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Guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty on all charges. Montag’s face in the mirror was ashen in spirit rather than its usual. His hands shook with all the books he should be carrying. To the bushes or the incinerator? The grey moth resting in his ear said the former, and the latter was advocated for by the one and only-
“Alright, Montag?”
Montag started, though less surprised than frustrated. “I’m fine.”
Beatty’s boots padded closer and his sure hand squeezed Montag’s shoulder. “Washroom’s not a very good place to have a crisis, you know. The closet with the spare suits is the place to be. If I had a nickel, every time I cried in there…”
“I’m not crying,” said Montag, then checked his reflection to see if he was truly delusional. Clear. “The guys might cheat while you’re away from your hand.”
Beatty’s shoulders shrugged in the mirror. “Let them. I don’t have too much money on this round anyhow.” Quieter, with an unusual care: “Really, though, are you alright? I didn’t mean to taunt you too terribly bad. The Guy Montag in my dream was firmer and more secure than I made him sound in the retelling.”
“No kidding?”
“Downright titillating, really. You’re a compelling man when you want to be.”
Beatty’s hand trailed off Montag’s shoulder at length and Montag fought the instinct to duck down and catch it again. He tried not to think about how long (how long?) it had been since Mildred had touched him.
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
Montag swallowed and didn’t look at his reflection. “I have a hypothetical for you.”
He risked a glance up to see Beatty’s eyes narrow. He was reminded of electric gates inching closed. Beatty said, “Shoot.”
“A hypothetical, I remind you.”
“Of course.”
“Well.” Montag looked at the floor. “Suppose I’d done something… morally dubious.” The tile needed cleaning. “Definitely illegal, arguably bad, I mean. There are those who would call for my arrest. Suppose I’d done this thing one time but thought about it many more.”
The moth at his ear awoke and began clinking against its lantern. “Montag, you idiot, what are you doing?”
Beatty tilted his head, slightly canine, wholly interested. “Hypothetically, I suppose I’d want you to tell me all about it. Not that I’m above the law or anything silly like that, but I’d be willing to bend rules so long as you felt appropriately bad. Without detail I can’t promise more or threaten less.”
“I see.” In the back of his head, that damned woman stood holding his Bible and burning steadily. Her skin peeled back and she just stood, just looked at him. He shook his head like she might fall out of his ear.
Beatty took a step closer. “Something you want to tell me, Montag?”
“No, sir.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. Nothing at all.”
Reason nowhere in sight, Beatty laughed his burnt caramel laugh. “Okay. Okay, then hypothetically, supposing you had done something morally dubious, would you tell me?”
Montag’s breath caught and his guilty hands twitched with phantom electricity. “Probably.” Beatty’s eyes raked from his hands up to his face, which he desperately hoped was less red than it felt.
“In that case, what would you hypothetically say?”
“I don’t know,” Montag grated out, “it was just a question.”
Beatty smiled. “Sure it was. Say, Montag, when was the last time you had to change the sheets on your bed?”
He knows about the book, said the burning woman. Faber just made a distant static noise of agony. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s exactly what a guilty man says. You sure Mildred hasn’t… wanted anything, lately?”
He can’t take Millie! said the small voice of Clarisse, opposite Faber. “Very sure. We’re as distant as ever, ha. She barely knows what I’m up to most days.”
Beatty moved closer yet. He could slap Montag from right there. “Really or hypothetically?”
“Really.”
“Good man.”
A rush, a rubber squeak on tile, an inhale; Montag braced for a hit and for a moment he searched for that harsh glowing that came after the punch-adrenaline subsided. Beatty had a hand curled tight around his collar, the other at his… hip?
Oh.
Oh, God.
“Not big on kissing, are you?” Beatty said, pulling an inch or two away. “Or were you talking about something else?”
Faber said, “I don’t know what you’ve just done and I don’t want to, but you’d better not tell him a damn thing about the books.”
Montag reeled. He could see Mildred’s face, content, disappointed, horrified, tacky and blank with the Snake’s humming and slurping for ambience, lit up by the ‘family’ and utterly uncaring. He could feel Clarisse taking his hand and squeezing with a bolstering hum. He could hear Faber quietly losing his mind on the other side of their spider-silk connection. He could taste, ever so faintly, the kerosene on Beatty’s mouth.
“No, you read me right. Just caught me off guard.”
