Paper Doll - Part Six of Ten
Sep. 15th, 2011 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Face/OMC, Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of domestic violence and underage
Summary:
Templeton convinces Murdock to take him to see John, and what happens is nothing that he was expecting...
“You gotta tell me where he is, Murdock.”
“No, Temp, no I don’t.”
“Come on, buddy, I know he lives on the property somewhere...”
“Yeah...”
“I just want to ask him one thing, that’s it. I won’t make a scene...”
Murdock stared back at Templeton from where he’d been cornered in the library. He’d been perfectly friendly that morning, after breakfast, as he always was, until Templeton had innocently asked him where he might be able to find John Smith. Then he’d all but bolted from the room. It’d taken the young man twenty minutes to get him to the point where he would say anything about it at all, and still, Murdock was eyeing him so damn warily. Like a deer with a wolf after it, and Templeton was fast losing hope that he’d able to get anything out of the butler.
Murdock bit at a cuticle, like he was really thinking about it, and then he shook his head slowly. “After all the...Temp, he don’t wanna see you...”
That was more promising that Templeton had even dared to hope, but Murdock pushed him aside instead, making for the door, before he could ask anything else.
“Murdock, buddy,” he said desperately, grabbing on to the butler’s sleeve as he tried to walk away. “Please. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“No...”
“I need to talk with him, HM. Please, please help me out here...”
And the other man pushed dark hair out of his face, staring right into Templeton’s eyes for a breathless moment, and turned. “Come on then, Temp. I’ll show ya.”
The walk through the snowy grounds seemed to take forever, each step through the white a muffled reminder of how beautiful it had been in the summer, how green and lush, with all the world awake. How he’d walked these very ways, that first morning he’d seen John, and Templeton felt his lashes thickening with freezing tears when they turned down the little lane that led to that forgotten garden. Murdock didn’t look at him the entire way, not until they rounded a low hill, until finally they stopped in front of a very small cottage, chimney smoking into the crisp, cold morning.
Murdock’s hands twitched a little, and he smiled at . “Let me go first, Templeton, alright?”
Mouth suddenly dry, mind anticipating a thousand ways this could go wrong, the young man nodded.
The butler skipped ahead the last three steps on the path and knocked on the door. After a few moments, it opened outward, a hushed conversation taking place, and Templeton straightened, fearful, as the door swung out a little more.
Revealing John, his tall frame wrapped in an old, thick sweater, a book in hand, finger holding his place. Templeton felt his heart speeding up, just seeing him so close again, remembering how good he felt, how good those hands felt around him, how much he’d loved...
But that’s all over now, he reminded himself. He was just here for help. Advice. Nothing more.
“Come in, Mr. Peck,” John said softly, and after a long moment, Templeton followed him inside.
Stepping in, pulling his gloves off, looking around, Templeton felt a pang in his chest.
The cottage was tiny, barely enough room for a stove and a bed, a small table in the corner by the fireplace, a single chair pushed out from it. The rest of the space was filled with books. Stacks and shelves and piles of books, all looking well-loved and well-read, neatly organized by size and title. Fiction and philosophy and histories. A few even had French and German titles on the spines. How such a man as this, Templeton wondered, a man who was obviously educated, could end up in a job such as this. Did it have something to do with the Colonel? With what he was, his homosexuality...
But his contemplation was interrupted, shattered, as John closed the door behind them and set his book aside on the ledge of the small window.
“Can I take your coat, Mr. Peck?” the gardener asked softly, holding out a hand.
Templeton looked at him, hoping for a glimmer of something, of anything, that would tell him this man still carried feelings for him, that there was anything at all still there, but John’s face was blank. Empty except for the most basic of expressions, a mild not-quite smile, and for a moment, the young blonde almost despaired. But he’d come here for a reason, and he had to perservere towards those ends.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, shrugging it off and handing it over.
John looked at him again, and Templeton thought he might have seen the slightest bit of...but he was probably imagining things. “Your scarf, Mr. Peck?”
He shifted a bit. That was the only thing keeping the bruises hidden, and despite the fact that Templeton had planned on using those at the right moment, should they be needed, he found himself suddenly overcome with shame instead. “I’ll keep it for now.”
“As you wish,” and John gestured at the chair as he took up his own position on the edge of the bed. “Please, Mr. Peck, sit down. Tell me what this thing is that Murdock wanted you to talk with me about. Something about the preparations for Saturday?”
Templeton looked at the chair, and then back to John, who was watching him with those soft, soft eyes. Like nothing at all was wrong with the world, like nothing at all would ever be or ever was, and he realized this was the stupidest fucking idea he’d had in a long, long time. Almost as stupid as coming to New York in the first place. What had he been planning on doing, saying to this man? John, please help me, he almost killed me last night and I don’t know how to escape or you were right, you were right, so what should I do now? or something like that? Hadn’t John already told him he needed to stop asking for help, needed to not rely on anyone, needed to be his own man?
Well, he could do that. He could figure this out for himself. He had to.
“Yes,” he said, running a hand back through his cold hair, blurting out the first piece of bullshit he could think of. “Yes, the Colonel asked me to double check on what kind of lights you were planning on using in the trees themselves. I know we purchased a large quantity of those new-fangled electrics, but he’s a bit old-fashioned, the Colonel, and he just wants to ensure...”
“His Old World charm, of course,” John said, nodding. “We’ll make sure the lights work, Mr. Peck, and we’ll make sure iwe have back-ups, just in case.”
“Thank you,” he replied, and went for his coat, palms sweating. “That’s all I had, really, so I’ll just get out of your hair now and leave you to your reading...”
Then John was up, right next to him, between him and his retreat, reaching for that peg. Their hands met on the collar of his jacket, and for a moment, for a fleeting, glorious moment...
The gardener cleared his throat and moved his hand away. “Is that all you came to talk to me about, Mr. Peck? You could have sent Murdock for that.”
“I thought...thought I should...” and he faltered, pulling his coat on to cover the lapse.
John nodded, and smiled, ever so faintly. “You look well, Mr. Peck. I’m glad to know the months here have been kind to you.”
“We’re very happy,” Templeton said, hoping the bitterness was out of his voice, twisting that ring on his finger. “We’re...happy together, the Colonel and I.”
“Happy?” the older man asked thoughtfully. “Yes, happy. Of course you are...”
He nodded back. “Yes, very happy...mister, Mr. Smith.”
Their eyes met, close, close enough to touch, and Templeton felt his willpower start to crumble. There was nothing he would have liked more than to fall into John’s arms, right then and there, be held as he’d once been held, break down and have John tell him in that wonderful voice of his that it was okay, that everything would be okay...
But he couldn’t. They couldn’t.
That time had passed.
“Here, kid,” John said instead, tugging on the edges of his long woolen coat, pulling it more firmly around him, one hand moving up to his scarf, loosened up around his neck. “You’ll catch your death of cold out there on a day like this, if you don’t...” His fingers played up the ends of the scarf, tightening a little, and Templeton couldn’t stop the jerk, or his hiss of pain, as the strong knit tugged painfully along the abused skin from the night before.
John stopped. Immediately. Just looking at him. Templeton felt a flush of shame start spreading over his cheeks, heating him through, and he grabbed blindly behind him for the door’s latch, needing to go, needing to get out of here before John asked...
“What was that?”
He bit his lip. “Nothing,” Templeton muttered, and turned, going for the latch.
A hand fell on his shoulder, squeezing lightly through the jacket, while another dipped under the scarf, pulling it open. “It’s not nothing, is it, kid?”
Templeton’s forehead hit the door. “Mr. Smith, please...”
“What did you really come here to talk to me about today?” John asked, fingers ghosting over the bare skin of his neck, moving down, pulling the last roll of the scarf away, and then those fingers sprang away. “Oh, god...”
He squeezed his eyes shut. His bruises discovered, that shame laid bare... “It’s not...”
“What did he do to you, Templeton?” John asked, breathing his name like a prayer. “Tell me, kid.”
“It was my fault,” he swallowed, remembering his stupidity from the night before. “I tried to...”
He was spun around then, John grabbing him and swinging his back around, pinning him there, caught between the older man’s firm body and the unyielding wood of the door. “This was not your fault, Temp! Nothing you did caused this!” he growled, anger echoing out through his voice. Struck by that, Templeton felt himself starting to shake, and he couldn’t bear to bring his eyes up, to meet John’s, to see whatever was there. Then, after a moment, those big, rough fingers brushed the black and blue skin very, very carefully, and when he spoke again, it was soft. Sad. “You don’t deserve this kind of treatment, kid, not for any reason...”
“I’m not saying I deserved it, John,” he said softly. “But I broke his fucking rules, so...”
“By doing what?” John prompted, moving a hand to the young man’s side, fingers stroking gently.
“Called him by his first name.”
“Fuck...” John groaned.
“I didn’t...he wanted me to tell me I loved him, but I thought, I thought he was giving me permission...”
“Listen to me, Temp,” the gardener replied, hardening again, like he had a point that he desperately needed to make. “Kid, you should never need permission to call your lover by his first name, not ever. Just because you did that, doesn’t mean he had the right to choke you like this...”
“I know that! But it’s one of his rules and if I’m supposed to live here, live with him, I can’t go breaking his damn rules, I can’t...” and he laughed mirthlessly. “Which is quite obvious.”
“Then what are you going to do, kid? Accept this kind of treatment? Stick around until he finally does kill you for some minor infraction? Live like this for the rest of your life, scared of crossing over the line?”
“No! Goddamn...” the younger man snapped, and pushed John away, crossing over to the fireplace, staring into the fire, everything beginning to rage deep down. All the anger, all the humiliation and and the confusion and the hurt he’d felt, since the day the Colonel first touched him.
“Then what, Templeton?” John asked, coming up behind him, that hand returning to his shoulder. “What are you going to do?”
He sighed and bowed his head between his arms, gripping the mantle. “I don’t know, John. I need to leave, I accept that, but he’ll find me. I know he will...”
