Graduation Night
Aug. 21st, 2011 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Russ
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: rough sex, hints of bondage
Summary: A follow-up fic to Honors’ Night!
Major Morrison’s in town for John’s graduation from West Point, and the boys haven’t seen in each other in over a year. John’s very...enthusiastic. And Russ just can’t help himself!
Russ goes for another beer out of the tub on the deck, breathing a sigh of relief as he closes the sliding door that leads into the house.
One of the History instructors, Major Zach Hines, an old classmate of Russ’ who’s been looking after John for him, offered to host it for John and a few of the other cadets he sponsored. The walls are practically shaking in there. Between the cadets - former cadets he admonishes himself, lieutenants now - and their families and younger still-cadet friends and the booze and the Eagles blasting on the living room speakers and the general melee of celebration, there’s no way Russ can hear himself think.
And he's going to need a smoke soon, anyway. Especially if John doesn't show the fuck up sometime soon.
It’s graduation night. John's graduation. Parade, first salute, wheelcaps thrown in the air. Graduation.
Russ smiles, thinking about it.
John had made a beeline up to his family right after, sweeping his mom up into a huge bear hug. She’d cried through the whole ceremony, especially the bit where John got his diploma presented to him by President Reagan, and she’d cried as her son held her in the stands. He kissed his sister and hugged his little brother, who’s much less of a shit than he seemed to be four years ago, and then John was off on those long legs of his. Off to turn in his scarlet parade sash and out-process from his cadet company.
Russ hasn’t seen him since then. Probably out with his family, taking care of his mom, who can’t be at the party. Not around all this alcohol.
Which is fine. They get his day, he’d said. Russ gets tonight.
“Whatcha out here for, major?”
He looks up, looks behind him from where he’s leaning on the rail. Inside, beyond the big windows, Zach's other two sponsor cadets - former cadets, goddammit, Russ - are staging an inebriated sword fight with their dull, cadet-issue sabers to the laughter of their girlfriends. They both looked like very drunk boys, headed off to Infantry and Logistics, respectively.
Not John, though.
Not the man who’s standing behind Russ now.
John’s broader in the shoulders, that lean frame of his bulked out a little bit from boxing, which he’s apparently gotten very, very good at. His hair’s still shorn short and his eyes have the same dark circles of that exhaustion under them that all cadets seem to share. He’s older, of course, and he’s tired.
He’s still in his cadet parade uniform, those grays that Russ wore himself a decade and a half ago. But John wears it better than he ever did. In fact, in that high military collar and double row of brass buttons and gold braid and long white parade pants, John looks like he stepped out of some 1800s painting. Like some old European war hero.
But despite all of that, or perhaps because of it, Russ really wants to grab the kid and fuck his brains out. Hear him gasp, taste the contours of his body again, feel that delectable ass squeezing around him. Wants him bad.
He's not sure if it's because he's too drunk or not drunk enough, but John’s more beautiful, right now, than he’s ever been before.
The sarcasm got beaten out of him plebe year, leaving behind a dry sense of humor and an unfettered wit. He doesn't slouch. He looks people in the eye when he talks to them. He's stopped hating people for being stupider than him. The fear's gone, replaced by a shaky confidence, but a confidence nonetheless. He's not done, though, not by a long shot. He’s still a work in progress, just like any new Academy grad would be. Still needs to be shaped, polished, taught...
Won’t that be something?
Russ sips at his beer as John grabs one of his one, and pops the cap off with his class ring, finger wrapping and pulling up.
“I remember that trick,” the major comments, grinning as the newly minted lieutenant slots up next to him on the deck railing, staring out, away from the party.
It gets him a grin in return. “You ever wear yours, sir?”
“Sometimes. Not always.” And he nods. "You get your mom off okay?"
"We grabbed dinner. Brett was on a bit of sugar high. Samantha took them both back to the hotel,” John replies, really smiling now. “They’re taking care of her, with Jeff in jail. She seemed pretty fucking proud...."
"You sound proud yourself," Russ says softly, remembering the conversation in the stands this morning. The one where Joyce had grasped his hand and told him how much she loved her son, how she'd been genuinely touched by what he'd done here, how inspirational it had for her in getting through rehab...
"She's not the same woman I grew up with anymore," he says, nodding his head. “She's been dry for three years now. You know that?”
Yeah, Russ thinks. And the young man in front of him now is hardly the same boy he sent off to West Point, four long years ago. “You’re different, too, John?”
The kid frowns a bit, biting his lip. That goddamn wonderful oral fixation of his. It reminds Russ about the cigars he’s got in his pocket, and pulls them out now. Only the best for his boy.
"Am I really that different?" John asks, watching as the Ranger cuts the ends off the cubanos.
"You don't see it?" Russ says.
He shrugs and fishes his own lighter out of his pocket, passing it over. "Maybe."
Maybe ain't gonna cut it in the Rangers, Russ thinks to himself, smirking to himself. He wants to tell him about making the cut, wants to tell John he’s not going to be a 35D, no, no Military Intelligence career for his boy... but not yet. Call him selfish, but tonight, he wants Lieutenant John Smith all to himself. How he wants him, where he wants him.
So he hands John one of the cigars instead, holds the lighter for him. "Don’t just stick the end in the flame, kid,” he says, watching carefully. “Roll it a bit, get an even char."
John grins and does so, his fingers twirling slowly, puffing a little.
And coughs.
Russ laughs, and claps John on the back. “It ain’t a cigarette, kid. Inhale, hold it in your mouth. Savor it.”
It’s the younger man’s turn to laugh at that, and Russ cuffs his shoulder lightly.
“You’ve got a sick mind, kid.”
“And you fucking love it,” he chortles back.
Resting as it is on the gray wool, the major lets his hand linger as John figures it out, taking in those new shoulder bars. That one single gold bar, stitched across. He'd put those on John himself last night, at midnight, at the kid’s commissioning ceremony. John had requested that he do it. Nobody else, he'd said.
I only want Major Russell Morrison.
And Russ had talked his way out of an op in Afghanistan, while he was still in Afghanistan, to get here for it.
Fucking worth it. Every minute of the six days it took him to get back here to the States. Just to see John like this. Triumphant over the hardest four years his life will, more than likely, ever know.
"It's a good look on you, kid," he says at length, more for his own benefit than John's.
What a man, an officer, a Ranger, this Lieutenant Smith is going to be.
Those pale eyes turn on him then, though, and he promptly forgets everything yet to come, everything that's been. There's only the now. Only the now that's populated by one slightly weary major and one extremely weary lieutenant.
His. His lieutenant, he decides.
"Russ, tonight, you promised we could..."
Only ever his.
"Eager, are we, kid?" the Ranger chuckles in reply, feeling his blood start to heat, start to race.
"I haven't seen you in a year," the younger man murmurs back. "It's been a long year, Russ."
"You gonna tell me all about how celibate you were?" he asks, thinking of sand and cold desert nights spent alone and the Taliban fighters they’re helping right now, the ones who pack their little butt-boys around with them everywhere. Thinking of what he would have given some nights, to have his John with him. To have John...
The new lieutenant snorts, but when he speaks again, there's an edge of sadness there. Something like loss, maybe. "Nobody else ever does what you do," he whispers, not daring to touch, clearly wanting to. "Nobody else ever even wants to, with me..."
Russ feels a shiver run up his spine. Oh yes, oh yes, the game they play, on these nights when they're lucky enough to be in the same room together. His boy likes being topped, overpowered, split open and claimed. He likes to struggle, likes the way kisses feel on bruised skin, likes teeth and hard entries. John's never liked pain, not for pain's sake, but he enjoys knowing that he can lose control, that control can be wrested from him, even if he doesn't let it go without a fight,
A fight that's become more and more of a challenge over the past few years.
