Fic: Chariots of Fire (Liam/Louis)
Title: Chariots of Fire
Fandom: One Direction rps
Pairing: Liam/Louis (for the Liam/Louis smut!ficathon)
Notes: This was supposed to be smut but then running metaphors and ~feelings got in the way. Ugh, hate it when that happens.
Running is simple.
Running is finding calm in the chaos-controlled falling. Letting yourself go and then catching yourself over and over and over. It’s just you and the push of your feet into the ground and the bump of your heart against your ribs, the swell of your lungs, the ache in your calves.
Beforehand it’s all nerves and expectations, pressure from everywhere. It’s set records and sleepless nights and panic attacks and wet eyes and shin splints and throwing up from the heat and it’s shattered confidence and it’s miles and miles and miles in worn down shoes. Afterwards it can be broken toes and broken hearts, scraped knees and anger and self-loathing and more miles, more push, more more more or it can be broken precedents, gold medals and cheers and flags draped over shoulders, champagne and legends.
But it’s not the before and after. It’s the during. It’s the meantime. The run is everything.
At least, that’s what Liam Payne thinks. He thinks that the running is the easiest part. He thinks it’s the most beautiful part, too, just him and the ground and power punching through his legs. But the Ethiopian that’s keeping a backbreaking pace at the front probably doesn’t think of it so poetically.
That’s why Liam has the edge.
The twelve pull around the last corner, Liam five back from the front. He’s boxed in by the American on his right, but the guy seems to flag a little, feet slowing. Liam edges out in front of him, sliding to the outside of the pack as they reach the apex of the curve. It’s a tricky move, coming to the outside in a corner, but Liam knows this race and he knows this town and he knows the voices in the crowd are chanting only for him. He knows what he’s doing.
So it’s only really surprising to the Belgian and the Kenyan when he pulls it out at the last second. He kicks his pace up and sweeps right past them on the last 100, checking in second only to the Ethiopian.
He gets pulled into hugs and congratulations from his coaches, his Irish training partner Niall that he’s running anchor against in the 4x400 on Tuesday, his mum and his dad and his sisters. Then the interviewers are a flood, innumerable faces and microphones tucked underneath his chin and cameras pressed into his still-sweaty face.
Usually he doesn’t notice them further than their introductions, bland suits and the same six questions about his pace and his expectations for the finals and the home field advantage and track conditions. He kind of hates it. Liam never got into running to get in the spotlight. To the contrary-he started running so he wasn’t so obligated to socialize in gym.
It doesn’t help that he’s always completely knackered after a race, because usually reporters are completely on, hyperactive and insistent and basically just annoying as fuck. Especially the American women, for some reason. And then there’s always Louis. He didn’t even want to think about that bast--
“Great race, Payne. Are you that intense with everything you do?”
Liam jumps a little bit at the sort-of familiar male voice, turning towards the source. The man smirking cheekily at him has the same bright, shrewd blue eyes Liam remembers narrowing at him after Worlds last year, and the year before that, fresh-faced and gorgeous and naught but a year or two older than Liam himself. He’s got a notepad and a press pass that glints a little in the low light. Louis Tomlinson, it reads; London Times.
Liam frowns at him, irritation already bristling underneath his skin. Tomlinson liked to ask the most annoying, awkward, uncomfortable questions. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I was asking if all that passion,” just the way he says the word makes Liam flush, “translates to something extra in the bedroom.”
“I don’t see how that would be any of your business,” Liam bites back hotly.
The man’s eyebrows go up, and he lets his eyes track ostentatiously down Liam’s frame, biting at the tip of his pen. “And what a shame it is.”
Anger flares more in Liam’s stomach, coupling with the warm flush on his cheeks, and with a glance around the mostly empty tunnel, he wraps a hand around the reporter’s upper arm. He drags the man down the corridor and around a corner, pressing him backfirst into the wall. “What do you want?” he hisses, because he hates having to deal with people like this, people that will print crap about him and his family for no good reason and with no facts (although Louis’s stories involving him have never anything less than complimentary-it’s mostly the gossip rags that blow things out of proportion). “What’s your angle?”
Louis laughs, and it sounds breathless. “Angle? I’m a sports journalist, Payne, I have no angle. The only angle I’m interested in is the one between your legs.”
Liam snorts. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” Louis snaps back at him. His bangs are falling into his eyes, and the dark edge to them is pretty unmistakable. “Jesus, I’ve wanted to fuck you since you were the sixteen-year-old running prodigy that I read about in school.”
“That’s,” Liam flounders, and then he flushes because, well. “Really?”
Louis fists a hand in the front of Liam’s Team GB race shirt. “Come on, Payne. Let’s go and see about your stamina, shall we?”
“Liam.”
The fingers loosen but don’t let go of the fabric. “What?”
Liam leans down and kisses him, pulse jumping from choked-down nerves for the finals and uncertainty and mostly just the fact that he hasn’t gotten laid in a really, really long time, too obsessed with split times and race videos and dreams. “Call me Liam, wouldjda?”
xx
Louis is shockingly careful with his fingers, his teeth. He sucks Liam’s cock with all the finesse of a professional, bites bruises only into the skin below his hips, digs scratches where they won’t show in a camera shot. He makes Liam’s back arch and heat pool in his stomach and his toes curl.