“And then...” the gardener sighed, laying his chin on Templeton’s shoulder. As unexpected as that was, the younger man stiffened against it, and John immediately pulled away again. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, falling with his back to the fireplace, right next to Templeton’s shaking hand. “Kid, I am so sorry...”
And for a long moment, the only thing heard in the small cottage was the crackling of wood, burning down in the fireplace between them.
“What are you sorry for, John?” Templeton finally said in a low voice, unable to take the stillness any longer. Staring ahead at the wall in front of him. Trying not to look over at the man next to him. “What did you do that was so goddamn bad here?”
“I...I should have told you...how bad he can get. I’ve seen...I’ve seen it,” he whispered, hands beginning to roam a little. Uncertain, slow, but moving yet. Sliding up and down the warming sleeves of his jacket. “I’ve seen him do horrible things to boys under his command, boys who couldn’t stop him from doing what he was doing...”
Templeton sighed, despair washing over him. “Is that what you think I am, John? A boy? Some pathetic child who needs rescuing?”
“No, not at all. That’s not what you are.” John’s voice was starting to tremble and Templeton could feel himself starting to shake, rough pads of long fingers slipping around his palms, attempting to find purchase there. “You’re no child, but you do desire an escape, don’t you? Wish for somebody to take you away from all of this?” His lips were soft against Templeton’s ear, ghosting around the delicate outer shell of it. His chest was firm against Templeton’s spine, laid out against it. His hands were twined into Templeton’s, warm heat growing between them. “No child, but you do long to be rescued, lad. You long for it so. If you’ll let me...”
And John’s burgeoning erection was swelling up against the cleft of his ass, hard enough now to feel through layers and layers of winter clothing.
The younger man stiffened then, cursing himself for being lulled by those soft and caring words, that gentle tenor. Of course. Of course. He could weep over it. Of course. John just wanted him, wanted him the same way the Colonel wanted him, wanted to take him, wanted to own him.
That’s all you’re good for, that evil little voice whispered in the back of his mind. No better than chattle to be possessed, a weak, craven thing such as you...
“No!” he snapped, shoving John off him and shooting away, as far as he could in the cramped space of the older man’s home. “No, goddamn, you won’t...”
“Kid...” John pleaded, eyes wide and hands open.
Part of Templeton, seeing that, hearing that, wanted to walk over, take it, be drawn in again against the broad comfort of that chest he hadn’t felt in...but...
“No, John! Not from you, too!” he said, less heated, less certain, confusion starting to swirl up in his mind, clouding everything. Last night, right now...what was he supposed to do with all of this? What could he? He knew John’s intentions, didn’t he? Hadn’t he once seen, in fleeting glimpses, the very bottom of this man’s heart? He trusted him, he did. He’d come here today, trusting him. And yet...yet he couldn’t bring himself... “I...I couldn’t bear it.”
“Couldn’t bear to have me close, Templeton? Couldn’t bear to be close to me?” the gardener asked, holding his distance, clearly not wanting to, judging from the way his weight was shifting on his feet.
The younger man sighed, eying the door, wondering if he shouldn’t just leave. Walk away. Forget John all over again. If he could. “No, I can’t...I can’t be...can’t...”
“Can’t be what, kid?” John asked in the softest voice Templeton had ever heard from him.
And he collapsed, sinking slowly to the floor, knees tucking up around him. Templeton felt like crying, felt like he should be crying, but there were no tears there. A vast emptiness was opening up within him, a rift, tearing him away from everything he thought he loved, everything he’d ever had. The Colonel, the security of somebody who cared for him, knowing he had a place in the world, somewhere he belonged...
“Six months...”
Templeton looked up, pulling his face up and away from the black despair that was starting to overwhelm him, and was met with a pair of gentle blue eyes that held his own so carefully. The younger man felt as if he could break, just from that gaze alone, if it were to all somehow go wrong.
Again.
As it probably would.
“Six months,” John re-iterated, kneeling on the floor, hands on his down-bent knee. “Six months, lad, wondering if you were getting along alright. If you were...happy.” He closed his eyes, and bowed his head. “I told myself you were happy, content with him, but this...”
Then John stopped, a flush spreading across his cheeks. For Templeton, who was listening with growing disbelief, that, that right there, was enough for him to reach out and lay his smooth hand over one of those rough ones. “I...was that you, I saw, John? Outside my window yesterday? Did I see you?“
“Yesterday?” And the gardener drew a shuddering breath, letting his fingers run through Templeton’s, turning their palms together, squeezing lightly. “Yesterday, yes, I was looking up at your room. Yesterday, and every day since the afternoon you chose...chose him and not...”
“Not John Smith.” Templeton said it flatly, with finality, and the gardener winced, as if he’d been struck. He realized, in a shot of horror that kinked up in his guts, what he’d just said, what he’d just more than implied, and the young blonde only barely caught that big hand as it tried to unwind from his own.
“Let me go, Mr. Peck,” John said, sounding defeated, dead, eyes away. “Let me go and go back to your warm comforts. There’s no reason for you to be visiting an old man in his mean little hovel, not on a cold day such as this.”
Heart hammering in his ears, remembering that last conversation between the two of them, the one six months ago, where he had let this man walk out of his life, believing... Templeton shook his head. “No, John, I...”
“Please go,” the older man whispered. “This, I can’t...”
And something in him just cracked open, permitting the words to tumble out, one after another, unstoppable, honest in a way he hated being honest. Things he’d heard in the quiet of his own mind, late at night, the Colonel asleep next to him, that slimy sense of his self-betrayal growing more and more unbearable, with every passing breath.
“There’s no warmth there, John, no comfort. I’ve...” and he turned his fingers back through John’s, pulling out of his little cocoon of misery, stretching out the few feet between them, trying to reach him before he vanished once again, feeling the catch of fine woolen trousers against the rough stone of the floor. “I’ve never felt warm before, or comfortable, or anything like that...I never knew I could, before I...before I met you.”
He saw the gardener’s adam’s apple bob up on his elegant, stubbled neck. Nervous, perhaps. Nervous, hopefully. “Kid...”
“You said once that you loved me,” Templeton said in a voice so quiet it was barely a voice. “Do you love me still, John Smith?”
There was no response, not for a long minute, those bright eyes turned away from him, and the young man felt his heart quail again.
“Fine,” and he stood slowly, letting go of John’s hand, just as he had requested. And Templeton brushed at his knees, looking off towards the door and its little hand-carved latch that would release him back into the cold of the winter beyond John’s tiny cottage, and the summer it still contained. “I shall find my own way free of him. I am sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Smith.”
But the gardener stayed on his knees by the crackling hearth and did not so much as look over, as Templeton lifted the latch and passed out of the comforting little space.
As his booted feet hit the snow outside, he knew, somehow, that he would never find such a man again.
He trudged up the path he’d walked with Murdock only a half hour or so before, their footprints already coated with a fresh dusting of snow from a storm he could see rolling in if he turned his reddening eyes up to the sky. Templeton shook his head as he walked, mind in chaos.
What had happened there?
He’d said...he hadn’t meant to imply that, not at all.
He had come here looking for advice, for an escape, for a way...and he’d thrown that back in John’s face. Once again, rejected him through his own stupidity, his own fear...
What a damn fool thing I am, he thought bitterly to himself, and wrapped his long jacket a bit tighter to him, the breeze beginning to turn into a biting wind, kicking up little flurries of white snow around his leaden feet, to hurt him so again.
His thoughts seemed to turn blacker and blacker, as he toiled up the path, almost back to the main walk to the house. It was a good half-mile away at this point, and the wind seemed to be growing colder, more vicious, the snow beginning to fall in thick eddies, caught up in all of it. Fettered to the will of a force stronger than its own...
So much like me.
What in damnation am I to do now?
And then.
“Templeton!”
It seemed very faint, as if yelled from a great distance, or from a long time ago, and he kept going.
“Templeton, lad, stop!”
That was closer, more immediate, and the young blonde turned into it, wondering if maybe it wasn’t...
And it was, because there was John, bare-headed, sans coat, work pants shoved hastily into a high pair of rubber wellingtons, coming towards him, fast through the piling snow.
His own feet froze immediately, heart pounding in his ears. Wondering, wondering if...
“Templeton,” John said again, the word freezing into a cloud around his face as he approached and stopped, a few paces away, hands shoved in his pockets. “Templeton, what you asked me...”
“Yes?”
“I can’t...I can’t lose you again,” he said, those blue eyes now as piercing, as icy-blue, as the world around them, a conviction that Templeton had not yet heard in him. Some kind of old strength reasserting itself, he thought, and wondered again, for a brief moment, what he must have been like in his days as an Army officer, as a young man on the battlefield. “I won’t lose you again, Templeton. So I must know something, lad...”
He nodded slowly. “Anything.”
John watched him for a moment more, and then took those last few paces separating them as if in an instant, laying a freezing-cold hand against the smooth skin of Templeton’s cheek. He could feel the older man shaking, but there was nothing reading there in those blue, blue eyes. Nothing given away. Everything hidden.
Right up until the second they closed together.
When their lips met for the first time in six months.
As if for the first time, all over again.
And Templeton told his lover everything that could be said with his body alone.
Lips moved, a tongue thrust, and the repression of the past years was all tearing apart at once and letting him out, letting him fall into this single moment. All the younger man could do was hold on for dear life as the gardener swept him up and around, clean off his feet, back connecting with something firm, a tree perhaps, and he felt, then, that he might never touch down again.
+++++
By the time they got back to John's little cottage, the snow was coming down thick and hard, covering them both, and the gardener's exposed skin was red, chill to the touch. He couldn't quite bend his fingers enough, so Templeton pulled the cord that lifted the latch inside and drew them both in.
A swirl of snow followed them, falling to melt on the floor of the warm space. Templeton stripped off his own jacket and gloves - ring falling down into the finger, forgotten - and scarf, heedless of the necklace of bruises he was wearing, taking John's hands in his own, leading him closer to the fire in its little hearth.
