still don't know what i was waiting for
Title: still don't know what i was waiting for
Fandom: Life on Mars
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3205 words.
Notes: Sam/Gene, set 1989. Title from ‘Changes’ by David Bowie. Part ten in the Changes Series (link takes you to the previous parts.)
Warning: Prior character death. Sex between an adult and a teenager who is over the age of consent by today's standards, but not by 1989's.
Summary: Sam kisses him back with youthful intensity, all quick breaths and clashing teeth. Still not quite getting the right angle. Still desperate and beseeching.
Sam licks into his mouth with a fervour that ordinarily couldn’t be matched --- but Gene has needed this for so long now, he’s every bit as passionate, and every bit as uncoordinated. They’re not graceful or elegant in how they tangle up together, but fever gets in the way of finesse, and Gene can’t say he rightly cares. Sam’s mouth is hot and wet and still nothing like Gene remembers; all tenderness one minute, ferocity the next. Gene’s hands automatically cradle Sam closer, one at the back of his head, the other in the small of his back. He presses his length against him and hisses with the contact between them. This is it, this is finally it.
Gene can think of at least nine different reasons as to why he shouldn’t be doing everything he is doing at this moment. More than six of them relate to Sam’s well-being. He’s willing to concede that a couple relate to his own. There are good reasons he’s been resisting so long and none of them have diminished. But as Sam glides a hand down, hooking under the back of his waistband, none of them matter. All that matter are Sam’s finger-tips soft and sensual against his skin, making his fine hairs stand on end as those fingers apply the barest amount of pressure to parts of him that feel like they’ve never been touched.
There’s something reverent in the way Sam touches him. Worshipful. Like Gene might shatter if he presses him the wrong way, might blow away if he breathes too hard. Sam pulls away from kisses and stares at him, eyes wild and bright, cheekbones flushed. Gene pushes his fingers deeper into the hair that curls at the nape of his neck and tugs him tight. He lets his instincts take control, no second-guessing, no hesitation, just give and take and movement. Sam’s hips roll against him, small undulating movements that build and build, until Gene has to root him to the spot, bracing him against the wall because it’s all too much too soon. He makes a warning noise that sounds more like supplication; low, choked, urgent. His body is at once overheating and chilled, rapidly shifting from temperature to temperature as Sam arches back.
He fumbles with Sam’s buttons, the plastic miniscule and seemingly deliberately cumbersome. Sam shakes his head, hardly detaching his lips from Gene as he does so, and somehow presses deeper against the wall so he creates just enough space to pull his shirt above his head. The sensation of Sam half-naked against him has Gene thinking it’s entirely possible he’s shifted from solid to liquid, his whole being transfigured.
They rut against each other as they continue to kiss, finding a rhythm. Everything is too quick and not quick enough and Gene thinks this is going to end very soon. Sam says something half-formed; syllables as opposed to words, and Gene nods without knowing what he’s agreeing to. A second later his own shirt is up over his head and Sam’s working on unfastening his trousers.
Gene stops him, pulling back to give breathing space, watching Sam as dejection and confusion play on his features. But Gene has no intention of halting this for anything longer than a minute.
“Don’t rush,” he says, stroking over Sam’s jaw.
Sam pouts, forehead creasing as he murmurs. “If I don’t rush, you’ll run away.”
“I won’t,” Gene insists. “I’m too far gone.”
And he is, he is gone as he stares at Sam’s reaction to him cupping his crotch. Wanting to gasp as Sam’s eyelids flutter and his mouth opens, lower lip glistening and pink. If it were only a physical fascination, Gene feels he could get over it, over the sheer magnetising desperation, but seeing Sam like this arouses more than his body. It’s more than sense memory, more than longing for what he’s lost. He yearns to be the one to make Sam shudder apart, to pick up the pieces and rearrange him.
Sam flexes against him, knocking his head back into the wall, pushing his lower body closer. Gene’s heart speeds up as he lowers Sam’s zip, his breathing becoming even more ragged as he pushes his hand inside the fabric of his underwear and grips Sam’s cock. Sam bites his lower lip and gives a short, cut-off sigh as Gene rubs him, momentarily dazed. He’s more than half-hard, hot and thick, and as he surges into the circle of Gene’s hand, precome begins to trickle between them. Sam wriggles and his jeans slide down his legs, his cock thickens and becomes full and swollen in Gene’s palm.
