’s enough, that’s fine. And Bob punches One Two in the thigh, pretty hard, but One Two definitely deserves that and probably worse. Doesn’t mean he won’t hit back, but he does, just a scuff, and then Bob’s on him, wrestling him onto the couch, and One Two tells him, oh no, but even if Bob’s smaller he does come out on top in the end, their legs all tangled and One Two not so much pinned as, well, weighted down like a stack of paper.
“You said it felt good,” Bob says, like a challenge.
“I fucking well meant it.” There’s no point in lying about that. “You could suck a bullet back into a gun, Bob. No wonder God made you gay.”
One Two can feel Bob laughing everywhere their bodies touch. Bob’s still a bit hard, against One Two’s hips, and One Two thinks he knows just how he can make it up to Bob, even tonight.
“You said you think about my cock,” One Two says.
Bob nods, like he knows what’s coming. “I did. I do.”
“And that you’ve thrown one off, before, thinking about just that.”
“I have.”
It takes a hard gulp of air for One Two to say it, but he really ought to be as brave as Handsome Bob. “Show me.”
Bob’s bright smile only grows as the zip on his trousers creeps back down.
-
“Where was you last night?” Mumbles asks him at the Speeler, right after he walks in, before he’s even got a second shoe on the floor. “I got to the end of the crawl, couldn’t find you.”
I was on my back, One Two doesn’t dare let himself say, and Handsome Bob was wanking to nothing but the sound of my voice, and he was beautiful. His face, his hand, his cock, the fucking lot of it, it was beautiful.
“Had a bit too much,” he says instead. “Bob took care of me.”
Now, nothing gets past Mumbles, least of all anything One Two ever does, but Mumbles, he’s discreet, even if he knows what’s what. So all he does is look One Two up and down, just the once, and smile. “Good on Bob,” he says, “and good on you,” and pulls out another chair for a round of cards. And that’s that.
-
---
-
.
Things I learned writing this fic:
1) My wordkink is perhaps even more deeply ingrained than my fightkink.
2) I now have theories about why live-action fandoms are so peripatetic, in comparison to animated or prose-specific ones. It is a special kind of wonderful to have a clear, same-species picture of the characters. Especially when one of them is Tom Hardy. And if that bounces between fandoms, I can totally understand.
3) Glaswegian speech patterns are FUCKING DIFFICULT.
Also, happy Day-After-National-Coming-Out-Day~! The fic, I suppose is rather appropriate.
Title: Walking On Eggshells
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: RocknRolla
Characters: Handsome Bob and One Two, later Mumbles.
Words: 4800
Rating: Somewhere between R and NC-17 but I’m not sure which.
Warning: Given the pairing, this fic deals with homophobia, but in a remedial context. If you can forgive One Two’s reactions in the movie, you can probably forgive them here.
Enticement: Failure to properly administer fellatio. In fact, let’s just up and call it fail-latio.
Summary: It’s gonna take a bit of time for One Two to get over himself. Maybe a couple of bits of time, and this is just one of them. But it’s a big step, you know, actually giving this cocksucking thing a shot.
art by pinstripesuit, who is consistently awesome
Walking On Eggshells
rocknrolla
“Them Russians,” One Two says, like he’s gotta clarify it, ‘cause no one else is up in his head and all. “They was like you.”
Bob just looks at him. Bob spends a lot of time just looking at him. It’s the lighting that’s got him looking heavy in the eyes like they’re trying to say something and it isn’t just what do you mean ‘like me’, but the rest of that look, One Two doesn’t have to be a college boy to know what that look’s looking for. It’s spinning a bit, swelling in and out like a funhouse mirror. The birds think Bob’s a prize. One Two isn’t stupid, he knows they’re right.
“I’m not a commie, One Two.” Bob says, smiling.
“I meant like you,” One Two says again, and he’s clarifying a lot, seems like. “Died with their fucking boots on. Boots for fucking. Buggering.”
“Not dead neither.”
“Buggering.”
Now One Two thought-or thinks a second after-that saying something like that might well get Bob to look away, but it doesn’t, just gets his eyebrows up and wrinkles his forehead all mastiff-like. “Well, yeah,” he says. “With each other, or what?”
“What, do all you homos have a code or something? X-ray vision or-or something,” One Two gives up, drops his head into his hands, looks into the latest pint. He’s got a reflection in it and it spins around. “Did everyone know? There’s something I can’t see, isn’t there.”