"You're a damn fool, forgetting a coat like that," he murmured, rubbing lightly. "Going out in your shirtsleeves."
The older man shivered appreciatively, and shook his head. "And if I hadn't gone after you, kid? What then?"
Templeton shook his head, not wanting to even think about that, and ran his fingers around those thick wrists in his hands. "Your shirt's wet," he said softly, pulling at the edge of the touch, snow-covered fabric, undoing one of those little buttons there. "It's soaked."
"It's nothing," John said.
"You'll get sick," Templeton replied, undoing the other sleeve of the older man’s rough shirt, and letting one hand stray up to his lover's collar. "I can’t bear to think of you getting sick for me."
The gardener looked down as the top button was slipped from its hole. His cheeks were flushed, most likely from the temperatures they’d just escaped. "I couldn't let you go back, thinking..."
"I could never think ill of you, John," he told the older man softly, and undid the next button in the line, baring that broad chest, that light dusting of silvery hair there. "You've done nothing to deserve my scorn."
"You've done nothing to earn mine, either..."
Another button slid out.
"I was horrible to you," he murmured, pressing his lips to a bared patch of snow-cooled skin, feeling a shiver run through the gardener. "Terrible..."
And another.
A warming hand stroked into the younger man’s hair, breaking up his carefully slicked and styled curls, breaking them back into their natural state, long and messy. “Things were said, Templeton. It’s alright, lad...”
Another button. Another kiss, right above John’s belly-button.
“No, John. No, it’s not. I hurt you...”
The last button, and then he was bending, tugging the edges of that shirt out of his lover’s trousers, just as big hands titled his head back. Their eyes meeting.
“I hurt you, lad,” John said, his voice thick with sorrow. “I hurt you because I was hurting, because I was selfish and wanted you...”
“You have me,” he whispered, barely above the crackling of the fire, laying a hand on the bare skin of John’s waist. “I want you to have me.”
“Templeton, kid, if that man...”
He shook his head, reaching up to wrap his arms around John’s neck, kissing him lightly on the lips, nuzzling into his bared shoulder. “I don’t care if he hurts me. You won’t hurt me. You can’t. You won’t.”
“Templeton,” John breathed, his blue eyes soft in the flickering light of the fire, the world darkening outside the bleary-glass windows of the little cottage. Everything sinking into a premature twilight, under the influence of the thick-falling snow. Their bodies were close, his lover’s breath hot on his neck, and Templeton had to step away to strip the shirt from his shoulders.
And everything from the summer came rushing back to him at once.
Underneath those mean, snow-wet clothes was the same man Temp had found in the warmth of the July grass. Not a different man, no. Just more, so much more. Those taught, long muscles, those scars from his days in the service...the officer. The war hero. The man who’d been, who still was, proud and unbroken by the bastard who owned them.
Something about that made Templeton feel almost dizzy, like he was out of his body, like he was Clara from that Nutcracker ballet in Manhatten, the one the Colonel had taken him to a week ago. The part where the rats attacked and the nutcracker saved her and swept her away and she found the prince under it all...
You’re a damn fool, Templeton, he told himself again. He was no child of some noble family, and John was no prince. But yet, something was happening in this little room right now. It was happening, and he wanted it. More than anything else in the world, he longed for it to come to pass.
“Make love to me, John.”
John sighed, and laid his forehead down on the younger man’s, cradling him close. “Dear boy.”
Had that been a yes? A no? Templeton trembled, suddenly feeling far too warm in his heavy winter clothes, and he clung to John, scared. “Please,” he pleaded again. “Please, John, make love to me, show me. You promised once you’d show me...”
“And then we were so rudely interrupted,” John growled deep in his throat, pulling him backwards nonetheless, pulling him around until the back of his legs hit the edge of John’s little, low bed. “I was so inconsiderately prevented from keeping my promise to you.”
Templeton smiled, warmth racing through him, and wound a hand into John’s, bringing it to his mouth, kissing knuckles scarred with white spiderwebs of old injuries. “You should keep it now.”
“Yes,” John murmured in his ear, kissing the soft skin just behind. “I should keep it now.”
“You can,” he replied and started shrugging out of his jacket. “You must.”
Another kiss, and then Templeton found himself flat on his back, on the bed, staring up at his half-naked lover, one big hand holding him lightly to the thin pad and its thick, handmade quilts. “I will, my darling. But you must do something for me.”
“Anything,” the younger man whispered, neck craning up of its own accord, body begging for that which his heart so desperately yearned for. “I’ll do anything for you.”
And John gave, a light kiss, another affectionate ruffle of his damp hair. “Then allow me to undress you, sweetheart. Let me see you, every inch of you.”
He moaned at that.
John chuckled, and pulled Templeton’s scarf away, the rich tie free of its knot. “I love you, you know, lad,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Templeton said, and a flush of warmth ran through him as the silk unfurled from around his neck. “Yes, John, I love you too...”
“Let me love you, Templeton, let me...”
“John...”
His suit jacket was flung aside, tie with it, and John placed a knee on the quilt, close enough for the young man to touch, ghosting his hand up the back of that hard thigh.
“Tease,” John murmured into his neck, fingers opening the buttons of Templeton’s fine woolen waistcoat.
“Should I stop?” he asked, terrified of doing something wrong. He couldn’t do that to John, couldn’t disappoint...
“No, sweetheart,” his lover said in those same soothing tones, mouthing the rise of his pulse with soft, soft lips, and the last button popped loose on his waistcoat. The gardener flicked the material aside and laid a big hand over his belly, rolling the round of his palm around so, so gently. “It feels good.”
Templeton wanted to tell him, wanted to say that it felt good for him, too, but his mouth was captured anew, sultry and sweet, and John pulled his other leg up. Straddled proper, kissed deeply, the younger man dug his hands into the thick denim of his lover’s trousers, holding on for dear life, twisting and rubbing his knuckles against the muscle he couldn’t reach through that barrier.
John’s tongue thrust in and Templeton arched up, pushed up, straight into John, skins meeting, his nipples peaked against the light dusting of silver hair, his cock already responding to the man above him, surrounding him, warming him through...
“You like that?” his lover asked, husky and low, one hand on the small of Templeton’s back, holding them flush, erections fighting for space, a finger trailing down the edge of the younger man’s cheek, hand resting on his shoulder. “Does that feel good, sweetheart?”
“You...you feel good, John,” he whispered, unsure of what he could say, how he could express all the things coursing through his body, white and bright as the thickening snow outside. “You’re...this...”
Blue eyes sparkled, and that hand brushed his cheek once again. Fingers played down, one coming to rest just at the top of his cleft. “I know, lad. I know...”
And his shirt was swept completely away.
Templeton couldn’t help the little moan that escaped him as the cotton left him in one smooth pass, left him half naked, falling back on the quilt of John’s narrow bed. John laid that hand back on his belly, and scooted back to kiss him. Kiss that patch of skin between his thumb and forefinger where they rested on the younger man’s pale skin.
John’s teeth scraped, gentle, not biting, along the fluttering tension of his abs, and Templeton gasped again.
Blue eyes, all afire, met his. Locked with his, for a long, long moment. Taking him in. Seeing everything. Knowing...knowing everything...
“Beautiful,” his lover whispered.
And kissed him again.
Cock straining, yearning, in its need for the touch of this man, driven higher with every passing second, Templeton nearly shot off the bed the moment that John’s hands laid down over that growing bulge. “For me, darling?” the older man asked softly, fingers splaying out to frame his erection, tracing around it. “Is this all for me?”
“Oh, John...”
“Want to hear you say it, Temp. Need to hear you say it.” His ass canted up in the air, his body down, and he kissed the seam of the younger man’s trousers. “Do you want me?”
He felt a tremor run through his body. “John...”
“Tell me, please,” and the gardener kissed his belly again, letting his tongue circle the rim of his bellybutton. “Please, Templeton, my love...”
Templeton, my love...
He nodded, eyes starting to sting. “Y-yes, yes, John, I want you...”
Those blue eyes flashed up at him again, smiling, and held the young’s man’s gaze. All the way. As John sat back up on his heels. As he eased the taught buttons of Templeton’s fly from their little holes. As he pulled trousers and underwear and socks and boots away all in one go.
Templeton sucked air, alone for a few moments as he was stripped fully. The warmth of John’s little room surrounded him, caressed his skin, pulled him into the falling twilight outside, the snow obliterating the utility of the cabin’s little windows.
Exposed.
Exposed for this man, once again, as he had been, on those summer days, those few days they had together.
The young blonde could feel his pulse in the hard flesh of his cock, flopped up against his belly and leaking already. His heart, beating there... could he touch? The Colonel never let him touch, but this was John.
John was safe.
Then his boots hit the bare wooden floorboards, and he felt a hand on his cheek, a hand encasing his cock in rough, wonderful heat. Those blue eyes were above his, John’s lean, scarred, naked body above his, his own trousers gone, and Templeton couldn’t stop the pure, happy laugh that tore loose from him at the sight of it, hand clapping up over his mouth of its own accord.
John was beautiful. John was beautiful and John was here with him and John wanted him...
“There you are, Templeton,” John whispered, and tugged Templeton’s hand away, stroking the vein along the back. “There’s your beautiful voice.”
“I’m right here, John,” the younger man whispered back, twisting and twining and pushing their hands, together, to the hollow between John’s pecs. “I’m here with you.”
John smiled again, pulling up on his hand a little in acknowledgment, his chest rising and falling once, twice, and then he slowly let his body sink down over Templeton’s, chest and abs and legs and cock, oh yes, that thick cock he’d longed for for so, so long. Templeton whimpered at the first wet slide of silken skin across his own, and John nuzzled his cheek.
“Yes, yes, my love, you are.”
They kissed, a hot, long kiss that followed them through all their movements, everywhere they twisted and turned together on the bed, up under the thick quilt already warmed by their bodies, moving against each other, finding anew all those ways they fit into each other.