Gene focuses on applying slow, steady pressure to Sam. On drawing back to let him catch his breath before continuing to twist his hand up his length. He rests his forehead against the wall and sucks in deep breaths as Sam pants in his ear. He’s agonisingly hard himself, straining against his trousers, unconsciously rocking his hips as he pulls at Sam’s cock. He can tell Sam’s getting close, his skin’s drawing tight, and he speeds up his movements, but Sam makes a strangled gasp and slides out from under him.
“What’re you...?” Gene starts to ask before Sam presses him into the wall by his shoulder and tugs his trousers off his hips with both hands.
Gene can’t do anything but scrabble at the wallpaper as Sam drops to his knees and takes him in his sinfully hot mouth. He thinks he may now be nothing more than vapour, intangible and scattering in the air. Sam’s not practiced, but he’s enthusiastic, licking up Gene’s cock before sucking on his head. He wraps his hand tightly at the base and takes the cock deep to the back of his throat, looking up at Gene as he tongues him. Gene shudders and rests his weight against the wall, pushing one hand into Sam’s hair and guiding him. He takes several shallow breaths, attempting to calm himself, prolong the inevitable.
Sam looks so happy to be there at Gene’s feet, jaw tilted up, Gene’s cock in his mouth. He stares up at Gene with dark, tense flames burning in his sherry-tinted eyes. Sam finds a pace that is at once perfection and torture and Gene can’t fathom why he’s been denying himself this for so long. Every objection ever mounted seems pointless against Sam’s lips wrapped around him, Sam’s look of devotion, Sam wanting to be everything to him like he wants to be everything to Sam.
His baser instincts take control and he holds Sam’s head fast as he rocks into him. Sam doesn’t seem to mind, if anything he loves it, eyes flickering closed and blush stretching over the pale arch of his neck and shoulders. Gene doesn’t know how he’s already lasted this long, but then Sam adds a corkscrew action to his sucking and he can tell it’s all over. Sam only has to stroke him twice more before he’s making a warning sound for Sam to pull off. This doesn’t happen. Gene comes, hard and blinding, and Sam takes it all, throat working as he sucks him down.
His cock is oversensitive as Sam laps at him, and he scrabbles to push away. Sam mercifully stops, gazing up at Gene reverently again as he strokes his own cock rapidly. He comes a short time later, spurting high into the air in three long jets. He goes to rest his head against Gene’s thigh, but Gene can’t stand up any longer and he slumps into a puddle on the floor. Sam collapses against him, head tight in the crook of his neck and shoulder, dissolving into soft, warm chuckles as Gene attempts to extricate his legs from a tangle of shoes and hastily shoved down trousers. Gene chances a look at him; his eyes glinting mischievously, his hair mussed and his lips soft in relaxation. Gene can’t resist temptation and pulls him into another kiss, delving into Sam and tasting himself.
Sam kisses him back with youthful intensity, all quick breaths and clashing teeth. Still not quite getting the right angle. Still desperate and beseeching. He rises up against Gene and settles over him, cock half-hard as it presses between their abdomens. His thighs are tight and over-heated against the outside of Gene’s, buttocks firm as Gene holds him. His body is in a sheen of sweat, glistening in the meagre sunshine that filters through the curtains of the window. Sam’s St. Christopher is warm as it swings between them, catching the light. Gene thinks he should feel physically incapable, at least for another hour, but he notices there’s a twitch of interest from the part of him that he suspects chucked away the restraints he had firmly clasped around his self-will. He rocks up to meet Sam’s movements; incremental, staggered, almost lazy.
“You’re obscene, you are,” he murmurs between kisses, slipping his fingers along the cleft of Sam’s arse. “Rubbing one off on me like some kind of animal.” Sam ceases shifting, searching his face. “I didn’t say stop,” Gene admonishes, nipping at Sam’s collarbone, stark and angular under pale, smooth skin.
