Rowe x Jack (Licensed by Royal)
Story Title: Downward
Author: Animarelic
Rating: Hard R
Spoilers: Minor
Author's Notes: This couple and show is seriously under-written. >_< I always want to read smut for the fandom, but it's no fun since I have to write all of it myself!
Prompt: Rowe disguises himself and propositions Jack in a nightclub or similar establishment. Jack may or may not be aware of the fact that it is Rowe.
"Rowe Rickenbacker," Jack had said scoldingly, just as the brunette had slung one arm into the sleeve of his jacket. As scolding as Jack ever got - the good natured reminder of a parent who was more amused by their child's antics than irritated. Emotional extremes were not Jack's forte - and Rowe had learned to tell the level of Jack's seriousness by a variety of other indicators. Jack's eyebrows were one, and now, arched in a way that would otherwise indicate geniality, they indicated that Rowe was seriously pushing it by assuming without asking.
Assuming, at this moment in time, that he was invited along on Jack's little constitutional. Maybe just a little push more, and Rowe could find out what the limits were, here. Before, these evenings away had been occasional. Healthy forays out to maintain interest in the world outside of Cloud House. To interact with people that weren't spies or villains or fellow enforcers of the right in Ishtar.
Intermingling with reality, as opposed to remaining isolated in the irreality of a life like the spy movies - the life that Rowe embraced. It was important, perhaps, that Jack maintained this difference between them so that he remembered who he was himself, rather than attempt to be only what Rowe had come to think of him. Playing the part was also a specialty of Jack's; putting on a face and attitude that anticipated the needs of the world around him. Maybe this was why his first reaction to everything was a smile.
"Jack Hoffner." Rowe assumed a similarly serious tone, slinging his other sleeve into place. His tone softened, his face lighting up with his best pleading smile. "Now that introductions are finished, I don't s'ppose you'd take me out to dinner, hmmm?" The push was clearly too much. Rowe's smile cued Jack's, but it wasn't a genuine expression. It was a mask of strength; put up to indicate that he was a big boy, could take care of himself.
"I'm afraid I had other engagements this evening." The disinvitation would not get any clearer. But if Rowe continued to insist, Jack would become icy to the point where the evening would be entirely unsalvageable. Currently, once he finished his walk, he could possibly return home in a better mood. Still, Rowe was curious as to where he would go, what he would drink, how he would think of her.
"Well," Rowe tried to keep his tone upbeat, his voice casual. There was nothing in his life that he hadn't trusted Jack with - though it wasn't fair to expect that Jack would find being open as easy as Rowe - it still hurt. Rebuffed trust he could live with, but Rowe didn't just trust Jack with his life. "I couldn't ask to intrude on previous plans, could I, mate?"
Jack slipped through the door as Rowe pulled off his jacket in a sign of defeat. The darker member of L/R was hardly ready to give up, but Jack assumed that he had won for the evening. As he slipped through the darkened streets toward his car, step used to the cobblestone sidewalks, his mind turned quickly away from Rowe.
-------------------
With wind in his hair like a caress and the streets speeding by in little more than streaks of light and lines that his tires carried him past at dizzying speed. This late at night, the roads were fairly empty, allowing Jack's mind to wander while he negotiated the familiar streets of Ishtar's capitol. He thought of bedside tables, clear in the darkness because of proximity. Lying awake, unable to sleep, and cataloging the spread of items over the table, committing them to memory while he lay there and thought of how fresh and bright his life seemed.
Remember this, he'd thought to himself, eyes tracing the safety-cap lines of pillbottles, two aspirin scattered free and forgotten. Flat packets clinging tightly to their circular contents, edges ragged foil. The nondescript surface of a nondescript table in a nondescript room, it's occupants defined by the few contents they'd brought with them and that currently occupied the table, motionless as if they'd been set upon an altar instead of left casually behind, forgotten in the desperation of moments passing by.
A hairbrush full of dark hairs, the majority of a pair of panty hose. A flatteringly colored lipstick. All occupants that his eyes traversed again and again, desperately memorizing in the hopes that it would also call up the freshness, the new feeling that he had experienced laying there, a warm body against his back. The indescribability of sensation when he lay, completely exhausted by the night's excursions, and yet unable to sleep for fear of the morning having claimed the feeling from him.