The fire crackled and the wind howled outside, a proper storm now, and Templeton cried out as John sucked lightly on his adam’s apple. The young man had never known such peace, never known it could feel like this. Soft declarations of love were being written on on his skin in lips and fingers and ghosting words, sweet words, all those sweet things he’d longed to hear the past six months. All the past years of his life.
“Sweet boy, sweet, perfect boy, I love you,” John said, breaking away for a moment, eyes dark with arousal and lips swollen as he laid atop Templeton, straddling his leg, cock insistent, damp. “Can you feel it? Can you feel how I love you?”
“John, yes...I feel it, I feel you...” Templeton replied, dazzled, feeling half-senseless already, and ran his lover’s fine silvery hair between his fingers. “I feel you...”
A hand touched that sensitive bridge of flesh, between his balls and his tight bud, caressing him with more care than Templeton could ever remember. “I want to make love to you,” his lover whispered in his ear. “Templeton...I want to make love with you, I want us to have that together...”
“Oh, oooh” Templeton keened, that clever finger circling his entrance. “Oh, John, yes, make love to me, make...make, please, John...”
It got him a soft, throaty chuckle, and a rush of cooler air across his heated, flushed body as the older man reached up and out, reaching for something up above, and Templeton couldn’t help but admire the way his body flexed, how those muscles pulled and bunched, revealing whole new angles, new things... and he couldn’t resist tilting his head to suckle, lightly, at one of John’s hard, hard nipples.
“Mmm, sweetheart, sweetheart,” his lover said, urging him off as he laid his long frame back into the narrow of their shared cocoon. “I have something for you. For us.”
In his big hand was a tin, some kind of salve, and Templeton recognized the label as being from...
“You shop downtown?” he asked.
“It’s good for this. The best. Only the best, for you, Templeton, I thought.” John smiled, a little sad this time, and looked away as he broke the seal, as the sweet scent of mint filled the room. “I...I asked Bosco to pick this up for me, after...after that morning, in the grass together. I thought we would...”
But they hadn't. His foolishness had cost them that. Cost them all this time, all this pain, and Templeton felt a tear slide down his cheek as he lunged up to kiss those words right out of his man.
John stopped Templeton just shy of his goal, their lips touching, nothing yet initiated. He whined a little, and the older man smiled back in reply.
“It’s fine, sweetheart,” the gardener murmured, and thumbed that tear away from Templeton’s cheekbone. “Please, lad, don’t...”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for what I said that day, what I did...”
“Hey, kid, no apologies,” John replied softly, following the words up with the fondest of kisses. “No looking back. We’re here now, together, you and I. Nothing else matters right now. Nothing but your pleasure...”
“And yours,” Templeton said with a firm little nod, and wraped his lips around the top of John’s thumb, tasting the saltiness of his own tear as his lover sighed. “Show me how to please you, John.” He laid one hand on the older man’s chest, took the little tin away with the other, scooping out a bit of the creamy salve within. It felt lovely on his fingers, smooth and slick, just a hint of tingle from the mint, and he briefly wondered what its real purpose was as he kissed John again. “Tell me how to make you feel what I feel for you. Tell me how I make you feel beautiful...”
John’s smile didn’t waver, but he caught Templeton’s wrist before the younger man had the chance to start opening himself up. “No, my love.”
The blonde felt a wave of confusion wash through him. His brow furrowed and he felt his body starting to retreat of its own accord. John had said...he had... hadn’t he? “John?”
“You...you do not have to do this for yourself, lad. Open yourself up for me. You don’t...”
He shook his head. So that was it. John wanted him tight? That was fine, tight was fine, but John was so big, bigger with every second, it seemed. Could he handle it? Of course he could. He could, for John he could do anything... “The Colonel hasn’t taken me for several days. I’m tighter than perhaps you might...it might not be as good for you it...”
John growled, but his fingers stayed soft around Templeton’s wrist as he wiped the slick away, rubbing it between his own fingers. “No, sweet boy. That’s not what I meant.” He laid his arm around the jut of Templeton’s hipbone, letting those fingers trail into the young man’s cleft, one finger just circling his entrance. “Let me, my love. Let me do this for you.”
Eyes wide, realizing the truth in those words, Templeton tried to answer and found his voice failing him. So he nodded instead.
The smile that met his agreement was dazzling, and John laid back, urging the younger man half up over him, one hand on his cock, just enough contact to keep him from going out of his mind with desire, that other hand starting to tease his tight bud. “I’m going to open you, Templeton. Wide enough to take me. No pain. You should never have anything like pain...”
He wanted to start crying again as John’s long digit slipped into him, resting, moving slow, thrusting slow, circling slow. It was past the clenching ring, past all his fears, all the old memories. It was indescribable. Nobody had ever done this for him. Nobody had ever thought to his pleasure during this simple preparation. Nobody had ever...
“Ooh,” he moaned and gasped into John’s shoulder, white light exploding through him as the pad of that questing finger brushed something deep inside. “Oh, John, what was...”
“That’s your pleasure, my love.” John’s words were thick, tangible with so many conflicting emotions. “That’s how this is supposed to feel.”
They kissed, his lover moving slowly, finger in and out, shallow thrusts that soon grew thicker, twisting and curling with the addition of a second finger and a third. His mind was reeling. His cock was drooling. And Templeton clung to John, listening to his own whimpers, smelling the scent of his man’s skin, sweat beginning to bead up, rich and salty, the scent of their combined desire, musky and earthy. He was panting. Hard. His heart was beating against his ribs. He’d never, it had never, never been like this, never before...
John let out a throaty groan, pure need echoing in his voice, and those fingers thrust deep, spreading wide as they pull out. “I cannot wait any longer, Temp. Please, lad...”
He nodded, understanding. This part. Of course. An expectant shiver ran through him. This part. With John. Finally, finally... “Belly, then?”
Blue eyes clouded for a moment, and John rolled him over fully, kissing him as he did it. “Back, my love. On your back. I want to see everything...I want to see you. I want you to see me, what you do to me...”
Heat surged through Templeton and he spread his legs automatically, the sheets whispering against his skin. “I can see you, too,” he replied softly, in awe. “You want me to see you.”
“Everything shared,” John affirmed, and scooped out a generous palmful of salve from the tin, reaching between his own legs as he settled between Templeton’s. “Everything...”
Templeton stopped him, wiping the salve off into his own hand, and craned his neck to kiss John’s jaw. It was all he could reach from the angle he was at, but it got him a happy, delicious growl anyway. “Everything shared,” he agreed, and took John’s burning manhood in hand, slicking it fully.
John let him touch, caress, for a moment or two, and then nipped at his neck, at his ear, and knelt up, grabbing one of his thin pillows. He folded it in half - “lift, sweet lad” - and shoved it carefully under Templeton’s hips. He laid a big hand on the younger man’s belly, practically shaking as he made a few slow passes over flushing skin. “Templeton...” he whispered.
He had his cock in hand. Lining up. Getting ready. And Templeton had never been more ready himself for anything in his life.
“Please...” he whispered.
“Anything, love,” John whispered back.
And Templeton’s world narrowed to the single sensation of the slow, beautiful slide of thick, heavy, pulsing flesh straight up into his very heart.
It burned, but only around the edges, and the pain only highlighted the brilliance of that feeling. He cried out as John’s cock nudged his prostate, slipping up it, dragging his body higher and higher.
Templeton was impaled. John was huge inside of him. John was enormous. Filling him, sparking every nerve, firing joy through him, opening him up. And his body opened to him, the internal flutters fading, adjusting, allowing, welcoming John home, where he always should have been, into the place that had always belonged to him. Before they’d even met, Templeton thought, mind flooded, this had belonged to John...
That wonderful bubble of pleasure in his belly, the one he’d felt so rarely before, the one he’d felt last with John, so many months ago, was swelling, near to bursting, and Templeton only realized he was holding his breath against it, trying to hold on, when John’s body draped fully over his, little words whispered in his ear.
“Breath, darling, breath. You’re doing so well...please don’t come yet...please wait for me...”
“Can...can I...can we...” the younger man gasped.
John nudged his hips forward, ever so slightly. “We can. We should.” A lock of sweat-damp hair was brushed from Templeton’s face, replaced by a soft kiss as those hips began to roll, hitting new places inside, giving the younger man’s own throbbing cock some friction between their bellies. “Do you want to?”
There was only one answer for that.
“Yes,” he pleaded.
John’s blue eyes crinkled in happiness. “I love you,” he whispered, and started to move proper.
Templeton didn’t know what to do. He gasped for air, hands digging in the sheets until John caught them and wound through them and held them by his heaving sides. He squeezed tight and found the rhythm, meeting John, meeting him, clenching around him, years of ill-gotten skill put to glorious use for the very first time. He listened to John’s moans and tangled them with his own, sometimes tasting as their mouths met and fell apart again. He tried to keep the bubble down, tried to keep it from rising too high and popping, from...
Their lips passed, a kiss left open, and John shuddered and rolled up hard. “Can’t... not long, not long...”
“John...I...” and he couldn't find the words, so he squeezed every muscle around that driving pillar of flesh within him, begging John with his body, saying that which he could not say with words.
Please, please, John, please...
John groaned, louder than any other, more pain than pleasure now, and he rocked forward harder. “I’m going, I’m going...” and he groaned again. “Please, Templeton, love, come, come with me, come with me...n-now!"
And with that now, their dance fell apart and so did John, thrusting deep inside, as deep as he had gone yet, locking up above him as he spent himself in wave after wave of crashing heat, filling him in a way Templeton had felt a hundred, thousand, time before, but never really experienced...
The bubble snapped under the weight of it all and Templeton’s head fell back into the pillows as he heard himself screaming, emptying, sobbing out with the pleasure of it all as his sense of the world fell in to the gray oblivion of the snow beyond the window and all else faded beyond recognition.
Warm, Templeton thought as his mind loosed and he drifted on the last weak pulses of orgasm. So, so, warm...