Sam strokes them back to full hardness, until it’s damn near painful, slick and hot and so very close. He makes a greedy, covetous sound, eager as he rolls his thumb over the head of Gene’s cock. Gene continues exploring his arse, gentle as he slides the pad of his middle finger over Sam’s hole. Sam cants his hips and shudders, coming in a split second, eyes wide and shocked. Gene uses the mess between them to soothe the friction as he slides up and crashes down, belly and cock wet. It doesn’t take long for the sensation to pull him over the edge and he thumps his head as he trembles through the aftershocks of the kind of orgasm he hasn’t had in years; one that’s too soon after the force of another, and is somehow more powerful because of it.
As if to prove Gene’s earlier point about obscenity, Sam scoops up some of their come and takes a luxurious lick of his fingers. He offers his hand with a quirked eyebrow, challenging Gene, constantly challenging, and hisses as Gene takes the bait. Gene sucks in Sam’s fingers, spreading his lips wide as he tastes.
Afterwards, after they’re cleaned up and dressed, an equal measure of awkward and matter of fact as they swipe damp cloths over themselves and tie up shoelaces, Gene realises he’s not feeling as regretful as he thinks he should. Mostly, he feels gratified, fortunate, affectionate. He cups Sam’s jaw again and kisses him, not letting it become sloppy and uncontrolled, but instead deliberate and measured. He pats Sam’s cheek and shuffles backwards towards the door.
“What was I like, in comparison?” Sam asks, and he tries to mask his vulnerability, but it’s there in the tightness of his blush-kissed lips, in how the rest of him looks bloodless.
Gene halts, frowns. “In comparison with what?”
“With the man you loved. The one I remind you of. Better? Worse? Did it make you feel nostalgic?”
Gene ruminates on this subject for a while and decides to lie. “One of these days, Sam, you’ll learn not to say stupid shit to get a rise out of people, and then everyone shall rejoice.”
“I’m genuinely curious.”
“I wasn’t keeping score.” Gene moves forward again, tangles his hand into Sam’s hair and kisses the corner of his mouth. He holds him for a moment. “You can’t be jealous of a dead man.”
“I can and clearly will.”
“Don’t. I’m off to the centre. See you in a few hours? We’ll have dinner.”
Gene doesn’t wait for Sam’s response before he clatters out the door, heading immediately in the wrong direction before correcting himself.
*
Gene thinks about it on his way to the community centre. Sam’s question. He thinks about the implications and the concealed truths that are slowly uncovered. He hasn’t thought about what he and Sam had for a good long while now. Hasn’t made many overt comparisons. Assumptions, plenty of those, based on what he thought he knew, but not comparisons. He hasn’t reminisced about Sam as he once was for months and can’t think of him as ‘his Sam’ at all; that would suggest that this Sam isn’t, and… it’s all too confounding, but it feels like betrayal.
He’s moved on. In a truly fucked-up sort of way, he’s finally got over losing Sam by gaining another. And it isn’t like he’s a replacement, not like he fills the void. More like he’s pushed the void to the side and taken up new space, fully furnished with traces of guilt and disorder.
Sam isn’t the same. Doesn’t have the experiences to temper his responses, to dull his sharp corners. Doesn’t have the same drive, has an entirely altered capacity for understanding humanity. He’s simultaneously more manipulative and more truthful. Less guarded, less stable, suffering from greater damage despite never encountering the same levels of hallucination Sam once recounted. He isn’t the same and Gene doesn’t like him despite that, but because of it, because he is unpredictable in a completely different way and it keeps him alive.
He thinks he should have realised this before. He thinks he probably did. He hates that he can live so easily in denial.
Gene’s antsy when he reminds himself that the kids he talks to as they help him varnish donated furniture are a couple of years, in some cases a few months younger than Sam. That he could be arrested if anyone knew what they did together, because the law stipulates what they’re doing is wrong, and dammit, he should think so too. The law’s stupid, of course. And unfair. If he or Sam were female it wouldn’t apply. Sam’s an adult, he’s an adult, it shouldn’t be a problem. But it still is.
He can smell Sam on himself. He can still feel the brush of his lips. There’s a bruise forming on his hip, he knows there is, from where Sam held him fast against the wall.
He genuinely considers hopping on a train to anywhere that requires a sufficiently high distance to travel, not having packed, just having gone straight to the station, but Sam would find him, Sam always finds him, and anyway, the thought of never touching Sam again makes him ache. He’s waited so long that now he has Sam, he can’t let go, he won’t.
