Roman Elegy (Kirk/McCoy, NC-17) Happy Birthday, sangueuk!
To sangueuk , the brilliant and beautiful, a wonderful birthday and hopes for many more and better. As a friend of mine once said, "You're never really old, as long as you have a mental age of 12" (although in your case we better make it 18 so it's legal in all states ;) ).
A humble offering, neither as good or as smutty as you deserve, but with at least some things you like (Jim, Bones, sex, red wine, and a suggestion of cigarettes).
“This place?” Leonard peered down the long, dark flight of stairs to where light and noise spilled out of an open door. “It isn’t in the guide.”
“Fuck the guide.”
Jim grabbed his hand and pulled him downward. It had been like that all day. All Leonard’s good intentions, all the ancient art and architecture, a once-in-a-lifetime chances to use his high school Latin, all flew past in an espresso-fueled blur of Jim.
They’d visited a carnival, a sex shop, a crypt full of monks’ skulls, and-surprisingly-the Coliseum, where Jim had described, very seriously and at some length, how he would have fought a lion. And now, instead of sitting in a pleasant outdoor café, they were in an underground wine bar with a smoke-dark ceiling and air tinged with illegal tobacco.
At least the wine list looked wonderful--villas and castles and princes, hundreds of them. He scrolled through, affecting a connoisseur’s frown, trying to figure out if they were arranged by region or variety.
“Miss, what do you think of-“ he began when the server arrived
Of course Jim interrupted him.
“We have no idea what to order. What do you think we’d like?”
She was round and pretty, and gave Leonard a quick once-over with her bright, black eyes.
“For him, a Barolo. We have one from Monprivado, ten years old. And for you-“ she looked at Jim quite a bit longer, and the corners of her mouth curved up as she pressed a finger against her lips. “You look familiar. Are you an actor?”
Leonard rolled his eyes; it irritated him that Jim’s blue-eyed blondness attracted attention. Rome had a thriving Orion neighborhood, for God’s sake.
“When I need to be. But really, we’re just clueless tourists.” She gave him the compliment of a skeptical look and came back with two glasses of red wine and little plates of olives and cheese.
“I brought you a Bardolino, from my cousin’s vineyard. If you like it, and you’re traveling, I could give you his address.”
“Unfortunately, we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Too bad,” she said, a little too sincerely for Leonard’s taste. Same old story. Two women, and then three men, had propositioned them on the Spanish Steps, and Jim had actually had his ass pinched on the Via Acala while his hands were busy with a gelato cone.
“It’s not that I’m better looking,” Jim had said when Leonard complained. “It’s that they think they have a shot with me. It’s a well-studied phenomenon; no one likes rejection.”
“And I look like I’d reject them?”
“You look like you’d knee them in the groin, take their keycards, and charge them credits for wasting your time. Which is part of your appeal, actually. But it explains why nobody’s grabbing your ass.” And of course, with that, Jim had reached down to cup his cheek and give it a squeeze. Leonard had swatted his hand away with a grunt, but it was the sort of thing that no one noticed here.
The server came back with crusty bread and a candle for the table. If forced, Leonard would have admitted it was pleasant; the crowd packed into the little space was young but not rowdy, the wine was delicious, and he could watch Jim’s hands tear the bread and dip little pieces in olive oil.
Jim was a moderately enthusiastic but not particularly discriminating eater. Most of the time he seemed to view the act as Spock did, more of a metabolic equation, but it didn’t interfere with the aesthetics. He had beautiful hands, and a beautiful mouth, and a natural grace that wasn’t entirely due to the fact that he was used to having an audience. This was life with Jim: concessions and silver linings.
“So we’ve really got to leave tomorrow? We just got here.”
“Kind of our unofficial motto.” Jim took an unconnoisseur-like gulp of his wine. Surprising; on the ship, he hardly drank, only waved around celebratory glasses of scotch. “Like the sailors of old. Except we don’t get to leave our sweethearts behind.”
When Leonard said nothing, he added, “That’s where a normal, gracious person would say how lucky he was, or some shit like that.”
Another pause. He grabbed a bread stick and pointed it at Leonard.
“You know, you’re right. I can have this conversation one-sided by now. You’re mad because I didn’t let you waste a beautiful day in a boring museum, or a fantastic night in some tourist trap restaurant. You rant about how I push you around, and I point out that nobody forced you to anything, and that you actually enjoyed it, and then I graciously compromise and do some of your boring crap, or give you a blow job to shut you up. So which will it be tonight?”