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of domestic violence and underage
Summary:
Templeton convinces Murdock to take him to see John, and what happens is nothing that he was expecting...
“You gotta tell me where he is, Murdock.”
“No, Temp, no I don’t.”
“Come on, buddy, I know he lives on the property somewhere...”
“Yeah...”
“I just want to ask him one thing, that’s it. I won’t make a scene...”
Murdock stared back at Templeton from where he’d been cornered in the library. He’d been perfectly friendly that morning, after breakfast, as he always was, until Templeton had innocently asked him where he might be able to find John Smith. Then he’d all but bolted from the room. It’d taken the young man twenty minutes to get him to the point where he would say anything about it at all, and still, Murdock was eyeing him so damn warily. Like a deer with a wolf after it, and Templeton was fast losing hope that he’d able to get anything out of the butler.
Murdock bit at a cuticle, like he was really thinking about it, and then he shook his head slowly. “After all the...Temp, he don’t wanna see you...”
That was more promising that Templeton had even dared to hope, but Murdock pushed him aside instead, making for the door, before he could ask anything else.
“Murdock, buddy,” he said desperately, grabbing on to the butler’s sleeve as he tried to walk away. “Please. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“No...”
“I need to talk with him, HM. Please, please help me out here...”
And the other man pushed dark hair out of his face, staring right into Templeton’s eyes for a breathless moment, and turned. “Come on then, Temp. I’ll show ya.”
The walk through the snowy grounds seemed to take forever, each step through the white a muffled reminder of how beautiful it had been in the summer, how green and lush, with all the world awake. How he’d walked these very ways, that first morning he’d seen John, and Templeton felt his lashes thickening with freezing tears when they turned down the little lane that led to that forgotten garden. Murdock didn’t look at him the entire way, not until they rounded a low hill, until finally they stopped in front of a very small cottage, chimney smoking into the crisp, cold morning.
Murdock’s hands twitched a little, and he smiled at . “Let me go first, Templeton, alright?”
Mouth suddenly dry, mind anticipating a thousand ways this could go wrong, the young man nodded.
The butler skipped ahead the last three steps on the path and knocked on the door. After a few moments, it opened outward, a hushed conversation taking place, and Templeton straightened, fearful, as the door swung out a little more.
Revealing John, his tall frame wrapped in an old, thick sweater, a book in hand, finger holding his place. Templeton felt his heart speeding up, just seeing him so close again, remembering how good he felt, how good those hands felt around him, how much he’d loved...
But that’s all over now, he reminded himself. He was just here for help. Advice. Nothing more.
“Come in, Mr. Peck,” John said softly, and after a long moment, Templeton followed him inside.
Stepping in, pulling his gloves off, looking around, Templeton felt a pang in his chest.
The cottage was tiny, barely enough room for a stove and a bed, a small table in the corner by the fireplace, a single chair pushed out from it. The rest of the space was filled with books. Stacks and shelves and piles of books, all looking well-loved and well-read, neatly organized by size and title. Fiction and philosophy and histories. A few even had French and German titles on the spines. How such a man as this, Templeton wondered, a man who was obviously educated, could end up in a job such as this. Did it have something to do with the Colonel? With what he was, his homosexuality...
But his contemplation was interrupted, shattered, as John closed the door behind them and set his book aside on the ledge of the small window.
“Can I take your coat, Mr. Peck?” the gardener asked softly, holding out a hand.
Templeton looked at him, hoping for a glimmer of something, of anything, that would tell him this man still carried feelings for him, that there was anything at all still there, but John’s face was blank. Empty except for the most basic of expressions, a mild not-quite smile, and for a moment, the young blonde almost despaired. But he’d come here for a reason, and he had to perservere towards those ends.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, shrugging it off and handing it over.
John looked at him again, and Templeton thought he might have seen the slightest bit of...but he was probably imagining things. “Your scarf, Mr. Peck?”
He shifted a bit. That was the only thing keeping the bruises hidden, and despite the fact that Templeton had planned on using those at the right moment, should they be needed, he found himself suddenly overcome with shame instead. “I’ll keep it for now.”
“As you wish,” and John gestured at the chair as he took up his own position on the edge of the bed. “Please, Mr. Peck, sit down. Tell me what this thing is that Murdock wanted you to talk with me about. Something about the preparations for Saturday?”
Templeton looked at the chair, and then back to John, who was watching him with those soft, soft eyes. Like nothing at all was wrong with the world, like nothing at all would ever be or ever was, and he realized this was the stupidest fucking idea he’d had in a long, long time. Almost as stupid as coming to New York in the first place. What had he been planning on doing, saying to this man? John, please help me, he almost killed me last night and I don’t know how to escape or you were right, you were right, so what should I do now? or something like that? Hadn’t John already told him he needed to stop asking for help, needed to not rely on anyone, needed to be his own man?
Well, he could do that. He could figure this out for himself. He had to.
“Yes,” he said, running a hand back through his cold hair, blurting out the first piece of bullshit he could think of. “Yes, the Colonel asked me to double check on what kind of lights you were planning on using in the trees themselves. I know we purchased a large quantity of those new-fangled electrics, but he’s a bit old-fashioned, the Colonel, and he just wants to ensure...”
“His Old World charm, of course,” John said, nodding. “We’ll make sure the lights work, Mr. Peck, and we’ll make sure iwe have back-ups, just in case.”
“Thank you,” he replied, and went for his coat, palms sweating. “That’s all I had, really, so I’ll just get out of your hair now and leave you to your reading...”
Then John was up, right next to him, between him and his retreat, reaching for that peg. Their hands met on the collar of his jacket, and for a moment, for a fleeting, glorious moment...
The gardener cleared his throat and moved his hand away. “Is that all you came to talk to me about, Mr. Peck? You could have sent Murdock for that.”
“I thought...thought I should...” and he faltered, pulling his coat on to cover the lapse.
John nodded, and smiled, ever so faintly. “You look well, Mr. Peck. I’m glad to know the months here have been kind to you.”
“We’re very happy,” Templeton said, hoping the bitterness was out of his voice, twisting that ring on his finger. “We’re...happy together, the Colonel and I.”
“Happy?” the older man asked thoughtfully. “Yes, happy. Of course you are...”
He nodded back. “Yes, very happy...mister, Mr. Smith.”
Their eyes met, close, close enough to touch, and Templeton felt his willpower start to crumble. There was nothing he would have liked more than to fall into John’s arms, right then and there, be held as he’d once been held, break down and have John tell him in that wonderful voice of his that it was okay, that everything would be okay...
But he couldn’t. They couldn’t.
That time had passed.
“Here, kid,” John said instead, tugging on the edges of his long woolen coat, pulling it more firmly around him, one hand moving up to his scarf, loosened up around his neck. “You’ll catch your death of cold out there on a day like this, if you don’t...” His fingers played up the ends of the scarf, tightening a little, and Templeton couldn’t stop the jerk, or his hiss of pain, as the strong knit tugged painfully along the abused skin from the night before.
John stopped. Immediately. Just looking at him. Templeton felt a flush of shame start spreading over his cheeks, heating him through, and he grabbed blindly behind him for the door’s latch, needing to go, needing to get out of here before John asked...
“What was that?”
He bit his lip. “Nothing,” Templeton muttered, and turned, going for the latch.
A hand fell on his shoulder, squeezing lightly through the jacket, while another dipped under the scarf, pulling it open. “It’s not nothing, is it, kid?”
Templeton’s forehead hit the door. “Mr. Smith, please...”
“What did you really come here to talk to me about today?” John asked, fingers ghosting over the bare skin of his neck, moving down, pulling the last roll of the scarf away, and then those fingers sprang away. “Oh, god...”
He squeezed his eyes shut. His bruises discovered, that shame laid bare... “It’s not...”
“What did he do to you, Templeton?” John asked, breathing his name like a prayer. “Tell me, kid.”
“It was my fault,” he swallowed, remembering his stupidity from the night before. “I tried to...”
He was spun around then, John grabbing him and swinging his back around, pinning him there, caught between the older man’s firm body and the unyielding wood of the door. “This was not your fault, Temp! Nothing you did caused this!” he growled, anger echoing out through his voice. Struck by that, Templeton felt himself starting to shake, and he couldn’t bear to bring his eyes up, to meet John’s, to see whatever was there. Then, after a moment, those big, rough fingers brushed the black and blue skin very, very carefully, and when he spoke again, it was soft. Sad. “You don’t deserve this kind of treatment, kid, not for any reason...”
“I’m not saying I deserved it, John,” he said softly. “But I broke his fucking rules, so...”
“By doing what?” John prompted, moving a hand to the young man’s side, fingers stroking gently.
“Called him by his first name.”
“Fuck...” John groaned.
“I didn’t...he wanted me to tell me I loved him, but I thought, I thought he was giving me permission...”
“Listen to me, Temp,” the gardener replied, hardening again, like he had a point that he desperately needed to make. “Kid, you should never need permission to call your lover by his first name, not ever. Just because you did that, doesn’t mean he had the right to choke you like this...”
“I know that! But it’s one of his rules and if I’m supposed to live here, live with him, I can’t go breaking his damn rules, I can’t...” and he laughed mirthlessly. “Which is quite obvious.”
“Then what are you going to do, kid? Accept this kind of treatment? Stick around until he finally does kill you for some minor infraction? Live like this for the rest of your life, scared of crossing over the line?”
“No! Goddamn...” the younger man snapped, and pushed John away, crossing over to the fireplace, staring into the fire, everything beginning to rage deep down. All the anger, all the humiliation and and the confusion and the hurt he’d felt, since the day the Colonel first touched him.
“Then what, Templeton?” John asked, coming up behind him, that hand returning to his shoulder. “What are you going to do?”
He sighed and bowed his head between his arms, gripping the mantle. “I don’t know, John. I need to leave, I accept that, but he’ll find me. I know he will...”
