Merry Christmas, darling
May. 1st, 2013 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonshadowsIn a dingy motel room, roughly a year after the explosion in Zurich, in December...
===
It's a rustle that wakes him, every nerve tense and listening for the creak of a man's footfall on the floorboard. Then he sees the pale shape of an owl-skull mask, and he can breathe.
"Sorry," a deep, familiar voice growls from the darkness. "Didn't mean to startle you."
Jack takes his hand off the silenced pistol under the pillow. The clock's LED display reads 2:57. "It's three in the morning, darling," he says as he sits up, unconcerned that he went to bed wearing nothing but briefs. It's dark, and anyway, they'd been married for twenty years. He's welcome to whatever he sees.
"Three in the morning on the twenty-fifth," he corrects with amusement, and Jack returns the smile in his voice.
"Mm. Does that mean I get to unwrap a present?" They've only seen each other across battlefields since the explosion, enough to recognize each other but not talk. The silence changes somehow, and Jack's eyes have adjusted enough to see the outlines of the dark shape by the door. The adrenaline comes back. "Did I say something wrong?"
"I want to show you something," he says instead of answering.
The heavy note in his voice doesn't ease Jack's nerves any. The dark, masked shape comes closer, but there's no footfalls or creaking floorboards.
"I haven't been as honest with you as I should have been," he starts, "and I caused us both a year of unhappiness and frustration. If you're going to keep wearing that ring, you have the right to know exactly what you're getting involved with." He pauses for Jack's reaction, but there is none and he says softly, "If you want to back out at any time, I won't blame you."
Jack doesn't dignify that with any response past a scathing look, and Reaper ducks his head slightly, the gesture incongruously sheepish beneath mask and hood.
"I don't know how much you know about what happened to me," he says slowly, drifting to the edge of the bed. "I survived, but at the cost of being sustained by a nanite swarm."
"I'm still not seeing a downside," Jack teases.
"You might change your mind when you see the toll it's taken on my body."
Well now, Reaper, you have Jack's full and undivided attention! "You mean I actually get to unwrap the Reaper for Christmas?"
He grimaces. "Just leave the mask on, please."
"Of course." Jack stands reaches out towards the hood, but Reaper flinches away. "Darling, I'm not going to hurt you."
"But I'm afraid that I'll hurt you," he says quietly. "Or rather, that once you see..."
Jack rolls his eyes. It's not that he has no sympathy for his husband's fear and vulnerability, it's just that if he were even the slightest bit less than fully committed, he wouldn't have let go of the silenced pistol. As he reaches for Reaper's hand, the gauntlet dissolves into smoke. Jack passes his hands over arm, shoulder, chest, banishing the black leather and leaving...
...leaving...
He had expected scars. What he hadn't expected was those scars bleeding traces of black smoke, or the places where his husband's skin fuzzed out like a failing holographic projection. But aside from the unnerving gaps, his husband's thighs are just as thick, chest just as broad, arms just as strong as Jack remembers. He prowls around Reaper, exposing the back he spent so many nights cuddled up to, the fine ass he'd smacked so many times.
"Nothing to say?" he growls, and Jack smiles.
"Mmm, just one thing," he says as his hands banish the belts resting on Reaper's hips, the leather pants concealing his package.
"And that is?"
Jack sinks to his knees. "Mine."
Before Reaper can react Jack's taken the lightly-smoking limp cock into his mouth, cool flesh warming quickly as Reaper hisses, both hands going to Jack's head as he swells and lengthens in his husband's mouth. Weak and insincere protests are summarily ignored, Jack sucking with decades of expertise, and it's not long before his husband cries out and a sooty, salty fluid spurts over Jack's tongue. He swallows as Reaper trembles and pours onto the floor as a puddle of black smoke that re-forms into Gabriel Reyes, skin still smoking from scars and the areas where he's not quite solid, but his face is just as handsome as Jack remembers, his eyes just as brown and warm, and his hair! His hair falls past his shoulders in luscious curls that have Jack's fingers itching to run through them, and his expression is one of cautious hope.
"You're really okay with this?" he asks, the same uncertain, vulnerable voice that once asked, Will you marry me?