He said it without rancor; the bread stick in his hand remained unbroken. The surest way to keep Jim level-headed was to try to make him mad.
“How about neither? This wine is putting me right to sleep. Let’s go back to the hotel. If you’re still hungry, we can order room service.”
Jim nodded and gave the universal sign for the check, but his eyes, scanning and calculating, didn’t leave Leonard’s.
“I really am just tired, Jim,” he said, to stave off any detours to the burlesque show or aquadisco. “Anyway, I had a nice day. It was-interesting.”
“Only you can make that word sound like a curse.”
But it was concession enough, or so Leonard thought. Jim kept his hand on the small of Leonard’s back all the way up the long flight of stairs, out into the night air, and then let it fall away.
Leonard breathed it in, and felt revived; looked at the stars overhead, and wondered why they looked so beautiful, when he stared at them every day.
“It’s cooling off,” Jim said, shoving his hands into his pockets. Leonard wasn’t sure why-not circulation issues, anyway-but they got like ice. Leonard had the urge to take them and warm them in his own, but Jim had turned away, was looking down the street with its open doorways and tinny sounds of distant music.
Leonard brushed his arm. “Let’s walk back through the Borghese Gardens.”
“Really? Okay.” Jim followed along with a little more spring in his step.
A three-quarter moon hung over the trees, just enough light to navigate the well-tended paths. In the almost-darkness Leonard could see other couples walking hand in hand. Jim’s stayed in his pockets.
Midway down the long alley of trees, Jim stopped with a crunch of gravel.
“I can be selfish, I know it. If you really wanted to see all those old buildings, I’m sorry. I just-those people are dead, Bones. Today, today is all that matters. Because someday we’ll be dead, too, and before that happens-we have so little time together. Which is weird, because we’re together all the time. But you know what I mean. I was trying to make it special. In my own fucked-up way.”
“I know.” And he did, and was more touched by Jim’s introspection than he’d been by Jim’s attempt to buy him a sex toy shaped like the Circus Maximus. “I know that you try. And that’s what matters, mostly.”
Jim nodded, looking at the ground. Leonard didn’t want the day to end like this, with them standing three feet apart, Jim’s posture (as far as he could tell in the dark) awkward and sheepish, Leonard tinged with free-floating exasperation and the beginnings of a red wine headache.
He closed the distance between them and slid an arm around Jim’s waist. Jim gave a reflexive shiver against the warmth and leaned in a little. Leonard could make a little joke, and they could move on. Jim would let him; he was that easy.
He brought his free hand to the back of Jim’s neck, rubbed it a little, to let him know he planned to keep it there a while, and then leaned in to kiss him. His lips were shockingly warm. He tasted of earth, maybe of the sunshine in that vineyard. Jim’s tongue stroked his, unhurried; for once he had nowhere else to be.
Leonard let his hand push up and under the hem of Jim’s thin cotton sweater, finding the place where he loved to rest his hand, where the hollow of his spine met the swell of his buttocks. It wasn’t as easy for Jim to do the same; Leonard’s shirt was a little tighter than it had been on their last shore leave, so he slipped his hands into Leonard’s back pockets, where they’d be sure to stay warm.
He could kiss Jim like this for hours-probably had, hundreds of hours over the years and he never got tired of it, not the shape of his mouth, not the firm insistence of his lips, not way he could tell the exact moment when Jim’s titanic libido engaged. Tonight, though, it stayed on a smooth and easy path, quelled by wine or the hint of late winter still in the air, and so Leonard could enjoy what he had, if that was all he wanted. More likely it was because Jim was letting him choose, trusted him as he did on all the important decisions.
It was an easy enough choice. Leonard reached back and pulled Jim’s hands from his pockets, smiled wide enough that Jim could see it even in the dark. He squeezed them a few times before pulling Jim slowly off the path and into the dark shrubbery.
“You?” Jim whispered, amazed and delighted. “You don’t do this.”
“Well, like you kept saying-‘When in Rome.’”
“You said you’d do something awful if I said that again.”
“I am going to do something awful.”
He tried to ignore his own arousal long enough not to get tangled in the underbrush. Behind the hedge, as near as he could make out, was a grove of trees. He grasped Jim’s shoulders and pushed him back against the closest one, feeling his shoulder blades curve against the smooth trunk.
“Oh, god. I love it when you do that.” Jim’s voice was smoky, saturated; it almost made up for the fact that Leonard couldn’t really see him.