“And then...” the gardener sighed, laying his chin on Templeton’s shoulder. As unexpected as that was, the younger man stiffened against it, and John immediately pulled away again. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, falling with his back to the fireplace, right next to Templeton’s shaking hand. “Kid, I am so sorry...”
And for a long moment, the only thing heard in the small cottage was the crackling of wood, burning down in the fireplace between them.
“What are you sorry for, John?” Templeton finally said in a low voice, unable to take the stillness any longer. Staring ahead at the wall in front of him. Trying not to look over at the man next to him. “What did you do that was so goddamn bad here?”
“I...I should have told you...how bad he can get. I’ve seen...I’ve seen it,” he whispered, hands beginning to roam a little. Uncertain, slow, but moving yet. Sliding up and down the warming sleeves of his jacket. “I’ve seen him do horrible things to boys under his command, boys who couldn’t stop him from doing what he was doing...”
Templeton sighed, despair washing over him. “Is that what you think I am, John? A boy? Some pathetic child who needs rescuing?”
“No, not at all. That’s not what you are.” John’s voice was starting to tremble and Templeton could feel himself starting to shake, rough pads of long fingers slipping around his palms, attempting to find purchase there. “You’re no child, but you do desire an escape, don’t you? Wish for somebody to take you away from all of this?” His lips were soft against Templeton’s ear, ghosting around the delicate outer shell of it. His chest was firm against Templeton’s spine, laid out against it. His hands were twined into Templeton’s, warm heat growing between them. “No child, but you do long to be rescued, lad. You long for it so. If you’ll let me...”
And John’s burgeoning erection was swelling up against the cleft of his ass, hard enough now to feel through layers and layers of winter clothing.
The younger man stiffened then, cursing himself for being lulled by those soft and caring words, that gentle tenor. Of course. Of course. He could weep over it. Of course. John just wanted him, wanted him the same way the Colonel wanted him, wanted to take him, wanted to own him.
That’s all you’re good for, that evil little voice whispered in the back of his mind. No better than chattle to be possessed, a weak, craven thing such as you...
“No!” he snapped, shoving John off him and shooting away, as far as he could in the cramped space of the older man’s home. “No, goddamn, you won’t...”
“Kid...” John pleaded, eyes wide and hands open.
Part of Templeton, seeing that, hearing that, wanted to walk over, take it, be drawn in again against the broad comfort of that chest he hadn’t felt in...but...
“No, John! Not from you, too!” he said, less heated, less certain, confusion starting to swirl up in his mind, clouding everything. Last night, right now...what was he supposed to do with all of this? What could he? He knew John’s intentions, didn’t he? Hadn’t he once seen, in fleeting glimpses, the very bottom of this man’s heart? He trusted him, he did. He’d come here today, trusting him. And yet...yet he couldn’t bring himself... “I...I couldn’t bear it.”
“Couldn’t bear to have me close, Templeton? Couldn’t bear to be close to me?” the gardener asked, holding his distance, clearly not wanting to, judging from the way his weight was shifting on his feet.
The younger man sighed, eying the door, wondering if he shouldn’t just leave. Walk away. Forget John all over again. If he could. “No, I can’t...I can’t be...can’t...”
“Can’t be what, kid?” John asked in the softest voice Templeton had ever heard from him.
And he collapsed, sinking slowly to the floor, knees tucking up around him. Templeton felt like crying, felt like he should be crying, but there were no tears there. A vast emptiness was opening up within him, a rift, tearing him away from everything he thought he loved, everything he’d ever had. The Colonel, the security of somebody who cared for him, knowing he had a place in the world, somewhere he belonged...
“Six months...”
Templeton looked up, pulling his face up and away from the black despair that was starting to overwhelm him, and was met with a pair of gentle blue eyes that held his own so carefully. The younger man felt as if he could break, just from that gaze alone, if it were to all somehow go wrong.
Again.
As it probably would.
“Six months,” John re-iterated, kneeling on the floor, hands on his down-bent knee. “Six months, lad, wondering if you were getting along alright. If you were...happy.” He closed his eyes, and bowed his head. “I told myself you were happy, content with him, but this...”
Then John stopped, a flush spreading across his cheeks. For Templeton, who was listening with growing disbelief, that, that right there, was enough for him to reach out and lay his smooth hand over one of those rough ones. “I...was that you, I saw, John? Outside my window yesterday? Did I see you?“
“Yesterday?” And the gardener drew a shuddering breath, letting his fingers run through Templeton’s, turning their palms together, squeezing lightly. “Yesterday, yes, I was looking up at your room. Yesterday, and every day since the afternoon you chose...chose him and not...”
“Not John Smith.” Templeton said it flatly, with finality, and the gardener winced, as if he’d been struck. He realized, in a shot of horror that kinked up in his guts, what he’d just said, what he’d just more than implied, and the young blonde only barely caught that big hand as it tried to unwind from his own.
“Let me go, Mr. Peck,” John said, sounding defeated, dead, eyes away. “Let me go and go back to your warm comforts. There’s no reason for you to be visiting an old man in his mean little hovel, not on a cold day such as this.”
Heart hammering in his ears, remembering that last conversation between the two of them, the one six months ago, where he had let this man walk out of his life, believing... Templeton shook his head. “No, John, I...”
“Please go,” the older man whispered. “This, I can’t...”
And something in him just cracked open, permitting the words to tumble out, one after another, unstoppable, honest in a way he hated being honest. Things he’d heard in the quiet of his own mind, late at night, the Colonel asleep next to him, that slimy sense of his self-betrayal growing more and more unbearable, with every passing breath.
“There’s no warmth there, John, no comfort. I’ve...” and he turned his fingers back through John’s, pulling out of his little cocoon of misery, stretching out the few feet between them, trying to reach him before he vanished once again, feeling the catch of fine woolen trousers against the rough stone of the floor. “I’ve never felt warm before, or comfortable, or anything like that...I never knew I could, before I...before I met you.”
He saw the gardener’s adam’s apple bob up on his elegant, stubbled neck. Nervous, perhaps. Nervous, hopefully. “Kid...”
“You said once that you loved me,” Templeton said in a voice so quiet it was barely a voice. “Do you love me still, John Smith?”
There was no response, not for a long minute, those bright eyes turned away from him, and the young man felt his heart quail again.
“Fine,” and he stood slowly, letting go of John’s hand, just as he had requested. And Templeton brushed at his knees, looking off towards the door and its little hand-carved latch that would release him back into the cold of the winter beyond John’s tiny cottage, and the summer it still contained. “I shall find my own way free of him. I am sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Smith.”
But the gardener stayed on his knees by the crackling hearth and did not so much as look over, as Templeton lifted the latch and passed out of the comforting little space.
As his booted feet hit the snow outside, he knew, somehow, that he would never find such a man again.
He trudged up the path he’d walked with Murdock only a half hour or so before, their footprints already coated with a fresh dusting of snow from a storm he could see rolling in if he turned his reddening eyes up to the sky. Templeton shook his head as he walked, mind in chaos.
What had happened there?
He’d said...he hadn’t meant to imply that, not at all.
He had come here looking for advice, for an escape, for a way...and he’d thrown that back in John’s face. Once again, rejected him through his own stupidity, his own fear...
What a damn fool thing I am, he thought bitterly to himself, and wrapped his long jacket a bit tighter to him, the breeze beginning to turn into a biting wind, kicking up little flurries of white snow around his leaden feet, to hurt him so again.
His thoughts seemed to turn blacker and blacker, as he toiled up the path, almost back to the main walk to the house. It was a good half-mile away at this point, and the wind seemed to be growing colder, more vicious, the snow beginning to fall in thick eddies, caught up in all of it. Fettered to the will of a force stronger than its own...
So much like me.
What in damnation am I to do now?
And then.
“Templeton!”
It seemed very faint, as if yelled from a great distance, or from a long time ago, and he kept going.
“Templeton, lad, stop!”
That was closer, more immediate, and the young blonde turned into it, wondering if maybe it wasn’t...
And it was, because there was John, bare-headed, sans coat, work pants shoved hastily into a high pair of rubber wellingtons, coming towards him, fast through the piling snow.
His own feet froze immediately, heart pounding in his ears. Wondering, wondering if...
“Templeton,” John said again, the word freezing into a cloud around his face as he approached and stopped, a few paces away, hands shoved in his pockets. “Templeton, what you asked me...”
“Yes?”
“I can’t...I can’t lose you again,” he said, those blue eyes now as piercing, as icy-blue, as the world around them, a conviction that Templeton had not yet heard in him. Some kind of old strength reasserting itself, he thought, and wondered again, for a brief moment, what he must have been like in his days as an Army officer, as a young man on the battlefield. “I won’t lose you again, Templeton. So I must know something, lad...”
He nodded slowly. “Anything.”
John watched him for a moment more, and then took those last few paces separating them as if in an instant, laying a freezing-cold hand against the smooth skin of Templeton’s cheek. He could feel the older man shaking, but there was nothing reading there in those blue, blue eyes. Nothing given away. Everything hidden.
Right up until the second they closed together.
When their lips met for the first time in six months.
As if for the first time, all over again.
And Templeton told his lover everything that could be said with his body alone.
Lips moved, a tongue thrust, and the repression of the past years was all tearing apart at once and letting him out, letting him fall into this single moment. All the younger man could do was hold on for dear life as the gardener swept him up and around, clean off his feet, back connecting with something firm, a tree perhaps, and he felt, then, that he might never touch down again.
+++++
By the time they got back to John's little cottage, the snow was coming down thick and hard, covering them both, and the gardener's exposed skin was red, chill to the touch. He couldn't quite bend his fingers enough, so Templeton pulled the cord that lifted the latch inside and drew them both in.
A swirl of snow followed them, falling to melt on the floor of the warm space. Templeton stripped off his own jacket and gloves - ring falling down into the finger, forgotten - and scarf, heedless of the necklace of bruises he was wearing, taking John's hands in his own, leading him closer to the fire in its little hearth.
