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Birdlike.
Stanley watched as Goodsir rearranged the specimens on his table for the third time that hour. He never sat, instead flitting about, and made note of his mollusks under his breath. Indeed, Stanley was of a mind to force him into a chair. His constant movement distracted Stanley from his own work.
Sir John had been kind enough to provide them both space in his cabin for their scientific interests. Unfortunately, this meant that whenever Stephen wanted a moment to his own pursuits, Goodsir was often there also. At first, Stanley had managed to stagger their time, ensuring one of them was always in the sickbay, but the generous lack of ailment during the voyage thus far meant that the sickbay could be left unattended for an hour here and there.
It was not that he wished injury on anyone, but Stanley could have easily taken a broken limb over the scratching of Goodsir’s irregular note-taking and his incessant shifting. At least he knew what to do with broken bones. If only there were a cure for this sort of nervous movement, this agitation.
But as he had watched, he had come to realize that Goodsir wasn’t nervous at all. The man was completely focussed on his specimens, without the least thought for anything else. His eyes never left the table, covered as it was in little creatures. Where Stanley’s table was kept neat; notes to one side, pencil beside them, equipment on the other, bird in the middle; Goodsir left loose leafs of paper scattered on his desk, with nothing centralized, not even the microscope.
In fact, it was not hard to watch Goodsir at all. So engrossed was he with his bucket-haul that Stanley could watch him for minutes at a time without his notice. He became a different man in the openness of the great-cabin than he was in the dimly-lit sickbay. Yet he flutters no less.
That was the truth of it. Wherever Goodsir was, he fluttered like a little bird, and even if he was not moving, his eyes spoke the near constant desire for flight. He was easily spooked, easily startled. Stanley’s mind drifted to the tit, a rather small bird, always darting from one spot to another, and always in the exact place you didn’t want it to be. An apt comparison if ever there was one.
Goodsir must have noticed his amusement, staring at him with an expression quirked in mild confusion.
“Is there something you need, Mr. Goodsir?”
Goodsir only shook his head, turning back to his studies. Then, “an arctic tern, Doctor?”
Stanley sighed. Goodsir had the exceptional capability to begin speaking only after he was given the chance, which made Stanley’s patience as thin as his hair. Perhaps he should be more generous to himself, Stanley thought, but he was not a generous man, even in the privacy of his own mind.
At present, most of the desk in front of him was taken up by the tern, splayed on its back, white belly exposed and ready for dissection. A bird of prey, vulnerable under Stanley’s fingertips, under his scalpel. Open.
“What about it, Mr. Goodsir?”
The naturalist took a step closer—that’s what he was, at heart: a naturalist—moving to stand just next to where Stanley sat. “May I?” His voice had regained its usual timidity, and Stanley wondered not for the first time if he was the reason for Goodsir’s constant discomfort.
“If you must.”
Goodsir reached past him, running two fingers gently across one carefully unfurled wing. Stanley suppressed a shudder. Goodsir’s touch was lighter than his could ever be, ghosting across white feathers with a tenderness Stanley found, somehow, shocking. If this is the care he takes with a bird…Stanley didn’t allow himself to finish the thought. But Goodsir was close, too close, and one errant movement would find his arm brushing Stanley’s shoulder.
“It’s beautiful.” Stanley was interrupted by Goodsir’s soft voice just above him. “Shame to cut it open.”
“That is the price we pay for learning.”
Goodsir’s eyebrows knitted together a brief moment, an involuntary twitch, drawing back his hand. “Yes.”
A curt answer. Too short for anything Goodsir might usually say, and there was a certain sadness behind those eyes, a distance he was putting between himself and the creature. Not just the creature. It was the sort of distance Stanley put between himself and a patient. ‘How many bodies have you cut open, Mr. Goodsir?’ he was tempted to ask, ‘why do you work this profession?’ He did not. Instead, he picked up the scalpel, that cold, familiar metal a steady weight in his hands.
Goodsir turned away. A tender man, a tender heart. Here is not the place for tenderness. Stanley could almost hear himself say it, whisper it to the dark. He had done it before, in the sanctuary of his berth, hands curling in the sheets at his sides. The memory of dark curls falling across Goodsir’s face burning behind his eyelids, and for as much as Stanley had rolled his eyes at the time, the vision had followed him to his bunk, hands itching for nothing more than to brush those stray hairs away from Goodsir’s pale forehead.