“Yeah,” Bob says. “There’s a lot of that.”
“Then you’re gonna fucking well teach me,” One Two says. He looks up. Bob’s still looking, it’s like there’s spinach in One Two’s teeth except it strips him a little raw and he doesn’t like it. “You’re gonna teach me to spot poofs like you so I don’t wind up tied to my fucking bed with-with socks down my throat and all.”
Bob laughs. “They did that to you?”
“Them fucking Russians,” One Two says, because that’s an answer.
He’d think Bob was going to laugh at him, if he went by that smile, but Bob’s not laughing at him, he’s laughing at, well, his pint, maybe. It’s the soft kind of laugh, the kind where he shakes his head and all. Bob does look away, though, closes his eyes a bit and hangs his head and shakes it, side to side, like it’s funny. It’s not fucking funny. One Two tells him so.
“It’s not,” Bob agrees. “Not what they did to you.”
“Tried,” One Two says, because again, it’s true. “They dinna get the chance to do nothing else. Just up and tied me to my own fucking bed and danced around in their pants and fucking commie hats like a couple of queens.”
Bob is definitely laughing. So One Two smacks him in the knuckles, pint to pint, except it isn’t a toast.
“It isna fucking funny,” One Two says, again.
“Not what they did to you,” Bob agrees, again. “Just the image of that fat one. Can’t help laughing, mate, it’s not at you. Never at you.”
“You better not fucking start.” One Two pulls back, leans in his chair. “Last thing I want’s to think about you doing that shit to me.”
Bob says something. The pub’s loud enough that One Two loses it, asks for it again.
“That’s not what I want to do to you,” Bob says. “I mean.”
One Two holds onto his pint. It might slip away or something.
“I mean,” Bob goes on, “the tying you down and all. I don’t want to have to, you know? Or gag you. Means you couldn’t talk, yeah?”
“What, you want to hear me talk?”
“Yeah, I like to hear you talk, you big weegie bastard. It’s a sexy voice, you know that.” Bob’s smiling, tapping his fingers on the wet side of his pint-which means One Two is watching, doesn’t it, if he noticed that. They’re just fingers, fine, he can watch. “So I wouldn’t put a sock in you. Wouldn’t put anything in you at all, unless you wanted it.”
One Two laughs, and then wonders what’s funny. “What, it’s all-all dancing to you?”
“Except the part where I suck your cock, yeah.”
-Oh, right, One Two still has a drink in his hand. He should drink it. That’ll stop him smiling.
Doesn’t stop Bob though, Bob even waits until One Two’s put the pint back on the table, leans in a little closer so that probably no one else in the pub can hear him. “I mean, I’d want to kiss you first, if that’s all right with you, wanted that since I was a kid. But mostly I’d just suck you off. You wouldn’t have to take care of me, I’ve got hands, you know. Has a girl ever done that for you? Touched herself while she got you off?” There’s something shaking a little in Bob’s voice, like back in the car when he said he wanted One Two at all, something like the floor’s gonna crack if he steps it wrong, and One Two thinks, he thinks he’s right about that. “I think about that. ‘Bout your cock, One Two. ‘Bout seeing how much of it I can take.”
Now you’d have to be an extremely heterosexual man to not give that kind of offer a second thought. Actually, you’d have to be a monk. Actually you’d have to be dead. And One Two, despite the efforts of Lenny Cole and his gorillas and them aforementioned buggering Russians, is not dead.
“That’s all it is, then?” he says, softer than he’d like, but then again he shouldn’t be saying this kind of thing loudly, if at all. “Just you, sucking my-”
“Yeah, same as a bird would, I guess, ‘cept I know it better.” Bob takes a pull of beer, just a long sip, and now One Two’s watching Bob’s mouth, lips and throat and all of it, and his tongue where it cups the rim of the pint and all right One Two isn’t dead and isn’t a monk but he’s not a fucking homo, not even for Bob-
-but he’s Bob, and he isn’t asking One Two to be that.
“You know it better,” One Two says, because anything else and he’s gonna be the one to shatter the floor.
“Not yours,” Bob says, a bit contrite. “But yeah.”
“How would you do it?”
“Do you want me to talk, or to you want me to show you?”
