Work Text:
Alex wrapped his lips around the neck of his beer bottle and took a furious swig.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Maria said, slamming two new bottles down in front of him. “I thought you guys were done avoiding each other! Take these over to him already, stop moping all over my nice clean bar.”
“I’m not avoiding him,” Alex protested, only to be silenced by a withering look.
“You’ve been sitting here for over an hour watching him throw himself all over the pool tables trying to get your attention. Either you’re making him wait on purpose, or you’re completely clueless. Either way, I’m putting myself out of your misery.”
“He isn’t—”
“Oh my God, Alex Manes, not only do I have intimate knowledge of Guerin’s flirting tactics, but I am literally psychic. Go!”
The Pony’s dim yellow lights, half halogen half neon, gave the bar a smoky quality, a twilit mystique that swirled and eddied with Michael’s movements. To any other bystander, he may not have been the center of the room, the center of light, the single solid point around which the cosmic symphony pivoted, but to Alex he was all those things and more, and also the bastard who’d spent the better part of two hours draping himself over flat surfaces in soft, well-worn jeans and a t-shirt that kept riding up, smirking at everyone he talked to, running his fingers around the edge of his glass and licking condensation off his thumb.
Bastard.
Alex stalked away from the bar and around the perimeter, staying out of Michael’s line of sight as he lined up his next shot and let it go with the satisfying clack of billiard balls together. He wasn’t wearing his hat, sparing Alex that much of his infuriating cowboy magnetism, but that only meant he had full view of those curls. For the hundredth time that night, Alex raked his eyes over Michael’s body, from his wild hair to the broad shoulders beneath his jacket to the curve of his ass in his old, well-worn jeans—there was a fraying hole right in the crease of his thigh, worn all the way through so the white of his back pocket poked out a little—down his long legs to his boots.
As he watched, Michael stuck his ass out on his next shot, tongue fixed between his teeth. Clack, and then Michael straightened up again, glanced over his shoulder to the bar…then slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Looking for someone?” Alex said, stepping up onto the dais.
Michael whipped around, head and chest pointing Alex’s way faster than his feet could keep up.
“Alex!”
“Well, you found him. Did you…need something?”
Alex dragged his eyes the length of Michael’s body yet again, taking his time, letting Michael feel eyes on him: the thing he’s been baying for so loud and needy all night. And Michael went still under Alex’s watchful eye, only leaning back against the pool table to give Alex more to look at.
The suggestion was that Alex could step forward, slot a thigh in between Michael’s legs, lean past him to take the cue and take a shot of his own. His heartbeat would pound through his shirt when Alex’s chest pressed to his chest. His hair would tickle Alex’s cheek; his breath would be hot and gentle and quick on Alex’s ear.
“Well?” Alex prompted, leaning away instead, quirking an eyebrow and tilting his head.
“Uh-h, uh…”
He could drag this out. Make Michael squirm the way Alex had been squirming since he dropped in to say hi to Maria and get a drink. But Michael was entirely a tomcat who didn’t know what to do with a bird once he caught it, and his cheeks flushed pink so prettily already, and Alex was tired of waiting.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
There was no need to check behind him to see if Michael was following; his feet clomped clumsy and eager after Alex, close enough to his back to feel the heat radiating from him. They stumbled out into the parking lot, Alex dragging Michael, hand clamped around his wrist, Michael leaning and letting himself be dragged, laughing all the while, a double-ended physical pull on the both of them.
Across the gravel lot, past the pools of streetlight, Michael’s warm body pressed him into the cold metal of his car with a desperation that Alex could only echo back to him, yanking him in as close as possible with grasping hands on his belt, in his jacket pockets; he gasped when his cold fingers hit the bathwater-hot skin of Michael’s neck, scrabbling up into his hair to twist and tug and cling as they kiss. In the midnight cold, he was so hot, scalding every time Alex’s tongue dipped inside his welcoming mouth, branding everywhere their skin touched.
“Unhh-“
Their hips ground together, pushing groans from each of their mouths into the other. Michael had been teasing Alex for hours, but he was the one hard and aching behind his zipper. Alex shoved his hand down between them to rub at the bulge in his jeans
Soaking in him in sips like this wasn’t enough. Alex needed to bathe in him, to breathe him in like steam, to drown.
He tightened his grip on Michael’s hair to pull him back and away from his neck and gasped, “Let’s get out of here.”