The scalpel hesitated above the cadaver.
The first cut opened the breast, clavicle to vent, peeling back skin and pinning it open to expose the fragile world beneath. Next went the sternum, cut out as if portioned. The keel, it was called, for its shape like the keel of a ship, a hard pallet extending above the ribs for the attachment of the breast muscles. Underneath, the organs, so much smaller than that of a man’s, so much more delicate.
A delicacy, not to be dissecting people.
He had been too focused on the bird to hear the noise behind him—or more accurately, the lack thereof, where Goodsir stood watching him, no longer changing position every few moments, rooted.
Stanley paused, scalpel still in hand. He turned his head ever so slightly, trying to see Goodsir without actually looking at the man. To discern if he really was watching, after all.
“So little is known about them.”
Stanley needn’t have worried. Goodsir announced his own voyeurism. It was barely a whisper, as if it were the breaking of some spell. The interruption of the silence which, until very recently, Goodsir had not yet allowed.
“You have to go so far north to get any data,” Goodsir continued, “that not many people try. Quite the mystery.”
Yet here one was. Stanley felt as though its white feathers should be dyed red, after his transgression, but they remained the same, untouched by any warm blood that might have spilled over had the thing been more fresh. Or alive.
“They pass over every so often, a single bird drifting on the winds. Lonely.”
The first time Stanley had cut into a bird, seen its keel, he had been shocked at how different it was from that of a human. How unalike he was to any of avians he parceled apart. So different.
And yet so similar.
Goodsir’s eyes never left the bird, but his words were their own knife, running the length of Stanley’s chest. Goodsir was not talking about the bird.
“They’re very territorial, I’ve heard. They attack others who enter their nesting grounds.”
“Do you find me territorial, Mr. Goodsir?” Stanley’s voice was low, lower than it should have been, lacking its usual apathy.
Finally, finally, Goodsir’s gaze flicked over to Stanley before dropping to the floor. “You don’t like others in your space, Doctor.” He smiled nervously, daring a glance back up, and Stanley made sure to give away nothing.
Stanley turned, facing his assistant, leaning forward in his chair. He discarded the scalpel, leaving it on the desk beside the tern. “Do you consider this my space? Perhaps you think of the sickbay as being mine. Do you feel attacked?”
Stanley watched as Goodsir’s eyes widened, jumping back up to meet his own. He took secret pleasure in watching the man before him stumble over and search for words.
“No,” Goodsir finally stuttered out.
“But unwelcome.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
For a moment, Stanley wasn’t quite sure he’d heard it, but there was a pink to the man’s cheeks that said all he needed to know.
“I am a bird of prey, then?” Stanley stood, using his height to cow Goodsir against the table behind him. Then, softer, closer: “Do you enjoy feeling preyed upon?”
A gasp escaped Goodsir, his chest beginning to rise and fall with a sort of panicked breath beneath his sternum. Beneath his keel, his center.
Goodsir’s thighs hit the table, pinning him there, unable to move away, and Stanley dared a step closer, pervading the space, making it his own. Making Goodsir my own. His mind wasn’t clear enough to process the thought, and he let it pass.
“Come now, Mr. Goodsir. Surely you have not lost your tongue.”
“No, I— ”
They were close enough that Stanley could feel the heat rolling off his colleague, and it made him dizzy. Dizzier than the blood of a patient ever had.
“And?” A purr, at its base. A little too pleased, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself.
“No.” Something steeled itself in Goodsir’s gaze. “I do not like feeling preyed upon.”
Stanley stopped, taken aback. He had gone too far. Goodsir had cut the tension between them, cutting him off, and by extension, cutting him open, showing the ugly mass of desire beneath his treacherous breast.
Goodsir’s look softened again at Stanley’s fear. “Though I do enjoy learning what I can about the things I do not know.” One hand strayed upwards from its spot gripping the lip of the table to rest its fingertips feather-light against the side of Stanley’s face. He pushed himself upright, regaining his feet, and with every movement closer Stanley drew back until he was sitting back in his chair, looking up into Goodsir’s kind smile. Pitying smile.
Stanley’s chest fell out from his body, a swooping feeling, leaving him with nothing more than a slight exhale as he hit the chair, all other air gone with his missing lungs. His blood, too, had left his face all in one go, and he became white as the tern. A stark contrast to Goodsir’s dark curls, rosy cheeks, warm smile, warmer hands.
