For her Royal Nosness
Title: Much Like Wolves
Fandom: due South (musician AU)
Pairing: Fraser/Smithbauer
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3000 words (ish)
Notes: This takes place at the Conservatoire where Fraser and Mark studied, and shared a room. Fraser is a cellist, Mark is a trumpeter. Nos, darling, I thought I'd give you some background, and some bonus Mark. It has been a pleasure and a joy interacting with you. I wish you much joy on your birthday ♥
The walls are white. The beds are on either side of the room, the desks are next to each other. There is a closet, a lockable safe, two music stands, nightstands with lamps on them, curtains-
My cataloguing becomes ridiculous. My father looks at me, concerned, puts a hand on my shoulder. “We can go back-” he starts to say. I smile at him, nod to the tin he holds in his hand.
“Mrs. Jackson baked a cake especially; we can’t possibly let all that effort go to waste,” I tell him, solemnly. There was a leaving party. He conceals a smile with his hand; his eyes crinkle at the edges. Then- he almost speaks. Almost, of course. In the end, he retreats to silence once more. I am left reading his face. He will miss me. I know it. He clears his throat and nods, hefts my case, puts it on the bed without covers already on it. My unclaimed space. Diefenbaker, my cello, stands in the corner.
“Keep your nose clean, son,” he says, gruffly, hugging me clumsily, still unused to the motion. I allow myself to cling to him a little, but return his curt, manly nod when he goes to leave. The room echoes with unsaid things. It is as it has always been; that mix of exasperated and worshipful I feel for him- my own clay-footed god. My father.
I enrolled in the Toronto Conservatoire as Benton Pinsent- my mother’s name. My father will not overshadow me here; I lie to avoid expectations. If I am to succeed, let it be on my own terms, at least until they find out. They will, of course. At some point. But I will have tried, tried to carve out a career for myself with only the tools allowed those without a famous father. I am Benton Pinsent, born in the wilds of Canada, raised by the wolves, with only a cello to guide me in a strange city-
Librarians and composers are much like wolves, after all. And the city is strange, tall buildings, trees, grey pavements. My sky is circumscribed, limited by buildings, people, cars, trees. At home, I know where the sky meets the ground. Here, the lighting and smoke stain the sky; the city imposes itself on nature. We intrude, clamour, an assumption of belonging colouring our actions. I resolve not to belong, looking out on this place we built. I turn inwards, back to the room.
The other bed- the bed of my room mate- has an assortment of objects on it. A bunch of keys, a handkerchief, a tub of Vaseline- brass player, then- and a heavily graffiti-ridden book of music. Most of the writing on it is doodling; caricatures, looping spirals, spiderwebs. Black biro swirls obliterate the title; the editor’s name is scored through; curlicues sweep outwards onto the spine. The writing on it is succinct: ‘Arban sucks dick.’ I laugh a little at that.
“He does, you know.”
I jump, turn around, knowing I flush with embarrassment. Caught reading a book, caught snooping. I feel gauche, blushing like some uncultivated yokel- it is not an auspicious first meeting. He leans against the doorframe, grinning at me. “I’m Smithbauer. Mark. Trumpet. Calgary.”
“Pinsent. Fraser. Cello. Northwest Territories.”
We shake hands, formal, then catch each other’s eye, smile foolishly. “Arban?” I ask, unable to contain my curiosity.
“Full of studies. One of those- you know- albatrosses. Wholesome studies you do before the fun stuff. Repeat and repeat and repeat until the neighbours start buying you sheet music to make for a bit of variety through their walls. Crotchets, quavers, scales, drills, drills and more drills. There’s one for cello, right?”
“Feulliard,” I say with a shudder. “He didn’t write as much as this, though.”
“More stuff you can do with a trumpet.”
He looks sideways at me, smile twitching the side of his mouth. He has a wolf’s smile, sharp eyes, relaxed amusement with the danger of something sharper always underneath. I find him handsome.
“You don’t expect me to let that pass, do you?” I ask mildly.
I spend the afternoon rehashing the debate on the comparative merits of our respective instruments. I have range on my side, bowing, plucking, versatility, chords, harmonics. He has mutes, triple tonguing, jazz, the cornet, the soprano trumpet-
Portability. Of course. He isn’t made to look like a turtle and trudge along slippery streets with comments following him all the way. He says he also has style. I agree to disagree. Our rivalry is well rehearsed; musicians compare, split off into groups. The brass are arrogant, tubas slow, violas stupid, flautists loose of moral, violinists insular, French horn players precious. We slip into our roles because it’s simple, our tribes delineated from the start.
