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Truly, there is no current-fueled contraption ever invented by man that is more ingenious than the electric fan in all its simplicity.
Although, to be honest, Thomas Barrow is quite ready to admit he might be a little bit biased when it comes to that. Especially as he’s spent the greater part of the last four hours reclining on the bed flanked by two gently purring wind-making machines, even as the merciless Californian heat keeps rising and rising to unbearable heights just beyond the protection of the window-glass.
They’d stumbled back into the house just minutes before three in the morning, cheerful and dizzy and tired to the bone, after marking the end of six truly exhausting weeks with an event that could technically be described as a party, but should, perhaps, be more accurately labeled as a friendly slump. In the best possible sense, of course, with actors and crew sprawled all over the place, chatting and eating with the occasional drink – that in some cases quickly became three or five – and the sound director blasting Duke Ellington from his beloved bright red Victor phonograph, to the enjoyment of those who seemed to prefer rhythmic swaying to sleep.
Thomas had hoped to pack Guy off to bed for the entire day, or even week, if need be. Completing a shoot at the height of summer, filmed partially outside and in heavy period gear, wasn’t the easiest on anyone, especially on either of the leads bound to appear in the majority of scenes.
And sure enough, for all that, unlike some others, Guy kept his complaining to an absolute minimum, Thomas could see the toll it took him to not only go onto the set every day with a smile, but also do his utmost to keep the overall morale up. Not to mention, he himself missed his man, despite dedicating every available hour of the day to making his life easier in even the tiniest of ways.
But then, of course, after a measly three and a half hours of sleep, Guy simply had to wake up on time for his morning swim, forcing Thomas to employ his best brand of canny coaxing – and a well-timed kiss – to reroute him to the shower, and then the breakfast nook, instead. Where, let it be noted, he promptly ignored the truly impressive if somewhat eclectic spread only to scarf down two entire grapefruits, which in Thomas’ books counted as probably the single most hateful fruit on Earth, before finally letting himself be towed back to their huge, terribly inviting bed.
Where they both have been residing since: Guy asleep and curled up – a sure sign of utter exhaustion – on his half, Thomas keeping guard and catching up on a murder mystery on his, only getting up to close the bay windows once the sun started to warm the air too much for anyone’s liking, and then to turn the electric fans on to full speed.
Truly, fans are simply invaluable in combating the heat, especially for two men who, no matter how they’ve tried to leave it all behind, still have the memory of British, eminently bearable summers etched into their skin.
Thomas puts his book down after reaching the last page, and smiles. Not because of the book itself, which proved to be an utter, mawkish pill – one he nonetheless had to finish, to make sure his initial suspicions were correct, and what a surprise, they indeed were! – but because Guy has finally uncurled and is now sleeping sprawled on his front, one hand hugging the pillow to the side of his tired, handsome face.
Thomas should probably show himself to be a proper dear and pull up the sheet covering Guy, which by this time has slipped down and is barely concealing his hips, but… It’s not like there’s a need for additional warmth, quite the opposite, and it’s not like Guy would ever mind him enjoying the view. It’s already heroic enough, in Thomas’ mind, to resist the sudden urge to pass a hand – followed by a tender mouth – all the way along the groove marking his spine. And yet he does, settling for filling out his weekly crossword next.
“Why so angry, dearest?” Guy’s sleepy voice distracts him from angrily rubbing an eraser over the same line for the second time in a row. “Relax, or you’ll end up as wrinkled as me.”
“I wish I were that lucky,” Thomas says, leaning in for a good morning kiss. A good noon, actually, if one were to be precise, but on a day like this, he’s not exactly inclined to count the passing hours. Nor minutes, in fact, as he then gets pulled down to the mattress and lured into a much deeper, considerably longer kiss. “I’ll go all saggy and spotted instead, just you wait and see.”
“Will you? Fifty years from now?” Guy smiles against his lips and surely, there is no need to sound this absolutely delighted over the idea of sagging, stretched out skin. Although…
“Unless you steal another, much younger butler, then I suppose so, yes.” There is something truly exhilarating about being able to joke freely about such matters, having the blessed security of knowing that it is nothing more than an empty jest. “Or unless you make me a rich widow before that, leaving me to hunt for a younger husband myself.”
“Big mistake, you wily thing! Now that you’ve told me your cunning plan, I’ll just have to live forever instead.”