Michael scrambled to agree, hauling himself into Alex’s SUV as soon as he pushed off from the door and hurried around to the drivers’ seat, catching Alex’s keys with his TK when he dropped them. By the time they had the car started and Alex peeled out of the parking lot, both of them were cracking up with laughter.
A zipper buzzed from the passenger seat, making Alex jerk his head away from the road for just a second, just long enough to see Michael take his dick in hand and give it a stroke, hissing as the freezing air hit his overheated, sensitive skin.
“What are you doing?” Alex demanded, grabbing his own crotch to relieve the pressure.
“I’ve been aching for hours, I just need…”
“And whose fault is that?”
Michael whined, and Alex whipped a glance at him again long enough to register his eyes going even more blown and black.
Alex seized the moment. “You can hold yourself, but you don’t get to jerk off until I’ve got you where I want you.”
“Aye aye, Captain…”
As strangled as his voice sounded, when they stopped at a light and Alex chanced another look, Michael had his eyes closed, head tipped back in the golden shaft of a streetlight, broad hand gripping his cock, thighs tense but body loose and lax against the seat. In the bare light, his mouth was red and swollen, and his breath steamed the window in even curls as he controlled his breathing.
His zipper buzzed again when they hit Alex’s driveway, and he was out of the car and heading for the door before Alex had the car off. He followed at a more leisurely pace.
They were on his turf now. Michael could claw at the door all he wanted, but he wouldn’t get inside until Alex let him. He’d do whatever Alex wanted—and right now, Alex wanted to kiss him again, walking forward until he couldn’t anymore, Michael’s body trapped against the door, legs falling open as wide and slack as they could and keep him standing.
Once upon a time, Alex wouldn’t have trusted Michael’s trust in him, would have doubted it or doubted himself and turned it away no matter how much Michael twisted and turned and begged. Those days—weren’t past, entirely, everything was a work in progress, but—
“Open the door. With your powers,” Alex said, biting and sucking his way across Michael’s neck.
He dug his fingers into Michael’s ass to hold him steady, bending him back when the door swung open, Michael’s fingers clinging helplessly to the front of Alex’s shirt, soft, hitching cries muffled into his shoulder. Alex nipped sharply at his ear to scold him for the hiding, kneading his ass roughly—Michael’s back bowed to press their bodies together, one of his legs hooked around the back of Alex’s, entwining them—one of Alex’s fingers caught the hole in his jeans, and he slid it inside, hit skin, dug his nail in, and even through two layers of denim felt Michael’s cock twitch at that one bright point of pain.
“Inside,” Alex panted. “Bedroom, now.”
“Fuck yeah.”
Alex didn’t bother turning any lights on until Michael was in his bed and underneath him and he jerked at the lamp-pull to light him up. He was even more gorgeous close-up than he was across a crowded bar; even more gorgeous when Alex had him all to himself than when he was in public, out of reach. Alex shucked off his own jacket and undershirt before attacking Michael’s jacket—and froze when he had it open and recognized what Michael was wearing.
“Is this…my shirt?”
The yellow-and-navy plaid—he hadn’t seen it in a while and figured it was lost in the back of a drawer somewhere. But here it was, on Michael’s body, and Alex—
“Yep.” Michael popped his lips at the word and chased it with a hazy grin. “Don’t know if I can pull it off like you can—” he slid one hand up Alex’s stomach to his chest, and Alex caught it in his own, pressing it against his skin. “—But what do you think?”
With his other hand, Alex toyed with one of the buttons, all the desperate heat fallen away, nothing but gentle adoration left in its place. It was too easy to imagine the shirt dropped or flung away, fallen down between Michael’s bed and the wall, left and forgotten until Michael fished it out and kept it, wore it.
It was an unforgivably lonely thought. Even if Michael only meant to tease now.
Alex lifted his hand up to his mouth to kiss his fingers, lingering over once-broken knuckles, then cupped it against his cheek and leaned into it, his favorite feeling in the world, those hands so rough but so gentle against his skin. Michael’s face was as impossibly soft as Alex felt.
“I think,” Alex said, “You should take your pants off.”
