Fic: Proof (Jack/Boone)
Title: Proof
Pairing: Jack/Boone
Warning: Adults only: graphic sexual content, consensual violence.
Summary: 3200 words. Jack and Boone and their sado-masochism kink wouldn’t vacate my brain until I wrote this. I seriously have no idea where it came from. I've never written these two before. I guess the Muse demands odd things from time to time.
Note: No spoilers or identifiable timeline placement, but it’s obviously season one on the island, disregarding Boone’s eventual Locke worship and the events of “Do No Harm.”
Proof
Jack couldn’t bring himself to scream out curses and orders, even though he was checking those words just before they passed through his lips. It was too much. But he could fuck Boone into the ground or the nearest tree in a way that probably spoke those words for him anyway, and in a language Boone could understand well.
Boone was well-versed in this language, and he had a subtle command of it, at first doling out such proof of his desire that a man would only notice it if he wanted to see it. First he had danced around Jack, coming closer and then pulling back, but always within reach. Blue eyes in his line of vision, the smell of his body so near and so sharply masculine, shirt tail pulled up just enough that he could always see his small, round ass. Then the touching: hands on his shoulders, his arms, breath on his skin, intimate but with just enough sense that they could both flinch and it would easily, needfully disappear.
Then one day at the caves, out of the blue but probably calculated for its effect: “Jack, I think you should kiss me. If you want to.”
He felt his eyes go wide. Of course he’d thought about it. But thinking was all he’d ever done with a man. Jack waited for Boone to move, but he didn’t, not until he walked away, with a welcoming smile and a very obvious swagger. And Jack was completely at a loss as to what to do, suddenly needing it that badly and being surer than ever that it was something he could never properly do. It was hard enough with a woman, but this...
It had been a bad day, that day it finally happened. Boone knew it, and he stayed within sight of Jack all day, which seemed at first to just make everything worse. Late in the evening, Jack was standing down the beach, almost out of the sight of camp, trying to breathe and just not be near those fucking people and their endless problems. Then there was Boone, strolling out toward him. He stopped in front of him, a hair’s breadth into his personal space. It was enough.
“Jack,” he said. White t-shirt, those dark blue jeans hanging off his hips, hair stirred up by the wind. Lips soft, red. Eyes trying their best not to absolutely scare him with their intensity while at the same time practically begging for him.
Boone thrust his hands in his pockets, but he didn’t take his eyes off him. He just repeated his name. “Jack.” He closed his eyes. “It’s just a kiss, Jack.”
It was something in the way he said his name that last time--soft, sure--and Jack was suddenly kissing him, both hands on the sides of his face. He couldn’t do anything but taste Boone’s warm mouth, like he was drinking him in, slowly, exploring with his tongue and feeling him yield, but actively, drawing Jack closer, his mouth and his body, until Jack could feel Boone’s body just brushing his, but fluttering almost, nervous or holding something back.
Jack broke the kiss and looked at him, seeing a strange flush on his face and how his eyes no longer seemed icy blue but warm and deep. He saw the smile coming, serious and dangerous. Boone said, “Now you can kiss me like you really want to.” It had felt for a second like criticism, but Jack realized it was more of an invitation.
“Who says I wasn’t?” he said, stalling. Stalling desperately because he could finally feel the adrenaline rocking him.
“I know you,” he said. All he did was squeeze Jack’s arm and all of a sudden Jack was trying to swallow him whole, gulp him down. Jack sucked his lips into his mouth, and he lapped at his tongue, and with his tongue coming to life, so did his dick, eager, not even knowing what it could have but wanting it anyway. He hadn’t been the least bit unsure, somehow, and when he felt Boone’s slender body slipping against his, worry didn’t even seem like a possibility.