We unpack as we debate, dance around each other as we hang up shirts, stow away music stands, practice chairs, music. It goes dark around us. I hardly notice, absorbed in nest building. Absorbed in Mark. He puts a bottle of whiskey on the windowsill, two glasses and a packet of cigarettes next to it. He loves jazz, wants to get a job playing in the bars around Toronto. He prefers Gillespie to Davis. Thinks Mozart’s music fits too well. Worships Bartok. Likes Beethoven when it’s raining, Delius when the sun shines. I tell him things, too. How I hate all of Pachelbel’s music with a passion because of that damned canon and its monotonous cello line. How sometimes playing Debussy’s sonate scares me, unsettles me. How hearing The Lark Ascending makes me want to fly myself. He likes seeing how sweet he can play the middle movement of the Haydn, loves cadenzas, especially when he puts in passages of swung improvisation, to scare his teacher.
Then it’s done. I turn on the spot, looking at the room I will be living in, then at the boy I will be living with.
“I need a drink.”
I find myself nodding. I have had wine, sometimes, at receptions, parties my father has been unable to avoid. Not whiskey.
We sit on our beds and he pours a generous measure of whiskey into each glass. It burns my throat; even a sip makes me cough and shudder. He laughs, not unkindly, at my expression.
“You get used to it. I used to go to one of the bars in Moosejaw, played with one of those old style big bands- Glen Miller stuff. Played second, so I got the solos, and every time I got one right, the old guy who was the leader, Timmy Ellis, would give me a swig out of his hipflask. Did more for my playing than any lessons. Walking home wasn’t too fun, though. Weaving, sometimes. Then we moved back to Inuvik, and I started my own quartet.”
“How old were you?”
“About fourteen. Then we moved again. Never stayed in the same place for more than a few months.”
I blink, once, try not to look too shocked. I fail, I think. He laughs again. My chest goes tight, but my heart feels warm and open. I smile foolishly at the world, and listen to him speak some more.
*
My days fall into a pattern. Orchestra on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and during the day, composition, conducting, harmony, choral music, music history, cello lessons, my secondary instrument, which is voice, lessons. My free time, I spend reading in the library, writing letters home, and letting Mark drag me to ice hockey games and bars with his friends. The brass section of the orchestra seems to have made me into an honorary member. I am not expected to talk or drink too much, and they seem to have taken it upon themselves to teach me how to dance and approach women. I feel like the opposite of Eliza in My Fair Lady. I don’t know if my father would be horrified or proud. Even if I do not carry his name, his influence spreads throughout the conservatoire. He is, after all, a composer in his prime. I take apart his compositions in harmony class, play his symphonies in orchestra, learn about his life in Music History. My father and Robert Fraser become peculiarly split in my memory. I keep Pinsent as my last name, hide my secret close. It is easy, so easy, to pretend.
The first time is after our first concert. Mark leads the brass. It is the Firebird last, and I leave the auditorium with my pulse thudding in my head, my body thrumming with this exhilaration, the openness of being drunk, the joy of a perfect piece well played. I grin at him, careless, and he slings an arm around my shoulder, kisses me on the cheek, quickly and clumsily. I accept it as my due, almost, complacent in our easy companionship. Later, when we’ve put out instruments in our rooms, he leans back in his desk chair in his shirt sleeves, a lazy predatory smile on his face. The door is locked. I want him. I admitted this to myself weeks ago. It is simple. I accept the glass he gives me as my due too, take a gulp, the taste of the cheap whiskey hot on my tongue, burning on my throat.
“How drunk do you need to be before you want to fuck?” he asks, curious sounding. I meet his eyes.
“If this is…if you aren’t- don’t want me- then I’ll-”
I stop. I want. But if this is a joke- if I respond to him, tell him what I…want then our friendship and my reputation may be ruined. I know what I am. I know what risks I take, the sideways glances and careless smiles that lead to alleyways, to danger, to connection of a sort I cannot find without debasement. Mark stands up, stands close to me, puts a hand on the back of my neck and leans into me, clean shirt, valve oil, whisky and sweat mingling.
“You’ll what?”
“I don’t know. I was going to say I would hit you. I don’t- just say it was the concert, the music, bright lights, dancing- say you were dazzled, and we can forget this.”