And to be the only man who does that for him, the only man who can force him to submit...it's addicting.
Just like John himself, honestly.
"I want that," he growls, leaning in and letting his lips brush the rim of John's ear. "And I'd be extremely displeased if you let anybody else have what's mine..."
The new lieutenant smiles and sucks air and reaches out, reaches over. "Russ..." he groans, a breathy, needy little groan. "Russ, please..."
That please, so desperate, gives the kid away completely, and the major wants to laugh at the spike of pleasure that runs through him. Tonight's going to be good. He fucking knows it.
"You know which room is mine, lieutenant?" he growls in that ear.
"Oh, oh, fuck..." John groans, pitching forward, the white material of his parade pants pulling tight across tight muscle.
"Sounds better than cadet, doesn't it, John?" Russ continues, wishing like hell he could slap that upraised ass. It's really begging to be slapped right now. "And here's your first order. Get this perfect," and the older man can't resist a quick love tap, he can always blame it on the beer later, "ass of yours upstairs."
"Sir..."
"And don't you dare unwrap it for me. Not a button, not a single snap," Russ adds, keeping his calm, not wanting John to know just how goddamn arousing he finds this, not wanting John to see - at this stage of the evening, anyway - just how much power the kid truly does hold over him.
It's what John needs, too, because his eyes close and he's trembling, just a little.
But he doesn't answer.
"Acknowledge, el-tee," Russ warns.
"Rrr...Roger that. Sir."
And he vanishes into the house, letting a swirl of AC/DC out after him.
Russ is staying here, with Zach. They were roommates for three years when they were going through West Point; there are no secrets between them, no judgments, and that same courtesy had been extended to the kid from day one. Zach even knows about them, and the only thing he's ever asked is for it not to become his issue, ever.
So, considering the number of people in this house right now, discretion is of importance. So Russ lets the seconds tick around on the face of his watch, trying not to think about John waiting for him in that parade uniform, about the kid stripping it off for the last time for him, about seeing his boy naked, spread out beneath him, hips lifted and neck bared, for him... and he flicks the remains of his cigar into the damp grass beyond the deck.
Fuck it.
Thirty-eight seconds is a fucking long head start.
Russ tried to be unobtrusive as he made his way through the bottom floor of his old friend’s house, up the stairs and down the little hallway back towards one of the rooms Zach kept up for the cadets. He’s been here before, on those rare, stolen nights over the past four years. When he’d fly up from wherever the hell he was in the world and John would take a pass and they’d find each other again in the darkness...
But tonight, tonight, John’s got the bedside lamp on, long limbs folded up around his cigar as he sits there, smoking carelessly, the collar and top three buttons of his parade coat thrown open. He looks up at Russ as he comes in, rolling that smoldering cubano between his fingers.
“Major,” he says with a yawn, stretching a hand out behind him and settling his weight down on it, that chest of his hidden beneath the smooth expanse of cadet gray that doesn’t really belong on him any more. “It’s a good cigar.”
Russ feels a rumble starting up in him at the sight. That’s the game. The game they both want to play tonight. The game that’s not quite a game, not for him anyway, and he almost feels bad about pulling John into his rank kink...
But then, way the kid’s arching up, screaming fuck me hard with that long, lean body of his, Russ doesn’t think he minds too much.
“So you thought you’d slack off to finish it?” he growls, grabbing the chair from the corner desk and shoving it under the door handle, stalking over towards the bed. He grabs the opened edge of the parade jacket. “Thought you’d do exactly what I told you not to?”
John tenses a bit, that cigar ceasing to move. “It’s...the collar...I couldn’t breath in it, sir,” he mutters.
“Bullshit. You had it closed all day,” Russ snaps, leaning over the kid.
“It’s hot in here,” John tries, those blue eyes wide, faux-fear growing. It’s very, very realistic. And that’s his boy, all right. Kid never does anything by halves.
The major reaches around and gets as much of that short hair in his fist as he can, jerking back hard enough to draw a whimper. “You want hot, John? Try Guatamala in July with ninety pounds of gear on your back...”
His boy sucks his lower lip into his mouth and Russ’ cock starts taking a definite interest in the proceedings. “I...thought I had more time to pull back together,” he admits
“So you did think you could disobey me,” the older man grumbles, bringing his lips right along the exposed edge of John’s collarbone, tasting the day’s sweat on his skin, that salty sweetness delicious, unlike any he’ found in another. “You thought I wouldn’t find out.”
“Oh, fuck...sir, please...please...”
“Don’t lie to me, lieutenant!” he growls, jerking again.
“...Major Morrison,” he whispers, “Major, I’m sorry...”
God help me, Russ thinks, as his growing arousal spikes, his rank going straight to his groin. “Sorry for what?” he urges, pushing for control of the game John’s started here. “What are you sorry for, lieutenant?”
“I...I didn’t follow your orders,” John says, squirming a bit, almost smiling.
“Damn right you didn’t,” Russ replies sharply and gets a leg up on the bed, dragging John down to the quilt top by the hair, plucking that cigar away from him and laying it aside on the nightstand. “Fucking disgraceful.”
“Sir, I...”
“Shut up,” he orders, kneeling down right next to the kid and going back to that elegant neck, nipping. “Just shut up, John. Violating Article 92 on your goddamn graduation day. Bucking one of my orders...”
“Sir...” the kid tries to protest.
“I should slap you with goddamn paperwork, shouldn’t I?” he snarls, straddling John’s thighs and slamming him down to the quilt with his free hand. “I could fucking court-martial you, discharge you right the fuck now. We could make your commission the shortest in the history of the Army...”
“Sir, no, please,” John breathes, begging now as Russ continues to tease his throat, his jaw, lips everywhere but on his mouth. “Please, not that...”
“Then what, John? What should I do with a lieutenant who can’t take orders?”
And his new lieutenant turns his head. Closing his eyes. Offering his throat. And one hand slides up Russ’ side. Pulling him closer.
“Tell me what to do,” John whispers. “Anything you want, I’ll do it. Anything, major, anything you want...”
The major chokes back his groan at those words, at the sight of that throat bared to him, and opens his hand slowly, letting the hair slide in between them, closing back around it, lifting it up off the bed. “Is this what you think?” he asks softly, using the dangerous tone he normally reserves for discipline sessions with the troops, and bites lightly, savoring the way John shudders up into him. “That it? You can pay for your mistake with this fucking amazing body of yours? Everything’ll be just dandy?”
A shiver runs through the younger man, and that hand against Russ’ side digs in. “I can follow orders, sir,” he pleads, pulling at the older man’s civilian shirt. “I can. Please...”
The Ranger smirks at him.
Rolls off to the side.
And flicks the pocket knife out of his back pocket.
His boy’s eyes go wide, legitimately wide, genuinely shocked, trying to figure out the four-inch serrated blade that Russ drags up the smooth, heavy surface of his parade coat.
But he doesn’t move.
Not a fraction of an inch, as Russ lays the tip of the knife right at the hollow of the lieutenant’s throat.
“Any order I give you?”
John’s adam’s apple bobs, swallowing, but he nods, tight. “Yes.”
“Then hold very, very still for me John,” Russ whispers in his ear.
Tips the knife to horizontal.
And slashes down.
As hard and as fast he can.
Collar to groin.
Buttons fly fucking everywhere, scattering across the thick shag carpet, hitting the walls in a clatter of brass. John arches up, gasping, parade coat falling open to reveal wifebeater and suspenders and tanned, smooth skin...