One Two gives Bob a tap on the head for that. Or that’s what he means to do. His hand lingers, kind of, like his fingers are wondering why Bob’s damn-near-shaved hair is soft instead of bristly, and then that gets One Two thinking about how when girls do that to him he likes to hold onto their hair and he couldn’t do that with Bob, it’s too short, but it feels nice rubbing up against his palm, like a warm fresh towel or the inside parts of leather or a short-furred cat, and while those aren’t necessarily things that One Two wants anywhere near his dick, especially the cat, they’re all nice things, good things. Things he doesn’t mind thinking about rubbing against his hand at the same time as someone’s blowing him. Except the cat. But it’s not a cat, it’s Bob, Handsome Bob, and Bob wants him. Wants to show him that. Wants to get him off.
“Show me,” One Two says, because damn it, he isn’t dead.
He needs to finish his drink, though.
-
And that would be how they wind up on the couch in Bob’s flat, because it was closest to the pub and even though Bob offered to do him in the car One Two took one look at those clear glass windows and said they could walk, it’s better on a bed, and One Two isn’t averse to a little show and tell when it’s with a lady but this is different, he thinks. This is Handsome Bob hanging up his jacket and shutting and bolting the door and sitting on the back of the couch like he was at that party, his foot nestled right against One Two’s thigh. He does that, One Two’s noticed, it’s not just a move, Bob sits where you can see all of him, and oh can One Two see all of him and it’s not bad to look at. A little fuzzy around the edges, sure, but not bad, all strong and friendly and a little nervous. One Two doesn’t have to like blokes to think that Bob’s a good-looking one, that’s allowed and all, and besides, it’s true.
“So,” Bob says, and it makes One Two look up at him. Aside from the part where he’s having a hard time focusing at all, and seeing upside-down at that, it’s a sight for sore eyes. “Can I kiss you?”
One Two shivers all through, or that might just be the couch creaking.
Bob waits a bit, looking at One Two a little sideways, and slides down the back of the couch. He doesn’t sit in One Two’s lap or anything but there’s more of them touching now, thigh-to-thigh, shoulder-to-shoulder. It feels somehow closer than they are when they dance, but Bob’s head is higher than usual. He’s got a long torso. That’s it. “Hey, if you don’t-”
“I dinna say I-” One Two stops. Breathes. Looks at his knees and then at the table and then at the wall on the other side of the room with a Sex Pistols poster on it and thinks Sid Vicious’ trousers are awful tight. “Just. Just give me a bit.”
“All right,” Bob says, and starts to get up, “you want some water?” His hips pass right in front of One Two’s eyes and One Two can’t help looking. They aren’t tight. They just seem it, a little, like there’s more in ‘em than usual.
-huh. Right. That.
One Two’s never looked at that, not on another bloke.
He reaches out and catches Bob on the thigh. It makes the front of Bob’s jeans pull tighter, just for the second he stalls. It’s not like One Two can help looking, it’s right there, all the proof he wants that Handsome Bob isn’t joking with him, that he really wants this, like levels of One Two you are the star in what’s going on in my head right now and what’s going on in my head involves you getting off and that’s plain too much to take.
“It’s fine,” One Two says. “I dinna need a drink. Stay.”
Bob nods, and smiles, and gets on his knees. He’s right between One Two’s thighs like this, which puts them on a level again, long torso and thick arms and that generous mouth, turned up all inviting.
“Put your hands on me, One Two,” he says. “We’re just dancing. It’s just me.”
Bob is fucking brave, One Two decides. Bob is fucking brave and fucking strong and a right fucking manipulative bastard when it comes down to it, ‘cause sure he’s saying this on his knees but it’s not the first time he’s put himself all into One Two’s hands like this, and the first time he did it, when he up and came out, it could well have been the last. And he knows that Bob knows all that, knows that there’s still a chance One Two will tell him no. Funny, that that’s what gets One Two to tell him yes, in the end.
So One Two reaches out, and puts his hands against Bob’s skull, rubs his hair, wonders what it would feel like if there was more to hold. Bob makes this sound in his throat that One Two can see the start and finish of, can even feel it a little against the heel of his palms. And then One Two has to bend his elbows if he wants to keep touching because Bob is leaning in, pushing up higher on his knees and bringing his face in.