He shrugs, seemingly completely at ease. So certain. Never afraid, not when playing, talking, smoking out of the window with his legs dangling over the edge of the building, ice skating with swift graceful strokes, heedless of what a fall would do to his career. Fearless, beautiful. Sometimes I wish I could live my life without fear, too. He backs me up to my bed, pushes me so I fall, empty glass rolling to the corner of the room.
“How is the rest of life meant to compete with music?” he whispers, eyes fever-bright, pinning me on my back to the bed. That question drives all of us, terrifies all of us. What if we can no longer play? Our bodies are so fragile, so fallible, so prone to broken bones, torn ligaments, arthritis. What happens when our tools no longer work? How do we live? I shudder, shift under him. His eyes are haunted. He leans in closer. “Simple sex, that’s all. You don’t have to- it’s not us, it’s just us.”
I stay silent, look up at him. My limbs feel heavy, dead; my skin thrums. I’m trapped and flying at the same time. Silence stretches. I will not speak.
“Say something, you sonofabitch,” he almost snarls, his face tight. I kiss him, rough, more teeth than tenderness. His lips are sensitive; he still has a red ring from where his mouthpiece has been. My fingers dig into the muscles on his upper back. I don’t know who wants this more. I don’t know who’s more scared by it.
One of the buttons on his shirt flies off as I unfasten it, heedless of the fabric, of anything other than his skin. When I try to apologise, he slips a hand into my concert pants, hand pressing onto my erection with something approaching pain. I jerk my hips up into it, chase it as if it were something elusive, and he smiles, storing the information for-for some other time. This is not a one-time thing. This is for when we get drunk, exhilarated after a concert, bored, aroused, when we are without other partners, after a hard day-
I dizzily map all the possibilities as I rake my blunt nails down his chest, the calluses on my left hand catching a little bit.
“Clothes, Pinsent. You’re too fucking distracting, you know that?”
“Just enjoying the ride, Smithbauer,” I say smoothly, unable to keep a straight face for very long. He shakes his head at my desultory attempt at suaveness, yanks my shirt over my head, careless of the fabric or buttons. I toe off my shoes, twisting and contorting as much as he will allow me. We’re like some many-limbed creature; contact is maintained throughout our undressing, as we writhe on my single bed with its lumpy mattress and iron frame. We go from clothed to naked with little pause in our kissing, in our frantic, graceless rutting-
“Slow down,” I gasp out, pushing him off me, sitting up and breathing in as if I can somehow inhale a measure of calm. His scent surrounds me, and as he tries to push me back onto the bed, I growl, deep in my throat. “Patience,” I tell him, allowing a note of command into my voice. He nods. He moves forward, slower again, and this time I lie back on the bed, tilting my hips so our cocks are lined up, so my hand can wrap around them, so it forms a loose fist, so Mark kisses me, so he bites my lip, hard-
I let him. I’ll bruise tomorrow. His one hand grasps my hip, fingers digging in, his other seems to want to touch everything it can. I lose myself in the musculature of his back, the ridges of his spine, his cock against my own, against my palm, hot, silken, slick. Mark follows my lead; his tempo matches mine, an extension of the music we have played, made to fill echoing silence with sighs and moans. We play and we fuck. I move faster, quarter-notes to eighth-notes. He breaks the kiss, rests his lips on my jaw and gasps for breath, his eyelashes fluttering, jaw clenching. I catalogue his body as I once catalogued the room, my own responses secondary. The muscles on his back undulate under my hand as he moves, and I find myself clinging to him, eyes closed tight. He thrusts into my fist once, twice, comes with a gasp, arching his back, then slumping forward, breathing hotly into my neck.
I breathe in his sudden peace, his lassitude. I will never tire of the peace in a bed-partner’s eyes, after their orgasm- their little death into stillness and calm. My own orgasm seems to curl up from my toes, the sensation of hovering, of waiting to fall suspending me- the A-string, up the fingerboard, thumb on the string, a flurry of notes, bow near the bridge for a strong, harsh sound- then letting me drop. When I open my eyes, I realise I have been clinging to him. I let go, allow him to move away, which he does, cleaning us up with the wifebeater he wore to run in yesterday, that he dropped next to my bed- he is many things; tidy is not one of them. His absence leaves me feeling cold. He shifts again, and I can’t suppress my little whimper of protest. His look is sharp, knowing and kind. I thought he was going to leave. To go and sleep in his bed, leaving heavy silence, our scents combined in my sheets, crumples and memories the only things allowed to me.