“Fuck, Russ, oh fuck...” he’s panting, eyes half closed, lips parted, white parade pants tenting, nudging up against the older man’s thigh. “Russ, please...”
The Ranger has one hand twisted up in his boy’s undershirt in an instant, hauling him up off the bed. “Russ?” he growls in John’s ear, overriding the babbled apologies that come almost instantly, the kid scrambling for purchase. “Russ, lieutenant? You are really in the shit now, you hear me? Show some goddamn respect for your superiors!”
“Major Morrison, sir, please, I didn’t... I didn’t mean...”
“Oh, I think you did,” Russ tells him, and he lets John fall back to the covers. “I think you’re trying to provoke me. Trying to get me to punish you for being such a bad, bad lieutenant.”
“N-no, no sir...”
“Then you are a bad lieutenant, Smith? Is that what you’re telling me?” The older man covers his boy’s body with his own pinning him, squeezing the kid’s sides hard with his own thighs as he slides a hand back into his hair, jerking back.
John can’t move, not with the skills he’s learned on the West Point boxing team and in their unarmed combatives classes. It’s going to take Ranger training to get this boy up to par, Russ thinks with some small part of his mind not focused on fucking John senseless tonight. And when that time comes, he’s going to enjoy teaching this lithe, beautiful body everything his own knows.
But tonight, those aren’t the lessons he wants to impart.
“Are you really unable to follow my orders?”
“No sir!” John snaps, some of that steel in him coming into play now.
Russ smirks, and bites his throat. Hard. Not hard enough to break skin, but it still has John crying out, and then crying out again, as the major slaps his cheek.
“No? So you can’t follow orders?”
John’s blue eyes flare. “I can follow orders, sir!”
The Ranger has to look, has to touch. His own arousal is starting to strain against his jeans, but it doesn’t match the sight of John’s cock hard and leaking, throbbing in that parade white, precum soaking the fabric. He’s truly massive, John is, long and thick, almost too big for Russ’ hand. But right now, he doesn’t take it out or cup it or anything like that. No, he drags one finger down the trapped length, drawing a pained groan from his boy.
Russ chuckles. “Then get your hands up, Lieutenant Smith. Grab the fucking headboard and don’t let go.”
John sucks his lower lip into his mouth, but nods, stretching his arns overhead. He has a bit of trouble with it, the jacket he’s got on wasn’t meant for this kind of movement, but he manages, wrapping long fingers through the wrought iron bars. It opens that jacket even more, exposing more of his chest, nipples hard under the sweatstained white whitebeater he’s go on underneath. It’s a vision, and the major makes a mental note to thank whatever grandmother foisted this antique of a bed off on his old buddy Zach. It’s perfect for this game.
“Hands...hands up, sir,” John says, a little breathless from need.
“Good man, Smith, you did something a two year old could do,” Russ says with as much sarcasm as he can force over his own burning need to bury himself in his boy. He rocks into his boy’s groin for another of those delicious groans, grinding as much of his body into John’s as he can. “Let’s see how you do with a more complicated order, shall we?”
“W-what...what order, sir?”
“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers, and lets his knife make a reappearance, right below one armpit, “and don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”
John’s eyes are wide, irises blown to black, but he sucks air and nods again, once, tight. Doesn’t even flinch as the tip of Russ’ pocket knife slices open the seam on the underside of his arm.
He wasn't exactly expecting John to actually hold his breath, although Russ isn't exactly opposed to it. The kid can comfortably hold his breath underwater for, according to the paperwork Russ got from the preliminary Spec Ops readiness evals, one minute and forty-eight seconds.
Russ makes sure he doesn’t take nearly that long to slit the seams on John’s jacket, gray wool and gold braid snapping apart. Those damn suspenders are next, cut along his shoulders. He tugs that undershirt up and out of those fucking pants, over the tip of John’s leaking, neglected cock, and with it pulled off that young chest, Russ splits the thing down the middle and rips it off him.
John’s laying in an pile of rags, gray and gold and white, throat sucking in, wanting air, wanting contact, wanting... me, Russ thinks with a shiver, and closes the knife, tossing it aside.
“Better,” he murmurs, laying back down on top of his boy and slipping a hand underneath him, undoing one of those ruined suspenders. “So much better now, aren’t you, John?”
The young man, his new lieutenant, nods frantically, eyes beginning to water. He needs air, Russ knows, and smiles as he takes in those fluttering eyelids, those flaring nostrils, and covers that perfect mouth with his own. Breathing in, right as he reaches up with that cut length of elastic and leather bands.
Right as he ties John’s hands to the headboard.
“Much, much better, Lieutenant Smith,” Russ says approvingly, and rocks forward on him once again. “Breathe for me.”
And the noise that his boy releases, once he inhales, once he realizes, once he tugs, is pure, wanton heat.
Russ can't resist, can't resist at all, and reaches back to slap John lightly on the ass. "What the fuck did I tell you about shutting the fuck up?" he growls, and slides down to take care of that very, very insistent erection, rock hard against his own.
Russ scoots his legs back, back so his ass is right over John’s knees, and kisses his way down his lieutenant’s stomach. Hot, biting kisses, the kind that scrape skin and that light dusting of chestnut hair and linger around the hard peaks of nipples, as he unbuttons John’s pants. It has his boy gasping, straining against the restraints, but he lingers on this task. As torturous as any spanking could be, exactly what John needs right now, but that’s not the reason the older man drags it out as long as he can.
No, not that at all. It’s more selfish than that. He wants to inspect what hopefully, in a little more than a year, will be one of his baby Rangers.
Back when John was just leaving high school, the first time they did this together, the first time Russ had taken him, the boy had been just that; a boy. An assemblage of long limbs and big hands, big feet he hadn’t quite grown into, a strength about him that was still, for all his outdoor adventuring, gangly.
Not any longer.
This is no boy beneath him now.
West Point’s been good for John. He’s put on muscle, the muscle flexing under Russ’ questing lips right now, good muscle. Not as hard, not as refined as it will be some day. It’s the kind of bulk you get from lifting weights and sprinting, things John had to do for the PT test, things cadets do to one-up each other. He received excellent scores on those tests, every semester, but that’s not the kind of strength Russ is interested in.
No, he’s more concerned about whether or not John can tread water for six hours straight, holding a five gallon bucket of air under him as he does it. If John can go on fifteen mile runs, with eighty-pound packs, on a regular basis. If he drag heavy loads through the woods and climb a thirty-foot wall without clear handholds and reserve his strength, flow around an armed opponent with nothing but his quick, quick mind to keep him alive...
“Major,” John begs above him. “Major, please, I’m gonna...”
Russ rims the top of John’s belly button as he fingers the zipper down on those parade pants. There’s a good foundation here. Plenty of time to test it later. And he bites, right at the top of that little indentation, feeling abs flex below his chin.
“Calm down, John. We both know you aren’t going to come until I let you,” he purrs, and unzips.
He nearly gets smacked in the face by a lust-reddened cock the second he slides the damp white fabric off and away. John’s whimpering with relief now, and Russ savors the sound of that as he moves away, just enough to strip those pants away completely, and take in the sight of his boy.
It’s beautiful, how he can reduce John to this puddle of need, melting beneath his touch, and he admires that tanned, toned body for just a moment. Before kneeling between bent legs and flexing toes. Before fluttering his fingers up and down the swollen underside of his boy’s hungry cock, across the sensitive skin of his perinuem, pinkie sweeping back across that hole.
Tight, grasping, and a flush of warmth spreads through Russ’ entire body as he thinks of it. Nobody but him. Nobody’s ever gone here but him. Nobody ever will. That’s his only condition, and John had agreed to it without a second thought.