They were on the ground, Jack on top of him, when Boone started begging. Please. Yes. Now. Please. Good. Harder. It couldn’t get much harder: Jack was grabbing or pressing every inch of his flesh, and the thrust of their cocks together, denim on denim, hurt. It made Jack forget everything but the scratchy hair on Boone’s jaw and the smell of their bodies together. He vaguely thought that this was too fast, too much, but Boone was pulling him down, as if he wanted Jack to push him into the sand, to bury him, and Jack felt the power surging through him, because Boone was trying to take it from him, stretch it between them. It was a flood of power through his limbs and down into Boone’s clutching thighs and out through his sweating forehead, hair plastered down.
They had barely gotten their jeans and underwear down their hips so they could feel skin on skin when Boone was coming with a groan, and it was warm and wet and so unexpected to Jack that he came too, shooting semen all over Boone’s chest. For a moment, they kept rocking into each other and reveling in the slickness and heat, then Jack reluctantly pulled himself off Boone, waiting to know what in the hell he should do, how he should react.
Boone looked dazed, but he managed a lazy smile, lying there on his back with his arm slung over his forehead. “Amazing,” he said.
Jack just shook his head, muttered something about them not being teenagers anymore, about the mess. But Boone shook his head and pulled Jack back down to his face to kiss him and tell him to shut up.
That night, Boone showed up at his tent and let his long, slender fingers tease over Jack’s arms and back and stomach until Jack was kissing him fiercely and tearing off his clothes. Boone taught him how to use his fingers to stretch him carefully, and he murmured encouragement as Jack slipped into him. Then he begged to be fucked until Jack began to feel his body moving in a way it rarely had before with a lover--hard, almost brutal. He wanted to split Boone in half, fuck him deep until he groaned from the feeling of being full of Jack. Boone’s narrow hips and pale white shoulders excited him in ways he didn’t understand. He felt his cock force its way into the tightness of Boone’s ass and slide out again, but the heat gave way to emptiness and Jack pounded back in, to make Boone scream. He loved to hear it, and Boone was so vocal, pleading and praising and taking it all. When his moans rode the line between pleasure and pain, Jack let it all go and just concentrated on his hips meeting Boone’s ass until Boone was coming, biting back some strangled sort of sound, nearly helpless, and Jack came right after him, almost physically bowled over by Boone’s body’s reaction to his. As he came down from it, he felt strangely compelled to kiss Boone’s neck, then suck it, then bite, and he was soon making a trail of bites all the way down Boone’s back as far as he could reach. These bites didn’t break the skin, but they were clearly visible, and when Boone fell asleep there, Jack couldn’t take his eyes off the red ovals on his skin nor could he forget the pained grunt that Boone had made when he finally slipped out of him. So he left before Boone woke up, and Boone was gone when he got back.
This is what they did. Boone worked him up, set him off, pushed him toward it until he was practically throwing Boone onto the ground and ravaging him. Jack left bruises; he was guilty over the bruises; he avoided Boone like the plague until Boone would corner him somewhere, plead with him with his eyes and ask for it. Sometimes, Jack was almost sure he only fucked Boone so hard because he was angry with him for pushing, for not just leaving him alone. But it was more than that. He got to where he craved it, and he waited impatiently for Boone to come and invite him to take control of him like that. He couldn’t just go and take it; he had to know it was what Boone wanted. But deep down he knew that Boone wanted it--needed it--just as badly, and that made him leery of it. It wasn’t right. It was too easy; it was unkind and crazy and fucked up and unhealthy. Surely.
Then one day Jack finally did make the move himself. He’d gone into the jungle to do something, he could no longer remember what, but Boone was following him. He was quiet about it at first, not demanding any of Jack’s attention. That was his method, to hope to entice Jack with his submission and silence, but it always gave way to him being more direct. This directness from Boone was something Jack absolutely could not resist, because it seemed somehow wrong even as Jack was sure that in another lifetime, Boone was the forceful one. He had to be. The way he moved and spoke and kissed said he could be so insistent and aggressive, so why wasn’t he with Jack? The more pressing question to Jack was why Boone’s acquiescence both bothered and excited him.