In return, then, Liam pushes Louis into the mattress, spreads his hands wide over Louis’s ribs and feels his lungs heaving like he’s run miles to get here. Eyes wide, cheeks flushed, mouth open and slick with spit and come and pliant underneath Liam’s. He tangles his fingers through Louis’s, pulls his hands over his head and leaves them there, never misses a second of Louis’s glance tracking hungrily over his skin.
Liam scrapes teeth over Louis’s collarbone trying not to leave any marks. He knows this isn’t going anywhere-Louis was just looking for a fuck and Liam’s already completely committed. But it makes Louis keen, a high, desperate sound, so he bites in, coupling it with a cant of his hips up to meet Louis’s, skin slapping lewdly.
Louis starts murmuring filthy, encouraging things and it sounds like the scuff of shoes on pavement, the pace of someone just ahead of him, coaxing him forward. “Come on,” he pants, sweat a sheen over his cheeks, “you gonna show me that passion or what? Make me come all over that gorgeous fucking chest.”
Liam thrusts into him with a harsh squeeze around his wrists and watches, fascinated when Louis’s bright baby blues roll back in his head. “Li,” he wheezes, frantic, panicky, needy. Liam slips a hand between them, tugs at Louis with a solid grip. “Fuck, yes.”
Liam drags an open mouth across Louis’s neck, licks at his pulse point and sucks at the skin. “Lou,” he hums into the raw flesh, and that in itself sets Louis off with a cry.
The sound punches through Liam’s chest like a false start, a stumble out of the blocks, and it throws the world out of focus and onto its head. And he wants to say something, but his tongue’s tied and Louis is kissing him, sweaty and warm and solid and sleepy. He figures falling asleep to that is an okay alternative.
xx
“Liam,” someone murmurs into his jaw. “Time to get up.”
“Five more minutes?” he asks hopelessly, and his arm tightens around the warm body whose legs are tangled up with his.
There’s a sigh that’s far too put-upon to be Niall (who he’s woken up with a few times like this-it happens) and he opens his eyes to see a Louis Tomlinson that is about six seconds from pinching him awake. “Aren’t you supposed to be the dedicated athlete here? I don’t have to be up for another four hours.” He pulls fingers through Liam’s hair softly.
“Mmm,” Liam purrs mournfully, because shit, he’d forgotten about the training run he wanted to do today. The finals are tomorrow. He’s not going to be ready if he doesn’t run a couple miles today. But he feels disgusting, sticky with come and sweat. “I need a shower.”
Louis doesn’t bother hiding the mischievous look in his eyes. “Mind if I join you?”
And showering with Louis doesn’t come out anything like Liam expects it to. It’s actually sweet-Louis helping him wash his hair with a giggle, kneading fingers into the sore places in his back and shoulders and arms and anywhere else he can’t reach. He kisses Liam slow and sloppy and gets out two minutes before him just to lay out the brightest running shorts and top he could find in Liam’s suitcase.
He’s sitting on the bathroom sink when Liam towels off his hair, grinning at the outfit choice. “Really?”
“Live a little,” Louis says, sticking out his tongue. “Honestly, Liam, people are going to think you’re a grandfather at the ripe old age of twenty if you don’t.”
Liam harrumphs in disagreement, but pulls on the fluorescent yellow tank top and equally blinding electric blue shorts anyway. “What do you think?” Liam asks, striking a thoughtful pose.
“I’d do you.”
A snort tears not-so-gracefully out of Liam. “Obviously.”
Louis laughs, and the sound is genuine, if a little rusty. It sounds like a balled-up piece of paper getting tossed in the bin, abandoned for better things. “C’mere,” he beckons, taking Liam’s shaving cream can in his hands and squirting some of it into his palm. Liam wriggles his hips between Louis’s knees and watches curiously as Louis spreads it onto his fingertips. He flattens his hands on Liam’s cheeks, drags the shaving cream across his jaw and underneath and wipes the excess on the hand towel hanging from the wall.
He goes about shaving Liam’s face like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And it isn’t as if Liam isn’t appreciating this, this-whatever this is, with Louis waking him up and getting him into the shower and helping him dress and shaving him-but it’s setting him a little bit off balance. Louis pulls the razor carefully along Liam’s jaw. “Why are you doing this?”
Blue eyes link with his, and the undercurrent in them is a sort of affection that looks like it hurts. “Someone should,” Louis says, after a beat, “Someone should take care of you, every now and then.”
Liam blinks at him, because that’s not something he’s ever thought of, having someone else take care of him. He can look out for himself fine. Does it get lonely? Well, yes, of course, but up until now it’s always seemed like a necessary evil. He’s a distance runner, that’s what happens; you don’t count on anyone but yourself. Because that’s all it is-you and your feet and the ground. It’s always been okay to be alone. And it is. Okay.
But. The idea is tempting. Having someone there so that Liam’s life is less like a marathon and more like a relay. “Are you offering, then?” Liam asks. “Every now and then?”
Louis smiles at him, and Liam’s teetering between steps, the fall between beats of his feet. “Sure,” he murmurs, soft, and Liam hits the track hard, the world righted.
xx
He runs the race, and he can remember afterwards the fact that practically all of England had been there, the Princes and Kate and everyone. He can remember people roaring with pride and screaming out in secondhand victory and he can remember the heaviness of yellow metal around his neck and the cackling hug from Niall and getting choked up during “God Save the Queen,” a shaky hand over his pounding heart.
He can also remember the wide shine of sky blue, a viciously happy smile, and a kiss on the lips that’s worth his weight in gold.