“Mine,” he growls in a voice he barely recognizes, grabbing blinding for the slick he left in the nightstand. And he’s treated to the sight of John, lifting his head, nodding frantically. Russ closes a hand over the small container of vaseline, nipping at the inside of one young, hard thigh, , tickling through wiry hair, cupping his boy’s balls. “All mine.” He scoops out a healthy handful of slick - they both like it a little on the dry side and tight, but it’s been a year and he’s got no intention of hurting this young man. “My beautiful man...”
And he slides a well-lubed finger all the way inside that silken sheath within his boy.
Cock leaking freely, a flush spreading down to cover his pecs, John whines again. And again, as Russ starts swirling, working him open. A beautiful sound, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Say it, John. Say it for me,” he urges softly as he adds a second finger, taking the intensity way, way down for the moment. Or up, perhaps. All Russ really knows right now is that he can smell their combined arousal in the air around them and feel his boy flexing beneath him and he needs to be balls deep in John and John needs that too, and they both need to come. Right the fuck now. He pulls his fingers out. “Say you’re mine...”
Another moan of pure, tormented pleasure tears loose from his boy’s throat, and Russ can’t take it any longer. He unzips his own jeans and shoves them down as far as he needs to, hissing as his cock hits the cooler air outside its former prison. He grabs one of John’s legs, pulling it flush to his side, scooting in, taking his cock in hand and lining up with that barely stretched hole, pushing just barely in. It’s going to be tight, dear god, it’s going to be...
“Come on, kid. You’re mine, say you’re mine...”
Tears are starting to leak from the corners of John’s tightly closed eyes, but Russ gets his nod. “I...” he whimpers, twisting against those bonds a little harder now, clearly needing friction, contact, all that.
But he’s got to finish his goddamn sentence first.
Russ needs to hear that so badly he can taste it.
“Say it, John!”
The kid raises his other leg, wrapping around, locking his ankles behind the small of the older man’s back. “Russ, I love you...” he whispers in a voice so faint that a shocked Ranger thinks he might have imagined it.
Except for that smile on the kid’s face. As he tightens his legs and fucking pulls himself right on to Russ’ cock, burying him to the hilt.
It is tight, almost unbearably so, and John’s whimpers are more pain that pleasure at this point, but Russ really can’t bring himself to care right now. He falls forward, barely catching himself on his elbows in time to keep from crashing down onto the younger man beneath him. John arches up into him, every square inch of their skin slipping against each other, sweat-slick and burning hot, the kid’s rock-hard length trapped up and begging for release. Their mouths meet again, in another of the sloppy, uncoordinated kisses that tell Russ just how far gone his boy is. How far gone he is.
He’s already thrusting lightly in, hips moving of their own accord, and he can’t remember the last time he needed anybody like this, this badly. How much he needs to bite down and spill and claim, honestly and truly. How much he’s needed to since he first laid eyes on John. On the sullen, sad boy trying to smoke his way out of the grief of a wasted, loveless childhood, wishing for a future he thought hopeless. On the boy who’s managed to climb above it all, who took the chance that was given to him and never looked back.
And suddenly, above the desperation of his need for this young man, Russ remembers every letter, every phone call, every furtive, quick visit and every holiday leave he could manage, spent wrapped around each other in Russ’ small apartment in Georgia or some cheap hotel room in New York City.
He’s been there. He’d been the one John had talked to, cried to. Through all of it. Every moment he could manage.
The struggle John went through at West Point, learning to play nice with others, having to learn teamwork for the first time in a place that expects it automatically. Having to help his classmates who were struggling in school, learning that not everybody’s as smart as him, not even in a place like that. Struggling through the classes where he got Cs for the first time in his life. The year of hell he’d committed himself to as a junior, four hours a day in the gym, trying to prep for the spec-ops evals. How he used to haul himself back to his dorm room at 2100, dead tired, two hours of homework still to do and reveille at 0700. Weekend inspections, beat sessions, parades in the snow, parades in the summer heat...
And Russ remembers one moment, one single moment, horrible moment, out of it all. The week the Utah Supreme Court had issued a supoena and John had gotten a special pass and gone back to Salt Lake to testify at Jeff’s final appeal. The one that bastard lost, mostly on John’s calm, dry-eyed testimony, the one that had gotten him ten years in prison for assault and child abuse. Russ had managed to fly in for it, pissing his commander off to no end, but he’d made it. Been there as John collapsed in a hotel bathroom, been there to hold him up until he stopped crying and started smiling again, talking about how his sister was already married and pregnant with his first nephew...
It all passes through Russ in an instant, and he clasps John to him tightly, pistoning wildly into him, feeling the younger man’s cock leaving trails of moisture in the frictionless space between them, hearing him crying out with every upthrust.
“Come for me,” he gasps into the younger man’s mouth in between when their lips meet and pull apart and meet again. “John, baby, come for me...”
John’s head falls back and Russ has to cover his parted, kiss-swollen lips with a rough hand, fast, because he’s screaming through his climax, muscles clamping down vice-hard around that cock inside him. It pulls Russ over the edge, pumping and pumping and pumping as deeply into his boy as he can, teeth latching on to the joint of John’s shoulder, biting and sucking and biting, tasting blood to keep from screaming himself, both of them falling off the edge of the world together.
+++++
Russ comes back first, vision blurred, nerves still crackling with the force of...whatever that was.
John’s limp and loose beneath him, fucked out, a trickle of red smearing into the damp sheen of his skin along his shoulder. His mouth is moving a little, like they’re still kissing, wherever he’s slipped off to. His hands are soft, fingers still wound through the bars. There’s not a trace of the last four years of stress and pain and agony and victory, anywhere on his face.
With a small moan, the major manages to pull himself from his lover’s body and finds the knife on the floor where he dropped it, the wet wipes from where he hid ‘em under the bed. He lays back over John’s senseless form and kisses him softly as he cuts the bonds free and pulls those red wrists into his hands, rubbing softly. He leaves that task to his left hand, alternating, as he goes for a handful of wipes, cleansing sweat and seed away from first his boy, chest and thighs, where muscle is beginning to release, and then himself.
Once he’s sure they’re both okay, he rolls the quilt up and around them both, John automatically finding him under the covers, even in sleep, sighing as Russ pulls him close.
They don’t always cuddle. They usually don’t, actually. It’s too...
But after what John said tonight...it’s not that at all.
Russ thinks he might need it, too.
He reaches over John’s sleeping form, going for the smoldering stub of that cigar, one or two good pulls left on it, tasting his boy.
The nicotine does nothing for his nerves.
Russ, I love you...
The Ranger knows the world John’s walking into, what the slightest hint of such a thing could mean for his career, for him... he’s so, so proud of what John’s done for himself, what he’s won, what he’s earned, with his butter bars and class ring and acceptance to Ranger School, the only cadet in his class to actually make the cut. Russ can already see the signs; there are men who serve in the Army for a living, and then there are the men for whom the Army is their life.
John’s going to be the latter.
Just like Russ.
Sex is one thing. Sex can be hidden, disguised, overlooked. But love...love’s quite another thing altogether. It’ll ruin them. It will. Sooner or later. He knows it. The end of something good is coming.
But they haven’t lived it yet, and right now, for Russ, there’s no point in jumping ahead to the heartbreak. He’s good. Right here. Like this. With John.
“Love you,” he whispers, meaning it, heart gathering up and stopping, just for a moment, wondering if he’ll ever be able to say it again. If he can ever tell this amazing young man when he’s awake. “I love you too, John Smith...”
In his sleep, John nuzzles closer, and Russ chews on the end of that cigar.
