Momentum
by athens7 as Jack (font: Courier New)
and mazaher as Patrick (font: Verdana)

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4. Reunion: Tearing down the barrier, one layer at a time

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Jack's POV

He is here. He is actually here.
I do not let myself believe it until the final step.
The sight of him, physically present in my house, makes me fear for a stroke.
There cannot be any errors on my part. A wounded tiger flees at the smallest sign of danger.
I extend my hand to touch him, to reassure myself that this is no ghost, then I think better of it and stop. Because I realise that, even if he were a ghost, I’d want him to stay. This is the level of insanity I have reached.
“Come” I murmur then, afraid that even my voice could startle him, and lead I him to the study.
I turn on the small lamp on my bureau, and turn to face him.
This is the moment for truth.

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Now that we are enveloped in the safety of this room, I let myself look at him more closely.
He’s been punishing himself, as I feared.
I know it from the weak shade of his skin --so unlike its usual healthy rose-- from his parched lips, from the lock of hair angrily caressing his forehead.
I can feel guilt settling in the pit of my stomach like a nasty glob of slime.
Then my eyes focus on the lapel of his jacket.
“What does this mean?” I whisper, brushing the marigold he wears.
He hesitates, a tormented tremor shaking his fine frame.
“I — I... it is a... I wanted to –”
I silence him with a wave of the hand.
This is intolerable. This is simply, completely wrong. My heart bleeds and howls at his pointless misery. This man was made to be worshipped and loved and adored with every step he takes; to be witness of his own self-nihilism instead, and to know that I am the cause – it is too much. I can’t allow it.
It is this new resolution that gives me the boldness I need to speak the next words.
“Although I suspect we are not contemplating the same issue” I declare, “I accept your apology.”
For a moment, he actually gapes at me. Then something shifts in his mind, and a spark of the usual fire starts flickering again in those formidable eyes.
“That’s it?” he snaps at last. “After everything that happened I am absolved by a few words of rite?”
“I do not care about apologies, Patrick.”
“But I do!” he nearly shouts, his hands closed in fists, exposing himself like he never did.
The admission hangs in the air between us, palpitating.
I can see that he regrets it. But I do not. This excruciating foreplay has been going on for far too long. It’s time to move on, together.
“Patrick, I know.”
“Then why are you so accommodating? Why do you act like you don’t understand that I can’t let it go, just like that?
“Why-- what can’t you let go, exactly? The fact that we haven't set eyes on each other in seven weeks and a few hours-- or the act itself? Do you find me so disgusting?”
“No!” he cries, and I hear panic seeping through his clear voice. “No, do not ever think something like that! It – it is me. It is always me.”
Usually at this point, I yield. Usually at this point, I perceive I’ve come just too close to that door in his heart he keeps to tightly shut; I can feel the horror hiding behind it, the memories and the vicious suggestions, an ache so subtle and pervasive that I fear by now it is integral part of his own personality.
Usually I tell myself that, all things considered, what right do I actually have to knock on that door? And I retreat.
But now everything is different. By kissing me and asking me to make love to him, he gave me the right –-consciously or not-- and may God spit me in the eye if I will pull back tonight.
“Why must you always take all the blame?”, I insist mercilessly then, pressing my advantage, “Are you truly convinced that I followed you out of pity? That it would have happened, had I not met you halfway? I’m not a masochist, Patrick. I’m in love with you.”
He gasps.
I back slightly, so that as little as two feet divide us, and open my arms.
“It is not stealing, when it is willingly offered” I say, and I rest my case.
Silence descends upon us. However, it doesn’t feel like the disorienting emptiness that follows after the end of a symphony; rather, it is charged with potential and promise, like the interval dividing two movements.