The place he came to was quiet, it's occupants subdued like the soft Jazz music that was performed live on Tuesdays and Thursdays, soothing sorrows with the knowledge that those who experienced them weren't alone. Others had been down the lonely roads before, and Jack knew he had much more than many of the other patrons could boast. He shifted the car into park - there were only four others in the spacious lot, and when he pushed the door open, he found the bar barely occupied, only one couple. The rest were secluded at the islands of their tables, beached and alone with their bottles in the small circles of light that left the rest of the bar with a dark 'ambiance'.
The band was gathered on a slightly raised semicircle at the center of the room's acoustic hollow. The sounds carried easily, even though the tired band looked to be playing with about as much enthusiasm as the patrons were drinking. It was a tired little place with tired old patrons and tired tasting alcohol. Smoking was allowed - the patrons here didn't mind a little secondhand smoke. They were past minding much of anything. Jack settled down at a table that a previous drinker had abandoned a half-full ashtray at, and set on occupying the remaining space therein, lighting up a cigarette and signaling the lone server girl.
She knew him, her middleage features managing a weary smile as she nodded her head in recognition, headed off to get him his drink of choice. He'd found one not-so-tired alcoholic addiction in this place, and perhaps it wasn't their one excellent choice of Red. Coming here made even tired old Jack Hoffner still feel alive, new.
Claudia had done that before, spinning into his life with her vibrancy and color, her deep brown eyes catching his almost colorless blue and refusing to let go. They'd both been younger then, but Jack had already started to feel weary, sick of world that would take his easy smile for granted as reality, never bother to ask deeper than his mask. She'd known that behind his smile there was a profound lack of, well just about everything. She'd known, and sought to drag him along into her everything. Her enthusiasm was addictive, dragging him in, leaving him awake at night with feelings he couldn't fully define her sleep peaceful where she was settled against his back.
He'd thrown all of it away. Maybe he'd been frightened of what he was becoming. Seen his new wings and been much too afraid to fly.
---------------------
When she entered, he'd thought nothing of it. She seemed a little brighter, a little bolder than the current patrons. Perhaps she'd come to the wrong place, or needed directions. She went to the bar to order her drink, received whatever well-beaten beer the place had on tap, and then turned to survey the room. Three sips and then her eyes settled on him, the least gray of the room's inhabitants. He ducked his head, trying to convey his wish to be alone, but it was too late. She'd seen him looking, and he had looked.
She was wearing a dark blue dress, not satin or shiny, but obviously soft to the touch. Probably well liked and one she was accustomed to - the woman seemed hardly conscious of the way it clung to her curves, did not fiddle with the low-slung neckline revealing the vulnerable outjutting of collarbone. Her hair was long, but done up, kept carefully out of her face, though in back it was a gentle disarray, a bun that had not quite come entirely undone. The exhausted lights painted it in an almost-black color, but experience told him it would be a ruddy brunette in actuality.
He could smell her perfume as she approached, set her glass down on the table before she gently set herself in her seat, looking up at Jack as if just noticing him there, smiling without opening her mouth. When she spoke, her voice was soft, almost familiar, gently toned without hint of accent. "I wouldn't guess that this seat is taken?"
Jack's eyes lit up, tracing with the faintest of movements the oval shape of Rowe's eyes. No mask could be made that would hide the shape of the eyes, though contacts could be put in to conceal the color and adjustments could be made to the sort of wrinkles or smoothness at the edges. Of course, this was important, considering Rowe's development recently of what women hated as 'smile lines'. These were all carefully concealed, but Jack had known him before the lines had started forming. Blue eyes watched brown-behind-gray for a long moment, in silence, before he replied.
"Now, isn't that surprising," Jack intoned carefully, fingers curling elegantly around the stem of his wineglass - always wine, and rarely anything stronger. Usually when so, he was in a mood that even Rowe couldn't have salvaged, disguised or not.
"Oh?" She asked, leaning on the tabletop gently, a well-manicured hand curled around her beer glass. Her tone was light, though she guessed that Jack knew the game already, she would continue to play for as long as he would. "Is there someone you're waiting for?"
The question sounded genuinely curious. Jack paused a long moment, regarding the woman carefully. There was someone he was waiting for, but he supposed he would be waiting a very long time before he had a chance to see her again. His mask answered with a smile, but a thought caught him, just as he was about to make a wry answer about waiting and patience.
He thought about a bedside table - one almost barren of placings. A cigarette tray, a half-crushed pack of lucky-strikes, one very battered silver flip-top lighter. Though his reasons for insomnia and this table weren't related to the first, he recalled a warm body at his back on this occasion, too. The one reassuring presence he'd let himself trust with a matter as sensitive as his own protection.