Wondering.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: rough sex, hints of bondage
Summary: A follow-up fic to Honors’ Night!
Major Morrison’s in town for John’s graduation from West Point, and the boys haven’t seen in each other in over a year. John’s very...enthusiastic. And Russ just can’t help himself!
Russ goes for another beer out of the tub on the deck, breathing a sigh of relief as he closes the sliding door that leads into the house.
One of the History instructors, Major Zach Hines, an old classmate of Russ’ who’s been looking after John for him, offered to host it for John and a few of the other cadets he sponsored. The walls are practically shaking in there. Between the cadets - former cadets he admonishes himself, lieutenants now - and their families and younger still-cadet friends and the booze and the Eagles blasting on the living room speakers and the general melee of celebration, there’s no way Russ can hear himself think.
And he's going to need a smoke soon, anyway. Especially if John doesn't show the fuck up sometime soon.
It’s graduation night. John's graduation. Parade, first salute, wheelcaps thrown in the air. Graduation.
Russ smiles, thinking about it.
John had made a beeline up to his family right after, sweeping his mom up into a huge bear hug. She’d cried through the whole ceremony, especially the bit where John got his diploma presented to him by President Reagan, and she’d cried as her son held her in the stands. He kissed his sister and hugged his little brother, who’s much less of a shit than he seemed to be four years ago, and then John was off on those long legs of his. Off to turn in his scarlet parade sash and out-process from his cadet company.
Russ hasn’t seen him since then. Probably out with his family, taking care of his mom, who can’t be at the party. Not around all this alcohol.
Which is fine. They get his day, he’d said. Russ gets tonight.
“Whatcha out here for, major?”
He looks up, looks behind him from where he’s leaning on the rail. Inside, beyond the big windows, Zach's other two sponsor cadets - former cadets, goddammit, Russ - are staging an inebriated sword fight with their dull, cadet-issue sabers to the laughter of their girlfriends. They both looked like very drunk boys, headed off to Infantry and Logistics, respectively.
Not John, though.
Not the man who’s standing behind Russ now.
John’s broader in the shoulders, that lean frame of his bulked out a little bit from boxing, which he’s apparently gotten very, very good at. His hair’s still shorn short and his eyes have the same dark circles of that exhaustion under them that all cadets seem to share. He’s older, of course, and he’s tired.
He’s still in his cadet parade uniform, those grays that Russ wore himself a decade and a half ago. But John wears it better than he ever did. In fact, in that high military collar and double row of brass buttons and gold braid and long white parade pants, John looks like he stepped out of some 1800s painting. Like some old European war hero.
But despite all of that, or perhaps because of it, Russ really wants to grab the kid and fuck his brains out. Hear him gasp, taste the contours of his body again, feel that delectable ass squeezing around him. Wants him bad.
He's not sure if it's because he's too drunk or not drunk enough, but John’s more beautiful, right now, than he’s ever been before.
The sarcasm got beaten out of him plebe year, leaving behind a dry sense of humor and an unfettered wit. He doesn't slouch. He looks people in the eye when he talks to them. He's stopped hating people for being stupider than him. The fear's gone, replaced by a shaky confidence, but a confidence nonetheless. He's not done, though, not by a long shot. He’s still a work in progress, just like any new Academy grad would be. Still needs to be shaped, polished, taught...
Won’t that be something?
Russ sips at his beer as John grabs one of his one, and pops the cap off with his class ring, finger wrapping and pulling up.
“I remember that trick,” the major comments, grinning as the newly minted lieutenant slots up next to him on the deck railing, staring out, away from the party.
It gets him a grin in return. “You ever wear yours, sir?”
“Sometimes. Not always.” And he nods. "You get your mom off okay?"
"We grabbed dinner. Brett was on a bit of sugar high. Samantha took them both back to the hotel,” John replies, really smiling now. “They’re taking care of her, with Jeff in jail. She seemed pretty fucking proud...."
"You sound proud yourself," Russ says softly, remembering the conversation in the stands this morning. The one where Joyce had grasped his hand and told him how much she loved her son, how she'd been genuinely touched by what he'd done here, how inspirational it had for her in getting through rehab...
"She's not the same woman I grew up with anymore," he says, nodding his head. “She's been dry for three years now. You know that?”
Yeah, Russ thinks. And the young man in front of him now is hardly the same boy he sent off to West Point, four long years ago. “You’re different, too, John?”
The kid frowns a bit, biting his lip. That goddamn wonderful oral fixation of his. It reminds Russ about the cigars he’s got in his pocket, and pulls them out now. Only the best for his boy.
"Am I really that different?" John asks, watching as the Ranger cuts the ends off the cubanos.
"You don't see it?" Russ says.
He shrugs and fishes his own lighter out of his pocket, passing it over. "Maybe."
Maybe ain't gonna cut it in the Rangers, Russ thinks to himself, smirking to himself. He wants to tell him about making the cut, wants to tell John he’s not going to be a 35D, no, no Military Intelligence career for his boy... but not yet. Call him selfish, but tonight, he wants Lieutenant John Smith all to himself. How he wants him, where he wants him.
So he hands John one of the cigars instead, holds the lighter for him. "Don’t just stick the end in the flame, kid,” he says, watching carefully. “Roll it a bit, get an even char."
John grins and does so, his fingers twirling slowly, puffing a little.
And coughs.
Russ laughs, and claps John on the back. “It ain’t a cigarette, kid. Inhale, hold it in your mouth. Savor it.”
It’s the younger man’s turn to laugh at that, and Russ cuffs his shoulder lightly.
“You’ve got a sick mind, kid.”
“And you fucking love it,” he chortles back.
Resting as it is on the gray wool, the major lets his hand linger as John figures it out, taking in those new shoulder bars. That one single gold bar, stitched across. He'd put those on John himself last night, at midnight, at the kid’s commissioning ceremony. John had requested that he do it. Nobody else, he'd said.
I only want Major Russell Morrison.
And Russ had talked his way out of an op in Afghanistan, while he was still in Afghanistan, to get here for it.
Fucking worth it. Every minute of the six days it took him to get back here to the States. Just to see John like this. Triumphant over the hardest four years his life will, more than likely, ever know.
"It's a good look on you, kid," he says at length, more for his own benefit than John's.
What a man, an officer, a Ranger, this Lieutenant Smith is going to be.
Those pale eyes turn on him then, though, and he promptly forgets everything yet to come, everything that's been. There's only the now. Only the now that's populated by one slightly weary major and one extremely weary lieutenant.
His. His lieutenant, he decides.
"Russ, tonight, you promised we could..."
Only ever his.
"Eager, are we, kid?" the Ranger chuckles in reply, feeling his blood start to heat, start to race.
"I haven't seen you in a year," the younger man murmurs back. "It's been a long year, Russ."
"You gonna tell me all about how celibate you were?" he asks, thinking of sand and cold desert nights spent alone and the Taliban fighters they’re helping right now, the ones who pack their little butt-boys around with them everywhere. Thinking of what he would have given some nights, to have his John with him. To have John...
The new lieutenant snorts, but when he speaks again, there's an edge of sadness there. Something like loss, maybe. "Nobody else ever does what you do," he whispers, not daring to touch, clearly wanting to. "Nobody else ever even wants to, with me..."
Russ feels a shiver run up his spine. Oh yes, oh yes, the game they play, on these nights when they're lucky enough to be in the same room together. His boy likes being topped, overpowered, split open and claimed. He likes to struggle, likes the way kisses feel on bruised skin, likes teeth and hard entries. John's never liked pain, not for pain's sake, but he enjoys knowing that he can lose control, that control can be wrested from him, even if he doesn't let it go without a fight,
A fight that's become more and more of a challenge over the past few years.