Beatty’s 25-to-life smirk spread like butter over his face. “C’mere.”
He wasn’t all that bad at kissing, really. All Montag’s previous experience was with Mildred’s slightly chapped but generally pleasant lips, her passiveness, her preference to let him take the lead and just veto anything she didn’t like. Beatty’s kiss was something like being lovingly gnawed to death by a large carnivore. Montag tasted copper when Beatty nipped him a little too hard. God, those teeth.
“What do you want?” said Beatty’s voice at his ear.
Montag fished desperately for something intelligent to say and came up empty as a library. “Whatever you want. I want whatever you want.” It earned him a nip on the ear and Beatty made a pleased sound.
“Anything you don’t want?”
Much easier. “Lasting physical harm?”
“Naturally.”
“Er- any marks I can’t cover. Evidence that Black and Stoneman would hold against me.” Beatty laughed and kissed his neck. “Anything that requires me to touch the floor.”
“A man of taste,” Beatty said, then kissed him again before he could make a face to the contrary. Montag felt a shift in gravity and his feet followed the lean, jamming his lower back into the vanity in a way that might have bothered him if he could organize a single thought. Beatty’s teeth and tongue (good Lord) chased away any chance at that.
Distantly he knew he’d regret this. His treacherous hand pulled his Captain closer.
In the middle of letting Montag push his jacket off his shoulders, Beatty said, “Ever done this with another man before? Some other fireman get to you before I did?”
“Some,” Montag said, pleased and ashamed at once. “Not for a long time.”
Beatty smiled that assured smile, said, “Excellent,” and reached for his belt.
Montag jumped. Beatty put his hands up, somewhere between patronizing and apologetic, and Montag hated that he wanted the contact back. He chuckled to set them both at ease and watched Beatty’s concern fade back into that tireless interest. Montag felt a little like a book under those eyes.
“You know,” said Beatty, gaze flicking down to his hands at work and returning to pin Montag like an insect, “I always knew there was something different about you. I wouldn’t say special, because God knows all of us on His green earth are altered copies of the same assignment, and that’s why the ‘family’ works so well to make every one of us feel seen, but you have an air about you. ‘Sweet, rouse yourself, and the weak, wanton Cupid shall from his neck unloose this amorous fold, and like a dewdrop from a lion’s mane be shook to air.’ What say you, Guy Montag?”
“Um,” said Montag, because what else was there to say? “Thank you, I suppose.”
Beatty made a noise like a stray growling for its dinner. “Stop supposing and start thinking. You’ve had it in you as long as I’ve known you. ‘It wasn’t a compliment. It was a confession.’ Try that on for size.”
Montag looked at this man—his superior, his Captain, God’s sake—with, for possibly the first time, not a speck of wool over his eyes. Beatty stood in his black kerosene slicker jacket pushed far back on his shoulders because he liked to show off his chest, fists tight without anger, his stubble framing a scowl utterly offset by his eyes. His eyes were fire.
Montag’s hands twitched and he let them. “Come here.”
Instant gratification. Beatty was back on him in a flurry of hands, breath, teeth, and Montag held him tight and stable and slowed him until he stopped kissing like a fireman and started kissing like William Beatty. He wasn’t softer, not quite, but he was less violent, more soulful. No less wanting.
“Back up,” Beatty said into his mouth, and Montag jabbed himself in the lower back with the edge of the vanity. He considered suggesting a change in location but then Beatty’s predator teeth were on his neck and Beatty’s hands were working his uniform buttons open and he really didn’t have the heart or the wherewithal to say anything.
A tug on his belt. Montag tensed a little, but glanced up to find Beatty already looking at him, and it melted his tension like plastic in an oven. He nodded. Beatty took more time than he needed to. Hands over his hips, his thighs, eyes flickering appreciatively up and down him all the while. Montag felt like a specimen of some kind but wasn’t sure he minded. Finally Beatty got down to business, pragmatic as always but taking the uniform belt off from the opposite angle very quickly, which Montag took note of.
Beatty seemed to take note of him taking note and smirked in the way that always made Montag’s knees feel like wet glue. The feeling made a lot of sense, in hindsight. Beatty said, “Again, now that you’re not vibrating out of your skin: what do you want?”
Pause. Inhale. “I just want… you. Whole. Raw.”
Beatty made a skipping record noise. Then, “Oh, Montag, you delightful creature,” and the teeth were back in full force.