Then, wordlessly, Goodsir’s thighs came to rest atop his own.
“Oh.” Stanley let his eyes drift down the press of their bodies, heat flooding from Goodsir’s skin to his own through layers of thick clothing. “Oh.”
Goodsir chuckled. “Alright?” Even as he spoke, his hands moved to Stanley’s chest, methodically running, ever so slowly, from shoulders to waist.
Stanley nodded. The next breath he sucked in burned. Goodsir’s fingertips ghosted over Stanley’s broad shoulders and drifted up towards his neck, coming to rest at his cravat, teasing skin. Goodsir smiled knowingly. He let his fingers hover just above Stanley’s neck before dropping them back to his chest, exploring the expanse there, and Stanley let out a huff of frustration.
“Impatient, doctor? One could almost say you like this. One could almost say you wanted this.” Stanley’s eyes widened, but Goodsir didn’t give him time to interrupt. “Of course, with how you were watching me, I suppose it isn’t a surprise.”
“Mr. Goodsir…” Stanley trailed off. What was there to say?
“You didn’t think I hadn’t noticed, did you? Oh, you poor man.”
Stanley glowered. “Mr. Goodsir, I hardly think such…endearments…are necessary.”
The man above him only smiled, infuriating in its sincerity. “I thought you’d lost your voice, Doctor. I’m glad to see I’m not distracting you over much that you’ve lost your ability to insult me.”
It occurred to Stanley that he was being teased. He gritted his teeth. “And here I thought you didn’t enjoy my meanness.”
“You can understand things without cutting them open, Doctor. You don’t have to use a knife-sharp tongue to know me.”
For a moment, Stanley found himself torn out of the world of heat the press of bodies created to be hit with cold air. Goodsir’s words were so open, a confession Stanley didn’t know how he could make.
Goodsir seemed to notice his distraction, reeling him back in by working open one of the buttons on Stanley’s waistcoat. “Though it would be so easy to dissect you like this,” he breathed. “I have you pinned like a beetle in a display case. Lord knows you have a shell.”
Goodsir’s fingers made quick work of the buttons on Stanley’s waistcoat, and oh, Stanley thought, he’s done this before. Lightly, gently, Goodsir placed a finger against Stephen’s sternum, dragging it downwards like a scalpel on a cadaver. Goodsir’s eyes followed, trailing downward with his finger to the joint in Stanley’s thighs to find him achingly hard.
Stanley gasped brokenly at the sensation. Heat pooled in his stomach, any other sounds threatening to fall from his lips stopped by the mere shock of Goodsir’s finger against his prick. Stephen’s mouth had gone slack, and Goodsir’s knowing smile awoke something grating under Stanley’s skin, making him want to grind his teeth.
Goodsir tutted. “How long have you wanted this, doctor? How many days have you spent watching me in the sickbay?”
Stephen hadn’t the air to reply—not even the air to moan. Every muscle lay shocked into stillness. Goodsir’s fingers rested between his legs, unmoving, the heat from them torturously tempting. Had he the strength, Stanley might have bucked into them.
Goodsir’s other hand rose to trace Stanley’s clavicle, then further to the cords of his neck. Stephen almost couldn’t feel the touch. His head tilted back of its own accord, eyes glazed over. Goodsir took full advantage of the opening, dipping his head down to press warm lips to Stephen’s trachea in a moment of blazing heat. This time, Stanley did moan, breathlessly, and his hips jerked up into Goodsir’s waiting hand. He could feel the man smile against his skin.
Stanley’s hands, which had been still, came to rest on his inferior’s hips, pulling them down to rut deliciously against his own. Goodsir moved his hand away and adjusted his position, letting himself roll forward, clothed pricks finding each other with bruising need. Goodsir’s teeth ghosted over the space between Stephen’s neck and shoulder, and Stanley shuddered, both unsure and desperately willing.
“Goodsir?” Surely the man’s title was not needed, given their current intimacy. Stephen couldn’t quite figure out what the anatomist thought he was doing with his teeth, but Goodsir started talking before he could ask.
“Do you enjoy feeling preyed upon, doctor?” Goodsir’s voice was thick in Stephen’s ear, tickling flushed skin.