Despite these reservations, Jack would usually give in and let Boone coax him into starting it up again, but this day, he took Boone by surprise. He was tired of being reserved and confused. So he simply stopped and held the back of Boone’s head firmly as he kissed him, almost too hard at first, but he was bad at this, so very bad at being the one who acts. Or at least he thought he was until he felt it go through Boone, a shudder of anticipation following after that first moment of shock. Boone matched his intensity even as he surrendered himself to Jack, allowing him to back him into the nearest tree. This was more intense than it had ever been, somehow, just because Jack had initiated things.
They no longer had much foreplay anymore, because Jack didn’t quite know what to do with it. After, yes--but before he could only move blindly toward it and hope not to think too hard or he would stop. This day, as he held Boone’s body against the tree trunk with his own, something about the roughness of the bark made him think too much and he was releasing him, trying not to feel how rigid with need he was or see how Boone’s face had taken on a sudden look of betrayal.
“We can’t,” he said as he held his head in his hands, a few feet away from where he’d just been and where Boone was now leaned back against the tree, panting and bewildered. When Jack looked up again, Boone looked less bewildered and more frustrated.
“Jack...” he said pleadingly.
“Boone, we can’t keep doing this.”
“Why not? Come on. I’m not stupid. You get off on doing this to me. I know you do.”
“No.”
Boone’s eyes held his impressively. “You do. You like the way it feels.”
“Well, it’s not right.”
“What?”
“This. This slamming you into a fucking tree isn’t right.”
“Of course it is. We’re not hurting anybody.”
“I’m hurting you.”
“And that’s what I want.”
“That’s sick.”
Boone got angry then, really angry. It was almost scary, because Jack hadn’t seen anything like that from him before. His nostrils flared and his eyes, instead of going hard, seemed to fill up with things unfit for speech. “Really? I’m not the one that gets off on seeing a person’s bruises and has the gall to act like he doesn’t.”
Jack tried to stay calm, approaching this like he did any other problem, deluding himself into thinking he was being supremely rational when he was actually scared to death. He said, “This is so unhealthy it’s ridiculous.”
“Oh? Didn’t seem unhealthy yesterday.” He pulled back his collar, revealing the large bruise above his nipple.
“Boone.”
“No. You need to look at this. This is what you do. And you like it. And I like it.”
“’What I do’? You can’t even say it. How normal is this if you can’t even articulate it?”
“I don’t give a shit if it’s normal. And I can say it whatever way you want. How about plain and simple: I love the way you can take over my body and make me feel everything so hard. It feels safe and scary at the same time, like I’m the only person you’d ever do this for, be this for, but yet I don’t know what in the hell you’re going to do sometimes. But I’ve never run from it, because I need it. Maybe you can stand there and act like it’s beneath you, but I need you to fuck me like that. You, Jack. Not the doctor or the fucking island Indian chief, but you.”
Jack couldn’t say anything, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Boone either.
Boone continued, “You need it too. You do. Men like you always do.”
It stung him even as it confirmed something for him. “So this is what you always do? If you like pain this much, it can’t be healthy. You’re just stuck in some pattern of bad self-esteem. You’re just--“
Coldly, not even raising his voice, he said, “Fuck you. You don’t know anything about me, and if you did, you wouldn’t dare compare this to what I’ve been through.”
He began to stalk off, and while part of Jack thought that it was probably better to let him go back to the camp, he couldn’t let him go off so angry. He hated it when people were angry with him. And he was too curious to know what Boone meant. The sudden thought that Boone’s past was full of threats and hurt made his fists curl, nails tight against his palms. But right now he had to focus on the hard line of Boone’s shoulders and his angry but still somehow defeated footfall.
“Boone...”
“Leave me alone. You can just stay here with your self-righteous bullshit and leave me the fuck alone.”
“It’s just that I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Then he turned back toward him. “Stop being such a martyr. There’s hurt, and then there’s hurt. The fact that you’re even so worried about this should tell you that you don’t want to hurt me and you can’t.”
“But I have.”