Michael obeyed quick and easy, popping open his button and fly and shoving his pants down one-handed, but he couldn’t get them all the way off with Alex pinning down his thighs. His cock was still half-hard and bobbed forward, and he gave himself a couple strokes. God, he was a sight. Tousled hair bronzing the pillow, red kiss marks decorating his skin, naked except for Alex’s shirt, cock red and aching, and for the first time it really sank in that all night Michael had been strutting around commando, peacocking for Alex’s pleasure.
Still one-handed, Michael plucked open the buttons of his shirt, but when he lifted his shoulders to shrug it off, Alex let go of his other hand to use both his own to press him back down.
“Leave it on.”
Alex flicked the halves of his shirt open and just drank in the sight of him for a moment before stroking both hands down from his collarbones, over his nipples, over the planes of strong muscle to grip his hips.
“You put on quite the show for me tonight. Do you think you have to work that hard to get my attention?”
“Just wanna give a satisfactory performance,” Michael purred, shimmying his hips as if testing how far Alex would let him go.
To stop his squirming, Alex jerked him closer, hard. He slid across the sheets and between Alex’s legs, shirt rucking up behind his back; Alex raked his nails across his treasure trail—Ah!—and said, “You don’t ever have to perform for me.”
“I—”
“Never.”
Michael’s eyes, wet and gold and dilated-black, looked up at him through clumped-up lashes, under a furrowed brow, and his mouth popped open, then shut again. In place of a response, he arched his hips up to grind against Alex’s still-clothed groin, biting his lip in a way that just begged for more.
And Alex would give it to him.
He swung off straddling Michael to stretch out beside him instead, taking pressure off his knee, then hauled Michael’s leg over his own hip and knocked his hand away from his dick to replace it with his own. Face-to-face, Alex had to kiss him again, licking over his bottom lip, their mouths moving together for long moments before they fell apart again, Alex rolling his thumb over the tip of Michael’s cock and making him gasp.
“What do you need?” Alex rasped into the hot space between them. “What had you putting on a show tonight? What do you need from me?”
“I—I—”
“Anything.”
“Just—you. Everything. Whatever you’ll give me. It’s been…”
“Too long.”
“Y-yeah.”
Their relationship, fragile and new and older and stronger than bedrock, still moved in fits and starts, and they’d been more friends than not for the past few weeks as they tried to work this thing out between them. Too long. How long had it been? How did they make it so long, and why?
Frantic to make up for wasted time, Alex kissed him again, stroking his cock faster. “I need you too,” he gasped, words so simple, base, vital they tore out of him, and he released him on the upstroke to reach back to rub at his hole, see how far Michael wanted to go tonight—
“Michael.”
His fingers hit slick. Michael’s ass was wet with lube, hole slacked like he’d been fingering himself on and off all night—he’d need more, but Alex wanted to torture him with it, suddenly, spend all the remaining hours of the night working his fingers in and out of Michael’s body, slow and quick and hard and gentle until Michael was sobbing and coming dry.
“Wanted to be ready for you,” Michael said, grunting when Alex breached him with a fingertip, rolling his head against the pillow. Alex palmed the scruff of his neck, rubbing the tense muscle there. “I kinda thought I might get you to haul me off to the bathroom of the Pony. Stuff of wet dreams ‘n shit.” He gasped again, hips flexing forward and back like he was already getting fucked, even as Alex just traced the pad of his finger in a circle. “Or maybe I just liked it—open and ready for you in the middle of a crowd—you could just bend me over and mmmnnn…”
He dissolved into a moan as Alex pressed one finger in inch by inch, into his blazing-hot core.
“I like it too,” Alex said. “Fuck, Michael.”
It was hard to breathe, hard to think with the heat and smell of Michael all around him. Alex had no grace left in him as he tried to haul his own pants off; Michael might’ve helped with his powers a little bit, nearly whimpering with need for skin on skin. When he was naked, Alex took both their cocks in hand and stroked them together, devouring Michael’s mouth again and again until they dissolved into sloppy breathing, hearts pounding side-by-side, eyes open to watch each other.
“I want you to fuck me,” Michael blurted.
“Yeah? Good. Good, I want that too,” Alex said, rubbing Michael’s back, pressing them even closer together. “Get the lube out of the nightstand for me.”
He did, and Alex drizzled it over his fingers and reached back to rub at his hole again, two fingers this time, stretching and thrusting and fucking into him. Michael’s eyes finally slipped shut, mouth falling open, losing himself in the sensation, shuddering when Alex stroked his prostate, thighs trembling around Alex’s hips.