“Oh Christ.” Stephen moaned then, openly, hips bucking up harshly to press his length against Goodsir’s own hardness, a sensation so sweet washing over him he choked on it. His fingers buried themselves in Goodsir’s thighs, pulling the man ever downwards. Goodsir seemed happy to oblige, rolling his hips down until Stanley doubled forward to gasp into his chest.
In all his musings about his assistant, Stanley had never imagined himself in this sort of position. Of course there had been nights when he allowed a hand to slip between his legs, mouth pressed in a thin line to avoid any errant noises as he thought of Goodsir’s soft voice and shy smile. He only ever frowned at such mannerisms, he knew, trying to hide the the pressure they built in his chest, between his legs. Anything to keep the knowledge of his desire private, to keep its object at an arm’s length. But in all such nighttime fantasies, he had always been doing, not done to. Goodsir, laying splayed on his berth beneath him, head turned to the side, moaning brokenly into the sheets. A pretty little thing under Stephen’s hands, malleable, stripped down, all feathers on display.
He’d never imagined this—Goodsir’s mouth trailing kisses down the side of his neck were—oh—his cravat had been discarded to the floor, one of Goodsir’s hands on his chest, the other in his thinning hair, keeping his head pulled back and neck open for easy access.
Already, Stephen felt a tremor in his legs. His body was something molten, hot and sluggish. He allowed himself to close his eyes and let his head fall back away from the man above him, resting, relaxed in the chair, allowing himself to be done to.
Slowly, Goodsir came to a stop, halting his tantalizing movements. Stanley blinked open his eyes, trying to revive his altogether fuzzy brain back to consciousness, annoyed with the sudden bereavement.
“Is there a reason, Mr. Goodsir, that we are stopping?” He cast the man an unimpressed look. Goodsir hesitated, and Stanley did his best to drop the haughtiness from his gaze.
“It wouldn’t be much good to finish like this, would it? In our trousers like schoolboys.”
“If it’s slipped your memory, we are in the great cabin, which doesn’t afford us the luxury of intimacy.” Stephen caught his subordinate’s eye, swallowing. “I will not be caught, Mr. Goodsir.”
The teasing glint had returned to his assistant’s eye. “I should think,” said Goodsir, glancing over to their respective scientific endeavors, “that two men so careful as ourselves ought not to be overly worried.”
Though uneasy, Stanley could hardly deny his want. It lay tucked in his trousers, stimulated now only by the warmth of Goodsir’s thigh, close but not quite touching. He ached with it, the overwhelming desire to be touched too much to deny. How long had it been for him? Months? Over a year? He groaned inwardly at the thought. And just as he couldn’t deny himself the seeking out of birds, neither could he deny the seeking out of the hand that opened the flap of his trousers, feeling him out, the weight of him resting in a wonderfully soft palm.
Oh, to be touched by another. To be open for them. Stephen realized, with no little alarm, that it was a feeling he could easily get used to.
The first stroke set him to gasping. Goodsir’s hand wrapped around his shaft, drawing carefully upward, teasing the head, and Stephen’s eyes slammed shut. The hand made a similar, slow descent, coming to rest at the base. Stephen let his eyes flutter open and found Goodsir staring right back at him. Somehow, the eye-contact was more intimate than the hand on his cock, and he found himself unable to look away. Goodsir’s eyes were warm, as they usually were, though his typical bashfulness was replaced with an unmistakable lust.
Goodsir was hard, too; Stanley could feel it against the inside of his thigh. He moved a hand from the back of Goodsir’s thigh to the front, letting the pad of his thumb fall to the inside of it, rubbing slow circles there. Goodsir swallowed above him, color rushing to his cheeks.
“No need to be so hasty, doctor. If I am to study you, I must take ample time.” His strokes never sped in pace, almost lazy in their slowness. “I wonder,” he mused, leaning down so his breath tickled Stanley’s ear, “which part of you I should study next?”
Stephen’s breath stuttered. What more of him was there to discover? Goodsir already had the most personal part of him in hand. Even as Stanley wondered, Goodsir moved above him, maneuvering to place a gentle kiss to his jaw. The next kiss landed just below his ear, and Goodsir teased the flesh lightly between his teeth. Stanley let his eyes fall shut again, more relaxed this time, allowing himself to be blind and open, a specimen to be discovered, to be mapped out.
The kisses trailed from his jaw to the corner of his lip. He turned his head, leaning into the warmth, into the promise of a proper kiss. It was humiliating, really—for so long, he’d managed to make Goodsir believe he had no interest whatsoever in the man, and here he was. That thought alone sent a dull spike of heat between his legs.