He’s hardly at the centre two hours before he has to go home. He can’t handle the noise and euphoria; not from the kids, not from his own pounding heart. It’s too much like being giddy and it makes him delightedly sick.
He’s only stepped a foot in his place when he realises someone else is there too. He recalls that the gnome outside was at a different angle from that he left it and there’s a clatter from the kitchen. He thunders into the room to find Sam wrestling with a colander.
He sighs dramatically, prying the stainless steel from Sam’s fingers and glaring.
“Boundaries, Sam. Learn them.”
“I reckoned it’d be less suspicious if a friend entered your house than a teenage boy loitered outside it,” Sam says, carefully. He dips his head, looks awkward in a way he never should and usually wouldn’t. “I wanted to make you dinner.”
“Why are you trying to kill me? First sex ravaged, now poisoned. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it.”
Sam looks up at him, calculating, surprise showing in the lines of his expression. He seems about to say something, opens his mouth to do so, thinks better of it.
“No dinner, then?”
“Not by your hand. Starving, are you?”
“Famished.”
Gene cuffs him round the head and tells him to wait as he goes to the chippy down the road. He gets three times the amount of chips he normally would, seems the safest bet. When he gets back, Sam’s made coffee and is putting the milk back in the fridge. They sit opposite one another at Gene’s small dining table-cum-additional kitchen counter, and eat directly from the newspaper.
“You don’t have to attempt to feed me every time I do something you like,” Gene says, when Sam’s got five chips wedged in his mouth and can’t quickly talk back. “I’m not Pavlov’s dog and you can’t condition me with the promise of cake. And even if you could, it wouldn’t be with what passes for cake under your unskilled hands.”
“I never offered cake,” Sam says. “I was gonna make shepherd’s pie.”
“I’m never gladder I came home early.”
“I just wanted to do something for you. So that ---“ Sam says, he casts his eyes down at the table again, snorts gently, nostrils flaring.
“I’m not going, Sam. I told you. I’m too far gone.”
Sam stares at him a second, curious and grateful, and Gene has the urge to hug him tight, kiss him tenderly, and tell him he’s a soppy git with half a brain.
“If anything, I should be the one who’s insecure,” he mocks lightly. “Now that you’ve had what you want from me, you must surely have come to realise it’s nothing special.”
It’s a lie. Gene hasn’t come so hard without being inside someone for years, hasn’t burned and wanted and become molten. He’s not so stupid to think it could have been anything less for Sam, not when he saw his expression during and after; love-sick and sated.
He expects banter and is disappointed none comes. Sam is still unsure of him, eating in lieu of talking. Minutes pass. Gene talks about the community centre, rambling about the things that happened during Sam’s prolonged absence. Sam makes non-committal sounds, never engaging further than a grunt. Gene’s frustration builds until he explodes.
“Why are you giving me the silent treatment?”
“Because history dictates that this is the part where I say something stupid and you leave,” Sam says. “I can never simply be happy.”
Gene stares up at the ceiling, counts to ten, then gathers Sam up out of his chair and into his arms, kissing the idiocy out of him.
“This is my place,” he says when he finally pulls away, close to breathless. He presses Sam against the dining table, hiking him slightly so that he’s braced. “And history isn’t destiny. Be stupid all you want, I’m gonna make you come apart.”
He flicks open the fastening to Sam’s jeans to punctuate his assertion, watching Sam’s eyes widen as he liberally covers his fingers in spit, then slides them against the tight, smooth skin between his balls and arse. Sam’s chest heaves, twice, before he exhales, shivering. Gene's decided. He's only going to use his fingers. Only fingers means no kissing, and no kissing means a lot of observation, fixating on the points where Sam’s jaw becomes slack or his cheeks hollow. Gene uses his years of experience to finger-fuck Sam to the point his eyes cross and he slumps against him, letting go of high, breathy sobs as he shatters.
Part 11: these children that you spit on
1. never caught a glimpse, 2. time was running wild, 3. the taste was not so sweet, 4. how the others must see the faker, 5. strange fascination, fascinating me, 6. just gonna have to be a different man, 7. i turned myself to face me, 8. the days float through my eyes, 9. grow up and out of it, 10. still don't know what i was waiting for
Fandom: Life on Mars
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3205 words.