Montag didn’t quite know what to do with himself, held and devoured as he was, so he got his hands clutching hard at Beatty’s back and gave into the wandering lips, invading tongue. Eaten up and falling apart.
Wasting no time in making it worse (better, though, really), Beatty’s horrible, dextrous fingers made their way back to Montag’s open belt and the growing tent there, which he palmed. Montag arched and his grunt was more pain than pleasure, but Beatty kissed his jaw, rough and inexorable, and kneaded. Montag swore loudly.
“Hush, now,” Beatty said, tone admonishing but smile more than delighted. “What was it you said—evidence?” Another press of his hand, and Montag barely held back a gasp. Beatty was nothing but encouraged. “Black and Stoneman are out there, peeking at each other’s cards, wondering why Captain Beatty could possibly be taking so long to get his ass back to the game. Maybe they’re thinking about how Guy hasn’t joined them in a spell, has he? Guy’s been awfully quiet. Guy’s been looking at the Captain a whole lot. I wonder, I wonder…”
That was quite enough for Montag, so he exercised his autonomy and pulled Beatty into a sharp kiss and used his other hand to begin solving that familiar yet impossible belt. Beatty stayed in place nicely enough that both hands were soon freed to the task. It made Montag curse into his mouth, made Beatty palm him harder, made Montag less able to focus at all, until finally Beatty broke the cycle and unbuckled himself with a nearly hurt sound.
Then—oh. Then it was Montag’s turn.
“It’s been a long time,” he said again as a precaution, letting his hands chase what his eyes wanted. The fold of plastic leather was simple enough to pull away. He was faced then with what he may have called a nightmare five years ago and a wet dream by ten. He was terrified. “So, well, I might-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Beatty said. “You don’t have to worry about anything at all. Just do what you like.”
What he liked? Montag didn’t know what he liked, at least not yet. He idled for the time it took to pull himself out of his pants. Then he was standing there against the vanity, the epitome of his shame for his desires bared for all the world (Beatty looked hungry), and he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Would you like me to kiss you, Montag?”
“Yes.”
Beatty hesitated for a single moment, a blink in time, and for that single moment he looked ten years younger. The leader Montag first felt a kinship with, a man so full of passion but with something like a bird in his heart, fragile and quivering, a man Montag wanted to see grin every day so he could watch white teeth glint in the firelight. That Beatty, impeccable, untouchable, painfully beautiful, stood before him now with full, hot breaths falling into the space between them. That space was far too wide.
A good thing, then, that Beatty stopped hesitating. His mouth was back on Montag’s and his fingertips were drifting up and down Montag’s cock, assessing, maybe curious, and then his hand made a proper circle and began pumping. Montag barely remembered himself enough to return fire. God. God, but it had been so long. For a time after Mildred bought her Seashells, between parlor walls two and three, Montag had tried to keep up with his body’s polite requests, had touched himself in the shower to the thought of no one in particular. But it had gotten old and tiresome so fast that now, in the fist of the person who hounded his thoughts night and day, all his circuits clicked back into operation and he was on fire. It was like being sixteen again, confused and wanting, scared and determined, pointedly looking away when changing clothes with pretty boys before gym or seeing the herds of senior girls whipping down the roads in half-shirts. It was panic. It was inevitable.
“You’re gorgeous,” said Beatty, a little short of breath himself. “Don’t know if anyone’s told you that recently. You’re completely, unbearably beautiful. Takes everything I’ve got not to look at you sometimes.”
Montag murmured his name and then went silent again to see if he would continue.
“Out on calls, that’s my lucky break. When the others are so busy burning that they don’t notice me looking. You take advantage of that too, don’t you? The anonymity of the smoke? I’ve seen you looking more than once. For my part I know I like the way your eyes get. There’s, mh, there’s a depth, I guess you’d call it, they’re so- Jesus God, Montag.”
Half-listening, Montag slowed his hand over Beatty’s shaft. Beatty pushed out a long breath and it gave Montag a shiver of accomplishment to evoke a reaction, any genuine reaction, out of his Captain. A twist of his wrist on the upstroke yielded a flutter of the eyelids. A deliberate press of his thumb, a rasped groan. Montag allowed himself a moment to just look, to see and feel and preserve the moment for later lonely evenings. The memory of Beatty in his hand and making those little sounds. That was for Montag. He was creating it.