Without ever breaking eye contact, he takes a step forward, then another, until our chins brush and our mouths graze, so that we inhale each other’s breath.
All I see is chestnut eyebrows and sapphire irises and large pupils glinting with challenge.
He kisses me, an intangible graze at first, that soon becomes a sensuous glide of skin against skin.
His hands search my cheeks, fingers tracing my sideburns and the shape of my ears, while my own remain limp along my sides.
I part my lips, and immediately his tongue darts forward, invading me, searching for its twin.
They meet, and it’s an ignition of lust so strong that I can feel it burning and sliding down my throat, warmer and headier than a shot of scotch.
I succeed in temporarily gaining the upper hand and move inside him, licking those prominent, maddening lateral incisors of his, tasting his palate; I capture his rebellious tongue, and suck.
The soft groan this earns me hits me right between the legs.
I have to grab his hips, and grind our hard groins together, and thrust, just once.
My action elicits a snarl I had never heard coming from him before: without ever releasing my lips he clutches my collar and starts pushing me back insistently, manoeuvring me until the back of my knees hit something and I collapse on my blessedly large sofa.
I can barely catch my breath, and a glimpse of trousers and boots falling on the floor, and then in a flash of movement he’s ravishing me again, tearing flesh and clothes; he straddles me, taking my weeping prick and guiding it unerringly against his tight, dry muscle.
“For the love of --- stop!” I panic, grabbing his quivering thighs. “What’s the matter with you? I don’t want to hurt you again.”
He falters, seemingly regaining lucidity for a moment; then slips fluidly to his knees, a wicked half-smirk playing on his lips, and takes me in his mouth.
My hips surge forward of their own volition and I have to bite down on my hand, hard enough that I can taste flesh stinging on my tongue, to prevent myself from climaxing then and there.
He sucks me deep and hard, laving and sampling with single-minded precision, his skill digging a hole in the pit of my stomach.
For some searing, exquisite minutes of torture, he seems to lose himself completely in the task.
And just when I am about to cross the line of no return, he releases me, a thin string of saliva dripping obscenely from his mouth; climbs again on top of me, spreads himself wide and joins us, this time really and completely.
We both freeze, twin moans of surprise and fulfillment escaping our control. I know the penetration was painful, no matter how well he thinks he’s hiding it: I feel it in the shaking of muscles, the tightness of his mouth.
But then I look at him, take in his closed eyes and half-buttoned shirt, and my sex twitches, enveloped in his heat.
Escaping all control, my fingers start caressing his cool, soft hips, growing bolder and bolder with each stroke, and now they are insinuating into the crevice between his full buttocks; lower and lower they go, until they reach the pulsing centre of our joining to trace my own shape and his pulsing opening, stretched wide and hot around me.
He gasps weakly at the contact, trembling in my arms like the sea caressed by summer breeze.
One fingertip timidly asking for entrance is what makes him capitulate at last.
“For all the saints – “ he pants, squeezing my shoulders. “What is a gentleman required to do to get sodded?”
He’s right. This is not the moment for decadent shows of seduction. But there will be time for those as well, and the certainty is a warm pressure resting in a corner of my heart.
“Alright” I sigh, and wrap my arms around his torso and roll us over, so that he lies supine on the sofa and I am all over him.
I start moving, frantic and unrestrained, and each thrust makes the fire in my loins rage higher and harder.
“Please, oh please” he prays, and I suspect he doesn’t really know what he’s asking for.
I rotate my hips, searching for the right angulation , and finally start hitting that sweet, sweet spot inside of him.
Once, twice, thrice, and then he is shouting and writhing and exploding, baptized by his own essence.
His muscles contract convulsively around me, forcing me to follow him, and we are dying together, at last.