“Michael—”
“Ah—ah—ah—ah—”
“So good. You’re so good.”
They shifted together so Alex could line up and push inside him. The angle still wasn’t perfect—Alex rolled his hips and without better positioning or better leverage couldn’t manage more than shallow thrusts—but he wasn’t willing to move, wasn’t willing to be anything other than face-to-face, eyes locked on Michael in rapture, fluttering behind his eyelids, tongue between his teeth, every tiny shiver of muscle.
“What do you want?” Alex said. “Tell me more. Tell me everything. I want to hear it.”
Instinct bound them together from the start—instinct, gravity, with or without intention, the same force that held the stars in their positions in the heavens—but the words were something newer, a muscle that needed working, and all Alex wanted was to work. On this, toward something better.
“I want—I want—”
“That’s it.”
“I want to be yours,” Michael cried, the words clawing their way out of him and latching onto Alex, Michael curling his fingers into Alex’s skin, holding on so tight. “I want to stay here with you; I want you to keep me—”
Alex’s thrusts stuttered, rhythm of his hips broken like the rhythm of his heart, wild and uncontrollable. He wrapped a hand around the back of Michael’s neck again, squeezing tight, pulling him in, burying his face in his shoulder to whisper in his ear.
“I will. I promise you, I will.”
Michael’s voice cracked. “Alex…”
Curling around him, Alex didn’t answer and focused on fucking him, pumping pleasure through his body every way he knew how, Michael’s nails in his back, sweat curling at his temples. Alex brought him off with single-minded focus with his hands and mouth and cock, until Michael broke over his name again and came onto his stomach.
Michael’s muscles clenched around him when he pulled out, his nails tightening in his skin, too, his eyes still desperate when Alex flopped onto his back to breathe the cooler air above them, each exhale punctuated with a little laugh. It took a minute or two before Michael laughed with him.
“Fuck me,” Alex chuckled. He was still rock hard, but he just wrapped his hand around the base and ignored it for now, until he’d made sure Michael was okay.
“Uh, other way around,” Michael laughed, scooting closer to tangle their legs back together. Alex hadn’t even gotten his prosthetic off. More importantly, though, Alex reached for him, massaging his thighs as the aftershocks rolled through him, until the shaking stopped.
“Are you okay? We got a little more intense than I expected.”
Michael nodded, enough to assuage any actual fear Alex felt, but he didn’t elaborate. He rolled onto his back and lifted his knees to his chest and said, “Talk later. We’re not done yet.”
“If you’re too sensitive—”
“I’m not.” Michael reached for Alex’s cock, and Alex hissed when his calloused, warm hand closed around him. “I want you to fuck me. Use me. Come in me. I want you.”
Well-fucked and flushed, he was even more gorgeous than before, Alex’s shirt splayed open, hanging from his shoulders, his hole on display by his lifted hips, red and open and eager. Alex sat up, moved over him, bent to kiss it just to hear Michael yelp. The taste of lube was more than worth it for the high, babbling noises Michael made as Alex laved his tongue against that well-used skin.
Then Alex sat up and pulled Michael’s hips into his lap, legs falling open around him, and fucked back inside, thrusting hard and fast, splaying one hand out across Michael’s vulnerable stomach, pushing up to twist his nipples (--Ahn!--) until he had both hands curled around his shoulders, inches from where his lifeblood pumped in his bared throat.
Michael bit his lip, so “Let me hear you,” Alex gasped, kneading the sweat-slick muscle in his hands. And Michael did, opening his lips and throat on a throbbing whine, a sound of pure pleasure, pure sated need, that more than anything else, more than the tight, hot muscle gripping his cock, more than the beautiful, pliant enthusiasm Michael bled, had him coming deep in Michael’s body with a few more artless pumps of his hips.
When Alex pulled out a second time, Michael let out another groan, grasping for Alex’s hip like he could hold him still, hold him inside even a moment longer, but Alex laid out next to him again instead, cuddling him close, cupping his chin in both hands to kiss him.
Every line, every hair, every pore and freckle on Michael’s face was precious. Alex scattered kisses across his eyelids, across his cheeks and forehead. He had nowhere else to put the love too great to fit inside his body; there was nowhere else it belonged.
Minutes later, when they both could speak again, Alex repeated his earlier question. “Are you okay?”