“You want to snuggle, Pinsent?” Mark asks, voice husky, mocking. I growl, pin him to the bed. We rough-house for a while, our rediscovered energy from the concert making us jerky, breathless. He grins, nips at the side of my neck, then licks. I swat him away, laughing.
“Did they do this with you, too? Those other men, did they stay with you?” he asks, lying back on the bed. I blink. Go very still for a few seconds. Remember to breathe.
“How did you know?” I ask, when my voice is under control.
“I…I suspected. Then I saw the dirt on the knees of your jeans, and the way your lips shone after you had disappeared for an evening. Then- fuck- did you know any of them? Even talk to them?”
His voice has arousal, curiosity, and pity mingled. I look down at the way our hands are almost touching on the coverlet. “It was simpler without speech. There are certain bars where a certain way of looking- I met a man there, the first time. Our first week. Nothing in his manner invited conversation, and so I said nothing. We- it was simple. I knew nothing about him. He was a mechanic, I believe; the oil under his fingernails, and the burn mark on his left knuckle...”
He had gripped my hair, hard, and then soothed my scalp as I tensed. We had kissed, then he’d pressed me back against the wall, unbuttoned my jeans, got down on his knees. Silence, save for my moans. Mark had been asleep when I returned. I had moved quietly, undressed carefully, under the covers, as if he could have found out just by looking at me.
“It’s not important,” I tell him, quietly.
“Liar.”
I say nothing. He shifts in the bed, so that we’re lying spoon fashion. He’s behind me, leg draped over mine with an air of casual possessiveness. “We aren’t…encouraged to expect more than certain bars and certain looks. We grab whatever ragged scraps we are able to, in alleyways and back rooms. I make what I can of it.”
His lips are warm on the back of my neck. His fingers twine with mine. I did not expect him to stay. I listen to him, as his breath evens out and deepens into sleep. I smile into the darkness, gather the rags and wisps together to give me warmth, more warmth than I ever expected to have. With this warmth, I can sleep with a measure of peace. I close my eyes, and breathe.
Fandom: due South (musician AU)
Pairing: Fraser/Smithbauer
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3000 words (ish)
Notes: This takes place at the Conservatoire where Fraser and Mark studied, and shared a room. Fraser is a cellist, Mark is a trumpeter. Nos, darling, I thought I'd give you some background, and some bonus Mark. It has been a pleasure and a joy interacting with you. I wish you much joy on your birthday ♥
The walls are white. The beds are on either side of the room, the desks are next to each other. There is a closet, a lockable safe, two music stands, nightstands with lamps on them, curtains-
My cataloguing becomes ridiculous. My father looks at me, concerned, puts a hand on my shoulder. “We can go back-” he starts to say. I smile at him, nod to the tin he holds in his hand.
“Mrs. Jackson baked a cake especially; we can’t possibly let all that effort go to waste,” I tell him, solemnly. There was a leaving party. He conceals a smile with his hand; his eyes crinkle at the edges. Then- he almost speaks. Almost, of course. In the end, he retreats to silence once more. I am left reading his face. He will miss me. I know it. He clears his throat and nods, hefts my case, puts it on the bed without covers already on it. My unclaimed space. Diefenbaker, my cello, stands in the corner.
“Keep your nose clean, son,” he says, gruffly, hugging me clumsily, still unused to the motion. I allow myself to cling to him a little, but return his curt, manly nod when he goes to leave. The room echoes with unsaid things. It is as it has always been; that mix of exasperated and worshipful I feel for him- my own clay-footed god. My father.
I enrolled in the Toronto Conservatoire as Benton Pinsent- my mother’s name. My father will not overshadow me here; I lie to avoid expectations. If I am to succeed, let it be on my own terms, at least until they find out. They will, of course. At some point. But I will have tried, tried to carve out a career for myself with only the tools allowed those without a famous father. I am Benton Pinsent, born in the wilds of Canada, raised by the wolves, with only a cello to guide me in a strange city-
Librarians and composers are much like wolves, after all. And the city is strange, tall buildings, trees, grey pavements. My sky is circumscribed, limited by buildings, people, cars, trees. At home, I know where the sky meets the ground. Here, the lighting and smoke stain the sky; the city imposes itself on nature. We intrude, clamour, an assumption of belonging colouring our actions. I resolve not to belong, looking out on this place we built. I turn inwards, back to the room.