He must have moaned, for when Goodsir’s lips finally did reach his, the anatomist was smiling into it. There was a tenderness to it that Stanley had never quite experienced. One might have almost called it chaste.
Stephen chased the kiss, obviously to Goodsir’s amusement, pressing forward as soon as the man pulled away. He kissed Goodsir harshly, surging into him open-mouthed and starving. Goodsir’s tongue slipped past his teeth, pressing into the hot cavity of his mouth, all the while a hand ran over his prick with languid strokes.
The tension slipped from his shoulders as Goodsir continued his administrations, making him melt back into the chair. The cabin existed no longer—only the sweet, slow pull of Goodsir’s hand on his cock and the heat and tangle of their mouths.
Goodsir pulled away briefly as Stephen’s hand strayed from the inside of his thigh to the joint in his legs, massaging him mindlessly. Goodsir hummed contentedly, resting his forehead against Stanley’s in an unbearably tender manner.
“You seem to like my mouth, doctor,” he breathed. Then: “Would you like it somewhere else?”
Christ. Stanley’s lips met his assistant’s roughly to stop the moan that threatened to rip from his throat. He muffled it in Goodsir’s mouth instead, his now leaking prick swelling almost painfully with the image. Christ, yes, his mouth. Goodsir, on his knees, full lips around Stanley’s cock, eyes closed in concentration. “Perhaps,” he whispered, voice thick. “If it will finally get you to stop talking.” The words didn’t come out half as sharp as Stephen had intended, but Goodsir smiled and dropped between his legs and it didn’t matter.
Goodsir’s tongue swiped over the head of his prick and Stephen shuddered, full-bodied. One of his hands made its way instinctively to Goodsir’s hair. His fingers tangled in the dark curls, not forcing, simply holding the man in place. Goodsir licked careful stripes up Stephen’s length, agonizingly slow. The slick heat had him screwing his mouth shut in a tight line, breath coming out strong through his nose.
The anatomist’s mouth slipped over him in a moment of pure divinity. Goodsir set an unhurried pace, bobbing up and down his shaft with what he realized was practiced ease.
Stephen watched, unable to rip his eyes away from mouth impaling itself on him. He was a shrike, now, his prey skewered before him, pinned under him. And still, still, he knew he was no predator, here—he was still being done to despite having his subordinate kneeling below him, mouth around his length, tongue swirling, laving.
During the breeding season, a shrike will go through a variety of displays to attract a mate, including a dance that mimics the act of lancing prey. Was that what this was—a courtship where both parties feigned dominance? A dance for proving themselves to be hunters? A ritual saying ‘let me pretend, let me pretend I can help you, let me pretend I’m good for you’?
Stephen felt it now, the desperate need to spill over, and he ground his hips forward, deeper into Goodsir’s all too willing mouth. Goodsir responded almost immediately, taking him deeper, nestling into the hairs at the base of Stephen’s cock. Finally, he was rewarded with the image of Goodsir, knees on the floor, eyes closed. An almost imperceptible smile rested on the man’s lips as he worked Stephen’s length.
Then Goodsir’s mouth went taught, sucking, and Stephen’s feet shuffled against the floor, the hand not in Goodsir’s hair white-knuckling the arm of the chair. He was being wound up like some toy soldier, waiting for his release, staring down at Goodsir’s forehead, at the perspiration on his brow.
Goodsir looked up at him through long lashes, large, dark eyes gentle even then, and their gazes met.
All at once, Stephen was tumbling over the edge, unable to stifle the gasp that ripped from his throat, all the built up tension spilling over until he was limp in the chair once more. He stared at the ceiling, dazed.
It was only then that he realized Goodsir was still on the floor, and that the anatomist must have swallowed his seed to keep the tacky substance off the polished wood. His body gave a final shudder, then, and he dared to look down.
The sight beneath him was nearly enough to make him hard all over again. Goodsir knelt, head resting on Stephen’s thigh. One of his hands steadied himself on the ground while the other worked between his legs, the clothed form of his prick straining against his trousers.
Stanley could have watched him like that, just as he’d watched him at his earlier work, and with the same ease. Without thinking, his hand loosened its grip on Goodsir’s hair, dropping to cup his face instead. Stephen’s thumb brushed gently over his cheek, and Goodsir only leaned into the touch.