Instead of answering, Jack takes his husband's head in both hands and kisses him, sixteen months of loneliness and anxiety and fear transmuted into hope and devotion and as long as we both shall live. Gabriel groans and kisses back, slightly-cool skin against Jack's as his arms go around the other man, holding him tight before shifting to lift him, bridal-style, and lay him on the bed.
"God damn, Gabe," Jack murmurs into his husband's mouth, "how come you can get blown to shit and resurrected by questionable science and still look as hot as the day I lost my virginity to you?"
Gabriel growls and breaks the kiss, cool skin pinning Jack to the bed, hair falling in soft curtains to either side of his face. Jack smiles up at him, love and contentment radiating from his face as if, now that they're in the same place, nothing else about the last year matters. His tired blue eyes gain a wicked glint as he grinds up against Gabriel's hips.
"You're tempting me," Gabriel growls.
"Is it working?"
Fierce kissing is Gabriel's wordless response, and one knee urging Jack's legs apart. Jack wastes no time before wrapping his legs around his husband's, caressing thighs and hips as Gabriel grinds against him.
"We shouldn't." he breathes into Jack's throat before kissing it.
Not what Jack wanted to hear. He slides his fingers through Gabriel's hair. "Why not?"
An inarticulate snarl escapes Gabriel's lips. "I don't have lube."
Gently, Jack urges his husband's head up and kisses those slightly-cool lips softly. "Check in the bathroom."
Gabriel dissolves into black mist and flows across the bed, into the bathroom. Moments later he walks out rubbing thick, clear gel onto his erection. Jack feasts his eyes, admiring the sight he hasn't seen in way too long.
"See something you like?" he chuckles as he sits on the edge of the bed, but Jack's arousal has stolen his wits and he can only stare and clutch the sheets. He stretches one hand out, hovering above Jack's belly. "May I?"
That breaks the spell enough that Jack can smile slyly at him. "It's only fair; I got to unwrap you."
His hands are cool on Jack's skin as he hooks the elastic of his briefs and pulls gently. Jack arches his back to ease their downward slide, and he bends his head to kiss his way from Jack's waist up to one nipple, making his husband claws helplessly at the generous locks of his hair. The message comes across clearly enough, and Gabriel keeps Jack's mouth occupied while he once again covers his husband.
"Last chance to say no," he murmurs into Jack's mouth.
Jack locks his legs around Gabriel's waist and grinds up into him. "That means yes," he whispers, nibbling softly at his husband's ear.
Gabriel groans as if, now that he doesn't have to deny himself what they both want, he's afraid of it. He rears back, braced on one hand while the other reaches between them, lube-slicked fingers sliding between Jack's cheeks and inside, blindly finding the button that makes his husband's legs fall limply open while he cries out for more. Gabriel's expression shifts to a surprisingly delighted smirk as his fingers rub small, gentle circles that drive Jack wild.
"Like that, do you?" he teases, but Jack's enjoying it too much to care about his tone.
"Yes, darling, yes!"
The smirk slips into something more akin to worship. "I love you, Jack."
The finger retreats, replaced by the head of his penis. "Gabe," Jack half-begs as his husband starts the slow push inside.
The worship turns to hunger. "Mi sol," he says, his voice deep and rough, and it sends a delicious shiver down Jack's spine.
Gabriel finishes his slow slide, and Jack groans with the feeling of being full that only stokes his own hunger. "Gabe!"
Gabriel thrusts into Jack, gasping at his tightness, bucking frantically with their combined need. Jack rises up to meet him, hugging him with arms and legs and everything else, trying to become one with him as the friction of their bare bodies finishes what Gabriel's fingers started, and Jack's last thought before the world dissolves into perfection is, I hope no one's in the next room.
When the world reasserts itself, Jack is contentedly nuzzling Gabriel's scarred and smoking chest, one hand resting on his stomach, his knee on Gabriel's thick thigh. Post-coital contentment is an expression that, while Jack doubts anyone else will ever see, looks remarkably good with long, tangled hair. He treasures the knowledge that beneath the bone-white mask, the face of the terrifying Reaper is the same one now looking at him with adoration.