The other bed- the bed of my room mate- has an assortment of objects on it. A bunch of keys, a handkerchief, a tub of Vaseline- brass player, then- and a heavily graffiti-ridden book of music. Most of the writing on it is doodling; caricatures, looping spirals, spiderwebs. Black biro swirls obliterate the title; the editor’s name is scored through; curlicues sweep outwards onto the spine. The writing on it is succinct: ‘Arban sucks dick.’ I laugh a little at that.
“He does, you know.”
I jump, turn around, knowing I flush with embarrassment. Caught reading a book, caught snooping. I feel gauche, blushing like some uncultivated yokel- it is not an auspicious first meeting. He leans against the doorframe, grinning at me. “I’m Smithbauer. Mark. Trumpet. Calgary.”
“Pinsent. Fraser. Cello. Northwest Territories.”
We shake hands, formal, then catch each other’s eye, smile foolishly. “Arban?” I ask, unable to contain my curiosity.
“Full of studies. One of those- you know- albatrosses. Wholesome studies you do before the fun stuff. Repeat and repeat and repeat until the neighbours start buying you sheet music to make for a bit of variety through their walls. Crotchets, quavers, scales, drills, drills and more drills. There’s one for cello, right?”
“Feulliard,” I say with a shudder. “He didn’t write as much as this, though.”
“More stuff you can do with a trumpet.”
He looks sideways at me, smile twitching the side of his mouth. He has a wolf’s smile, sharp eyes, relaxed amusement with the danger of something sharper always underneath. I find him handsome.
“You don’t expect me to let that pass, do you?” I ask mildly.
I spend the afternoon rehashing the debate on the comparative merits of our respective instruments. I have range on my side, bowing, plucking, versatility, chords, harmonics. He has mutes, triple tonguing, jazz, the cornet, the soprano trumpet-
Portability. Of course. He isn’t made to look like a turtle and trudge along slippery streets with comments following him all the way. He says he also has style. I agree to disagree. Our rivalry is well rehearsed; musicians compare, split off into groups. The brass are arrogant, tubas slow, violas stupid, flautists loose of moral, violinists insular, French horn players precious. We slip into our roles because it’s simple, our tribes delineated from the start.
We unpack as we debate, dance around each other as we hang up shirts, stow away music stands, practice chairs, music. It goes dark around us. I hardly notice, absorbed in nest building. Absorbed in Mark. He puts a bottle of whiskey on the windowsill, two glasses and a packet of cigarettes next to it. He loves jazz, wants to get a job playing in the bars around Toronto. He prefers Gillespie to Davis. Thinks Mozart’s music fits too well. Worships Bartok. Likes Beethoven when it’s raining, Delius when the sun shines. I tell him things, too. How I hate all of Pachelbel’s music with a passion because of that damned canon and its monotonous cello line. How sometimes playing Debussy’s sonate scares me, unsettles me. How hearing The Lark Ascending makes me want to fly myself. He likes seeing how sweet he can play the middle movement of the Haydn, loves cadenzas, especially when he puts in passages of swung improvisation, to scare his teacher.
Then it’s done. I turn on the spot, looking at the room I will be living in, then at the boy I will be living with.
“I need a drink.”
I find myself nodding. I have had wine, sometimes, at receptions, parties my father has been unable to avoid. Not whiskey.
We sit on our beds and he pours a generous measure of whiskey into each glass. It burns my throat; even a sip makes me cough and shudder. He laughs, not unkindly, at my expression.
“You get used to it. I used to go to one of the bars in Moosejaw, played with one of those old style big bands- Glen Miller stuff. Played second, so I got the solos, and every time I got one right, the old guy who was the leader, Timmy Ellis, would give me a swig out of his hipflask. Did more for my playing than any lessons. Walking home wasn’t too fun, though. Weaving, sometimes. Then we moved back to Inuvik, and I started my own quartet.”
“How old were you?”
“About fourteen. Then we moved again. Never stayed in the same place for more than a few months.”
I blink, once, try not to look too shocked. I fail, I think. He laughs again. My chest goes tight, but my heart feels warm and open. I smile foolishly at the world, and listen to him speak some more.