Rowe cared for him, but all he'd done when the brunette had finally coaxed him into sharing more than care was sit up awake and lament over the fact that it wasn't new without Claudia. It wasn't new, because Jack hadn't looked for the things that were new about it.
------------------
It is the nature of disguises that they can be removed, a returning to self from the play at being another - though in some cases the play is deadly serious. In this case, play was just that. Rubber comes free to reveal darker skin, the faintest smell of spirit gum almost hidden under Rowe's choice of cologne - not that he was usually the sort to wear any, but he'd learned that the smell of adhesive could be persistent enough to throw off an entire disguise. Fancy clothes that masked the shape of his body slid free of his shoulders.
Jack watched the transformation with the fascination of one seeing an insect first emerge from it's preparative cocoon, watching the arch of Rowe's back as he slipped free of the dress, cast an eager look over his shoulder at Jack. "You, uh, aren't going to tell anyone about the dress, mate?"
"Whyever not? It wouldn't be the first time you've worn one." Rowe's shyness was a sore subject with him. He found it easiest to wear masks and put on other personas - including the one most typically associated with his own face. He'd admitted this to Jack one late evening, while Jack had been watching a half-full glass of beer on the bedside, noting it's exact relation to the edge and a spent cigarette. "I think Claire would be highly amused."
"Jack," Rowe entreated, the dress falling entirely away at last, hitting the floor heavily with the weight of the shaped bodysuit inside. It left Rowe bare down to his underwear - not many would have dared the boxers underneath the dress, but Rowe seemed to draw the line at women's underwear. His pleading tone was ruined by the traces of makeup left around his eyes.
"Alright, have it your way." Jack, still fully clothed.
"El." Rowe stated, his tone turning from entreating to demanding. He was answered with a bright smile, and a laugh. A longstanding joke.
"Whichever one you like." Jack knew better. He set aside his glass on the nondescript hotel room table, surrendered his coat to Rowe's eager fingers, once the buttons had been fumbled free. He undid his own tie.
Rowe, leaning in eagerly to press their bodies together. His hands searched along Jack's back, as if to feel for wings, lingered even as Jack broke away to drop his shirt on the floor. Rowe closed the distance again; relentless, leaned up to cover Jack's mouth with his own. Claudia's kisses had been new, sweet, shy at first. Rowe had known him longer with less gratification.
Jack found a new sensation in an eager, knowing mouth. It startled him, and he drew back with a soft noise. Rowe took brief notice, and then his hands left Jack's back to work instead on his pants, pulling him by the waistband toward the bed with parti-colored sheets. Cheap hotels were never known for their sense of interior decoration, Jack supposed. Instead of a shove onto it, like Jack expected, Rowe instead backed right up to it and settled down on it's edge. Here, he finished his work with the blonde's pants, sending them floorward in a motion that gave him little chance to react.
There wasn't, perhaps, a newness in an assertive bedpartner. But perhaps in one that foresaw his needs with such accuracy. Rowe leaned in to apply his mouth to a reply that was less than witty, but effective nonetheless. Surprised, Jack made a soft noise, locked his knees. His hands had settled on Rowe's shoulders, now, and through eyes that were rapidly slitting closed, he noticed that the darker member of L/R's hair was still in it's messy bun, the tips moving gently with each motion of his head.
Rowe went slowly, thoroughly. Carefully, Jack disentangled the holder from the other man's hair. Rowe was uninterrupted, drawing back only slightly to facilitate the removal, his hair falling free to beyond his shoulders. Still messy. His mouth was neat, however, efficient at what Jack needed, pliant but persistent. An argument of tongue against skin, sensitive on one side and convincing on the other.
Rowe won the argument, sat back smug, swallowing. Jack fell atop him suddenly enough so that even Rowe was startled. The darker haired member of L/R wrapped his arms around Jack's middle, gently, feeling the tense sensation through the thin veil of muscle, the taught stomach pressed against his most attentive flesh. He shifted to ease some of the pressure, turned his head to ask what was wrong - but it wasn't anything.
Jack was smiling. And somehow, Rowe knew it was a real smile.
"What's that for?" Rowe directed his low-pitched comment for Jack's ear, inches from his mouth.
"You." The answer was simple. Profound. "Weren't you about to impress me?"
"Haven't I already?" Instead of letting Jack answer, he shifted their position, onto their sides. Facing each other, Rowe's smile answered this time, instead of called out. He lost his boxers, found the lubrication from the bedside table, upset Jack's glass of wine.