“Do what? Shove you against trees?”
“No. You know.” He tipped his head back, surrendered his shoulders a little, and yes, Leonard did know.
Opening Jim’s fly in the dark was easy; he’d had plenty of practice. When he gathered Jim’s wrists in his hands and held them above his head, Jim thrust his hips out a little and made a sound in his throat that Leonard wanted to be the last thing he heard before he died.
He teased Jim’s cock out from the folds of his underwear, wrapping his hand around it so he wouldn’t lose the beautiful erection to the night air. He leaned in as close as he could, less to shield them from prying eyes than so Jim could feel his weight against him. That Jim liked this didn’t surprise him; Leonard didn’t think it was so much about surrender as a more basic need to feel life and strength.
Jim cock, as always, felt amazingly good: long and velvety and firm, Nearly impossible to grip it without feeling a sympathetic response in his own, but they were still a kilometer from the hotel and there’d be enough time to tame it. His mouth watered, wanting to taste it, but Jim liked it like this, Leonard’s hand holding his wrists tight while his hand pumped, firm and sure.
He loved watching Jim like this, loved everything about it: the deep, breathy gasps, the way his lashes fluttered against his cheeks, the way his hips thrust forward, even though this particular game was about holding still and letting Leonard be the pilot.
Jim was panting now; if he worked up a sweat, he’d be cold on the way home. Leonard leaned forward and licked him, just under the earlobe, and gave him a little bite on the point of his jaw. That easy, his body gave a little jerk and he shot, baptizing the ground.
He let go of Jim’s wrists, not before he gave him a deep, hard kiss on the mouth, and attended to business, holding him until he softened enough to tuck everything in.
“That had to be, uh, historic, right?” Jim’s voice after he came was thick as honey.
“Was it that good?”
“No, I mean-yes, but. Think of all the famous people who must have done the same thing, right here." On cue, another couple walked by, glanced at them, giggled, and walked quickly on.
"I thought you didn't care about history."
"It's different when it's ours."
They picked their way back onto the path, Leonard pleased that he'd arranged things so he didn't have dirt on his knees. Jim took his hand and swung it, more like a child than a lover. His steps were light, full of the untameable energy that would only stop when his life did.
"So," Jim said, "room service and bed?"
Leonard looked at the stars, and at Jim, and at their joined hands.
"Actually, I'm in the mood for music."
A humble offering, neither as good or as smutty as you deserve, but with at least some things you like (Jim, Bones, sex, red wine, and a suggestion of cigarettes).
“This place?” Leonard peered down the long, dark flight of stairs to where light and noise spilled out of an open door. “It isn’t in the guide.”
“Fuck the guide.”
Jim grabbed his hand and pulled him downward. It had been like that all day. All Leonard’s good intentions, all the ancient art and architecture, a once-in-a-lifetime chances to use his high school Latin, all flew past in an espresso-fueled blur of Jim.
They’d visited a carnival, a sex shop, a crypt full of monks’ skulls, and-surprisingly-the Coliseum, where Jim had described, very seriously and at some length, how he would have fought a lion. And now, instead of sitting in a pleasant outdoor café, they were in an underground wine bar with a smoke-dark ceiling and air tinged with illegal tobacco.
At least the wine list looked wonderful--villas and castles and princes, hundreds of them. He scrolled through, affecting a connoisseur’s frown, trying to figure out if they were arranged by region or variety.
“Miss, what do you think of-“ he began when the server arrived
Of course Jim interrupted him.
“We have no idea what to order. What do you think we’d like?”
She was round and pretty, and gave Leonard a quick once-over with her bright, black eyes.
“For him, a Barolo. We have one from Monprivado, ten years old. And for you-“ she looked at Jim quite a bit longer, and the corners of her mouth curved up as she pressed a finger against her lips. “You look familiar. Are you an actor?”
Leonard rolled his eyes; it irritated him that Jim’s blue-eyed blondness attracted attention. Rome had a thriving Orion neighborhood, for God’s sake.
“When I need to be. But really, we’re just clueless tourists.” She gave him the compliment of a skeptical look and came back with two glasses of red wine and little plates of olives and cheese.
“I brought you a Bardolino, from my cousin’s vineyard. If you like it, and you’re traveling, I could give you his address.”
“Unfortunately, we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Too bad,” she said, a little too sincerely for Leonard’s taste. Same old story. Two women, and then three men, had propositioned them on the Spanish Steps, and Jim had actually had his ass pinched on the Via Acala while his hands were busy with a gelato cone.