Then there was no room for memorization; Beatty licked his own palm slow and salacious right before Montag’s eyes, then reached back down to touch him. The opening stroke was like stepping into a too-hot bath, a smooth, wet scald, and immediately followed by a damn near punishing pace that had Montag biting the back of his free hand to keep from crying out and alerting their colleagues. Beatty smirked.
“That what you needed, Montag? Just a nice friendly hand to help you out? Is a little bit of attention what it takes to ruin you?” He leaned in close to Montag’s ear and the angle change made Montag shudder. He could feel Beatty’s huffed laugh. “I reckon it is. It’s good that you’re easy. Desperate men always fuck the hardest.”
“Getting close,” Montag gritted out, then stuck his fist back in his teeth to curb the outright moan that bubbled up in his throat. God, but Beatty was clever. More coherent than him, too, as the stimulation had caused his own touch to slow to nothing. He disregarded it. He’d give Beatty something back once his head was firmly back on his shoulders.
Beatty laughed at him again but didn’t tease further. He muttered the occasional thought, degradation and praise alike, sometimes a reminiscence. Montag almost wished they were in a more casual setting where he could commit the words to memory properly; along with the sex, good conversation in his home had been swallowed by the Seashells. Work, Beatty, was where the mental food came from, and evidently the man remained just as chatty as always with a dick in his hand. It made Montag’s chest clench in longing on a good day and like this it was bordering on devastating. Oh, Lord, he was close.
Beatty read his face like a- well. “Nearly there, are we?” A heavy-eyed smirk. “Go on, then. Let me see what you like when you come into a man’s hand. I’ve been wondering if it’s anything like the way you look when you run last-minute from a burn. You lunatic, you’re perfect. Ruined and perfect. May I quote Wilde at you?”
That did it. Montag might be embarrassed later—it could even have been suspicious, after all—but in the moment, the thought of the soul-deep shine of those dusty dead authors combined with the unbearable heat of Beatty’s eyes and hand was more than enough to send Montag gasping and bucking up into the best orgasm he’d had in… possibly ever.
Beatty held him through it, free hand cupping his jaw and horrible, wonderful mouth issuing sweet nothings. “Shh,” he said, “there you are. Just like I imagined. You did so well. There you go, Montag.”
“I’d like that quote,” Montag breathed.
Beatty gave him a face between disappointment and thrill, and conceded. “Alright, then. ‘The world is changed because you are made from ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.’ Just popped into my head, you know how it is.”
Nodding numbly, Montag turned the words over in his head, pulled at them, examined them, was terrified of what he found, and dropped them in favor of a bruising kiss.
Beatty laughed again, into Montag’s gasping mouth. “Affected, you are. How many do you have stashed away, then?” And, after a particularly harsh nip, “Easy there, Montag. Only teasing. Firemen know most of all what that temptation feels like, don’t we? We see all those books and those people every day, don’t we? I’m only ribbing you.”
Montag pulled away to look into his eyes: earnest, a veneer of nonchalance, if thin, and beneath it something hot and tremulous, and Montag remembered that there was a reciprocation to be given.
Beatty said, “What are you-” and then his mouth clicked shut on a sharp inhale as he was spun and pressed back against the vanity. His back arched and Montag couldn’t tell whether it was for the jab of the countertop or because Montag himself was just that irresistible. He wanted to be. He sank to his knees.
“I want to,” he said, before Beatty could tell him that he didn’t have to, because his Captain was chivalrous above irreverent, and Montag knew his Captain. “Will you let me?”
A stroke over his cheek, a helpless sigh. Beatty said, “Montag, you terrible fool, I would let you burn me alive.”
The image made Montag shiver. The flames of Hell licking up Beatty’s legs, blackening his hands, stuffing his lungs so he coughed and coughed and bent double and finally collapsed in a crackling, shimmering heap. Smoke making those stormcloud eyes run like rain. The cacophony of noise he’d make—or would he be silent? Would he lay back and show his belly and let Montag incinerate him? Would he close his eyes, tip his head back, murmur something of Forster or Marlowe? Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels-
“Montag,” Beatty breathed, and Montag clocked his hands (traitors!) gripping Beatty’s restless hips, mouth inches away from his prize. His last incombustible thought was that the couple of times he’d taken communion, this was what it was supposed to feel like.