He doesn’t kiss One Two on the mouth. He goes for the left side of One Two’s neck, high, right where it meets his ear. Either Bob’s plain right about how blokes who like blokes know what turns blokes on, or he’s fucking lucky, because that’s one of the spots with a direct current to One Two’s dick. One Two feels his mouth going slack and something filthy gathering in his throat. “Jesus fuck,” he says, and when his jaw moves he can feel Bob’s tongue following it, “I canna believe I’m doing this.”
Bob laughs, which is a strange thing for One Two to feel on his cheek and under his palms and all. “Hope I can make you believe, then,” he says, whispers really, because they’re too close to say things, and then he looks One Two in the eyes and One Two gets more than a little lost. They’re so pale and so dark at the same time. How does he do that?
Almost, he thinks. Almost. Maybe. I can. “Give me three to get ready.”
“One,” Bob says, all slow, like he’s counting, “Two,” but by then he’s breathing One Two’s air right out from between his lips.
And it’s fine. It’s a kiss, and One Two’s got his eyes closed and all, and Bob’s lips are thick and soft and if there’s more than a little scruff around them it’s no different than kissing a girl somewhere she hasn’t shaved. One Two holds on tight, presses his fingertips into Bob’s hair, and it’s soft and they slide and all right, he’s kissing Bob and it isn’t so bad.
It stops, and it’s like they breathe the same time, like they’re fighting for the same air. When One Two opens his eyes Bob isn’t smiling, not with his lips anyway, but his eyes are as bright as candy in a jar. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” One Two says, because really, he isn’t dead. “Yeah. All right.”
This one’s different, this kiss, it starts all strong and Bob’s tongue swipes over One Two’s teeth before he can get them out of the way, but once it’s started it’s all eggshells again, like Bob’s afraid he’s gonna scare One Two off. Well, nothing scares One Two off, least of all fucking Handsome Bob, and One Two shows him that, opens up and kisses him like you’re supposed to kiss someone who’s gonna put that mouth on your cock once it gets hard enough.
It’s gonna get hard enough.
That thought’s actually kind of surprising.
But damned if it doesn’t go south from there, if when Bob pulls his mouth away from One Two’s and starts kissing him on the chin and neck instead it leaves One Two’s mouth with nothing to do but talk, and oh does he start talking. Yeah, at least once, and all right, and that’s it, and no short share of curses when he realizes that Bob’s in his fucking lap, that his hands are rubbing on his thighs, up and in but not on. Big hands-big hard hands-and a hard voice to go with ‘em, breathing gusts into One Two’s skin. “Thank you,” Bob’s saying, of all the fucking things to say, “thank you, now let me-want to touch you, mate, want to get my hands on that-”
“Do-do as you fucking well please, Bob,” he can’t help saying. It’s all right, he keeps telling himself it’s all right, he’s kissed a man and he could run down all the ways it’s different but nothing’s bad, not yet. It’s kissing. It’s Bob. It’s Bob unbuttoning One Two’s trousers.
It’s.
Ah.
All right it turns him on but of course it turns him on, someone’s touching his dick. And it’s not a Russian. With a machete.
Actually the part about Russians and machetes doesn’t turn him on at all. And that’s the kind of thing that makes One Two want to hit something, which is a bad idea right now because Bob is about a centimeter from touching One Two’s cock which makes him almost everything that could qualify as something. And now the thought that Bob’s hand is about a centimeter from touching One Two’s cock is all tangled up with them Russians and it’s not exactly doing wonders for his erection, oh Jesus Christ he does have an erection. Which Bob’s fingertips are brushing against through One Two’s trousers because he’s holding onto the zipper and about to pull it down and looking at One Two like he wants permission and god if Bob was Babette or something that would be the hottest damned thing in the timezone.
“Want to,” Bob whispers, and his mouth’s on One Two’s neck, still, tonguing it at all.
“Then do it before you lose out on it, I warn you, I’m-ah-thinking about them Russians-”
Bob just tells him, “Don’t,” and then unzips One Two’s trou and pulls them down and that, that feels good, and then even better when he pulls the shorts down too and takes ahold of him like he knows what he’s doing, and Bob does know what he’s doing, doesn’t he, he does this with other blokes, knows how to do it backwards and shit that’s sent up a red flag in One Two’s head.
“Bob-”
Too late. Bob’s, ah. Bob’s got his mouth on One Two’s cock.