“It’s not that I’m better looking,” Jim had said when Leonard complained. “It’s that they think they have a shot with me. It’s a well-studied phenomenon; no one likes rejection.”
“And I look like I’d reject them?”
“You look like you’d knee them in the groin, take their keycards, and charge them credits for wasting your time. Which is part of your appeal, actually. But it explains why nobody’s grabbing your ass.” And of course, with that, Jim had reached down to cup his cheek and give it a squeeze. Leonard had swatted his hand away with a grunt, but it was the sort of thing that no one noticed here.
The server came back with crusty bread and a candle for the table. If forced, Leonard would have admitted it was pleasant; the crowd packed into the little space was young but not rowdy, the wine was delicious, and he could watch Jim’s hands tear the bread and dip little pieces in olive oil.
Jim was a moderately enthusiastic but not particularly discriminating eater. Most of the time he seemed to view the act as Spock did, more of a metabolic equation, but it didn’t interfere with the aesthetics. He had beautiful hands, and a beautiful mouth, and a natural grace that wasn’t entirely due to the fact that he was used to having an audience. This was life with Jim: concessions and silver linings.
“So we’ve really got to leave tomorrow? We just got here.”
“Kind of our unofficial motto.” Jim took an unconnoisseur-like gulp of his wine. Surprising; on the ship, he hardly drank, only waved around celebratory glasses of scotch. “Like the sailors of old. Except we don’t get to leave our sweethearts behind.”
When Leonard said nothing, he added, “That’s where a normal, gracious person would say how lucky he was, or some shit like that.”
Another pause. He grabbed a bread stick and pointed it at Leonard.
“You know, you’re right. I can have this conversation one-sided by now. You’re mad because I didn’t let you waste a beautiful day in a boring museum, or a fantastic night in some tourist trap restaurant. You rant about how I push you around, and I point out that nobody forced you to anything, and that you actually enjoyed it, and then I graciously compromise and do some of your boring crap, or give you a blow job to shut you up. So which will it be tonight?”
He said it without rancor; the bread stick in his hand remained unbroken. The surest way to keep Jim level-headed was to try to make him mad.
“How about neither? This wine is putting me right to sleep. Let’s go back to the hotel. If you’re still hungry, we can order room service.”
Jim nodded and gave the universal sign for the check, but his eyes, scanning and calculating, didn’t leave Leonard’s.
“I really am just tired, Jim,” he said, to stave off any detours to the burlesque show or aquadisco. “Anyway, I had a nice day. It was-interesting.”
“Only you can make that word sound like a curse.”
But it was concession enough, or so Leonard thought. Jim kept his hand on the small of Leonard’s back all the way up the long flight of stairs, out into the night air, and then let it fall away.
Leonard breathed it in, and felt revived; looked at the stars overhead, and wondered why they looked so beautiful, when he stared at them every day.
“It’s cooling off,” Jim said, shoving his hands into his pockets. Leonard wasn’t sure why-not circulation issues, anyway-but they got like ice. Leonard had the urge to take them and warm them in his own, but Jim had turned away, was looking down the street with its open doorways and tinny sounds of distant music.
Leonard brushed his arm. “Let’s walk back through the Borghese Gardens.”
“Really? Okay.” Jim followed along with a little more spring in his step.
A three-quarter moon hung over the trees, just enough light to navigate the well-tended paths. In the almost-darkness Leonard could see other couples walking hand in hand. Jim’s stayed in his pockets.
Midway down the long alley of trees, Jim stopped with a crunch of gravel.
“I can be selfish, I know it. If you really wanted to see all those old buildings, I’m sorry. I just-those people are dead, Bones. Today, today is all that matters. Because someday we’ll be dead, too, and before that happens-we have so little time together. Which is weird, because we’re together all the time. But you know what I mean. I was trying to make it special. In my own fucked-up way.”
“I know.” And he did, and was more touched by Jim’s introspection than he’d been by Jim’s attempt to buy him a sex toy shaped like the Circus Maximus. “I know that you try. And that’s what matters, mostly.”
Jim nodded, looking at the ground. Leonard didn’t want the day to end like this, with them standing three feet apart, Jim’s posture (as far as he could tell in the dark) awkward and sheepish, Leonard tinged with free-floating exasperation and the beginnings of a red wine headache.