Minutes go by.
We lift our heads at exactly the same time, excitement still faintly throbbing in the veins. Doubt dances for endless seconds in our gazes. But this is not a time for doubts: I close my eyes, raise my hand, and begin to trace blindly the contours of his unforgettable face.
I start from the roots of his silken hair, then slide down to his broad forehead. The well-defined arch of his eyebrow is a curve of learning and discovery, leading to his straight nose and then lower, down to skim over his rich lips.
I can perceive that at some point, his eyes fall close as well.
My fingertips are still resting on his lower lip when he prepares to speak. But I forestall him.
“Do you want to stay?” I ask, opening my eyes again.
“... Do you want it?” he counters, after a pause.
“More than anything else in my life.”
He looks at me, the memory contained in those words reawakening something powerful and undeniable, and I know –-deep down, where mistakes and misunderstandings could never reach-- that everything is going to be alright. Not now, most probably, and not even in a week or a month, but soon. Very soon. Soon enough.
He smiles, bows his head to hide it, and punches me in the forearm.
“You know, you’re becoming somehow monotonous in your answers.”
“It is hardly my fault, if you keep asking always the same question. You know, sometimes you are a complete idiot.”
“Must be your constant proximity.”
“I can leave any time, if my presence is not deemed worth.”
“You would never dare” and his hand still resting on my shoulder grips just that little bit tighter.
I draw a breath, inhale his scent of dry green musk, exhale, and feel his breath on my face at the same time, like a mingling of souls.
“That night -- it was not your first time” I blurt out after a moment, out of nowhere.
He looks at me with an expression that I can’t decipher.
“... Neither was yours.”
“No.”
I feel him smile against my neck.
“Good.”
“... Hm?”
“So you can appreciate the remarkable quality leap.”
I smile back.
“... Indeed.”

I wake up to find him sitting in the armchair besides the window.
It takes my dazed brain a while to realise that he is still rather naked.
He just sits there, seemingly oblivious to my hungry stare and the rest of the world, left leg bent over the right, sex quietly spent against his plane stomach, one loosely-fisted hand delicately pressed against pursed lips, while the morning twilight kisses his bones and sinews, bathing him in light blue and tangerine.
His eyes dart in my direction at the rustle of skin against fabric as I straighten to sit on the sofa, then turn back to the window, growing distant with what I manage to identify as remembrance.
When I was eight, or maybe nine years old, he sighs at last, without tearing his eyes away from sleeping London, I asked my mother, ‘what if I were not my father’s son?’
He pauses.
At first, she merely looked at me, like she had a sudden stranger in front of her. Then she smiled, the sweetest and scariest smile I had ever seen, and said, ‘What kind of question is that? After all, you can’t be anything else’.
Do you still believe her?
I thought it was impossible for me not to. I was alone, and desperation felt so natural. I believed that was the only way things were supposed to be.
But now? I insist.
He takes a deep breath.
But now he resumes, exhaling and leaning backwards against the cushions, now, there is you, and I don’t feel so certain anymore.
Something in my chest lightens up, rises higher and higher and finally explodes like fireworks.
I have to stand then, walk towards him, kneel at his feet.
Why, I think that is the most beautiful compliment you have ever paid me I grin cheekily, while desperately suppressing my urge to climb on the roof and shout my joy for Her Majesty and all the Empire to hear.
But doubts are not enough, Jack. I – I still do not know how to be someone else.
How can you not see it, my dearest friend? You already are. Your father is dead, while the Detective is alive. Even the Colonel had to face his sins. Patrick, you are free.
He smiles, a bitter twist of lips made in equal measure of hope and disbelief.
You always make everything appear so easy. How do you do it, Jack?, and he turns to look at me, fragile like I have never seen him.
It is because I know you. I know you, therefore I trust you.
Would you lend me some of this trust? he asks after a small pause, with eyes dangerously bright.
Of course. All that is mine is also yours, I answer, taking his hand and pressing it against my heart.
Unfortunately, this means that you will have to stand by my side as long and as often as possible he adds.
Is it a proposal?
I would read it more as a threat, but after all, who am I to make you change your mind?
Only the best and bravest man I know. But in this regard, he is actually right.
So I merely smile, and rest my head on his thigh.
We watch dawn break over the city together.

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