*
My days fall into a pattern. Orchestra on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and during the day, composition, conducting, harmony, choral music, music history, cello lessons, my secondary instrument, which is voice, lessons. My free time, I spend reading in the library, writing letters home, and letting Mark drag me to ice hockey games and bars with his friends. The brass section of the orchestra seems to have made me into an honorary member. I am not expected to talk or drink too much, and they seem to have taken it upon themselves to teach me how to dance and approach women. I feel like the opposite of Eliza in My Fair Lady. I don’t know if my father would be horrified or proud. Even if I do not carry his name, his influence spreads throughout the conservatoire. He is, after all, a composer in his prime. I take apart his compositions in harmony class, play his symphonies in orchestra, learn about his life in Music History. My father and Robert Fraser become peculiarly split in my memory. I keep Pinsent as my last name, hide my secret close. It is easy, so easy, to pretend.
The first time is after our first concert. Mark leads the brass. It is the Firebird last, and I leave the auditorium with my pulse thudding in my head, my body thrumming with this exhilaration, the openness of being drunk, the joy of a perfect piece well played. I grin at him, careless, and he slings an arm around my shoulder, kisses me on the cheek, quickly and clumsily. I accept it as my due, almost, complacent in our easy companionship. Later, when we’ve put out instruments in our rooms, he leans back in his desk chair in his shirt sleeves, a lazy predatory smile on his face. The door is locked. I want him. I admitted this to myself weeks ago. It is simple. I accept the glass he gives me as my due too, take a gulp, the taste of the cheap whiskey hot on my tongue, burning on my throat.
“How drunk do you need to be before you want to fuck?” he asks, curious sounding. I meet his eyes.
“If this is…if you aren’t- don’t want me- then I’ll-”
I stop. I want. But if this is a joke- if I respond to him, tell him what I…want then our friendship and my reputation may be ruined. I know what I am. I know what risks I take, the sideways glances and careless smiles that lead to alleyways, to danger, to connection of a sort I cannot find without debasement. Mark stands up, stands close to me, puts a hand on the back of my neck and leans into me, clean shirt, valve oil, whisky and sweat mingling.
“You’ll what?”
“I don’t know. I was going to say I would hit you. I don’t- just say it was the concert, the music, bright lights, dancing- say you were dazzled, and we can forget this.”
He shrugs, seemingly completely at ease. So certain. Never afraid, not when playing, talking, smoking out of the window with his legs dangling over the edge of the building, ice skating with swift graceful strokes, heedless of what a fall would do to his career. Fearless, beautiful. Sometimes I wish I could live my life without fear, too. He backs me up to my bed, pushes me so I fall, empty glass rolling to the corner of the room.
“How is the rest of life meant to compete with music?” he whispers, eyes fever-bright, pinning me on my back to the bed. That question drives all of us, terrifies all of us. What if we can no longer play? Our bodies are so fragile, so fallible, so prone to broken bones, torn ligaments, arthritis. What happens when our tools no longer work? How do we live? I shudder, shift under him. His eyes are haunted. He leans in closer. “Simple sex, that’s all. You don’t have to- it’s not us, it’s just us.”
I stay silent, look up at him. My limbs feel heavy, dead; my skin thrums. I’m trapped and flying at the same time. Silence stretches. I will not speak.
“Say something, you sonofabitch,” he almost snarls, his face tight. I kiss him, rough, more teeth than tenderness. His lips are sensitive; he still has a red ring from where his mouthpiece has been. My fingers dig into the muscles on his upper back. I don’t know who wants this more. I don’t know who’s more scared by it.
One of the buttons on his shirt flies off as I unfasten it, heedless of the fabric, of anything other than his skin. When I try to apologise, he slips a hand into my concert pants, hand pressing onto my erection with something approaching pain. I jerk my hips up into it, chase it as if it were something elusive, and he smiles, storing the information for-for some other time. This is not a one-time thing. This is for when we get drunk, exhilarated after a concert, bored, aroused, when we are without other partners, after a hard day-
I dizzily map all the possibilities as I rake my blunt nails down his chest, the calluses on my left hand catching a little bit.
“Clothes, Pinsent. You’re too fucking distracting, you know that?”