Notes: Sam/Gene, set 1989. Title from ‘Changes’ by David Bowie. Part ten in the Changes Series (link takes you to the previous parts.)
Warning: Prior character death. Sex between an adult and a teenager who is over the age of consent by today's standards, but not by 1989's.
Summary: Sam kisses him back with youthful intensity, all quick breaths and clashing teeth. Still not quite getting the right angle. Still desperate and beseeching.
Sam licks into his mouth with a fervour that ordinarily couldn’t be matched --- but Gene has needed this for so long now, he’s every bit as passionate, and every bit as uncoordinated. They’re not graceful or elegant in how they tangle up together, but fever gets in the way of finesse, and Gene can’t say he rightly cares. Sam’s mouth is hot and wet and still nothing like Gene remembers; all tenderness one minute, ferocity the next. Gene’s hands automatically cradle Sam closer, one at the back of his head, the other in the small of his back. He presses his length against him and hisses with the contact between them. This is it, this is finally it.
Gene can think of at least nine different reasons as to why he shouldn’t be doing everything he is doing at this moment. More than six of them relate to Sam’s well-being. He’s willing to concede that a couple relate to his own. There are good reasons he’s been resisting so long and none of them have diminished. But as Sam glides a hand down, hooking under the back of his waistband, none of them matter. All that matter are Sam’s finger-tips soft and sensual against his skin, making his fine hairs stand on end as those fingers apply the barest amount of pressure to parts of him that feel like they’ve never been touched.
There’s something reverent in the way Sam touches him. Worshipful. Like Gene might shatter if he presses him the wrong way, might blow away if he breathes too hard. Sam pulls away from kisses and stares at him, eyes wild and bright, cheekbones flushed. Gene pushes his fingers deeper into the hair that curls at the nape of his neck and tugs him tight. He lets his instincts take control, no second-guessing, no hesitation, just give and take and movement. Sam’s hips roll against him, small undulating movements that build and build, until Gene has to root him to the spot, bracing him against the wall because it’s all too much too soon. He makes a warning noise that sounds more like supplication; low, choked, urgent. His body is at once overheating and chilled, rapidly shifting from temperature to temperature as Sam arches back.
He fumbles with Sam’s buttons, the plastic miniscule and seemingly deliberately cumbersome. Sam shakes his head, hardly detaching his lips from Gene as he does so, and somehow presses deeper against the wall so he creates just enough space to pull his shirt above his head. The sensation of Sam half-naked against him has Gene thinking it’s entirely possible he’s shifted from solid to liquid, his whole being transfigured.
They rut against each other as they continue to kiss, finding a rhythm. Everything is too quick and not quick enough and Gene thinks this is going to end very soon. Sam says something half-formed; syllables as opposed to words, and Gene nods without knowing what he’s agreeing to. A second later his own shirt is up over his head and Sam’s working on unfastening his trousers.
Gene stops him, pulling back to give breathing space, watching Sam as dejection and confusion play on his features. But Gene has no intention of halting this for anything longer than a minute.
“Don’t rush,” he says, stroking over Sam’s jaw.
Sam pouts, forehead creasing as he murmurs. “If I don’t rush, you’ll run away.”
“I won’t,” Gene insists. “I’m too far gone.”
And he is, he is gone as he stares at Sam’s reaction to him cupping his crotch. Wanting to gasp as Sam’s eyelids flutter and his mouth opens, lower lip glistening and pink. If it were only a physical fascination, Gene feels he could get over it, over the sheer magnetising desperation, but seeing Sam like this arouses more than his body. It’s more than sense memory, more than longing for what he’s lost. He yearns to be the one to make Sam shudder apart, to pick up the pieces and rearrange him.
Sam flexes against him, knocking his head back into the wall, pushing his lower body closer. Gene’s heart speeds up as he lowers Sam’s zip, his breathing becoming even more ragged as he pushes his hand inside the fabric of his underwear and grips Sam’s cock. Sam bites his lower lip and gives a short, cut-off sigh as Gene rubs him, momentarily dazed. He’s more than half-hard, hot and thick, and as he surges into the circle of Gene’s hand, precome begins to trickle between them. Sam wriggles and his jeans slide down his legs, his cock thickens and becomes full and swollen in Gene’s palm.