“No, Jack. Bruises, pulled muscles, bite marks...those are nothing compared to somebody truly not giving a shit about whether they hurt you. I’ve been in and out of what you’d call normal relationships for a couple of years now, and they bore the everliving fuck out of me. I can’t get what I need. I was sure that I was somehow fucked up, wanting what I want, until I got it from you. You haven’t ever gotten angry and hit me, or gotten drunk and thrown marble sculpture or glass vases at me. And you sure as hell never fucked me like I was worthless.”
“You’re not.”
“Well, wanting to take me right up to the edge of pain doesn’t make you worthless either, or sick or cruel or whatever the hell it is you’re telling yourself now.”
“I didn’t know…”
“Well, there’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sighed, exasperated. “Stop that. Stop fucking apologizing. You just tell me if you want to keep doing this.”
“I can’t promise it won’t freak me out.”
“Well, join the club. You think you’re the only one who wonders if you’re colossally screwed up for needing it.”
“Then why keep looking for it?”
“Because it’s what I need.”
“All the time?”
“No. Sometimes I want it quiet, soft. With the right person. And it can be in between, too, Jack.”
“I know, I just don’t know how to...” He shook his head, embarrassed and annoyed at himself.
Boone smiled in response, and that managed to smooth out something in Jack’s soul that had been feeling squeezed and battered probably since they started doing this. Boone was standing just a couple of paces away, and he crossed over to him quickly, sliding his arms around Jack’s waist. It felt tentative and strange, their stomachs pressed their together, as if they’d never touched before. But then Boone kissed his neck with those soft lips, and it brought back all the arousal again. Then Boone said, “What if I tell you what to do, where to touch me.”
“Does it work like that?”
“If it didn’t, would you have ever laid a finger on me?”
Jack didn’t answer, so Boone took his hand and placed it on his neck, and Jack let his thumb caress the soft skin of Boone’s jaw. “What do you want, Jack?”
“You.”
“You’ve gotta do better than that,” he murmured. “You need to learn to be more vocal.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Whatever you want. There is no word so dirty I haven’t heard it, but if you can find one, you have no idea what that might do to me.”
Boone was almost purring now, supple in his arms but somehow still steady. It was unnerving how this younger man could be so sure of himself. It made Jack falter a bit, hesitate, and the way they were connected to each other now, Boone instantly felt it. Jack was slowly learning that Boone was almost as sensitive as he was to other people’s pain and tension. He realized that the last few weeks probably hadn’t been easy on him either.
Boone pulled his face away to look at him. “Jack, this is fine. We’re not hurting each other or anybody else. If we ever get to the point where we do, we’ll stop.”
“Okay.”
“Jack? You’re not gonna be guilty later, are you?”
“I hope not,” he said. Then he inhaled deeply as he pressed his face into the crook of Boone’s neck, and he knew that probably whether he felt guilty or not was up to him, and he didn’t want to keep feeling bad about this. Biting so lightly it wouldn’t even leave a mark, he said, “What do you call it when I tease your asshole with my tongue?”
“You’ve never done that.”
“You didn’t ask me what we’d done. You asked me what I want to do.”
“Rimming,” Boone answered, slightly breathless but holding something back. Jack wondered if Boone felt that same tension from him, and if it made him hot like it did Jack. Suddenly, the thought of building up that pressure before they pounded it out of each other seemed incredibly important.
Jack’s hands roamed up under Boone’s shirt, tweaking one nipple until it hardened and Boone was writhing at his touch. Softly, in his ear, Jack said, “Rimming. Then I want to suck your dick so hard it’ll make you dizzy.”
“Say that again,” Boone said, an edge now in his voice.
“I want to suck your dick, Boone. Hard. Then you’re going to do the same for me.”
“What happened to me telling you what to do?”
“Oh, you will. Loudly.”
Jack had to keep reminding himself to slow down and enjoy this man bending under his touch and asking for more of it. He was able to do that now, and it made that first real bite into Boone’s thigh taste even more like power than before, because now it was all so secure, the reciprocity in Boone’s groans making the proof of his body’s new marks feel so conclusive.