For once, Jack didn't fuss.
Author: Animarelic
Rating: Hard R
Spoilers: Minor
Author's Notes: This couple and show is seriously under-written. >_< I always want to read smut for the fandom, but it's no fun since I have to write all of it myself!
Prompt: Rowe disguises himself and propositions Jack in a nightclub or similar establishment. Jack may or may not be aware of the fact that it is Rowe.
"Rowe Rickenbacker," Jack had said scoldingly, just as the brunette had slung one arm into the sleeve of his jacket. As scolding as Jack ever got - the good natured reminder of a parent who was more amused by their child's antics than irritated. Emotional extremes were not Jack's forte - and Rowe had learned to tell the level of Jack's seriousness by a variety of other indicators. Jack's eyebrows were one, and now, arched in a way that would otherwise indicate geniality, they indicated that Rowe was seriously pushing it by assuming without asking.
Assuming, at this moment in time, that he was invited along on Jack's little constitutional. Maybe just a little push more, and Rowe could find out what the limits were, here. Before, these evenings away had been occasional. Healthy forays out to maintain interest in the world outside of Cloud House. To interact with people that weren't spies or villains or fellow enforcers of the right in Ishtar.
Intermingling with reality, as opposed to remaining isolated in the irreality of a life like the spy movies - the life that Rowe embraced. It was important, perhaps, that Jack maintained this difference between them so that he remembered who he was himself, rather than attempt to be only what Rowe had come to think of him. Playing the part was also a specialty of Jack's; putting on a face and attitude that anticipated the needs of the world around him. Maybe this was why his first reaction to everything was a smile.
"Jack Hoffner." Rowe assumed a similarly serious tone, slinging his other sleeve into place. His tone softened, his face lighting up with his best pleading smile. "Now that introductions are finished, I don't s'ppose you'd take me out to dinner, hmmm?" The push was clearly too much. Rowe's smile cued Jack's, but it wasn't a genuine expression. It was a mask of strength; put up to indicate that he was a big boy, could take care of himself.
"I'm afraid I had other engagements this evening." The disinvitation would not get any clearer. But if Rowe continued to insist, Jack would become icy to the point where the evening would be entirely unsalvageable. Currently, once he finished his walk, he could possibly return home in a better mood. Still, Rowe was curious as to where he would go, what he would drink, how he would think of her.
"Well," Rowe tried to keep his tone upbeat, his voice casual. There was nothing in his life that he hadn't trusted Jack with - though it wasn't fair to expect that Jack would find being open as easy as Rowe - it still hurt. Rebuffed trust he could live with, but Rowe didn't just trust Jack with his life. "I couldn't ask to intrude on previous plans, could I, mate?"
Jack slipped through the door as Rowe pulled off his jacket in a sign of defeat. The darker member of L/R was hardly ready to give up, but Jack assumed that he had won for the evening. As he slipped through the darkened streets toward his car, step used to the cobblestone sidewalks, his mind turned quickly away from Rowe.
-------------------
With wind in his hair like a caress and the streets speeding by in little more than streaks of light and lines that his tires carried him past at dizzying speed. This late at night, the roads were fairly empty, allowing Jack's mind to wander while he negotiated the familiar streets of Ishtar's capitol. He thought of bedside tables, clear in the darkness because of proximity. Lying awake, unable to sleep, and cataloging the spread of items over the table, committing them to memory while he lay there and thought of how fresh and bright his life seemed.
Remember this, he'd thought to himself, eyes tracing the safety-cap lines of pillbottles, two aspirin scattered free and forgotten. Flat packets clinging tightly to their circular contents, edges ragged foil. The nondescript surface of a nondescript table in a nondescript room, it's occupants defined by the few contents they'd brought with them and that currently occupied the table, motionless as if they'd been set upon an altar instead of left casually behind, forgotten in the desperation of moments passing by.
A hairbrush full of dark hairs, the majority of a pair of panty hose. A flatteringly colored lipstick. All occupants that his eyes traversed again and again, desperately memorizing in the hopes that it would also call up the freshness, the new feeling that he had experienced laying there, a warm body against his back. The indescribability of sensation when he lay, completely exhausted by the night's excursions, and yet unable to sleep for fear of the morning having claimed the feeling from him.