"You're a damn fool, forgetting a coat like that," he murmured, rubbing lightly. "Going out in your shirtsleeves."
The older man shivered appreciatively, and shook his head. "And if I hadn't gone after you, kid? What then?"
Templeton shook his head, not wanting to even think about that, and ran his fingers around those thick wrists in his hands. "Your shirt's wet," he said softly, pulling at the edge of the touch, snow-covered fabric, undoing one of those little buttons there. "It's soaked."
"It's nothing," John said.
"You'll get sick," Templeton replied, undoing the other sleeve of the older man’s rough shirt, and letting one hand stray up to his lover's collar. "I can’t bear to think of you getting sick for me."
The gardener looked down as the top button was slipped from its hole. His cheeks were flushed, most likely from the temperatures they’d just escaped. "I couldn't let you go back, thinking..."
"I could never think ill of you, John," he told the older man softly, and undid the next button in the line, baring that broad chest, that light dusting of silvery hair there. "You've done nothing to deserve my scorn."
"You've done nothing to earn mine, either..."
Another button slid out.
"I was horrible to you," he murmured, pressing his lips to a bared patch of snow-cooled skin, feeling a shiver run through the gardener. "Terrible..."
And another.
A warming hand stroked into the younger man’s hair, breaking up his carefully slicked and styled curls, breaking them back into their natural state, long and messy. “Things were said, Templeton. It’s alright, lad...”
Another button. Another kiss, right above John’s belly-button.
“No, John. No, it’s not. I hurt you...”
The last button, and then he was bending, tugging the edges of that shirt out of his lover’s trousers, just as big hands titled his head back. Their eyes meeting.
“I hurt you, lad,” John said, his voice thick with sorrow. “I hurt you because I was hurting, because I was selfish and wanted you...”
“You have me,” he whispered, barely above the crackling of the fire, laying a hand on the bare skin of John’s waist. “I want you to have me.”
“Templeton, kid, if that man...”
He shook his head, reaching up to wrap his arms around John’s neck, kissing him lightly on the lips, nuzzling into his bared shoulder. “I don’t care if he hurts me. You won’t hurt me. You can’t. You won’t.”
“Templeton,” John breathed, his blue eyes soft in the flickering light of the fire, the world darkening outside the bleary-glass windows of the little cottage. Everything sinking into a premature twilight, under the influence of the thick-falling snow. Their bodies were close, his lover’s breath hot on his neck, and Templeton had to step away to strip the shirt from his shoulders.
And everything from the summer came rushing back to him at once.
Underneath those mean, snow-wet clothes was the same man Temp had found in the warmth of the July grass. Not a different man, no. Just more, so much more. Those taught, long muscles, those scars from his days in the service...the officer. The war hero. The man who’d been, who still was, proud and unbroken by the bastard who owned them.
Something about that made Templeton feel almost dizzy, like he was out of his body, like he was Clara from that Nutcracker ballet in Manhatten, the one the Colonel had taken him to a week ago. The part where the rats attacked and the nutcracker saved her and swept her away and she found the prince under it all...
You’re a damn fool, Templeton, he told himself again. He was no child of some noble family, and John was no prince. But yet, something was happening in this little room right now. It was happening, and he wanted it. More than anything else in the world, he longed for it to come to pass.
“Make love to me, John.”
John sighed, and laid his forehead down on the younger man’s, cradling him close. “Dear boy.”
Had that been a yes? A no? Templeton trembled, suddenly feeling far too warm in his heavy winter clothes, and he clung to John, scared. “Please,” he pleaded again. “Please, John, make love to me, show me. You promised once you’d show me...”
“And then we were so rudely interrupted,” John growled deep in his throat, pulling him backwards nonetheless, pulling him around until the back of his legs hit the edge of John’s little, low bed. “I was so inconsiderately prevented from keeping my promise to you.”
Templeton smiled, warmth racing through him, and wound a hand into John’s, bringing it to his mouth, kissing knuckles scarred with white spiderwebs of old injuries. “You should keep it now.”
“Yes,” John murmured in his ear, kissing the soft skin just behind. “I should keep it now.”
“You can,” he replied and started shrugging out of his jacket. “You must.”
Another kiss, and then Templeton found himself flat on his back, on the bed, staring up at his half-naked lover, one big hand holding him lightly to the thin pad and its thick, handmade quilts. “I will, my darling. But you must do something for me.”
“Anything,” the younger man whispered, neck craning up of its own accord, body begging for that which his heart so desperately yearned for. “I’ll do anything for you.”
And John gave, a light kiss, another affectionate ruffle of his damp hair. “Then allow me to undress you, sweetheart. Let me see you, every inch of you.”
He moaned at that.
John chuckled, and pulled Templeton’s scarf away, the rich tie free of its knot. “I love you, you know, lad,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Templeton said, and a flush of warmth ran through him as the silk unfurled from around his neck. “Yes, John, I love you too...”
“Let me love you, Templeton, let me...”
“John...”
His suit jacket was flung aside, tie with it, and John placed a knee on the quilt, close enough for the young man to touch, ghosting his hand up the back of that hard thigh.
“Tease,” John murmured into his neck, fingers opening the buttons of Templeton’s fine woolen waistcoat.
“Should I stop?” he asked, terrified of doing something wrong. He couldn’t do that to John, couldn’t disappoint...
“No, sweetheart,” his lover said in those same soothing tones, mouthing the rise of his pulse with soft, soft lips, and the last button popped loose on his waistcoat. The gardener flicked the material aside and laid a big hand over his belly, rolling the round of his palm around so, so gently. “It feels good.”
Templeton wanted to tell him, wanted to say that it felt good for him, too, but his mouth was captured anew, sultry and sweet, and John pulled his other leg up. Straddled proper, kissed deeply, the younger man dug his hands into the thick denim of his lover’s trousers, holding on for dear life, twisting and rubbing his knuckles against the muscle he couldn’t reach through that barrier.
John’s tongue thrust in and Templeton arched up, pushed up, straight into John, skins meeting, his nipples peaked against the light dusting of silver hair, his cock already responding to the man above him, surrounding him, warming him through...
“You like that?” his lover asked, husky and low, one hand on the small of Templeton’s back, holding them flush, erections fighting for space, a finger trailing down the edge of the younger man’s cheek, hand resting on his shoulder. “Does that feel good, sweetheart?”
“You...you feel good, John,” he whispered, unsure of what he could say, how he could express all the things coursing through his body, white and bright as the thickening snow outside. “You’re...this...”
Blue eyes sparkled, and that hand brushed his cheek once again. Fingers played down, one coming to rest just at the top of his cleft. “I know, lad. I know...”
And his shirt was swept completely away.
Templeton couldn’t help the little moan that escaped him as the cotton left him in one smooth pass, left him half naked, falling back on the quilt of John’s narrow bed. John laid that hand back on his belly, and scooted back to kiss him. Kiss that patch of skin between his thumb and forefinger where they rested on the younger man’s pale skin.
John’s teeth scraped, gentle, not biting, along the fluttering tension of his abs, and Templeton gasped again.
Blue eyes, all afire, met his. Locked with his, for a long, long moment. Taking him in. Seeing everything. Knowing...knowing everything...
“Beautiful,” his lover whispered.
And kissed him again.
Cock straining, yearning, in its need for the touch of this man, driven higher with every passing second, Templeton nearly shot off the bed the moment that John’s hands laid down over that growing bulge. “For me, darling?” the older man asked softly, fingers splaying out to frame his erection, tracing around it. “Is this all for me?”
“Oh, John...”
“Want to hear you say it, Temp. Need to hear you say it.” His ass canted up in the air, his body down, and he kissed the seam of the younger man’s trousers. “Do you want me?”
He felt a tremor run through his body. “John...”
“Tell me, please,” and the gardener kissed his belly again, letting his tongue circle the rim of his bellybutton. “Please, Templeton, my love...”
Templeton, my love...
He nodded, eyes starting to sting. “Y-yes, yes, John, I want you...”
Those blue eyes flashed up at him again, smiling, and held the young’s man’s gaze. All the way. As John sat back up on his heels. As he eased the taught buttons of Templeton’s fly from their little holes. As he pulled trousers and underwear and socks and boots away all in one go.
Templeton sucked air, alone for a few moments as he was stripped fully. The warmth of John’s little room surrounded him, caressed his skin, pulled him into the falling twilight outside, the snow obliterating the utility of the cabin’s little windows.
Exposed.
Exposed for this man, once again, as he had been, on those summer days, those few days they had together.
The young blonde could feel his pulse in the hard flesh of his cock, flopped up against his belly and leaking already. His heart, beating there... could he touch? The Colonel never let him touch, but this was John.
John was safe.
Then his boots hit the bare wooden floorboards, and he felt a hand on his cheek, a hand encasing his cock in rough, wonderful heat. Those blue eyes were above his, John’s lean, scarred, naked body above his, his own trousers gone, and Templeton couldn’t stop the pure, happy laugh that tore loose from him at the sight of it, hand clapping up over his mouth of its own accord.
John was beautiful. John was beautiful and John was here with him and John wanted him...
“There you are, Templeton,” John whispered, and tugged Templeton’s hand away, stroking the vein along the back. “There’s your beautiful voice.”
“I’m right here, John,” the younger man whispered back, twisting and twining and pushing their hands, together, to the hollow between John’s pecs. “I’m here with you.”
John smiled again, pulling up on his hand a little in acknowledgment, his chest rising and falling once, twice, and then he slowly let his body sink down over Templeton’s, chest and abs and legs and cock, oh yes, that thick cock he’d longed for for so, so long. Templeton whimpered at the first wet slide of silken skin across his own, and John nuzzled his cheek.
“Yes, yes, my love, you are.”
They kissed, a hot, long kiss that followed them through all their movements, everywhere they twisted and turned together on the bed, up under the thick quilt already warmed by their bodies, moving against each other, finding anew all those ways they fit into each other.