“Mr. Goodsir,” he said. His voice was still a little strained, not yet fully recovered from his come-down. “I do believe you said something about not finishing like schoolboys?” Goodsir stopped his movements at that, searching Stephen’s face. “If you’d be so good as to get back up here, I believe such a goal could be accomplished.”
A flush spread over Goodsir’s face. Why the man was embarrassed now, Stephen didn’t know.
Shakily, he made his feet, and Stephen helped him re-straddle his lap. Almost immediately, Goodsir tucked his face into the joint of Stephen’s neck, hiding it there like some frightened animal. His soft breath tickled Stanley’s skin, puffs of hot air intentionally slowed as Goodsir attempted to steady his breathing.
Stanley wrapped an arm around Goodsir’s back, almost protective, running up the man’s back, hand cradling his head, holding him steady. A small whine escaped Goodsir’s mouth, pressed as it was into Stephen’s shoulder. Stephen hummed in response, sliding a hand between Goodsir’s legs to still his squirming.
A light gasp, a whimper, as Stanley’s free hand undid the flap of the anatomist’s trousers, gently taking him in hand. Stephen’s hands were rougher, he knew—not calloused, but not soft, either—and he took extra care with the boy quivering atop him, touching him with no less experienced precision than he himself had touched. Goodsir had only managed to get closer, pressing their chests together, searching for warmth. Stephen humored him, pulling him closer, gently tugging at the locks of dark hair at the nape of his neck. It was uncharacteristically charitable of him, he knew, uncharacteristically soft.
“Stephen.”
He started at the sound of his Christian name, but made no move to reprimand his assistant. To think he hadn’t heard his own name in months, only to have it sitting in the air like the boy on his lap made their situation all the more intimate.
“Harry.” He felt out the shape of it, foreign in his mouth, tasting each syllable. Goodsir’s hips stuttered and he began to squirm, shifting his weight as if in pain. “Oh, you don’t want to be preyed upon at all, do you, Harry?” Stephen let his voice grow deep, knowing well Goodsir could feel it from his position against his chest. “You want me to be gentle with you.”
Goodsir emitted something like a sob, his fingers clinging desperately to the back of Stephen’s waistcoat, twisting in the fabric. His thighs shook, bracketed as they were over Stanley’s, and Stephen forced them open wider, making him keen and rock forward, trying to find more friction in the linen of Stanley’s vest. Stephen adjusted his position, letting the head of the boy’s cock but against his stomach, earning several gasps in return.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, please.” Goodsir’s voice had become a whine, and Stephen couldn’t help but enjoy his begging.
Suddenly, it wasn’t enough. The heat and the closeness had all wrapped up into a ball of desire that grew in the pit of Stanley’s stomach—-not for his own release, now, but to watch that of his assistant, to see him, to look at the damp curls framing a head fallen to the side in pleasure, to know the exact way his face contorted as he spilled over the edge. I want to see you. No, not a want. A need.
He slowed his pace on Harry’s cock, letting his hand return to administering long strokes, teasing. Harry pulled his face away from Stanley’s shoulder, and finally, finally, Stanley could get a good look at the flushed skin and glassy, unfocussed eyes.
“Why are you stopping?” Even Goodsir’s arms trembled where they pushed against Stephen’s shoulders to hold him up.
“I am not stopping, Mr. Goodsir, but if I am to know you, I must be able to see you.”
Goodsir frowned, clearly uncomprehending. “Please call me Harry,” he whispered.
Stephen sighed. “I am going to move you, Harry, to the table, where I will splay you out like all my other birds. And given how I know your inability to keep still, I will pin you there.”
Goodsir’s eyes widened, face struck dumb, and Stanley used the opportunity to stand, lifting them both from the chair with Harry’s legs wrapped around his waist.
It shouldn’t have surprised him, how easy it was to lift his assistant, given the man’s frame. But oh, oh, it really was no trouble at all, and Stephen pivoted to set the man on the desk behind them.
Goodsir laid back on the table, chest rising and falling erratically. Stephen admired him a moment, like he might any one of the specimens he dissected, before resting his hands at either side of the man’s waist.
“Now, let’s see what we have.” Somehow, he kept his voice steady, watching his assistant’s pupils dilate, his normal tone of voice taking on a new meaning now, and he knew Goodsir would never be able to listen to his droll comments again without thinking of cold wood under his back and a dull ache in his prick.