They tussle for a while, but for all that Guy seems to be perfectly inclined to show Thomas the advantages of keeping him permanently in their bed, those few hours of sleep were far from enough to erase the shadow of utter exhaustion from his face. Thankfully, it looks like he’s conscious of that himself, and so their passionate, heavy kisses quickly gentle down to tiny, sipping pecks.
Then, as if nothing had happened, Thomas slips out of Guy’s embrace and goes back to sitting on the bed with a half-filled crossword in his lap. It’s best that he does, really. Because, as it turns out, getting kissed within an inch of your life after not getting up to too much in bed for a week straight tends to make a man feel his burgeoning need in a very sudden and acute way.
“You never told me, though. Why such an angry face?” Guy asks, plopping back down on his belly and reaching for a bigger pillow, normally used to prop their backs against the headboard, should they want to stay up and read. He embraces it, making Thomas unreasonably envious for a split second, since that is exactly the way Guy usually embraces his waist.
“I’ve been solving crosswords in Pearson’s Magazine for years,” Thomas starts the tale of his terrible woes. “Long before this whole crossword craze even started, I’ve been doing them,” he says, wisely keeping his opinion on that trend – and the presence of a crossword-patterned foulard among his accessories – to himself. “And those were some serious brain-strainers, nothing like those piddly things you get over here.”
“And yet…”
“And yet you better appreciate the sacrifice I made by following you to this barbaric country. This kind of atrocious spelling should have you sent to jail! Since when are pyjamas spelled without a ‘y’, exactly?” he asks into the air and since he’s already on a roll, he finds no reason to hold back on his main complaint. “And why am I supposed to know all those Presidents by number and their place of birth?”
Guy is laughing at him silently, his shoulders shaking and flexing around the pillow he’s resting against. “My poor sweetheart. You do know it’s perfectly possible to get English newspapers even over here?”
Alas, there is no true compassion left anywhere in the world! Besides, it’s not that Thomas hasn’t learned that particular fact by himself, he simply never saw the need.
“It’s a matter of principle,” he sniffs, filling in another two words across. “Fifteen million of those made by 1927, five letters? Also, I’m not going to order a newspaper for the sake of the puzzle page.” It is tempting, true, but also utterly against his working class sensibilities. Though he’s been working on the worst of those, with Guy’s gleeful help.
“Model T. And no need for you to do that, love, simply let me.”
Faced with such a showing of sincerity and care, even – especially – when it comes to utter trifles where nothing but his contentment is at stake, Thomas finds himself unable to resist his earlier urges, and puts his magazine and pencil away.
“You would do that? For me?” Thomas breathes against Guy’s nape even as his fingers travel lower, gently wandering the groove over his lover’s spine.
“Fulfilling your every wish is my life purpose, it seems. Even those yet unspoken ones, such as…” Guy leaves the sentence open, hanging in the air; an open invitation if Thomas feels inclined to take it up, if he only dares.
“Darling, no. You’re too tired for any such promises,” Thomas protests, belying his words immediately by slipping his hand below the edge of the sheet where it rests over the edge of a particularly tempting curve. “What if I wished for this?” he doesn’t explain with words, only squeezes to show his intentions clearly instead.
“You do. And sure, I am. But then… I’m pretty sure I don’t need to move an inch for you to take everything you deserve,” Guy says and oh, Thomas is now seeing the very edge of a wide grin that no pillow, no matter its size, would ever be able to hide.
“What?” It’s not that he doesn’t understand the exercise, both in its purpose and its method, but still, having free reign over Guy’s body with no participation from the latter is not something he’s used to, as tempting as it seems right now.
“Go ahead. That is, if you don’t mind that I’ll keep lying here like a very useless log. A handsome one, though, I hope.”
“The handsomest,” Thomas replies automatically. “You’re actually serious about this.”
“Grave as a judge that’s giving charge,” Guy promises, voice sparkling with laughter, this pure mischief being what makes Thomas abandon all his scruples and finally give in. “You want me to turn over or can I stay this way?”
“No! That is— Yes, stay like this. Please. You know how I adore your back.”
It’s nothing but the truth. Thomas always has adored it, from the moment he was first allowed to see Guy undress, long before they actually fell into bed. There is a certain vulnerability, combined with an alluring strength, to be found in any man’s naked back, and Guy’s – well, his, in Thomas’ humble opinion, counts as a particularly fine one.