With postcoital clarity, Alex twinged a bit with doubt at the marks he’d left all over the canvas of Michael’s body. Loving that fiercely, losing control when Michael gave up his own, freeing the thing in his chest he’d spent a lifetime starving and caging…it was new. And not something he’d expected out of tonight when Michael was just being playful at the bar trying to rile him up.
“Never better,” Michael rasped. His lidded eyes glittered every bit like they glittered in the sun in the back of his truck when they were seventeen and Michael made him feel like the only boy in the world who was loved.
“Yeah?”
Alex traced his fingers up and down the line of Michael’s spine. He needed to get a washcloth to clean Michael up, take care of him, but he wasn’t ready to move yet.
“Yeah.”
“It—I—wasn’t…too much?”
“Never.” Michael lifted himself up on one elbow so he could leverage himself even closer; he twined their fingers together and pulled Alex’s in. “I didn’t know the night would end like that either, but, hey, chemicals reacted, baby.”
Snorting at Michael’s sleazy smirk, Alex said, “Okay, dork.”
“You love me.”
And abruptly, Alex was serious again. “I do.”
At that, Michael hesitated, like Alex thought he might. His eyes dropped away to the vicinity of Alex’s chest.
So he repeated, “I do, Michael. So much.”
“I love you too.” His eyes flickered back up to Alex’s and away again.
“And you can trust me,” Alex blurted. “I know I haven’t always been trustworthy in the past—”
“Alex, no.”
“Hey, it’s okay. I’m not torturing myself with it, I just…know. But I-I want to be worthy of the things you want from me. Please don’t be embarrassed for wanting them. Or for saying them out loud. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard, actually.”
Michael finally relaxed as Alex babbled, and the visible release of tension from his shoulders loosened the knot in Alex’s chest, too.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Because—it’s all true. Every, uh, every humiliating bit of it.”
“It’s not—”
“Shh.” It was Michael’s turn to interrupt with the reassurance. “It’s kind of embarrassing to tell your not-quite boyfriend that you want to be kept.”
“It’s not. Not to me.”
Alex lowered his eyes, and he slid his hand from the back of Michael’s neck around to the front. Carefully, he watched his own thumb roll little circles against the apple of Michael’s throat, and as he watched he pushed down gently.
“There are so many ways I want to keep you,” he said. He felt Michael gasp, air passing under his touch to reach Michael’s lungs, oxygen to his veins. “You might not like all of them.”
“I would,” Michael spoke, the vibrations buzzing through Alex’s fingertips and up his arm. “I would. I do.”
His hand circled Alex’s wrist, a warm, loose manacle holding his hand steady, not pulling it away. Slowly, Alex fit all his fingers around Michael’s fragile throat, holding him in every vital inch, not squeezing, only applying the slightest pressure so Michael could feel him.
Michael’s head lolled back, weightless, giving all his trust over—it was as heady as the scent of rain and musk soaking off Michael’s skin—Alex drank it in and got drunk on it. Something out of Alex’s worst nightmares turned into something even more powerful in the gentleness it required. Only Michael made him feel like this; only Michael was himself and every hurt he’d ever felt living and shielding and loving outside his body, and vice versa. A binary system.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Alex said, raw. “I don’t want to be a not quite anything, anymore. I want us to figure this out together for real.”
He let up even the tiniest, barest pressure he’d exerted, but he left his hand where it was.
“Not quites are old news,” Michael agreed fervently. “Half-assess and past tense, too. I’m in if you’re in. All in.”
Alex nodded, even though they were so close together it made their foreheads tap, adding a silliness to the gesture that brought a smile to Michael’s face, and Alex fit his thumb into the line beside his mouth it created.
“I’m all in. No more sleeping apart. No more wondering if we should call or text. I never don’t want to hear from you.”
“No more second guessing or avoiding each other at the grocery store so it doesn’t get awkward.”
Alex winced at that, and at himself. “You noticed?”
“Your handsome face can’t hide behind a soda tower, babe.”
“Damn.”
Laughing, Michael said, “And more asking for what I want, no more trying to provoke you in our friend’s bar…”
“I don’t know…” Alex grabbed his ass hard enough to make him yelp. “Maybe we can give that one another go sometime.”
“If Maria doesn’t make my life a living hell laughing at me for it, that is.”
“Only then, for sure.”
Alex rolled Michael onto his back to kiss him again, pinning him to the bed, where they intended to keep each other for a very long time.