Beatty’s cock was blood-hot and terribly alive on his tongue, and he couldn’t help the noise that crawled out of his throat. Beatty answered with a choked groan. Montag felt vindicated, bolstered, and let himself get swept up in the sensation of it all: the hand dragging slow and rough through his hair, the cold linoleum under his knees, the humanity dressed in kerosene taste that he knew would haunt his breath for hours. The heartbeat he could feel in his mouth, which in and of itself sent a painful rush out to swell his veins and bounce like a pinball between his bones. He desperately swallowed the saliva threatening to drown him and it made Beatty gasp and twitch. Montag dipped his head lower and did it again to great success. Up, down, swallow, up, breathe, down, up, down, swallow, up, down, up, lick, suck, down.
Beatty’s hand in his hair tugged uselessly. “Fucking Christ, Montag, you’re incredible.”
“Nnh.” He bobbed his head faster to distract from the flush of heat he felt in his cheeks.
Beatty, thank God, was focusing deeply on the effort of not bucking his hips and not biting a bloody hole in his lip and not being louder than he already was. Montag could picture the snippets of noise that would make it past the metal door, nigh on imperceptible but infinitely damning. A quiet but constant echo of ah, ah, ah flew up from Beatty’s chest now, and his hips rocked minutely into Montag’s mouth, so he redoubled his efforts. Down, swallow, up, lick, down, swallow, up, down, up, down, swallow. Swallow. Hold, up, slow, wet, flutter, hum, and Montag wished desperately that he hadn’t already come so he could touch himself to the rhythm of Beatty’s ragged panting. Up, down, up, down, up, down, swallow, swallow, swallow- yes.
Montag did his best to get Beatty’s entire length down his throat, but gagged at about three-fourths and choked on the new flood there. He pulled off and distantly felt the last of it fall across his cheek while he coughed. Then, looking up with watery eyes, there was Beatty, all soft attraction rough around the edges, still breathing hard, and Montag could have cried.
“What’s wrong?” Beatty said, ever noticing the things Montag kept next to his soul.
“I don’t- you’re, you’re so- God,” Montag managed, trying to calm the quiver in his spine. “God almighty.”
Beatty lowered himself and fell heavily to his knees. His hands pushed so thoroughly through Montag’s hair it was like he was trying to scalp him. Montag let his eyes close and then gasped as Beatty licked harsh and warm across the come on his cheek, landing at his mouth to kiss him. He moaned into it and Montag guessed it was at the taste; he felt much the same about that. It was sharp like Beatty’s teeth and coated him, filled him, and he wanted to drink it down every other day to never ever forget that there was at least one real person in his life. Beatty was weak and made of animal passion in his arms. Montag breathed him in, held him there, gulped clumsily and relished the drag of stubble over his lips. Holding and beholding one another.
“God almighty indeed,” Beatty said at last, signature smirk creeping into his voice. “And I must know: where in the absolute hell did you learn to use your mouth like that?”
Montag flushed pink and chided himself (after all of that, really?) but said, “I was different in school than I am now. Seventeen and crazy, eighteen and reckless, nineteen and desperate.”
“Twenty and in fireman training.”
“Twenty and still desperate.”
Beatty looked at him, really looked, and Montag fought to keep his expression neutral under the scrutiny. “Thirty and what, then?”
Montag closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of sex and humanity. “Lonely.”
After a moment, Beatty’s hands cupped his cheeks, calluses palpable even over Montag’s five o’clock shadow. He couldn’t help but lean into such a firm hold. Beatty murmured, “Don’t have to be lonely anymore, Montag. Not here. Not with me.”
“But-”
“Shh,” Beatty said, and Montag shushed. “You’ve got something in you needs protecting. The rest of your miserable life isn’t doing it for you? Fine. But let me.”
Montag swallowed the lump in his throat. “Will you?”
“Yes,” he said, and his hands battled the chill of the floor, the circumstances, and the gleaming Hound downstairs. “I’ll keep you warm.”
It took several hours, but eventually Montag did remember that the green bullet was very much still in his ear. It was the next morning that Faber’s voice crackled to life and it was only to say, “If I ever said the word infiltrate, I did not mean-” but didn’t get the rest out because Montag was giving his Captain a deliberately noisy kiss. Faber made a gagging noise and absolutely didn’t need to know that Montag was at his Captain’s house, in his Captain’s bed, tracing calligraphy on his Captain’s bare chest.
Somewhere, a dandelion shook yellow dust onto a sidewalk.