For a bit, One Two can’t even feel a damned thing. There’s an image, like he’s outside himself, like he’s in a photograph of this old creaky couch with his hands on Bob’s fuzzy head and Bob’s fuzzy head between One Two’s spread legs sucking his cock. It’s all pictures, you see, just for that couple of seconds it takes the rest of One Two’s brain to catch up with his eyes, and then the rest of his body. There’s a mouth. On his cock. It’s warm and quick and it belongs to Handsome Bob and this is a problem. Feels like it shouldn’t be, feels good, but it is. A problem.
His eyes are shut now, seared red on the other side and rolling back in his head, and Bob’s taken him deep right from the start, shown him just how much he can, and fine, yeah, that’s got One Two going and all the blood rushing down. Something flutters in Bob’s throat, right around the head of One Two’s cock, and One Two swears, holds on right. There isn’t hair for him to grab, just the sides of Bob’s skull, all soft and so good on One Two’s fingers, and maybe it’s fine, maybe it’s bringing him up.
When Bob pulls back, lets One Two out of his mouth enough to breathe and talk and lick him, Jesus Buggering Christ, lick him right up the bottom all the way to the tip and there hasn’t been a bird who knew to do that to One Two in years, when Bob pulls back and lets him go One Two wants it enough to try and push himself right back in. He feels the flats of Bob’s teeth, Bob’s smiling, Bob wants this probably no definitely even more than One Two does and that, that also feels good. “So hard for you,” Bob whispers, damn it right into the slit at the head of One Two’s cock, “so fucking hard for you, One Two, damn it, thank you-wish you could feel it-”
“Show me.” One Two has no idea how those words just shot out of him but they don’t sound wrong, and he keeps on going. “You said you like my voice, fucking make me use it-” and that, that gets cut short when Bob sucks him down hard again, but there’s shifting and sounds and Bob moaning in his throat. One Two cracks his eyes open and looks, sees Bob’s shoulder working up and down and One Two, now, One Two’s never been one to deny anyone the pleasure of thinking of him while throwing one off at the wrist but it’s always been girls and girls don’t move like that.
He can’t hold Bob by the hair, but he can stroke it, run his fingers over it and it’s like all those short bristles are picking his palms apart, like Bob’s hot tongue is picking the rest of him apart and making him swell. He fills that throat right up and fucks it, lets his mouth speak his mind and asks Bob if that’s what he likes, if that’s what he wanted, me filling you up, is that it, that’s what you wanted, what you’re after when we dance and you’re grabbing my arse like the poof you are, Bob-that’s what gets you hard, “is it-fuck-Jesus, Bob, Jesus fucking-Christ-you-oh god do that again-”
He does. He does, and there goes One Two’s ability to think about anything else. That’s it. There’s the throb of Bob’s tongue and the tightness of his throat and the pulse of his shoulder, pushing on One Two’s knee as he jerks himself off. Like he said. Like he promised. Like he’s brave, Handsome Bob is, the bravest man One Two will probably ever know.
One Two probably made a mistake right then, remembering Bob’s a man, and all. Because that makes him a man, in another man’s flat, on another man’s couch, with his cock in another man’s mouth.
Now, One Two isn’t a man to panic. But he is a man. And he doesn’t want to think about what he looks like when he’s scrambling up the couch with his pants down like a flopping fucking spider and letting off Bob no matter how good his head feels. His head. Oh god. He was just-getting another man’s head-
“One Two-”
“Bob, I-” -fuck, bollocks, did the first fucking thing he sees after getting blown like a poof have to be Sid Vicious’ crotch? “Oh god. Oh Christ.”
Bob’s on his knees. Still. Bob’s on his knees and his pants are down too and his dick’s all flushed and hard against his shirt shining slick from jerking off and One Two stares. Not at Bob’s face. He can’t look at Bob’s face right now.
“I,” he starts, and then no, what he’s gonna say is wrong, everything’s wrong. “Just. A bit. Give me a bit.”
Bob doesn’t say anything, just nods until his forehead hits the couch and doesn’t look up again.