The fire crackled and the wind howled outside, a proper storm now, and Templeton cried out as John sucked lightly on his adam’s apple. The young man had never known such peace, never known it could feel like this. Soft declarations of love were being written on on his skin in lips and fingers and ghosting words, sweet words, all those sweet things he’d longed to hear the past six months. All the past years of his life.
“Sweet boy, sweet, perfect boy, I love you,” John said, breaking away for a moment, eyes dark with arousal and lips swollen as he laid atop Templeton, straddling his leg, cock insistent, damp. “Can you feel it? Can you feel how I love you?”
“John, yes...I feel it, I feel you...” Templeton replied, dazzled, feeling half-senseless already, and ran his lover’s fine silvery hair between his fingers. “I feel you...”
A hand touched that sensitive bridge of flesh, between his balls and his tight bud, caressing him with more care than Templeton could ever remember. “I want to make love to you,” his lover whispered in his ear. “Templeton...I want to make love with you, I want us to have that together...”
“Oh, oooh” Templeton keened, that clever finger circling his entrance. “Oh, John, yes, make love to me, make...make, please, John...”
It got him a soft, throaty chuckle, and a rush of cooler air across his heated, flushed body as the older man reached up and out, reaching for something up above, and Templeton couldn’t help but admire the way his body flexed, how those muscles pulled and bunched, revealing whole new angles, new things... and he couldn’t resist tilting his head to suckle, lightly, at one of John’s hard, hard nipples.
“Mmm, sweetheart, sweetheart,” his lover said, urging him off as he laid his long frame back into the narrow of their shared cocoon. “I have something for you. For us.”
In his big hand was a tin, some kind of salve, and Templeton recognized the label as being from...
“You shop downtown?” he asked.
“It’s good for this. The best. Only the best, for you, Templeton, I thought.” John smiled, a little sad this time, and looked away as he broke the seal, as the sweet scent of mint filled the room. “I...I asked Bosco to pick this up for me, after...after that morning, in the grass together. I thought we would...”
But they hadn't. His foolishness had cost them that. Cost them all this time, all this pain, and Templeton felt a tear slide down his cheek as he lunged up to kiss those words right out of his man.
John stopped Templeton just shy of his goal, their lips touching, nothing yet initiated. He whined a little, and the older man smiled back in reply.
“It’s fine, sweetheart,” the gardener murmured, and thumbed that tear away from Templeton’s cheekbone. “Please, lad, don’t...”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for what I said that day, what I did...”
“Hey, kid, no apologies,” John replied softly, following the words up with the fondest of kisses. “No looking back. We’re here now, together, you and I. Nothing else matters right now. Nothing but your pleasure...”
“And yours,” Templeton said with a firm little nod, and wraped his lips around the top of John’s thumb, tasting the saltiness of his own tear as his lover sighed. “Show me how to please you, John.” He laid one hand on the older man’s chest, took the little tin away with the other, scooping out a bit of the creamy salve within. It felt lovely on his fingers, smooth and slick, just a hint of tingle from the mint, and he briefly wondered what its real purpose was as he kissed John again. “Tell me how to make you feel what I feel for you. Tell me how I make you feel beautiful...”
John’s smile didn’t waver, but he caught Templeton’s wrist before the younger man had the chance to start opening himself up. “No, my love.”
The blonde felt a wave of confusion wash through him. His brow furrowed and he felt his body starting to retreat of its own accord. John had said...he had... hadn’t he? “John?”
“You...you do not have to do this for yourself, lad. Open yourself up for me. You don’t...”
He shook his head. So that was it. John wanted him tight? That was fine, tight was fine, but John was so big, bigger with every second, it seemed. Could he handle it? Of course he could. He could, for John he could do anything... “The Colonel hasn’t taken me for several days. I’m tighter than perhaps you might...it might not be as good for you it...”
John growled, but his fingers stayed soft around Templeton’s wrist as he wiped the slick away, rubbing it between his own fingers. “No, sweet boy. That’s not what I meant.” He laid his arm around the jut of Templeton’s hipbone, letting those fingers trail into the young man’s cleft, one finger just circling his entrance. “Let me, my love. Let me do this for you.”
Eyes wide, realizing the truth in those words, Templeton tried to answer and found his voice failing him. So he nodded instead.
The smile that met his agreement was dazzling, and John laid back, urging the younger man half up over him, one hand on his cock, just enough contact to keep him from going out of his mind with desire, that other hand starting to tease his tight bud. “I’m going to open you, Templeton. Wide enough to take me. No pain. You should never have anything like pain...”
He wanted to start crying again as John’s long digit slipped into him, resting, moving slow, thrusting slow, circling slow. It was past the clenching ring, past all his fears, all the old memories. It was indescribable. Nobody had ever done this for him. Nobody had ever thought to his pleasure during this simple preparation. Nobody had ever...
“Ooh,” he moaned and gasped into John’s shoulder, white light exploding through him as the pad of that questing finger brushed something deep inside. “Oh, John, what was...”
“That’s your pleasure, my love.” John’s words were thick, tangible with so many conflicting emotions. “That’s how this is supposed to feel.”
They kissed, his lover moving slowly, finger in and out, shallow thrusts that soon grew thicker, twisting and curling with the addition of a second finger and a third. His mind was reeling. His cock was drooling. And Templeton clung to John, listening to his own whimpers, smelling the scent of his man’s skin, sweat beginning to bead up, rich and salty, the scent of their combined desire, musky and earthy. He was panting. Hard. His heart was beating against his ribs. He’d never, it had never, never been like this, never before...
John let out a throaty groan, pure need echoing in his voice, and those fingers thrust deep, spreading wide as they pull out. “I cannot wait any longer, Temp. Please, lad...”
He nodded, understanding. This part. Of course. An expectant shiver ran through him. This part. With John. Finally, finally... “Belly, then?”
Blue eyes clouded for a moment, and John rolled him over fully, kissing him as he did it. “Back, my love. On your back. I want to see everything...I want to see you. I want you to see me, what you do to me...”
Heat surged through Templeton and he spread his legs automatically, the sheets whispering against his skin. “I can see you, too,” he replied softly, in awe. “You want me to see you.”
“Everything shared,” John affirmed, and scooped out a generous palmful of salve from the tin, reaching between his own legs as he settled between Templeton’s. “Everything...”
Templeton stopped him, wiping the salve off into his own hand, and craned his neck to kiss John’s jaw. It was all he could reach from the angle he was at, but it got him a happy, delicious growl anyway. “Everything shared,” he agreed, and took John’s burning manhood in hand, slicking it fully.
John let him touch, caress, for a moment or two, and then nipped at his neck, at his ear, and knelt up, grabbing one of his thin pillows. He folded it in half - “lift, sweet lad” - and shoved it carefully under Templeton’s hips. He laid a big hand on the younger man’s belly, practically shaking as he made a few slow passes over flushing skin. “Templeton...” he whispered.
He had his cock in hand. Lining up. Getting ready. And Templeton had never been more ready himself for anything in his life.
“Please...” he whispered.
“Anything, love,” John whispered back.
And Templeton’s world narrowed to the single sensation of the slow, beautiful slide of thick, heavy, pulsing flesh straight up into his very heart.
It burned, but only around the edges, and the pain only highlighted the brilliance of that feeling. He cried out as John’s cock nudged his prostate, slipping up it, dragging his body higher and higher.
Templeton was impaled. John was huge inside of him. John was enormous. Filling him, sparking every nerve, firing joy through him, opening him up. And his body opened to him, the internal flutters fading, adjusting, allowing, welcoming John home, where he always should have been, into the place that had always belonged to him. Before they’d even met, Templeton thought, mind flooded, this had belonged to John...
That wonderful bubble of pleasure in his belly, the one he’d felt so rarely before, the one he’d felt last with John, so many months ago, was swelling, near to bursting, and Templeton only realized he was holding his breath against it, trying to hold on, when John’s body draped fully over his, little words whispered in his ear.
“Breath, darling, breath. You’re doing so well...please don’t come yet...please wait for me...”
“Can...can I...can we...” the younger man gasped.
John nudged his hips forward, ever so slightly. “We can. We should.” A lock of sweat-damp hair was brushed from Templeton’s face, replaced by a soft kiss as those hips began to roll, hitting new places inside, giving the younger man’s own throbbing cock some friction between their bellies. “Do you want to?”
There was only one answer for that.
“Yes,” he pleaded.
John’s blue eyes crinkled in happiness. “I love you,” he whispered, and started to move proper.
Templeton didn’t know what to do. He gasped for air, hands digging in the sheets until John caught them and wound through them and held them by his heaving sides. He squeezed tight and found the rhythm, meeting John, meeting him, clenching around him, years of ill-gotten skill put to glorious use for the very first time. He listened to John’s moans and tangled them with his own, sometimes tasting as their mouths met and fell apart again. He tried to keep the bubble down, tried to keep it from rising too high and popping, from...
Their lips passed, a kiss left open, and John shuddered and rolled up hard. “Can’t... not long, not long...”
“John...I...” and he couldn't find the words, so he squeezed every muscle around that driving pillar of flesh within him, begging John with his body, saying that which he could not say with words.
Please, please, John, please...
John groaned, louder than any other, more pain than pleasure now, and he rocked forward harder. “I’m going, I’m going...” and he groaned again. “Please, Templeton, love, come, come with me, come with me...n-now!"
And with that now, their dance fell apart and so did John, thrusting deep inside, as deep as he had gone yet, locking up above him as he spent himself in wave after wave of crashing heat, filling him in a way Templeton had felt a hundred, thousand, time before, but never really experienced...
The bubble snapped under the weight of it all and Templeton’s head fell back into the pillows as he heard himself screaming, emptying, sobbing out with the pleasure of it all as his sense of the world fell in to the gray oblivion of the snow beyond the window and all else faded beyond recognition.
Warm, Templeton thought as his mind loosed and he drifted on the last weak pulses of orgasm. So, so, warm...