The only way to make it finer would be to adorn it with Thomas’ own marks, which… isn’t out of question right now, not with the carte blanche he is now receiving in Guy going limp and relaxed before his very eyes.
He starts by trying to leave a thousand kisses, one – according to an article he’s recently read – for every square inch of Guy’s skin, divided by three to account only for his back. Not that he keeps count, more focused on making sure he doesn’t miss a single tempting stretch and that he manages to earn at least one more of those delightful little huffs. Guy’s not ticklish, not at all, as he keeps reminding Thomas, every time the latter has to fight teasing fingers off his own ribs. And yet it seems like the sensation of Thomas’ lips and breath is making him laugh all the same.
Emboldened, Thomas dares a not-so-gentle bite just under the right shoulder blade, then licks the mark apologetically, even as he’s already locking in on his next target: a pale, ancient and stretched out scar on the Guy’s left side, right over the sixth or seventh pair of ribs. That, he mouths firmly, making sure to mind his teeth.
“One day you will finally tell me how you got this scar.”
It’s a game they play: Thomas asks, and sometimes tries to make his own guess. When he can’t come up with any, Guy will usually tell him a tall, dramatic tale – nothing but pure lies – fit more for a Hollywood hero than a real, blood-and-flesh man. One day, Thomas knows, he’ll finally manage to guess right or have enough of it and ask for the truth, straight from the heart. But that day is not today, he doesn’t think. Not yet.
“Not today, too embarrassing by far! Have pity, dearest heart. Unless you’d like to hazard a guess?”
Too embarrassing? Well, well, doesn’t that make for a pleasant change. The last time and the time before that Guy had insisted that it was a story that would bring unnumbered tears to Thomas’ poor eyes, all the while keeping a wide, teasing grin plastered onto his lips.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he shrugs, stopping his hands’ ministrations over Guy’s hips. “Fine, then… I say you fell off your favourite hobby horse while trying to impress… a boy? A girl? Both, perhaps, your little childhood court full of princesses and knights. Hanging on your every word, they were, until you fell so shamefully, and that was the end of your rule.”
“Close, very close, but… no. Are you my princess or my knight?”
Thomas doesn’t need to see the impudent smile to know that it is there, and chooses to enforce some punishment by biting lower, twice, while pressing both thumbs into the tempting divots just above the top of Guy’s arse, right where his spine and pelvis meet.
“I see what you’re doing there, since either would make you my king,” he grumbles, shifting a little more of his weight onto the body beneath, until he’s lying half draped over Guy’s back. “Your back dimples are still uneven, by the way.”
“I don’t think that’s going to change at this point. Though keep checking, by all means!” Guy laughs and the sudden movement causes Thomas to slide off him somewhat, thanks to the silk robe he’s chosen to wrap himself in – a thin, slinky, water-slick number that had been a lovely gift for… actually, it’s really hard to keep all the invented and real occasions for which he’s received presents straight in his head.
“Lie still, would you, darling?” he asks, pinching a reminder right into the curve of Guy’s cheek, before deciding that the sheet covering the rest really needs to go.
“I see now,” Guy is still laughing, although it’s somewhat muffled by the pillow that’s pressing against his chin. “You’re not my princess, dearest, but rather my slippery stinging eel!”
“Where have you seen an eel in this shade of virulent green, that’s what I’d like to know,” Thomas complains, peeling himself out of his robe, the exact shade of which is hardly to be found in nature and even if it were, it wouldn’t be in any piece of nature they’re likely to see. “And I take exception – I wouldn’t be a princess, but a whole damn queen. Now, weren’t you supposed to be resting and not laughing, my liege? Not to mention, not moving a single inch.”
Thankfully – whether due to Thomas’ stinging tone or the reminder of their original deal – at this moment, Guy decides to fall silent and, as Thomas hopes, become beautifully obedient.
Though he’s not taking any bets on the latter, not without a full set of ties affixed to their bed. And that’s a game best left for another day, when the honour of tiring Guy out will belong solely to Thomas and not to long, bone-breaking hours on the set or, God forbid, a demanding director who seems unable to grant him proper rest. No, where it comes to any such propositions, it’s much better to wait. For now, he only pulls the wide silken belt from his robe, not to use it, just… in case.
“See, darling?” Thomas asks, as he straddles Guy’s upper thighs, scratching gently and stroking all the way down his sides. “See how good you can be once you let me enjoy what’s mine? And this,” he smooths a palm over the expanse of the lovely, broad shoulders before him, “this is all mine, isn’t that right?”