The place he came to was quiet, it's occupants subdued like the soft Jazz music that was performed live on Tuesdays and Thursdays, soothing sorrows with the knowledge that those who experienced them weren't alone. Others had been down the lonely roads before, and Jack knew he had much more than many of the other patrons could boast. He shifted the car into park - there were only four others in the spacious lot, and when he pushed the door open, he found the bar barely occupied, only one couple. The rest were secluded at the islands of their tables, beached and alone with their bottles in the small circles of light that left the rest of the bar with a dark 'ambiance'.
The band was gathered on a slightly raised semicircle at the center of the room's acoustic hollow. The sounds carried easily, even though the tired band looked to be playing with about as much enthusiasm as the patrons were drinking. It was a tired little place with tired old patrons and tired tasting alcohol. Smoking was allowed - the patrons here didn't mind a little secondhand smoke. They were past minding much of anything. Jack settled down at a table that a previous drinker had abandoned a half-full ashtray at, and set on occupying the remaining space therein, lighting up a cigarette and signaling the lone server girl.
She knew him, her middleage features managing a weary smile as she nodded her head in recognition, headed off to get him his drink of choice. He'd found one not-so-tired alcoholic addiction in this place, and perhaps it wasn't their one excellent choice of Red. Coming here made even tired old Jack Hoffner still feel alive, new.
Claudia had done that before, spinning into his life with her vibrancy and color, her deep brown eyes catching his almost colorless blue and refusing to let go. They'd both been younger then, but Jack had already started to feel weary, sick of world that would take his easy smile for granted as reality, never bother to ask deeper than his mask. She'd known that behind his smile there was a profound lack of, well just about everything. She'd known, and sought to drag him along into her everything. Her enthusiasm was addictive, dragging him in, leaving him awake at night with feelings he couldn't fully define her sleep peaceful where she was settled against his back.
He'd thrown all of it away. Maybe he'd been frightened of what he was becoming. Seen his new wings and been much too afraid to fly.
---------------------
When she entered, he'd thought nothing of it. She seemed a little brighter, a little bolder than the current patrons. Perhaps she'd come to the wrong place, or needed directions. She went to the bar to order her drink, received whatever well-beaten beer the place had on tap, and then turned to survey the room. Three sips and then her eyes settled on him, the least gray of the room's inhabitants. He ducked his head, trying to convey his wish to be alone, but it was too late. She'd seen him looking, and he had looked.
She was wearing a dark blue dress, not satin or shiny, but obviously soft to the touch. Probably well liked and one she was accustomed to - the woman seemed hardly conscious of the way it clung to her curves, did not fiddle with the low-slung neckline revealing the vulnerable outjutting of collarbone. Her hair was long, but done up, kept carefully out of her face, though in back it was a gentle disarray, a bun that had not quite come entirely undone. The exhausted lights painted it in an almost-black color, but experience told him it would be a ruddy brunette in actuality.
He could smell her perfume as she approached, set her glass down on the table before she gently set herself in her seat, looking up at Jack as if just noticing him there, smiling without opening her mouth. When she spoke, her voice was soft, almost familiar, gently toned without hint of accent. "I wouldn't guess that this seat is taken?"
Jack's eyes lit up, tracing with the faintest of movements the oval shape of Rowe's eyes. No mask could be made that would hide the shape of the eyes, though contacts could be put in to conceal the color and adjustments could be made to the sort of wrinkles or smoothness at the edges. Of course, this was important, considering Rowe's development recently of what women hated as 'smile lines'. These were all carefully concealed, but Jack had known him before the lines had started forming. Blue eyes watched brown-behind-gray for a long moment, in silence, before he replied.
"Now, isn't that surprising," Jack intoned carefully, fingers curling elegantly around the stem of his wineglass - always wine, and rarely anything stronger. Usually when so, he was in a mood that even Rowe couldn't have salvaged, disguised or not.
"Oh?" She asked, leaning on the tabletop gently, a well-manicured hand curled around her beer glass. Her tone was light, though she guessed that Jack knew the game already, she would continue to play for as long as he would. "Is there someone you're waiting for?"
The question sounded genuinely curious. Jack paused a long moment, regarding the woman carefully. There was someone he was waiting for, but he supposed he would be waiting a very long time before he had a chance to see her again. His mask answered with a smile, but a thought caught him, just as he was about to make a wry answer about waiting and patience.
He thought about a bedside table - one almost barren of placings. A cigarette tray, a half-crushed pack of lucky-strikes, one very battered silver flip-top lighter. Though his reasons for insomnia and this table weren't related to the first, he recalled a warm body at his back on this occasion, too. The one reassuring presence he'd let himself trust with a matter as sensitive as his own protection.