Pairing: Jack/Boone
Warning: Adults only: graphic sexual content, consensual violence.
Summary: 3200 words. Jack and Boone and their sado-masochism kink wouldn’t vacate my brain until I wrote this. I seriously have no idea where it came from. I've never written these two before. I guess the Muse demands odd things from time to time.
Note: No spoilers or identifiable timeline placement, but it’s obviously season one on the island, disregarding Boone’s eventual Locke worship and the events of “Do No Harm.”
Proof
Jack couldn’t bring himself to scream out curses and orders, even though he was checking those words just before they passed through his lips. It was too much. But he could fuck Boone into the ground or the nearest tree in a way that probably spoke those words for him anyway, and in a language Boone could understand well.
Boone was well-versed in this language, and he had a subtle command of it, at first doling out such proof of his desire that a man would only notice it if he wanted to see it. First he had danced around Jack, coming closer and then pulling back, but always within reach. Blue eyes in his line of vision, the smell of his body so near and so sharply masculine, shirt tail pulled up just enough that he could always see his small, round ass. Then the touching: hands on his shoulders, his arms, breath on his skin, intimate but with just enough sense that they could both flinch and it would easily, needfully disappear.
Then one day at the caves, out of the blue but probably calculated for its effect: “Jack, I think you should kiss me. If you want to.”
He felt his eyes go wide. Of course he’d thought about it. But thinking was all he’d ever done with a man. Jack waited for Boone to move, but he didn’t, not until he walked away, with a welcoming smile and a very obvious swagger. And Jack was completely at a loss as to what to do, suddenly needing it that badly and being surer than ever that it was something he could never properly do. It was hard enough with a woman, but this...
It had been a bad day, that day it finally happened. Boone knew it, and he stayed within sight of Jack all day, which seemed at first to just make everything worse. Late in the evening, Jack was standing down the beach, almost out of the sight of camp, trying to breathe and just not be near those fucking people and their endless problems. Then there was Boone, strolling out toward him. He stopped in front of him, a hair’s breadth into his personal space. It was enough.
“Jack,” he said. White t-shirt, those dark blue jeans hanging off his hips, hair stirred up by the wind. Lips soft, red. Eyes trying their best not to absolutely scare him with their intensity while at the same time practically begging for him.
Boone thrust his hands in his pockets, but he didn’t take his eyes off him. He just repeated his name. “Jack.” He closed his eyes. “It’s just a kiss, Jack.”
It was something in the way he said his name that last time--soft, sure--and Jack was suddenly kissing him, both hands on the sides of his face. He couldn’t do anything but taste Boone’s warm mouth, like he was drinking him in, slowly, exploring with his tongue and feeling him yield, but actively, drawing Jack closer, his mouth and his body, until Jack could feel Boone’s body just brushing his, but fluttering almost, nervous or holding something back.
Jack broke the kiss and looked at him, seeing a strange flush on his face and how his eyes no longer seemed icy blue but warm and deep. He saw the smile coming, serious and dangerous. Boone said, “Now you can kiss me like you really want to.” It had felt for a second like criticism, but Jack realized it was more of an invitation.
“Who says I wasn’t?” he said, stalling. Stalling desperately because he could finally feel the adrenaline rocking him.
“I know you,” he said. All he did was squeeze Jack’s arm and all of a sudden Jack was trying to swallow him whole, gulp him down. Jack sucked his lips into his mouth, and he lapped at his tongue, and with his tongue coming to life, so did his dick, eager, not even knowing what it could have but wanting it anyway. He hadn’t been the least bit unsure, somehow, and when he felt Boone’s slender body slipping against his, worry didn’t even seem like a possibility.