And to be the only man who does that for him, the only man who can force him to submit...it's addicting.
Just like John himself, honestly.
"I want that," he growls, leaning in and letting his lips brush the rim of John's ear. "And I'd be extremely displeased if you let anybody else have what's mine..."
The new lieutenant smiles and sucks air and reaches out, reaches over. "Russ..." he groans, a breathy, needy little groan. "Russ, please..."
That please, so desperate, gives the kid away completely, and the major wants to laugh at the spike of pleasure that runs through him. Tonight's going to be good. He fucking knows it.
"You know which room is mine, lieutenant?" he growls in that ear.
"Oh, oh, fuck..." John groans, pitching forward, the white material of his parade pants pulling tight across tight muscle.
"Sounds better than cadet, doesn't it, John?" Russ continues, wishing like hell he could slap that upraised ass. It's really begging to be slapped right now. "And here's your first order. Get this perfect," and the older man can't resist a quick love tap, he can always blame it on the beer later, "ass of yours upstairs."
"Sir..."
"And don't you dare unwrap it for me. Not a button, not a single snap," Russ adds, keeping his calm, not wanting John to know just how goddamn arousing he finds this, not wanting John to see - at this stage of the evening, anyway - just how much power the kid truly does hold over him.
It's what John needs, too, because his eyes close and he's trembling, just a little.
But he doesn't answer.
"Acknowledge, el-tee," Russ warns.
"Rrr...Roger that. Sir."
And he vanishes into the house, letting a swirl of AC/DC out after him.
Russ is staying here, with Zach. They were roommates for three years when they were going through West Point; there are no secrets between them, no judgments, and that same courtesy had been extended to the kid from day one. Zach even knows about them, and the only thing he's ever asked is for it not to become his issue, ever.
So, considering the number of people in this house right now, discretion is of importance. So Russ lets the seconds tick around on the face of his watch, trying not to think about John waiting for him in that parade uniform, about the kid stripping it off for the last time for him, about seeing his boy naked, spread out beneath him, hips lifted and neck bared, for him... and he flicks the remains of his cigar into the damp grass beyond the deck.
Fuck it.
Thirty-eight seconds is a fucking long head start.
Russ tried to be unobtrusive as he made his way through the bottom floor of his old friend’s house, up the stairs and down the little hallway back towards one of the rooms Zach kept up for the cadets. He’s been here before, on those rare, stolen nights over the past four years. When he’d fly up from wherever the hell he was in the world and John would take a pass and they’d find each other again in the darkness...
But tonight, tonight, John’s got the bedside lamp on, long limbs folded up around his cigar as he sits there, smoking carelessly, the collar and top three buttons of his parade coat thrown open. He looks up at Russ as he comes in, rolling that smoldering cubano between his fingers.
“Major,” he says with a yawn, stretching a hand out behind him and settling his weight down on it, that chest of his hidden beneath the smooth expanse of cadet gray that doesn’t really belong on him any more. “It’s a good cigar.”
Russ feels a rumble starting up in him at the sight. That’s the game. The game they both want to play tonight. The game that’s not quite a game, not for him anyway, and he almost feels bad about pulling John into his rank kink...
But then, way the kid’s arching up, screaming fuck me hard with that long, lean body of his, Russ doesn’t think he minds too much.
“So you thought you’d slack off to finish it?” he growls, grabbing the chair from the corner desk and shoving it under the door handle, stalking over towards the bed. He grabs the opened edge of the parade jacket. “Thought you’d do exactly what I told you not to?”
John tenses a bit, that cigar ceasing to move. “It’s...the collar...I couldn’t breath in it, sir,” he mutters.
“Bullshit. You had it closed all day,” Russ snaps, leaning over the kid.
“It’s hot in here,” John tries, those blue eyes wide, faux-fear growing. It’s very, very realistic. And that’s his boy, all right. Kid never does anything by halves.
The major reaches around and gets as much of that short hair in his fist as he can, jerking back hard enough to draw a whimper. “You want hot, John? Try Guatamala in July with ninety pounds of gear on your back...”
His boy sucks his lower lip into his mouth and Russ’ cock starts taking a definite interest in the proceedings. “I...thought I had more time to pull back together,” he admits
“So you did think you could disobey me,” the older man grumbles, bringing his lips right along the exposed edge of John’s collarbone, tasting the day’s sweat on his skin, that salty sweetness delicious, unlike any he’ found in another. “You thought I wouldn’t find out.”
“Oh, fuck...sir, please...please...”
“Don’t lie to me, lieutenant!” he growls, jerking again.
“...Major Morrison,” he whispers, “Major, I’m sorry...”
God help me, Russ thinks, as his growing arousal spikes, his rank going straight to his groin. “Sorry for what?” he urges, pushing for control of the game John’s started here. “What are you sorry for, lieutenant?”
“I...I didn’t follow your orders,” John says, squirming a bit, almost smiling.
“Damn right you didn’t,” Russ replies sharply and gets a leg up on the bed, dragging John down to the quilt top by the hair, plucking that cigar away from him and laying it aside on the nightstand. “Fucking disgraceful.”
“Sir, I...”
“Shut up,” he orders, kneeling down right next to the kid and going back to that elegant neck, nipping. “Just shut up, John. Violating Article 92 on your goddamn graduation day. Bucking one of my orders...”
“Sir...” the kid tries to protest.
“I should slap you with goddamn paperwork, shouldn’t I?” he snarls, straddling John’s thighs and slamming him down to the quilt with his free hand. “I could fucking court-martial you, discharge you right the fuck now. We could make your commission the shortest in the history of the Army...”
“Sir, no, please,” John breathes, begging now as Russ continues to tease his throat, his jaw, lips everywhere but on his mouth. “Please, not that...”
“Then what, John? What should I do with a lieutenant who can’t take orders?”
And his new lieutenant turns his head. Closing his eyes. Offering his throat. And one hand slides up Russ’ side. Pulling him closer.
“Tell me what to do,” John whispers. “Anything you want, I’ll do it. Anything, major, anything you want...”
The major chokes back his groan at those words, at the sight of that throat bared to him, and opens his hand slowly, letting the hair slide in between them, closing back around it, lifting it up off the bed. “Is this what you think?” he asks softly, using the dangerous tone he normally reserves for discipline sessions with the troops, and bites lightly, savoring the way John shudders up into him. “That it? You can pay for your mistake with this fucking amazing body of yours? Everything’ll be just dandy?”
A shiver runs through the younger man, and that hand against Russ’ side digs in. “I can follow orders, sir,” he pleads, pulling at the older man’s civilian shirt. “I can. Please...”
The Ranger smirks at him.
Rolls off to the side.
And flicks the pocket knife out of his back pocket.
His boy’s eyes go wide, legitimately wide, genuinely shocked, trying to figure out the four-inch serrated blade that Russ drags up the smooth, heavy surface of his parade coat.
But he doesn’t move.
Not a fraction of an inch, as Russ lays the tip of the knife right at the hollow of the lieutenant’s throat.
“Any order I give you?”
John’s adam’s apple bobs, swallowing, but he nods, tight. “Yes.”
“Then hold very, very still for me John,” Russ whispers in his ear.
Tips the knife to horizontal.
And slashes down.
As hard and as fast he can.
Collar to groin.
Buttons fly fucking everywhere, scattering across the thick shag carpet, hitting the walls in a clatter of brass. John arches up, gasping, parade coat falling open to reveal wifebeater and suspenders and tanned, smooth skin...
