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Luck’s deck seems to be stacked with surprises for me, dealing them out one after another. I never expected Malcom Graves to survive and escape the Locker, to reappear in my life with the intent to end it. I never expected him to put aside that vengeful rage, to save my life and partner up with me again.
I never expected him to kiss me, and I sure as hell never expected it to be tender.
We’re in a room above the Eel’s Head Bar, a place where silver buys silence and a single bed. There’s whisky on his breath and wine on mine, but not enough to dull our senses, to make my old-new friend mistake his actions. Graves knows what he’s doing when he steps in close, tilts his head up and pulls me down by the collar.
He’s rusty, ten years between this kiss and our last. That time we’d devoured one another with youthful passion, high on the promise of future riches. We’d been on top of the world before it crushed us down, chewed Graves up and spat me out.
Now we’re older, with a little more wisdom and a lot more scars, like the one on his ear from our battle on the docks. My fingers brush against it for a breath too long, before tangling in his short hair. I don’t tug him closer no matter how much I want to, because I have no right.
Instead I take what he gives me and nothing more. He parts my lips with his tongue, re-mapping old territory in a way that’s hesitant and firm and gentle all at once. He’d kissed me hundreds of times in the old days, but never quite like this. Like he’s afraid I’m going to vanish.
When he pulls back I can barely keep from chasing him, especially when those dark brows furrow over concerned eyes.
“You ok there?” he asks, surprisingly soft.
“I…yes,” I say, my quick wit crushed under the sudden rush of feeling. “Just surprised. I thought you wouldn’t want me anymore.”
Graves lets out a huff of breath, the love-child of a chuckle and a sigh.
“Me wantin’ you ain’t the question,” he says, too rough to be anything but real. “What I don’t want is…pity, or obligation or—”
This time I’m the one to kiss him. I can’t hear him talk like that, not after so many years without his voice at all. Having him in my life again is more than I could have hoped for, and I will hold onto that, onto him, as long as he lets me.
Malcom lets out a surprised little sound when our lips first meet. I try to keep it chaste, a statement rather than a demand, but I’ve been ten long years without a proper taste of him. He seems to feel the same, tangling fingers in my hair and tugging me close enough to drown in him.
I make a sound I’ve never heard before, a sound like a dying man. I grip his shoulders like a lifeline, the only way to stay grounded when there’s lightning in my veins.
Malcom backs up until his legs hit the bed frame, never breaking the kiss. He sits on the narrow cot and I follow him down, climbing into his lap without a care for the armor plates on his thighs. His hands are everywhere now, on my hair and neck, my back and hips, while my own hands mirror his patterns. Now we’re free to touch, we have to touch everything.
There’s fingers on the buttons of my vest, tugging at the expensive fabric, but for once I don’t think to object. I’ve been far from celibate these past ten years, but this is the first time I’ve let someone else undress me. I kept telling myself that it was care for my clothes, but by rights Malcom Graves is the last person to trust with fine tailoring.
No, I’m trusting him with myself.
The thought sends a shiver down my spine as Malcom pushes the vest from my shoulders and tosses it onto the room’s one chair. When he starts on the shirt it’s with surprising care, though his calloused fingertips still catch a little on the Ionian silk.
It doesn’t matter, nothing matters but getting my own hands on his motley collection of belts. The buckles clink and clatter as they hit the floor, soon followed by his gauntlets. We keep having to pause as one of us tends to the other, but it’s worth it when his chest is finally bare. I’ve seen it before, the new scars and hard-won muscles, but it’s another thing entirely to touch.
We both give ourselves over to exploration, each charting the decade of changes to the other. I have fewer new marks and a lot less chest hair, but Malcom seems determined to reacquaint himself with every inch regardless.
“You’ve got no right to age so pretty,” Graves grumbles, even as he rubs his thumbs over my slender hipbones.
“Speak for yourself,” I reply, half-breathless. I take two big handfuls of his pecs and squeeze, relishing the firm, taught muscle.
His laugh is like a bark, and his echoing squeeze of my ass is a promise. So is the bite on my throat, on the front where I leave my collar open. He sucks on the skin until it’s hot and tender, purple and red, a mark I have no plans to hide.
Then suddenly I’m on my back, cheap sheets beneath me and Graves on top. He slots between my thighs, which fall open to welcome him home. He leans down for one quick kiss before he scrambles off me, tugging off my boots and trousers. My cock springs free, the leather slides off my legs, and then I’m more naked than I’ve ever been.
I feel like my soul is laid bare, not just my body, leaving me raw and open and vulnerable. I can’t help but squeeze my eyes shut to hide from my own exposure, one last barrier between me and the man I should never have abandoned.
There’s a silent moment. Two. I hope to hear his boots hit the floor, but a sick part of me expects to hear him pick up his belt, walk out the door or even cock his shotgun. It feels like he can see everything, down to my shriveled black raisin of a heart, every string of it cut except for one. I’m afraid to open my eyes and see disgust on his face, but even more I fear that he’ll just vanish, like a decade’s worth of dreams.
“Tobias.” Malcom sounds as raw as I feel. “You alright there?”
I huff out a shaky laugh, eyes still closed.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
I don’t even object to his using my birth-name, the name I gave to the river in his memory. If anyone has the right to dredge up that old, abandoned relic it’s him, so that’s one more irony for our growing collection. How am I the one falling apart, when he’s the one who spent ten years in hell? Why am I shaking like a virgin when he’s gone so long untouched by lovers’ hands?
And I know, I know that he hasn’t been with anyone since that last night before calamity. He hasn’t said a word, just as I haven’t mentioned my own activities—ones that now feel horribly like cheating. At the time I’d been sure he was dead, or perhaps just wished it…better to imagine that his suffering was over, instead of continuing while I was helpless to stop it.