They were on the ground, Jack on top of him, when Boone started begging. Please. Yes. Now. Please. Good. Harder. It couldn’t get much harder: Jack was grabbing or pressing every inch of his flesh, and the thrust of their cocks together, denim on denim, hurt. It made Jack forget everything but the scratchy hair on Boone’s jaw and the smell of their bodies together. He vaguely thought that this was too fast, too much, but Boone was pulling him down, as if he wanted Jack to push him into the sand, to bury him, and Jack felt the power surging through him, because Boone was trying to take it from him, stretch it between them. It was a flood of power through his limbs and down into Boone’s clutching thighs and out through his sweating forehead, hair plastered down.
They had barely gotten their jeans and underwear down their hips so they could feel skin on skin when Boone was coming with a groan, and it was warm and wet and so unexpected to Jack that he came too, shooting semen all over Boone’s chest. For a moment, they kept rocking into each other and reveling in the slickness and heat, then Jack reluctantly pulled himself off Boone, waiting to know what in the hell he should do, how he should react.
Boone looked dazed, but he managed a lazy smile, lying there on his back with his arm slung over his forehead. “Amazing,” he said.
Jack just shook his head, muttered something about them not being teenagers anymore, about the mess. But Boone shook his head and pulled Jack back down to his face to kiss him and tell him to shut up.
That night, Boone showed up at his tent and let his long, slender fingers tease over Jack’s arms and back and stomach until Jack was kissing him fiercely and tearing off his clothes. Boone taught him how to use his fingers to stretch him carefully, and he murmured encouragement as Jack slipped into him. Then he begged to be fucked until Jack began to feel his body moving in a way it rarely had before with a lover--hard, almost brutal. He wanted to split Boone in half, fuck him deep until he groaned from the feeling of being full of Jack. Boone’s narrow hips and pale white shoulders excited him in ways he didn’t understand. He felt his cock force its way into the tightness of Boone’s ass and slide out again, but the heat gave way to emptiness and Jack pounded back in, to make Boone scream. He loved to hear it, and Boone was so vocal, pleading and praising and taking it all. When his moans rode the line between pleasure and pain, Jack let it all go and just concentrated on his hips meeting Boone’s ass until Boone was coming, biting back some strangled sort of sound, nearly helpless, and Jack came right after him, almost physically bowled over by Boone’s body’s reaction to his. As he came down from it, he felt strangely compelled to kiss Boone’s neck, then suck it, then bite, and he was soon making a trail of bites all the way down Boone’s back as far as he could reach. These bites didn’t break the skin, but they were clearly visible, and when Boone fell asleep there, Jack couldn’t take his eyes off the red ovals on his skin nor could he forget the pained grunt that Boone had made when he finally slipped out of him. So he left before Boone woke up, and Boone was gone when he got back.
This is what they did. Boone worked him up, set him off, pushed him toward it until he was practically throwing Boone onto the ground and ravaging him. Jack left bruises; he was guilty over the bruises; he avoided Boone like the plague until Boone would corner him somewhere, plead with him with his eyes and ask for it. Sometimes, Jack was almost sure he only fucked Boone so hard because he was angry with him for pushing, for not just leaving him alone. But it was more than that. He got to where he craved it, and he waited impatiently for Boone to come and invite him to take control of him like that. He couldn’t just go and take it; he had to know it was what Boone wanted. But deep down he knew that Boone wanted it--needed it--just as badly, and that made him leery of it. It wasn’t right. It was too easy; it was unkind and crazy and fucked up and unhealthy. Surely.
Then one day Jack finally did make the move himself. He’d gone into the jungle to do something, he could no longer remember what, but Boone was following him. He was quiet about it at first, not demanding any of Jack’s attention. That was his method, to hope to entice Jack with his submission and silence, but it always gave way to him being more direct. This directness from Boone was something Jack absolutely could not resist, because it seemed somehow wrong even as Jack was sure that in another lifetime, Boone was the forceful one. He had to be. The way he moved and spoke and kissed said he could be so insistent and aggressive, so why wasn’t he with Jack? The more pressing question to Jack was why Boone’s acquiescence both bothered and excited him.