Guy tries to say something, to confirm what they both already know is nothing but the truth, but Thomas is faster and presses a warning, heavy hand onto the back on Guy’s neck, to remind him of another salient fact.
“And since it all is— since you are, I don’t think we need any of your honeyed words right now.”
There is undeniable power to being obeyed like that, in making a man who always, always talks fall silent, needing but to ask. There is even more in catching a long, stuttering sigh as he thrusts his hips forward for the first time, his leaking cock falling exactly into the cleft between Guy’s cheeks.
“Do you think you can keep still, love? I believe you can do it— for me, darling, please, try.”
Guy actually does, and Thomas suddenly feels so damn proud, so grateful that he can’t help but cover his neck and jaw in countless tiny kisses, whispering praise straight into his darling’s ear after each and every sliding, firm thrust.
“Beautiful. So damn lovely. Delightful. Just stunning. My love, mine.”
At some point Guy must have tightened his grip around the pillow, trapping it a bit lower underneath his body. Which just so happens to minutely change the angle of his hips, making it easier for Thomas to get some friction against that lovely arse. And yet, even so, it is not enough. He wants to come, needs to, and not in some nebulous future, but now. To mark Guy as his and only his, to get rid of the pent-up tension that’s risen over these weeks, to lay his lover back to the rest he so sorely needs.
“Just a little bit longer, I promise. You’re doing so well, darling, a minute and we’ll both go back to sleep. And then, when you wake, I’ll give you all you want, my mouth, my arse, my cock, whatever you may need.”
And then, by accident, Thomas' eyes fall on that wide, eminently useful strip of eye-catching green silk. It offers… certain possibilities, as far as friction is concerned, and so it seems only right to snag it off the covers, then raise himself slightly in order to make it possible to slip the piece of silk between their bodies.
Guy lets out a confused, inquisitive hum, no doubt unable to make head or tail out of those strange manipulations, some of which Thomas is yet to undertake.
“Trust me, dearest, I wouldn’t do you harm. It’s just to make things a bit tighter for me.”
With both his hands holding the fabric, he stretches it out and lays it right across the widest, juiciest curve there is to be found, controlling the tension and thus creating a perfect sheath out of Guy’s cleft and the slippery silk.
“See what I’ve made with your perfect, handsome gift? Will you get me another one, I wonder? Hush, darling, I know you will… but first, give me the opportunity to properly ask. I will, you know, will ask you as prettily as I can.”
It won’t take much, Thomas knows, maybe half a dozen thrusts at this point. Normally, he’d be embarrassed by being so close to coming, so very damn fast, but not today. Today, it’s the whole purpose of this exercise – well, apart from one other goal, which he’s also bound to achieve soon enough.
It’s too much to bear, too much to last for long, simply too much with the way he’s plastered against his lover’s skin, with the silk and the slide, the musky smell of sweat, and the oh-so-tempting way in which the crook of Guy’s neck seems to simply beg for Thomas’ lips and teeth.
“Darling—"
A single word of warning – completely pointless, for Guy, darling, obedient Guy is keeping perfectly still, exactly as Thomas had asked – and he is coming copiously, in several spurts, all over that shapely arse and lower back.
That’s what he wanted all along – to smear his own seed all across Guy’s beautiful back, to put his teeth once more to an already pinkening mark under his shoulder blade, to stroke and pet, and kiss his thanks into every stretch of skin. But most of all, to feel the undeniable, immovable, tangible truth in one simple word. Mine.
“How do you feel, darling? Do you need anything?” Thomas asks tenderly, before remembering one tiny, important fact. “You may talk now, of course, I’m so sorry for that.”
He really is, just a little, but Guy doesn’t appear to mind, judging by the relaxed way he stretches out and sprawls, half-turning to his side.
“Could do with turning the fans down, for one. Getting a bit chilly in here. And then… and then we will just have to wait and see,” he says, his crooked smile holding much promise, but no sleepiness at all, to Thomas’ practiced eye.
“Yes, of course. After we both sleep.” Thomas tries to put some sternness in his voice, then gives the very idea up. It’s not like he could do that, anyway, not when his flesh threatens to melt from his bones right now. “But how do you feel, my love?”
“Not very sleepy. Strangely not tired. And... delightfully, wonderfully yours.”