“Just enjoying the ride, Smithbauer,” I say smoothly, unable to keep a straight face for very long. He shakes his head at my desultory attempt at suaveness, yanks my shirt over my head, careless of the fabric or buttons. I toe off my shoes, twisting and contorting as much as he will allow me. We’re like some many-limbed creature; contact is maintained throughout our undressing, as we writhe on my single bed with its lumpy mattress and iron frame. We go from clothed to naked with little pause in our kissing, in our frantic, graceless rutting-
“Slow down,” I gasp out, pushing him off me, sitting up and breathing in as if I can somehow inhale a measure of calm. His scent surrounds me, and as he tries to push me back onto the bed, I growl, deep in my throat. “Patience,” I tell him, allowing a note of command into my voice. He nods. He moves forward, slower again, and this time I lie back on the bed, tilting my hips so our cocks are lined up, so my hand can wrap around them, so it forms a loose fist, so Mark kisses me, so he bites my lip, hard-
I let him. I’ll bruise tomorrow. His one hand grasps my hip, fingers digging in, his other seems to want to touch everything it can. I lose myself in the musculature of his back, the ridges of his spine, his cock against my own, against my palm, hot, silken, slick. Mark follows my lead; his tempo matches mine, an extension of the music we have played, made to fill echoing silence with sighs and moans. We play and we fuck. I move faster, quarter-notes to eighth-notes. He breaks the kiss, rests his lips on my jaw and gasps for breath, his eyelashes fluttering, jaw clenching. I catalogue his body as I once catalogued the room, my own responses secondary. The muscles on his back undulate under my hand as he moves, and I find myself clinging to him, eyes closed tight. He thrusts into my fist once, twice, comes with a gasp, arching his back, then slumping forward, breathing hotly into my neck.
I breathe in his sudden peace, his lassitude. I will never tire of the peace in a bed-partner’s eyes, after their orgasm- their little death into stillness and calm. My own orgasm seems to curl up from my toes, the sensation of hovering, of waiting to fall suspending me- the A-string, up the fingerboard, thumb on the string, a flurry of notes, bow near the bridge for a strong, harsh sound- then letting me drop. When I open my eyes, I realise I have been clinging to him. I let go, allow him to move away, which he does, cleaning us up with the wifebeater he wore to run in yesterday, that he dropped next to my bed- he is many things; tidy is not one of them. His absence leaves me feeling cold. He shifts again, and I can’t suppress my little whimper of protest. His look is sharp, knowing and kind. I thought he was going to leave. To go and sleep in his bed, leaving heavy silence, our scents combined in my sheets, crumples and memories the only things allowed to me.
“You want to snuggle, Pinsent?” Mark asks, voice husky, mocking. I growl, pin him to the bed. We rough-house for a while, our rediscovered energy from the concert making us jerky, breathless. He grins, nips at the side of my neck, then licks. I swat him away, laughing.
“Did they do this with you, too? Those other men, did they stay with you?” he asks, lying back on the bed. I blink. Go very still for a few seconds. Remember to breathe.
“How did you know?” I ask, when my voice is under control.
“I…I suspected. Then I saw the dirt on the knees of your jeans, and the way your lips shone after you had disappeared for an evening. Then- fuck- did you know any of them? Even talk to them?”
His voice has arousal, curiosity, and pity mingled. I look down at the way our hands are almost touching on the coverlet. “It was simpler without speech. There are certain bars where a certain way of looking- I met a man there, the first time. Our first week. Nothing in his manner invited conversation, and so I said nothing. We- it was simple. I knew nothing about him. He was a mechanic, I believe; the oil under his fingernails, and the burn mark on his left knuckle...”
He had gripped my hair, hard, and then soothed my scalp as I tensed. We had kissed, then he’d pressed me back against the wall, unbuttoned my jeans, got down on his knees. Silence, save for my moans. Mark had been asleep when I returned. I had moved quietly, undressed carefully, under the covers, as if he could have found out just by looking at me.
“It’s not important,” I tell him, quietly.
“Liar.”
I say nothing. He shifts in the bed, so that we’re lying spoon fashion. He’s behind me, leg draped over mine with an air of casual possessiveness. “We aren’t…encouraged to expect more than certain bars and certain looks. We grab whatever ragged scraps we are able to, in alleyways and back rooms. I make what I can of it.”
His lips are warm on the back of my neck. His fingers twine with mine. I did not expect him to stay. I listen to him, as his breath evens out and deepens into sleep. I smile into the darkness, gather the rags and wisps together to give me warmth, more warmth than I ever expected to have. With this warmth, I can sleep with a measure of peace. I close my eyes, and breathe.