Rowe cared for him, but all he'd done when the brunette had finally coaxed him into sharing more than care was sit up awake and lament over the fact that it wasn't new without Claudia. It wasn't new, because Jack hadn't looked for the things that were new about it.
------------------
It is the nature of disguises that they can be removed, a returning to self from the play at being another - though in some cases the play is deadly serious. In this case, play was just that. Rubber comes free to reveal darker skin, the faintest smell of spirit gum almost hidden under Rowe's choice of cologne - not that he was usually the sort to wear any, but he'd learned that the smell of adhesive could be persistent enough to throw off an entire disguise. Fancy clothes that masked the shape of his body slid free of his shoulders.
Jack watched the transformation with the fascination of one seeing an insect first emerge from it's preparative cocoon, watching the arch of Rowe's back as he slipped free of the dress, cast an eager look over his shoulder at Jack. "You, uh, aren't going to tell anyone about the dress, mate?"
"Whyever not? It wouldn't be the first time you've worn one." Rowe's shyness was a sore subject with him. He found it easiest to wear masks and put on other personas - including the one most typically associated with his own face. He'd admitted this to Jack one late evening, while Jack had been watching a half-full glass of beer on the bedside, noting it's exact relation to the edge and a spent cigarette. "I think Claire would be highly amused."
"Jack," Rowe entreated, the dress falling entirely away at last, hitting the floor heavily with the weight of the shaped bodysuit inside. It left Rowe bare down to his underwear - not many would have dared the boxers underneath the dress, but Rowe seemed to draw the line at women's underwear. His pleading tone was ruined by the traces of makeup left around his eyes.
"Alright, have it your way." Jack, still fully clothed.
"El." Rowe stated, his tone turning from entreating to demanding. He was answered with a bright smile, and a laugh. A longstanding joke.
"Whichever one you like." Jack knew better. He set aside his glass on the nondescript hotel room table, surrendered his coat to Rowe's eager fingers, once the buttons had been fumbled free. He undid his own tie.
Rowe, leaning in eagerly to press their bodies together. His hands searched along Jack's back, as if to feel for wings, lingered even as Jack broke away to drop his shirt on the floor. Rowe closed the distance again; relentless, leaned up to cover Jack's mouth with his own. Claudia's kisses had been new, sweet, shy at first. Rowe had known him longer with less gratification.
Jack found a new sensation in an eager, knowing mouth. It startled him, and he drew back with a soft noise. Rowe took brief notice, and then his hands left Jack's back to work instead on his pants, pulling him by the waistband toward the bed with parti-colored sheets. Cheap hotels were never known for their sense of interior decoration, Jack supposed. Instead of a shove onto it, like Jack expected, Rowe instead backed right up to it and settled down on it's edge. Here, he finished his work with the blonde's pants, sending them floorward in a motion that gave him little chance to react.
There wasn't, perhaps, a newness in an assertive bedpartner. But perhaps in one that foresaw his needs with such accuracy. Rowe leaned in to apply his mouth to a reply that was less than witty, but effective nonetheless. Surprised, Jack made a soft noise, locked his knees. His hands had settled on Rowe's shoulders, now, and through eyes that were rapidly slitting closed, he noticed that the darker member of L/R's hair was still in it's messy bun, the tips moving gently with each motion of his head.
Rowe went slowly, thoroughly. Carefully, Jack disentangled the holder from the other man's hair. Rowe was uninterrupted, drawing back only slightly to facilitate the removal, his hair falling free to beyond his shoulders. Still messy. His mouth was neat, however, efficient at what Jack needed, pliant but persistent. An argument of tongue against skin, sensitive on one side and convincing on the other.
Rowe won the argument, sat back smug, swallowing. Jack fell atop him suddenly enough so that even Rowe was startled. The darker haired member of L/R wrapped his arms around Jack's middle, gently, feeling the tense sensation through the thin veil of muscle, the taught stomach pressed against his most attentive flesh. He shifted to ease some of the pressure, turned his head to ask what was wrong - but it wasn't anything.
Jack was smiling. And somehow, Rowe knew it was a real smile.
"What's that for?" Rowe directed his low-pitched comment for Jack's ear, inches from his mouth.
"You." The answer was simple. Profound. "Weren't you about to impress me?"
"Haven't I already?" Instead of letting Jack answer, he shifted their position, onto their sides. Facing each other, Rowe's smile answered this time, instead of called out. He lost his boxers, found the lubrication from the bedside table, upset Jack's glass of wine.
For once, Jack didn't fuss.