Despite these reservations, Jack would usually give in and let Boone coax him into starting it up again, but this day, he took Boone by surprise. He was tired of being reserved and confused. So he simply stopped and held the back of Boone’s head firmly as he kissed him, almost too hard at first, but he was bad at this, so very bad at being the one who acts. Or at least he thought he was until he felt it go through Boone, a shudder of anticipation following after that first moment of shock. Boone matched his intensity even as he surrendered himself to Jack, allowing him to back him into the nearest tree. This was more intense than it had ever been, somehow, just because Jack had initiated things.
They no longer had much foreplay anymore, because Jack didn’t quite know what to do with it. After, yes--but before he could only move blindly toward it and hope not to think too hard or he would stop. This day, as he held Boone’s body against the tree trunk with his own, something about the roughness of the bark made him think too much and he was releasing him, trying not to feel how rigid with need he was or see how Boone’s face had taken on a sudden look of betrayal.
“We can’t,” he said as he held his head in his hands, a few feet away from where he’d just been and where Boone was now leaned back against the tree, panting and bewildered. When Jack looked up again, Boone looked less bewildered and more frustrated.
“Jack...” he said pleadingly.
“Boone, we can’t keep doing this.”
“Why not? Come on. I’m not stupid. You get off on doing this to me. I know you do.”
“No.”
Boone’s eyes held his impressively. “You do. You like the way it feels.”
“Well, it’s not right.”
“What?”
“This. This slamming you into a fucking tree isn’t right.”
“Of course it is. We’re not hurting anybody.”
“I’m hurting you.”
“And that’s what I want.”
“That’s sick.”
Boone got angry then, really angry. It was almost scary, because Jack hadn’t seen anything like that from him before. His nostrils flared and his eyes, instead of going hard, seemed to fill up with things unfit for speech. “Really? I’m not the one that gets off on seeing a person’s bruises and has the gall to act like he doesn’t.”
Jack tried to stay calm, approaching this like he did any other problem, deluding himself into thinking he was being supremely rational when he was actually scared to death. He said, “This is so unhealthy it’s ridiculous.”
“Oh? Didn’t seem unhealthy yesterday.” He pulled back his collar, revealing the large bruise above his nipple.
“Boone.”
“No. You need to look at this. This is what you do. And you like it. And I like it.”
“’What I do’? You can’t even say it. How normal is this if you can’t even articulate it?”
“I don’t give a shit if it’s normal. And I can say it whatever way you want. How about plain and simple: I love the way you can take over my body and make me feel everything so hard. It feels safe and scary at the same time, like I’m the only person you’d ever do this for, be this for, but yet I don’t know what in the hell you’re going to do sometimes. But I’ve never run from it, because I need it. Maybe you can stand there and act like it’s beneath you, but I need you to fuck me like that. You, Jack. Not the doctor or the fucking island Indian chief, but you.”
Jack couldn’t say anything, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Boone either.
Boone continued, “You need it too. You do. Men like you always do.”
It stung him even as it confirmed something for him. “So this is what you always do? If you like pain this much, it can’t be healthy. You’re just stuck in some pattern of bad self-esteem. You’re just--“
Coldly, not even raising his voice, he said, “Fuck you. You don’t know anything about me, and if you did, you wouldn’t dare compare this to what I’ve been through.”
He began to stalk off, and while part of Jack thought that it was probably better to let him go back to the camp, he couldn’t let him go off so angry. He hated it when people were angry with him. And he was too curious to know what Boone meant. The sudden thought that Boone’s past was full of threats and hurt made his fists curl, nails tight against his palms. But right now he had to focus on the hard line of Boone’s shoulders and his angry but still somehow defeated footfall.
“Boone...”
“Leave me alone. You can just stay here with your self-righteous bullshit and leave me the fuck alone.”
“It’s just that I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Then he turned back toward him. “Stop being such a martyr. There’s hurt, and then there’s hurt. The fact that you’re even so worried about this should tell you that you don’t want to hurt me and you can’t.”
“But I have.”