"Merry Christmas, darling," Jack purrs.
"Mmm," he replies eloquently. "This may be the first time in a long time that I'm actually feeling the Christmas spirit."
"That's afterglow."
He grins at Jack. "Close enough. If I don't want to arouse any suspicions, though, I need to get back to Talon. I'm still working on getting in deep enough to get revenge for them destroying our lives. I just..." He hugs Jack to his chest and kisses his hair. "I had to see you. I had to know you were okay. I wasn't expecting you to wake up."
Jack grins. "But aren't you glad I did?"
"Fuck yes. Oh, mi sol, I was so afraid you wouldn't want..."
A kiss on the lips cuts him off. "Better or worse, sickness or health, 'til death do us part."
"That's why I was worried," Gabriel teases. "I did die."
"But you came back. That's not parting, darling. The ring stays where it is."
Gabriel looks embarrassed. "That's not all that's staying with you."
"What do you mean, darling?"
"I'm sustained by a nanite swarm, mi sol. You swallowed..."
Jack blushes, but hugs his husband a bit tighter.
"...and we didn't use a condom. We'll never be apart. Not really. And..." He grins wickedly as the bit of himself inside Jack flexes against his prostate, and his husband gasps. "...I can do that to you."
"Mmm. That better not be your way of getting out of your marital duties," Jack teases.
Gabriel kisses him sweetly. "Of course not, mi sol. Just a way of letting you know I'm thinking of you. Doing okay for money?"
"Yeah. I only stay in places like this because they don't ask questions."
"Good. I hope you don't have any plans for New Year's."
Jack smiles. "None that don't involve you."
Gabriel's laugh is interrupted by his swirl into smoke, and when he re-forms, it's as Reaper. "I'll find you. Stay safe. Te amo, mi sol."
On the bed, Jack stretches and lets his husband have one last good look for the road. "I love you too, darling."
He blows Reaper a kiss, which the masked man pretends to catch and slap against his mask before dissolving once again and flowing out of the room through the crack under the door. Jack pulls the covers back up and rolls over, his head on the pillow where Gabriel's had been, and falls back asleep with a smile on his face.
===
It's a rustle that wakes him, every nerve tense and listening for the creak of a man's footfall on the floorboard. Then he sees the pale shape of an owl-skull mask, and he can breathe.
"Sorry," a deep, familiar voice growls from the darkness. "Didn't mean to startle you."
Jack takes his hand off the silenced pistol under the pillow. The clock's LED display reads 2:57. "It's three in the morning, darling," he says as he sits up, unconcerned that he went to bed wearing nothing but briefs. It's dark, and anyway, they'd been married for twenty years. He's welcome to whatever he sees.
"Three in the morning on the twenty-fifth," he corrects with amusement, and Jack returns the smile in his voice.
"Mm. Does that mean I get to unwrap a present?" They've only seen each other across battlefields since the explosion, enough to recognize each other but not talk. The silence changes somehow, and Jack's eyes have adjusted enough to see the outlines of the dark shape by the door. The adrenaline comes back. "Did I say something wrong?"
"I want to show you something," he says instead of answering.
The heavy note in his voice doesn't ease Jack's nerves any. The dark, masked shape comes closer, but there's no footfalls or creaking floorboards.
"I haven't been as honest with you as I should have been," he starts, "and I caused us both a year of unhappiness and frustration. If you're going to keep wearing that ring, you have the right to know exactly what you're getting involved with." He pauses for Jack's reaction, but there is none and he says softly, "If you want to back out at any time, I won't blame you."
Jack doesn't dignify that with any response past a scathing look, and Reaper ducks his head slightly, the gesture incongruously sheepish beneath mask and hood.
"I don't know how much you know about what happened to me," he says slowly, drifting to the edge of the bed. "I survived, but at the cost of being sustained by a nanite swarm."
"I'm still not seeing a downside," Jack teases.
"You might change your mind when you see the toll it's taken on my body."
Well now, Reaper, you have Jack's full and undivided attention! "You mean I actually get to unwrap the Reaper for Christmas?"
He grimaces. "Just leave the mask on, please."