Gene focuses on applying slow, steady pressure to Sam. On drawing back to let him catch his breath before continuing to twist his hand up his length. He rests his forehead against the wall and sucks in deep breaths as Sam pants in his ear. He’s agonisingly hard himself, straining against his trousers, unconsciously rocking his hips as he pulls at Sam’s cock. He can tell Sam’s getting close, his skin’s drawing tight, and he speeds up his movements, but Sam makes a strangled gasp and slides out from under him.
“What’re you...?” Gene starts to ask before Sam presses him into the wall by his shoulder and tugs his trousers off his hips with both hands.
Gene can’t do anything but scrabble at the wallpaper as Sam drops to his knees and takes him in his sinfully hot mouth. He thinks he may now be nothing more than vapour, intangible and scattering in the air. Sam’s not practiced, but he’s enthusiastic, licking up Gene’s cock before sucking on his head. He wraps his hand tightly at the base and takes the cock deep to the back of his throat, looking up at Gene as he tongues him. Gene shudders and rests his weight against the wall, pushing one hand into Sam’s hair and guiding him. He takes several shallow breaths, attempting to calm himself, prolong the inevitable.
Sam looks so happy to be there at Gene’s feet, jaw tilted up, Gene’s cock in his mouth. He stares up at Gene with dark, tense flames burning in his sherry-tinted eyes. Sam finds a pace that is at once perfection and torture and Gene can’t fathom why he’s been denying himself this for so long. Every objection ever mounted seems pointless against Sam’s lips wrapped around him, Sam’s look of devotion, Sam wanting to be everything to him like he wants to be everything to Sam.
His baser instincts take control and he holds Sam’s head fast as he rocks into him. Sam doesn’t seem to mind, if anything he loves it, eyes flickering closed and blush stretching over the pale arch of his neck and shoulders. Gene doesn’t know how he’s already lasted this long, but then Sam adds a corkscrew action to his sucking and he can tell it’s all over. Sam only has to stroke him twice more before he’s making a warning sound for Sam to pull off. This doesn’t happen. Gene comes, hard and blinding, and Sam takes it all, throat working as he sucks him down.
His cock is oversensitive as Sam laps at him, and he scrabbles to push away. Sam mercifully stops, gazing up at Gene reverently again as he strokes his own cock rapidly. He comes a short time later, spurting high into the air in three long jets. He goes to rest his head against Gene’s thigh, but Gene can’t stand up any longer and he slumps into a puddle on the floor. Sam collapses against him, head tight in the crook of his neck and shoulder, dissolving into soft, warm chuckles as Gene attempts to extricate his legs from a tangle of shoes and hastily shoved down trousers. Gene chances a look at him; his eyes glinting mischievously, his hair mussed and his lips soft in relaxation. Gene can’t resist temptation and pulls him into another kiss, delving into Sam and tasting himself.
Sam kisses him back with youthful intensity, all quick breaths and clashing teeth. Still not quite getting the right angle. Still desperate and beseeching. He rises up against Gene and settles over him, cock half-hard as it presses between their abdomens. His thighs are tight and over-heated against the outside of Gene’s, buttocks firm as Gene holds him. His body is in a sheen of sweat, glistening in the meagre sunshine that filters through the curtains of the window. Sam’s St. Christopher is warm as it swings between them, catching the light. Gene thinks he should feel physically incapable, at least for another hour, but he notices there’s a twitch of interest from the part of him that he suspects chucked away the restraints he had firmly clasped around his self-will. He rocks up to meet Sam’s movements; incremental, staggered, almost lazy.
“You’re obscene, you are,” he murmurs between kisses, slipping his fingers along the cleft of Sam’s arse. “Rubbing one off on me like some kind of animal.” Sam ceases shifting, searching his face. “I didn’t say stop,” Gene admonishes, nipping at Sam’s collarbone, stark and angular under pale, smooth skin.