One Two’s been here before, knows where the bathroom is and trips over the XBox on the way there. He gets in, shuts the door, turns the light on, and that’s another fucking mistake, hurts him right in the eyes like ice cream too fast. And thinking about ice cream is bad, worse, ‘cause he’s remembering what he and his friends used to say about the bloke who drove the ice cream truck in the town he grew up in being a paedo. Thinking hurts. Seeing hurts. His dick hurts, its so hard, and having one off’s what you do then no matter what’s done it to you. He jerks off into the toilet like he’s a goddamned teenager, it even takes about as long, which is fucking embarrassing, and if he’s thinking about Bob when he comes it’s because he’s trying not to think about Bob.
After, he washes up, splashes his face and tries not to take that much more of a look but it’s damned near impossible to wash your face blind. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he says to his reflection. His reflection doesn’t seem to hear him, so he says it again, louder.
But after that, it’s so quiet that he can hear Bob outside, just breathing, heaving and awful like it was in the car, when he first came out.
One Two shuts the lights, and opens the bathroom door. Bob’s still there, kneeling right where One Two left him, pillowing his head on the couch. He’s not crying, his breath’s too steady for that, and One Two’s not sure what he would think of himself if he made Handsome Bob cry again. It’s better that he isn’t, he decides, but he knows Bob’s hurting, and that it’s his fault. Again.
“Bob,” he says, and goes to the couch, sits down-not where he’d been sitting before, Bob’s head’s there, and his elbows and most o f his chest. “Bob, I’m sorry. And you-you dinna have to say you’re sorry even if you are, this one’s all on me, all right?”
Bob lifts his head, only to shake it a bit, tossed once side-to-side like he’s making himself comfortable. The way he’s draped One Two can’t see if he’s still hard or if he’s done himself one, and One Two decides not to think about it.
“It-it was good,” One Two says. He thinks he wants the couch to open up and eat him, but he says it. “It. It felt good, Bob. You felt good. I just-I couldna handle it, all right? It’s still in my head. Them fucking Russians. And you being a poof and all. But it’s my head, it isna you.”
Even after that, Bob’s not moving, except to breathe, and the breathing’s got his back spreading at the shoulders. One Two reaches down and puts his hand on that, on Bob’s shoulder-bone, feels the skin over it shifting.
The floor’s gonna shatter, he thinks, if it hasn’t already. But he can’t tread so carefully any more.
“It was good,” he says, again. “And we can try it again. Maybe. Just-not tonight. More time. Maybe a little less to drink. But I do-I-you’re my best mate, Bob, and I’ll do anything I can for you. Well. Except give up on girls,” he adds, because, well, he isn’t dead. “Or let the Russians bugger me. Or cats.”
But it gets Bob laughing, even if the couch cushions muffle it, and that’s enough, that’s fine. And Bob punches One Two in the thigh, pretty hard, but One Two definitely deserves that and probably worse. Doesn’t mean he won’t hit back, but he does, just a scuff, and then Bob’s on him, wrestling him onto the couch, and One Two tells him, oh no, but even if Bob’s smaller he does come out on top in the end, their legs all tangled and One Two not so much pinned as, well, weighted down like a stack of paper.
“You said it felt good,” Bob says, like a challenge.
“I fucking well meant it.” There’s no point in lying about that. “You could suck a bullet back into a gun, Bob. No wonder God made you gay.”
One Two can feel Bob laughing everywhere their bodies touch. Bob’s still a bit hard, against One Two’s hips, and One Two thinks he knows just how he can make it up to Bob, even tonight.
“You said you think about my cock,” One Two says.
Bob nods, like he knows what’s coming. “I did. I do.”
“And that you’ve thrown one off, before, thinking about just that.”
“I have.”
It takes a hard gulp of air for One Two to say it, but he really ought to be as brave as Handsome Bob. “Show me.”
Bob’s bright smile only grows as the zip on his trousers creeps back down.
-
“Where was you last night?” Mumbles asks him at the Speeler, right after he walks in, before he’s even got a second shoe on the floor. “I got to the end of the crawl, couldn’t find you.”
I was on my back, One Two doesn’t dare let himself say, and Handsome Bob was wanking to nothing but the sound of my voice, and he was beautiful. His face, his hand, his cock, the fucking lot of it, it was beautiful.
“Had a bit too much,” he says instead. “Bob took care of me.”
Now, nothing gets past Mumbles, least of all anything One Two ever does, but Mumbles, he’s discreet, even if he knows what’s what. So all he does is look One Two up and down, just the once, and smile. “Good on Bob,” he says, “and good on you,” and pulls out another chair for a round of cards. And that’s that.
-
---
-
.