"Of course." Jack stands reaches out towards the hood, but Reaper flinches away. "Darling, I'm not going to hurt you."
"But I'm afraid that I'll hurt you," he says quietly. "Or rather, that once you see..."
Jack rolls his eyes. It's not that he has no sympathy for his husband's fear and vulnerability, it's just that if he were even the slightest bit less than fully committed, he wouldn't have let go of the silenced pistol. As he reaches for Reaper's hand, the gauntlet dissolves into smoke. Jack passes his hands over arm, shoulder, chest, banishing the black leather and leaving...
...leaving...
He had expected scars. What he hadn't expected was those scars bleeding traces of black smoke, or the places where his husband's skin fuzzed out like a failing holographic projection. But aside from the unnerving gaps, his husband's thighs are just as thick, chest just as broad, arms just as strong as Jack remembers. He prowls around Reaper, exposing the back he spent so many nights cuddled up to, the fine ass he'd smacked so many times.
"Nothing to say?" he growls, and Jack smiles.
"Mmm, just one thing," he says as his hands banish the belts resting on Reaper's hips, the leather pants concealing his package.
"And that is?"
Jack sinks to his knees. "Mine."
Before Reaper can react Jack's taken the lightly-smoking limp cock into his mouth, cool flesh warming quickly as Reaper hisses, both hands going to Jack's head as he swells and lengthens in his husband's mouth. Weak and insincere protests are summarily ignored, Jack sucking with decades of expertise, and it's not long before his husband cries out and a sooty, salty fluid spurts over Jack's tongue. He swallows as Reaper trembles and pours onto the floor as a puddle of black smoke that re-forms into Gabriel Reyes, skin still smoking from scars and the areas where he's not quite solid, but his face is just as handsome as Jack remembers, his eyes just as brown and warm, and his hair! His hair falls past his shoulders in luscious curls that have Jack's fingers itching to run through them, and his expression is one of cautious hope.
"You're really okay with this?" he asks, the same uncertain, vulnerable voice that once asked, Will you marry me?
Instead of answering, Jack takes his husband's head in both hands and kisses him, sixteen months of loneliness and anxiety and fear transmuted into hope and devotion and as long as we both shall live. Gabriel groans and kisses back, slightly-cool skin against Jack's as his arms go around the other man, holding him tight before shifting to lift him, bridal-style, and lay him on the bed.
"God damn, Gabe," Jack murmurs into his husband's mouth, "how come you can get blown to shit and resurrected by questionable science and still look as hot as the day I lost my virginity to you?"
Gabriel growls and breaks the kiss, cool skin pinning Jack to the bed, hair falling in soft curtains to either side of his face. Jack smiles up at him, love and contentment radiating from his face as if, now that they're in the same place, nothing else about the last year matters. His tired blue eyes gain a wicked glint as he grinds up against Gabriel's hips.
"You're tempting me," Gabriel growls.
"Is it working?"
Fierce kissing is Gabriel's wordless response, and one knee urging Jack's legs apart. Jack wastes no time before wrapping his legs around his husband's, caressing thighs and hips as Gabriel grinds against him.
"We shouldn't." he breathes into Jack's throat before kissing it.
Not what Jack wanted to hear. He slides his fingers through Gabriel's hair. "Why not?"
An inarticulate snarl escapes Gabriel's lips. "I don't have lube."
Gently, Jack urges his husband's head up and kisses those slightly-cool lips softly. "Check in the bathroom."
Gabriel dissolves into black mist and flows across the bed, into the bathroom. Moments later he walks out rubbing thick, clear gel onto his erection. Jack feasts his eyes, admiring the sight he hasn't seen in way too long.
"See something you like?" he chuckles as he sits on the edge of the bed, but Jack's arousal has stolen his wits and he can only stare and clutch the sheets. He stretches one hand out, hovering above Jack's belly. "May I?"
That breaks the spell enough that Jack can smile slyly at him. "It's only fair; I got to unwrap you."
His hands are cool on Jack's skin as he hooks the elastic of his briefs and pulls gently. Jack arches his back to ease their downward slide, and he bends his head to kiss his way from Jack's waist up to one nipple, making his husband claws helplessly at the generous locks of his hair. The message comes across clearly enough, and Gabriel keeps Jack's mouth occupied while he once again covers his husband.