“Fuck, Russ, oh fuck...” he’s panting, eyes half closed, lips parted, white parade pants tenting, nudging up against the older man’s thigh. “Russ, please...”
The Ranger has one hand twisted up in his boy’s undershirt in an instant, hauling him up off the bed. “Russ?” he growls in John’s ear, overriding the babbled apologies that come almost instantly, the kid scrambling for purchase. “Russ, lieutenant? You are really in the shit now, you hear me? Show some goddamn respect for your superiors!”
“Major Morrison, sir, please, I didn’t... I didn’t mean...”
“Oh, I think you did,” Russ tells him, and he lets John fall back to the covers. “I think you’re trying to provoke me. Trying to get me to punish you for being such a bad, bad lieutenant.”
“N-no, no sir...”
“Then you are a bad lieutenant, Smith? Is that what you’re telling me?” The older man covers his boy’s body with his own pinning him, squeezing the kid’s sides hard with his own thighs as he slides a hand back into his hair, jerking back.
John can’t move, not with the skills he’s learned on the West Point boxing team and in their unarmed combatives classes. It’s going to take Ranger training to get this boy up to par, Russ thinks with some small part of his mind not focused on fucking John senseless tonight. And when that time comes, he’s going to enjoy teaching this lithe, beautiful body everything his own knows.
But tonight, those aren’t the lessons he wants to impart.
“Are you really unable to follow my orders?”
“No sir!” John snaps, some of that steel in him coming into play now.
Russ smirks, and bites his throat. Hard. Not hard enough to break skin, but it still has John crying out, and then crying out again, as the major slaps his cheek.
“No? So you can’t follow orders?”
John’s blue eyes flare. “I can follow orders, sir!”
The Ranger has to look, has to touch. His own arousal is starting to strain against his jeans, but it doesn’t match the sight of John’s cock hard and leaking, throbbing in that parade white, precum soaking the fabric. He’s truly massive, John is, long and thick, almost too big for Russ’ hand. But right now, he doesn’t take it out or cup it or anything like that. No, he drags one finger down the trapped length, drawing a pained groan from his boy.
Russ chuckles. “Then get your hands up, Lieutenant Smith. Grab the fucking headboard and don’t let go.”
John sucks his lower lip into his mouth, but nods, stretching his arns overhead. He has a bit of trouble with it, the jacket he’s got on wasn’t meant for this kind of movement, but he manages, wrapping long fingers through the wrought iron bars. It opens that jacket even more, exposing more of his chest, nipples hard under the sweatstained white whitebeater he’s go on underneath. It’s a vision, and the major makes a mental note to thank whatever grandmother foisted this antique of a bed off on his old buddy Zach. It’s perfect for this game.
“Hands...hands up, sir,” John says, a little breathless from need.
“Good man, Smith, you did something a two year old could do,” Russ says with as much sarcasm as he can force over his own burning need to bury himself in his boy. He rocks into his boy’s groin for another of those delicious groans, grinding as much of his body into John’s as he can. “Let’s see how you do with a more complicated order, shall we?”
“W-what...what order, sir?”
“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers, and lets his knife make a reappearance, right below one armpit, “and don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”
John’s eyes are wide, irises blown to black, but he sucks air and nods again, once, tight. Doesn’t even flinch as the tip of Russ’ pocket knife slices open the seam on the underside of his arm.
He wasn't exactly expecting John to actually hold his breath, although Russ isn't exactly opposed to it. The kid can comfortably hold his breath underwater for, according to the paperwork Russ got from the preliminary Spec Ops readiness evals, one minute and forty-eight seconds.
Russ makes sure he doesn’t take nearly that long to slit the seams on John’s jacket, gray wool and gold braid snapping apart. Those damn suspenders are next, cut along his shoulders. He tugs that undershirt up and out of those fucking pants, over the tip of John’s leaking, neglected cock, and with it pulled off that young chest, Russ splits the thing down the middle and rips it off him.
John’s laying in an pile of rags, gray and gold and white, throat sucking in, wanting air, wanting contact, wanting... me, Russ thinks with a shiver, and closes the knife, tossing it aside.
“Better,” he murmurs, laying back down on top of his boy and slipping a hand underneath him, undoing one of those ruined suspenders. “So much better now, aren’t you, John?”
The young man, his new lieutenant, nods frantically, eyes beginning to water. He needs air, Russ knows, and smiles as he takes in those fluttering eyelids, those flaring nostrils, and covers that perfect mouth with his own. Breathing in, right as he reaches up with that cut length of elastic and leather bands.
Right as he ties John’s hands to the headboard.
“Much, much better, Lieutenant Smith,” Russ says approvingly, and rocks forward on him once again. “Breathe for me.”
And the noise that his boy releases, once he inhales, once he realizes, once he tugs, is pure, wanton heat.
Russ can't resist, can't resist at all, and reaches back to slap John lightly on the ass. "What the fuck did I tell you about shutting the fuck up?" he growls, and slides down to take care of that very, very insistent erection, rock hard against his own.
Russ scoots his legs back, back so his ass is right over John’s knees, and kisses his way down his lieutenant’s stomach. Hot, biting kisses, the kind that scrape skin and that light dusting of chestnut hair and linger around the hard peaks of nipples, as he unbuttons John’s pants. It has his boy gasping, straining against the restraints, but he lingers on this task. As torturous as any spanking could be, exactly what John needs right now, but that’s not the reason the older man drags it out as long as he can.
No, not that at all. It’s more selfish than that. He wants to inspect what hopefully, in a little more than a year, will be one of his baby Rangers.
Back when John was just leaving high school, the first time they did this together, the first time Russ had taken him, the boy had been just that; a boy. An assemblage of long limbs and big hands, big feet he hadn’t quite grown into, a strength about him that was still, for all his outdoor adventuring, gangly.
Not any longer.
This is no boy beneath him now.
West Point’s been good for John. He’s put on muscle, the muscle flexing under Russ’ questing lips right now, good muscle. Not as hard, not as refined as it will be some day. It’s the kind of bulk you get from lifting weights and sprinting, things John had to do for the PT test, things cadets do to one-up each other. He received excellent scores on those tests, every semester, but that’s not the kind of strength Russ is interested in.
No, he’s more concerned about whether or not John can tread water for six hours straight, holding a five gallon bucket of air under him as he does it. If John can go on fifteen mile runs, with eighty-pound packs, on a regular basis. If he drag heavy loads through the woods and climb a thirty-foot wall without clear handholds and reserve his strength, flow around an armed opponent with nothing but his quick, quick mind to keep him alive...
“Major,” John begs above him. “Major, please, I’m gonna...”
Russ rims the top of John’s belly button as he fingers the zipper down on those parade pants. There’s a good foundation here. Plenty of time to test it later. And he bites, right at the top of that little indentation, feeling abs flex below his chin.
“Calm down, John. We both know you aren’t going to come until I let you,” he purrs, and unzips.
He nearly gets smacked in the face by a lust-reddened cock the second he slides the damp white fabric off and away. John’s whimpering with relief now, and Russ savors the sound of that as he moves away, just enough to strip those pants away completely, and take in the sight of his boy.
It’s beautiful, how he can reduce John to this puddle of need, melting beneath his touch, and he admires that tanned, toned body for just a moment. Before kneeling between bent legs and flexing toes. Before fluttering his fingers up and down the swollen underside of his boy’s hungry cock, across the sensitive skin of his perinuem, pinkie sweeping back across that hole.
Tight, grasping, and a flush of warmth spreads through Russ’ entire body as he thinks of it. Nobody but him. Nobody’s ever gone here but him. Nobody ever will. That’s his only condition, and John had agreed to it without a second thought.