“No, Jack. Bruises, pulled muscles, bite marks...those are nothing compared to somebody truly not giving a shit about whether they hurt you. I’ve been in and out of what you’d call normal relationships for a couple of years now, and they bore the everliving fuck out of me. I can’t get what I need. I was sure that I was somehow fucked up, wanting what I want, until I got it from you. You haven’t ever gotten angry and hit me, or gotten drunk and thrown marble sculpture or glass vases at me. And you sure as hell never fucked me like I was worthless.”
“You’re not.”
“Well, wanting to take me right up to the edge of pain doesn’t make you worthless either, or sick or cruel or whatever the hell it is you’re telling yourself now.”
“I didn’t know…”
“Well, there’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sighed, exasperated. “Stop that. Stop fucking apologizing. You just tell me if you want to keep doing this.”
“I can’t promise it won’t freak me out.”
“Well, join the club. You think you’re the only one who wonders if you’re colossally screwed up for needing it.”
“Then why keep looking for it?”
“Because it’s what I need.”
“All the time?”
“No. Sometimes I want it quiet, soft. With the right person. And it can be in between, too, Jack.”
“I know, I just don’t know how to...” He shook his head, embarrassed and annoyed at himself.
Boone smiled in response, and that managed to smooth out something in Jack’s soul that had been feeling squeezed and battered probably since they started doing this. Boone was standing just a couple of paces away, and he crossed over to him quickly, sliding his arms around Jack’s waist. It felt tentative and strange, their stomachs pressed their together, as if they’d never touched before. But then Boone kissed his neck with those soft lips, and it brought back all the arousal again. Then Boone said, “What if I tell you what to do, where to touch me.”
“Does it work like that?”
“If it didn’t, would you have ever laid a finger on me?”
Jack didn’t answer, so Boone took his hand and placed it on his neck, and Jack let his thumb caress the soft skin of Boone’s jaw. “What do you want, Jack?”
“You.”
“You’ve gotta do better than that,” he murmured. “You need to learn to be more vocal.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Whatever you want. There is no word so dirty I haven’t heard it, but if you can find one, you have no idea what that might do to me.”
Boone was almost purring now, supple in his arms but somehow still steady. It was unnerving how this younger man could be so sure of himself. It made Jack falter a bit, hesitate, and the way they were connected to each other now, Boone instantly felt it. Jack was slowly learning that Boone was almost as sensitive as he was to other people’s pain and tension. He realized that the last few weeks probably hadn’t been easy on him either.
Boone pulled his face away to look at him. “Jack, this is fine. We’re not hurting each other or anybody else. If we ever get to the point where we do, we’ll stop.”
“Okay.”
“Jack? You’re not gonna be guilty later, are you?”
“I hope not,” he said. Then he inhaled deeply as he pressed his face into the crook of Boone’s neck, and he knew that probably whether he felt guilty or not was up to him, and he didn’t want to keep feeling bad about this. Biting so lightly it wouldn’t even leave a mark, he said, “What do you call it when I tease your asshole with my tongue?”
“You’ve never done that.”
“You didn’t ask me what we’d done. You asked me what I want to do.”
“Rimming,” Boone answered, slightly breathless but holding something back. Jack wondered if Boone felt that same tension from him, and if it made him hot like it did Jack. Suddenly, the thought of building up that pressure before they pounded it out of each other seemed incredibly important.
Jack’s hands roamed up under Boone’s shirt, tweaking one nipple until it hardened and Boone was writhing at his touch. Softly, in his ear, Jack said, “Rimming. Then I want to suck your dick so hard it’ll make you dizzy.”
“Say that again,” Boone said, an edge now in his voice.
“I want to suck your dick, Boone. Hard. Then you’re going to do the same for me.”
“What happened to me telling you what to do?”
“Oh, you will. Loudly.”
Jack had to keep reminding himself to slow down and enjoy this man bending under his touch and asking for more of it. He was able to do that now, and it made that first real bite into Boone’s thigh taste even more like power than before, because now it was all so secure, the reciprocity in Boone’s groans making the proof of his body’s new marks feel so conclusive.