He closed the distance between them and slid an arm around Jim’s waist. Jim gave a reflexive shiver against the warmth and leaned in a little. Leonard could make a little joke, and they could move on. Jim would let him; he was that easy.
He brought his free hand to the back of Jim’s neck, rubbed it a little, to let him know he planned to keep it there a while, and then leaned in to kiss him. His lips were shockingly warm. He tasted of earth, maybe of the sunshine in that vineyard. Jim’s tongue stroked his, unhurried; for once he had nowhere else to be.
Leonard let his hand push up and under the hem of Jim’s thin cotton sweater, finding the place where he loved to rest his hand, where the hollow of his spine met the swell of his buttocks. It wasn’t as easy for Jim to do the same; Leonard’s shirt was a little tighter than it had been on their last shore leave, so he slipped his hands into Leonard’s back pockets, where they’d be sure to stay warm.
He could kiss Jim like this for hours-probably had, hundreds of hours over the years and he never got tired of it, not the shape of his mouth, not the firm insistence of his lips, not way he could tell the exact moment when Jim’s titanic libido engaged. Tonight, though, it stayed on a smooth and easy path, quelled by wine or the hint of late winter still in the air, and so Leonard could enjoy what he had, if that was all he wanted. More likely it was because Jim was letting him choose, trusted him as he did on all the important decisions.
It was an easy enough choice. Leonard reached back and pulled Jim’s hands from his pockets, smiled wide enough that Jim could see it even in the dark. He squeezed them a few times before pulling Jim slowly off the path and into the dark shrubbery.
“You?” Jim whispered, amazed and delighted. “You don’t do this.”
“Well, like you kept saying-‘When in Rome.’”
“You said you’d do something awful if I said that again.”
“I am going to do something awful.”
He tried to ignore his own arousal long enough not to get tangled in the underbrush. Behind the hedge, as near as he could make out, was a grove of trees. He grasped Jim’s shoulders and pushed him back against the closest one, feeling his shoulder blades curve against the smooth trunk.
“Oh, god. I love it when you do that.” Jim’s voice was smoky, saturated; it almost made up for the fact that Leonard couldn’t really see him.
“Do what? Shove you against trees?”
“No. You know.” He tipped his head back, surrendered his shoulders a little, and yes, Leonard did know.
Opening Jim’s fly in the dark was easy; he’d had plenty of practice. When he gathered Jim’s wrists in his hands and held them above his head, Jim thrust his hips out a little and made a sound in his throat that Leonard wanted to be the last thing he heard before he died.
He teased Jim’s cock out from the folds of his underwear, wrapping his hand around it so he wouldn’t lose the beautiful erection to the night air. He leaned in as close as he could, less to shield them from prying eyes than so Jim could feel his weight against him. That Jim liked this didn’t surprise him; Leonard didn’t think it was so much about surrender as a more basic need to feel life and strength.
Jim cock, as always, felt amazingly good: long and velvety and firm, Nearly impossible to grip it without feeling a sympathetic response in his own, but they were still a kilometer from the hotel and there’d be enough time to tame it. His mouth watered, wanting to taste it, but Jim liked it like this, Leonard’s hand holding his wrists tight while his hand pumped, firm and sure.
He loved watching Jim like this, loved everything about it: the deep, breathy gasps, the way his lashes fluttered against his cheeks, the way his hips thrust forward, even though this particular game was about holding still and letting Leonard be the pilot.
Jim was panting now; if he worked up a sweat, he’d be cold on the way home. Leonard leaned forward and licked him, just under the earlobe, and gave him a little bite on the point of his jaw. That easy, his body gave a little jerk and he shot, baptizing the ground.
He let go of Jim’s wrists, not before he gave him a deep, hard kiss on the mouth, and attended to business, holding him until he softened enough to tuck everything in.
“That had to be, uh, historic, right?” Jim’s voice after he came was thick as honey.
“Was it that good?”
“No, I mean-yes, but. Think of all the famous people who must have done the same thing, right here." On cue, another couple walked by, glanced at them, giggled, and walked quickly on.
"I thought you didn't care about history."
"It's different when it's ours."
They picked their way back onto the path, Leonard pleased that he'd arranged things so he didn't have dirt on his knees. Jim took his hand and swung it, more like a child than a lover. His steps were light, full of the untameable energy that would only stop when his life did.
"So," Jim said, "room service and bed?"
Leonard looked at the stars, and at Jim, and at their joined hands.
"Actually, I'm in the mood for music."