“I’m serious,” Graves says, brushing a hand over my cheek. “We don’t have to do this, partner. Like I said, I don’t want pity—”
“Neither do I,” I say. I swallow hard and open my eyes, looking up into his. “I want you, Malcom. Now get back down here, you’ve been gone too long.”
My partner lets out a huff of laughter and shakes his head.
“Gimme a second,” he says, then kicks off his trousers and grabs a pouch from his discarded belt. I can hear a clinking from inside, tools for maintaining his trusty shotgun.
Malcom clambers back on top of me, warm weight and reality settling down, making my breath come easier. He’s not going to run, or to vanish like smoke. He’s going to stay, and I’m going to stay with him.
We kiss again, hands retracing paths they’d mapped just minutes before, and I spread my thighs with no prompting or discussion. We’ve done this in every configuration—hands and mouths and just plain friction—but tonight he needs to be inside me.
There’s the pop of a jar lid and the mineral smell of gun oil. Slick sounds and thick fingers, one then two then three. Graves could go faster but he doesn’t, because this is a first time in every way that counts.
Then he’s panting into my mouth again, and I’m wrapping my legs around his waist, and then the slow push inside. He’s always been a large man, and my rim catches and stretches and twitches around the thick, blunt head of him. I moan like I’m breaking, like I’m dying, and clutch his shoulders with shaking hands.
Honesty’s a bad habit I’ve never fallen into, especially not with myself. It’s always been easier to hide my true feelings, layers upon layers of deceit to cover every weakness, every vulnerability. This time it had even seemed altruistic, focusing on Graves’ wounds and ignoring my own.
Now, with him holding me tight and buried in me to the hilt, I can’t deny it any more. I’ve spent ten long years aching and empty and alone, and now I can finally breathe.
“Move,” I gasp. “C’mon Malcom, I won’t break.”
He does, and I don’t, because he’s pulling me back together.
“Tight…” he groans, hips juddering as he tries to keep a steady pace.
“Been a while,” I reply with a breathless chuckle.
“How long?”
“S-six months.”
He sucks in a breath and I know why. That was a good month and a half before we’d joined back up as partners, let alone friends. I’d stopped taking lovers for one reason and one reason only—he’d broken out of the Locker. I’d learned he was alive.
Of course he’d been coming to kill me, but that didn’t change a damn thing. I’d run, I’d fight, I’d maybe kill him first, but I would never cheat on Malcom Graves. As long as he lives, there’s no-one else for me.
Maybe I’ll say that to him one day, but I’ve had enough honesty for now and far from enough of him. I pull him down by the back of the neck, kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. His lips are as soft as his cock is hard, so deep and hot and thick and right.
One large hand is in my hair, the other on my hip, and Malcom’s clearly found his rhythm. His thrusts have that old snap to them, and once he finds my sweet spot he doesn’t let up until I’m singing like a bluebird. Bounties be damned, I’ve needed this too goddamn long.
Graves clearly feels the same, cursing like a born sailor as he gives me everything he’s got. The bed squeaks and groans and pounds out a beat against the wall, setting a tempo to our cries. It’s got to sound like a real racket downstairs in the bar, but to me it’s more like music.
Then the key changes, Graves’ moans going rough and ragged. He’s closing on the finish line and I’m not far behind, more like teenagers than grown and grizzled men. It doesn’t matter that I’m thirty-five and he’s nigh on forty—it’s been ten long years and we can’t last another moment.
“T-Tobiaah!”
It’s my name, a prayer, a curse and a groan. Malcom digs his teeth into my shoulder as he comes, digs his fingers into my hip and my hair. He’s pressing down on me, into me, and every point of contact burns. The hot spill inside is everything I wanted, needed, and my head falls back with a wordless groan.
I grind down against his cock and up against his stomach, that last bit of friction I need to fall apart. I nearly sob as he gives a few last thrusts to ride me through it, still hard enough to do the job before we both go soft and boneless.
He collapses atop me, and for once I don’t complain. His warm weight is solid, his breathing slow, his heartbeat strong and steady. He’s real, so real, more than the sea or the stars or the air in my lungs. I card my fingers through his hair, his beard, a different style but the same soft feel.
We lie there for minutes, hours, eons, simply breathing. I know we should rise, adjust, wipe away the cooling slick, but it doesn’t matter. It’s always been messy between us, one way or another.
At last he sighs, stirring my hair, and presses a kiss to my ear.
“Needed that,” he murmurs.
“Me too,” I admit, and it means more than I mean it too.
“Your fancy pants’re too damn tight,” he chuckles, patting my thigh with proprietary fondness.
“So are your shirts,” I say, squeezing those delightful biceps.
“So’s your ass,” he says, slipping a hand beneath me to return the squeeze. Then his voice goes soft and serious, and his eyes are far too honest. “Six months?”
“Ten years,” I reply. I can’t look at him, can’t look away, and my heart falls open as my eyes fall shut. “That’s how long it should’ve been.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he says, holding my face in his hands. “If we start pilin’ up ‘shoulds’ they’ll reach the sky.”
“Reckon you’re right,” I murmur, and Malcom’s lips meet mine once more. It’s easy and familiar, different and strange, perfectly imperfect.
I first knew I loved him when I thought him dead, an unwed widower at an unattended wake. Now he’s back, and the words should come but they still catch in my throat and—
No, no more ‘should’. The words will come someday, when a conman can be honest and a coward can be brave. At the moment I’m none of those things, and all of them.
At this moment, in all moments, I am his.