“Mine,” he growls in a voice he barely recognizes, grabbing blinding for the slick he left in the nightstand. And he’s treated to the sight of John, lifting his head, nodding frantically. Russ closes a hand over the small container of vaseline, nipping at the inside of one young, hard thigh, , tickling through wiry hair, cupping his boy’s balls. “All mine.” He scoops out a healthy handful of slick - they both like it a little on the dry side and tight, but it’s been a year and he’s got no intention of hurting this young man. “My beautiful man...”
And he slides a well-lubed finger all the way inside that silken sheath within his boy.
Cock leaking freely, a flush spreading down to cover his pecs, John whines again. And again, as Russ starts swirling, working him open. A beautiful sound, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Say it, John. Say it for me,” he urges softly as he adds a second finger, taking the intensity way, way down for the moment. Or up, perhaps. All Russ really knows right now is that he can smell their combined arousal in the air around them and feel his boy flexing beneath him and he needs to be balls deep in John and John needs that too, and they both need to come. Right the fuck now. He pulls his fingers out. “Say you’re mine...”
Another moan of pure, tormented pleasure tears loose from his boy’s throat, and Russ can’t take it any longer. He unzips his own jeans and shoves them down as far as he needs to, hissing as his cock hits the cooler air outside its former prison. He grabs one of John’s legs, pulling it flush to his side, scooting in, taking his cock in hand and lining up with that barely stretched hole, pushing just barely in. It’s going to be tight, dear god, it’s going to be...
“Come on, kid. You’re mine, say you’re mine...”
Tears are starting to leak from the corners of John’s tightly closed eyes, but Russ gets his nod. “I...” he whimpers, twisting against those bonds a little harder now, clearly needing friction, contact, all that.
But he’s got to finish his goddamn sentence first.
Russ needs to hear that so badly he can taste it.
“Say it, John!”
The kid raises his other leg, wrapping around, locking his ankles behind the small of the older man’s back. “Russ, I love you...” he whispers in a voice so faint that a shocked Ranger thinks he might have imagined it.
Except for that smile on the kid’s face. As he tightens his legs and fucking pulls himself right on to Russ’ cock, burying him to the hilt.
It is tight, almost unbearably so, and John’s whimpers are more pain that pleasure at this point, but Russ really can’t bring himself to care right now. He falls forward, barely catching himself on his elbows in time to keep from crashing down onto the younger man beneath him. John arches up into him, every square inch of their skin slipping against each other, sweat-slick and burning hot, the kid’s rock-hard length trapped up and begging for release. Their mouths meet again, in another of the sloppy, uncoordinated kisses that tell Russ just how far gone his boy is. How far gone he is.
He’s already thrusting lightly in, hips moving of their own accord, and he can’t remember the last time he needed anybody like this, this badly. How much he needs to bite down and spill and claim, honestly and truly. How much he’s needed to since he first laid eyes on John. On the sullen, sad boy trying to smoke his way out of the grief of a wasted, loveless childhood, wishing for a future he thought hopeless. On the boy who’s managed to climb above it all, who took the chance that was given to him and never looked back.
And suddenly, above the desperation of his need for this young man, Russ remembers every letter, every phone call, every furtive, quick visit and every holiday leave he could manage, spent wrapped around each other in Russ’ small apartment in Georgia or some cheap hotel room in New York City.
He’s been there. He’d been the one John had talked to, cried to. Through all of it. Every moment he could manage.
The struggle John went through at West Point, learning to play nice with others, having to learn teamwork for the first time in a place that expects it automatically. Having to help his classmates who were struggling in school, learning that not everybody’s as smart as him, not even in a place like that. Struggling through the classes where he got Cs for the first time in his life. The year of hell he’d committed himself to as a junior, four hours a day in the gym, trying to prep for the spec-ops evals. How he used to haul himself back to his dorm room at 2100, dead tired, two hours of homework still to do and reveille at 0700. Weekend inspections, beat sessions, parades in the snow, parades in the summer heat...
And Russ remembers one moment, one single moment, horrible moment, out of it all. The week the Utah Supreme Court had issued a supoena and John had gotten a special pass and gone back to Salt Lake to testify at Jeff’s final appeal. The one that bastard lost, mostly on John’s calm, dry-eyed testimony, the one that had gotten him ten years in prison for assault and child abuse. Russ had managed to fly in for it, pissing his commander off to no end, but he’d made it. Been there as John collapsed in a hotel bathroom, been there to hold him up until he stopped crying and started smiling again, talking about how his sister was already married and pregnant with his first nephew...
It all passes through Russ in an instant, and he clasps John to him tightly, pistoning wildly into him, feeling the younger man’s cock leaving trails of moisture in the frictionless space between them, hearing him crying out with every upthrust.
“Come for me,” he gasps into the younger man’s mouth in between when their lips meet and pull apart and meet again. “John, baby, come for me...”
John’s head falls back and Russ has to cover his parted, kiss-swollen lips with a rough hand, fast, because he’s screaming through his climax, muscles clamping down vice-hard around that cock inside him. It pulls Russ over the edge, pumping and pumping and pumping as deeply into his boy as he can, teeth latching on to the joint of John’s shoulder, biting and sucking and biting, tasting blood to keep from screaming himself, both of them falling off the edge of the world together.
+++++
Russ comes back first, vision blurred, nerves still crackling with the force of...whatever that was.
John’s limp and loose beneath him, fucked out, a trickle of red smearing into the damp sheen of his skin along his shoulder. His mouth is moving a little, like they’re still kissing, wherever he’s slipped off to. His hands are soft, fingers still wound through the bars. There’s not a trace of the last four years of stress and pain and agony and victory, anywhere on his face.
With a small moan, the major manages to pull himself from his lover’s body and finds the knife on the floor where he dropped it, the wet wipes from where he hid ‘em under the bed. He lays back over John’s senseless form and kisses him softly as he cuts the bonds free and pulls those red wrists into his hands, rubbing softly. He leaves that task to his left hand, alternating, as he goes for a handful of wipes, cleansing sweat and seed away from first his boy, chest and thighs, where muscle is beginning to release, and then himself.
Once he’s sure they’re both okay, he rolls the quilt up and around them both, John automatically finding him under the covers, even in sleep, sighing as Russ pulls him close.
They don’t always cuddle. They usually don’t, actually. It’s too...
But after what John said tonight...it’s not that at all.
Russ thinks he might need it, too.
He reaches over John’s sleeping form, going for the smoldering stub of that cigar, one or two good pulls left on it, tasting his boy.
The nicotine does nothing for his nerves.
Russ, I love you...
The Ranger knows the world John’s walking into, what the slightest hint of such a thing could mean for his career, for him... he’s so, so proud of what John’s done for himself, what he’s won, what he’s earned, with his butter bars and class ring and acceptance to Ranger School, the only cadet in his class to actually make the cut. Russ can already see the signs; there are men who serve in the Army for a living, and then there are the men for whom the Army is their life.
John’s going to be the latter.
Just like Russ.
Sex is one thing. Sex can be hidden, disguised, overlooked. But love...love’s quite another thing altogether. It’ll ruin them. It will. Sooner or later. He knows it. The end of something good is coming.
But they haven’t lived it yet, and right now, for Russ, there’s no point in jumping ahead to the heartbreak. He’s good. Right here. Like this. With John.
“Love you,” he whispers, meaning it, heart gathering up and stopping, just for a moment, wondering if he’ll ever be able to say it again. If he can ever tell this amazing young man when he’s awake. “I love you too, John Smith...”
In his sleep, John nuzzles closer, and Russ chews on the end of that cigar.
Wondering.