Sam strokes them back to full hardness, until it’s damn near painful, slick and hot and so very close. He makes a greedy, covetous sound, eager as he rolls his thumb over the head of Gene’s cock. Gene continues exploring his arse, gentle as he slides the pad of his middle finger over Sam’s hole. Sam cants his hips and shudders, coming in a split second, eyes wide and shocked. Gene uses the mess between them to soothe the friction as he slides up and crashes down, belly and cock wet. It doesn’t take long for the sensation to pull him over the edge and he thumps his head as he trembles through the aftershocks of the kind of orgasm he hasn’t had in years; one that’s too soon after the force of another, and is somehow more powerful because of it.
As if to prove Gene’s earlier point about obscenity, Sam scoops up some of their come and takes a luxurious lick of his fingers. He offers his hand with a quirked eyebrow, challenging Gene, constantly challenging, and hisses as Gene takes the bait. Gene sucks in Sam’s fingers, spreading his lips wide as he tastes.
Afterwards, after they’re cleaned up and dressed, an equal measure of awkward and matter of fact as they swipe damp cloths over themselves and tie up shoelaces, Gene realises he’s not feeling as regretful as he thinks he should. Mostly, he feels gratified, fortunate, affectionate. He cups Sam’s jaw again and kisses him, not letting it become sloppy and uncontrolled, but instead deliberate and measured. He pats Sam’s cheek and shuffles backwards towards the door.
“What was I like, in comparison?” Sam asks, and he tries to mask his vulnerability, but it’s there in the tightness of his blush-kissed lips, in how the rest of him looks bloodless.
Gene halts, frowns. “In comparison with what?”
“With the man you loved. The one I remind you of. Better? Worse? Did it make you feel nostalgic?”
Gene ruminates on this subject for a while and decides to lie. “One of these days, Sam, you’ll learn not to say stupid shit to get a rise out of people, and then everyone shall rejoice.”
“I’m genuinely curious.”
“I wasn’t keeping score.” Gene moves forward again, tangles his hand into Sam’s hair and kisses the corner of his mouth. He holds him for a moment. “You can’t be jealous of a dead man.”
“I can and clearly will.”
“Don’t. I’m off to the centre. See you in a few hours? We’ll have dinner.”
Gene doesn’t wait for Sam’s response before he clatters out the door, heading immediately in the wrong direction before correcting himself.
*
Gene thinks about it on his way to the community centre. Sam’s question. He thinks about the implications and the concealed truths that are slowly uncovered. He hasn’t thought about what he and Sam had for a good long while now. Hasn’t made many overt comparisons. Assumptions, plenty of those, based on what he thought he knew, but not comparisons. He hasn’t reminisced about Sam as he once was for months and can’t think of him as ‘his Sam’ at all; that would suggest that this Sam isn’t, and… it’s all too confounding, but it feels like betrayal.
He’s moved on. In a truly fucked-up sort of way, he’s finally got over losing Sam by gaining another. And it isn’t like he’s a replacement, not like he fills the void. More like he’s pushed the void to the side and taken up new space, fully furnished with traces of guilt and disorder.
Sam isn’t the same. Doesn’t have the experiences to temper his responses, to dull his sharp corners. Doesn’t have the same drive, has an entirely altered capacity for understanding humanity. He’s simultaneously more manipulative and more truthful. Less guarded, less stable, suffering from greater damage despite never encountering the same levels of hallucination Sam once recounted. He isn’t the same and Gene doesn’t like him despite that, but because of it, because he is unpredictable in a completely different way and it keeps him alive.
He thinks he should have realised this before. He thinks he probably did. He hates that he can live so easily in denial.
Gene’s antsy when he reminds himself that the kids he talks to as they help him varnish donated furniture are a couple of years, in some cases a few months younger than Sam. That he could be arrested if anyone knew what they did together, because the law stipulates what they’re doing is wrong, and dammit, he should think so too. The law’s stupid, of course. And unfair. If he or Sam were female it wouldn’t apply. Sam’s an adult, he’s an adult, it shouldn’t be a problem. But it still is.
He can smell Sam on himself. He can still feel the brush of his lips. There’s a bruise forming on his hip, he knows there is, from where Sam held him fast against the wall.
He genuinely considers hopping on a train to anywhere that requires a sufficiently high distance to travel, not having packed, just having gone straight to the station, but Sam would find him, Sam always finds him, and anyway, the thought of never touching Sam again makes him ache. He’s waited so long that now he has Sam, he can’t let go, he won’t.