Slowly, gently, he unfastened each button of Goodsir’s waistcoat, feigning boredom with the task. It was his turn, now, to do, and he was giddy with it. His turn, now, to undo.
He splayed out the fabric, letting it rest on either side of Goodsir’s chest. A parallel sight, if he looked over, to the bird sitting only half a desk away. He stroked Harry’s sides, watching Harry watching him, impatiently, needing stimulation between his legs rather than at his chest. One of Harry’s hands came to grasp Stephen’s wrist, pulling, and he stared down, unimpressed.
“Doctor, I think we’re past the point of—”
But Stanley didn’t let him finish, taking each of Goodsir’s wrists and pinning them above his head with a hand, enjoying the pretty way Goodsir’s spine arched off the table at the implication.
He leaned down, letting his body hover above that of his assistant, creating just enough room to make rutting against him difficult. He let his breath tickle Goodsir’s ear. “Stephen.”
His free hand rucked up Harry’s shirt, exposing his chest to the cool air of the cabin, and he dipped down, pressing his mouth hungrily to the flushed skin. His teeth grazed lightly over a pectoral, and Harry’s legs squeezed around his waist. He indulged, sucking a deep bruise into the skin above Harry’s stomach, basking in the short, repetitive moans coming from above him. He lowered his hips, letting Goodsir rock against him to find relief.
He continued downwards, pressing kisses to Harry’s stomach, nipping at the soft skin at his sides, pressing his lips to hip-bone. Harry’s wrists strained from where Stephen had him pinned, and he could almost imagine the man against the dark velvet of a display box, arms pinned above him, legs pinned open.
“Grinding against linen must be somewhat abrasive, yes?” His voice had taken on a hoarse quality, strained. “Wouldn’t it be nicer to have something else?” He let his free hand fall to Harry’s cock, rubbing small circles into the sensitive flesh below the glans. Harry’s mouth fell open, but before he could moan, Stephen was on him, muffling him with a searing kiss.
Harry’s back had come up off the table, stomach pressing into Stanley’s own, arms twitching above him. Stephen fluttered his eyes open to watch his assistant in the throes of pleasure, looking down, vision obscured by their closeness, at the way their bodies pressed together, at his hand stroking along Goodsir’s shaft, slowly picking up speed, only to make Harry whine into his mouth, high pitched and wanting.
He was a hawk, a falcon, devouring the man beneath him. He could feel Harry beneath him growing close to his crisis and moved again to the space at Harry’s ear.
“Be a good bird now, Harry. Sing for me.”
The anatomist folded forward, and Stephen released his hands, letting him move so his noises were muffled by Stephen’s waistcoat. He clung there, burying his face into Stephen’s chest, gasping, releasing a few weary, overstimulated sobs into the fabric. His ejaculate smeared hot across Stanley’s hand, and Stephen picked up a rag to clean them both. He stared down at it a moment—a rag meant for the blood of the bird, now covered in other bodily fluids.
Harry twitched at the contact of the cloth against his oversensitive prick. Stanley only rubbed his back, helping him into a sitting position. Harry’s legs dropped from their place around his waist. He carded his fingers absentmindedly through the man’s hair, helping him relax.
They stayed that way, a stillness settling over them. Harry’s arms relaxed, no longer clinging, hanging loosely around Stephen’s frame. His head still rested against Stanley’s shoulder, and Stephen let it, soothed by his own repetitive movements stroking Harry’s scalp.
When Harry finally moved away, Stephen felt almost bereft. The anatomist straightened himself out, re-buttoning his waistcoat and smoothing out the fabric of his trousers like nothing had happened at all.
Stephen swallowed. Then he, too, righted himself, shaking off any lingering emotion, face returning to its usual mask. He glanced over, watching Goodsir begin to clean his desk of its research. Harry looked back at him, smiling, teasing once more.
“Well,” he sucked in a breath. “That was a particularly enlightening study. I do so look forward to future…endeavors.”
Stanley gaped at his boldness, and Goodsir stepped out, flitting out the door as if he had somewhere to be, leaving Stanley to pick his discarded cravat off the ground, tying it in place without even so much as the assistance of a mirror.
He stared down at the desk with its papers and pencil shoved hastily aside, scalpel gleaming at the edge opposite of where Goodsir’s body had just been.
Only the tern stared back.