"Last chance to say no," he murmurs into Jack's mouth.
Jack locks his legs around Gabriel's waist and grinds up into him. "That means yes," he whispers, nibbling softly at his husband's ear.
Gabriel groans as if, now that he doesn't have to deny himself what they both want, he's afraid of it. He rears back, braced on one hand while the other reaches between them, lube-slicked fingers sliding between Jack's cheeks and inside, blindly finding the button that makes his husband's legs fall limply open while he cries out for more. Gabriel's expression shifts to a surprisingly delighted smirk as his fingers rub small, gentle circles that drive Jack wild.
"Like that, do you?" he teases, but Jack's enjoying it too much to care about his tone.
"Yes, darling, yes!"
The smirk slips into something more akin to worship. "I love you, Jack."
The finger retreats, replaced by the head of his penis. "Gabe," Jack half-begs as his husband starts the slow push inside.
The worship turns to hunger. "Mi sol," he says, his voice deep and rough, and it sends a delicious shiver down Jack's spine.
Gabriel finishes his slow slide, and Jack groans with the feeling of being full that only stokes his own hunger. "Gabe!"
Gabriel thrusts into Jack, gasping at his tightness, bucking frantically with their combined need. Jack rises up to meet him, hugging him with arms and legs and everything else, trying to become one with him as the friction of their bare bodies finishes what Gabriel's fingers started, and Jack's last thought before the world dissolves into perfection is, I hope no one's in the next room.
When the world reasserts itself, Jack is contentedly nuzzling Gabriel's scarred and smoking chest, one hand resting on his stomach, his knee on Gabriel's thick thigh. Post-coital contentment is an expression that, while Jack doubts anyone else will ever see, looks remarkably good with long, tangled hair. He treasures the knowledge that beneath the bone-white mask, the face of the terrifying Reaper is the same one now looking at him with adoration.
"Merry Christmas, darling," Jack purrs.
"Mmm," he replies eloquently. "This may be the first time in a long time that I'm actually feeling the Christmas spirit."
"That's afterglow."
He grins at Jack. "Close enough. If I don't want to arouse any suspicions, though, I need to get back to Talon. I'm still working on getting in deep enough to get revenge for them destroying our lives. I just..." He hugs Jack to his chest and kisses his hair. "I had to see you. I had to know you were okay. I wasn't expecting you to wake up."
Jack grins. "But aren't you glad I did?"
"Fuck yes. Oh, mi sol, I was so afraid you wouldn't want..."
A kiss on the lips cuts him off. "Better or worse, sickness or health, 'til death do us part."
"That's why I was worried," Gabriel teases. "I did die."
"But you came back. That's not parting, darling. The ring stays where it is."
Gabriel looks embarrassed. "That's not all that's staying with you."
"What do you mean, darling?"
"I'm sustained by a nanite swarm, mi sol. You swallowed..."
Jack blushes, but hugs his husband a bit tighter.
"...and we didn't use a condom. We'll never be apart. Not really. And..." He grins wickedly as the bit of himself inside Jack flexes against his prostate, and his husband gasps. "...I can do that to you."
"Mmm. That better not be your way of getting out of your marital duties," Jack teases.
Gabriel kisses him sweetly. "Of course not, mi sol. Just a way of letting you know I'm thinking of you. Doing okay for money?"
"Yeah. I only stay in places like this because they don't ask questions."
"Good. I hope you don't have any plans for New Year's."
Jack smiles. "None that don't involve you."
Gabriel's laugh is interrupted by his swirl into smoke, and when he re-forms, it's as Reaper. "I'll find you. Stay safe. Te amo, mi sol."
On the bed, Jack stretches and lets his husband have one last good look for the road. "I love you too, darling."
He blows Reaper a kiss, which the masked man pretends to catch and slap against his mask before dissolving once again and flowing out of the room through the crack under the door. Jack pulls the covers back up and rolls over, his head on the pillow where Gabriel's had been, and falls back asleep with a smile on his face.