He’s hardly at the centre two hours before he has to go home. He can’t handle the noise and euphoria; not from the kids, not from his own pounding heart. It’s too much like being giddy and it makes him delightedly sick.
He’s only stepped a foot in his place when he realises someone else is there too. He recalls that the gnome outside was at a different angle from that he left it and there’s a clatter from the kitchen. He thunders into the room to find Sam wrestling with a colander.
He sighs dramatically, prying the stainless steel from Sam’s fingers and glaring.
“Boundaries, Sam. Learn them.”
“I reckoned it’d be less suspicious if a friend entered your house than a teenage boy loitered outside it,” Sam says, carefully. He dips his head, looks awkward in a way he never should and usually wouldn’t. “I wanted to make you dinner.”
“Why are you trying to kill me? First sex ravaged, now poisoned. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it.”
Sam looks up at him, calculating, surprise showing in the lines of his expression. He seems about to say something, opens his mouth to do so, thinks better of it.
“No dinner, then?”
“Not by your hand. Starving, are you?”
“Famished.”
Gene cuffs him round the head and tells him to wait as he goes to the chippy down the road. He gets three times the amount of chips he normally would, seems the safest bet. When he gets back, Sam’s made coffee and is putting the milk back in the fridge. They sit opposite one another at Gene’s small dining table-cum-additional kitchen counter, and eat directly from the newspaper.
“You don’t have to attempt to feed me every time I do something you like,” Gene says, when Sam’s got five chips wedged in his mouth and can’t quickly talk back. “I’m not Pavlov’s dog and you can’t condition me with the promise of cake. And even if you could, it wouldn’t be with what passes for cake under your unskilled hands.”
“I never offered cake,” Sam says. “I was gonna make shepherd’s pie.”
“I’m never gladder I came home early.”
“I just wanted to do something for you. So that ---“ Sam says, he casts his eyes down at the table again, snorts gently, nostrils flaring.
“I’m not going, Sam. I told you. I’m too far gone.”
Sam stares at him a second, curious and grateful, and Gene has the urge to hug him tight, kiss him tenderly, and tell him he’s a soppy git with half a brain.
“If anything, I should be the one who’s insecure,” he mocks lightly. “Now that you’ve had what you want from me, you must surely have come to realise it’s nothing special.”
It’s a lie. Gene hasn’t come so hard without being inside someone for years, hasn’t burned and wanted and become molten. He’s not so stupid to think it could have been anything less for Sam, not when he saw his expression during and after; love-sick and sated.
He expects banter and is disappointed none comes. Sam is still unsure of him, eating in lieu of talking. Minutes pass. Gene talks about the community centre, rambling about the things that happened during Sam’s prolonged absence. Sam makes non-committal sounds, never engaging further than a grunt. Gene’s frustration builds until he explodes.
“Why are you giving me the silent treatment?”
“Because history dictates that this is the part where I say something stupid and you leave,” Sam says. “I can never simply be happy.”
Gene stares up at the ceiling, counts to ten, then gathers Sam up out of his chair and into his arms, kissing the idiocy out of him.
“This is my place,” he says when he finally pulls away, close to breathless. He presses Sam against the dining table, hiking him slightly so that he’s braced. “And history isn’t destiny. Be stupid all you want, I’m gonna make you come apart.”
He flicks open the fastening to Sam’s jeans to punctuate his assertion, watching Sam’s eyes widen as he liberally covers his fingers in spit, then slides them against the tight, smooth skin between his balls and arse. Sam’s chest heaves, twice, before he exhales, shivering. Gene's decided. He's only going to use his fingers. Only fingers means no kissing, and no kissing means a lot of observation, fixating on the points where Sam’s jaw becomes slack or his cheeks hollow. Gene uses his years of experience to finger-fuck Sam to the point his eyes cross and he slumps against him, letting go of high, breathy sobs as he shatters.
Part 11: these children that you spit on
1. never caught a glimpse, 2. time was running wild, 3. the taste was not so sweet, 4. how the others must see the faker, 5. strange fascination, fascinating me, 6. just gonna have to be a different man, 7. i turned myself to face me, 8. the days float through my eyes, 9. grow up and out of it, 10. still don't know what i was waiting for