Work Text:
The wind, which had been light on Sheppard's flight from the covert, changed character as he walked the snow-heavy streets of Liverpool township. Winter had come early, claiming October and everything after with a greed grown unbecoming, slowing trade and limiting the maneuvers that any squadron of dragons might attempt above the chill sea. Snow fell in limitless quantity – Sheppard's coarsest trousers, wool lined with silk to repel the frigid consequence of flight, were quickly soaked as he walked his route, toes become ice within the leather of his boots.
It was, by grace, a short distance he traveled – from the port's main square to the darkened door of a sturdy townhouse, some fifty years weathered, built of brick against the salt and heat and wind and frost. The steps had not been cleared, and Sheppard swore within the folds of his muffler, climbed them with caution, wondered what help McKay retained that such small considerations were ignored when guests were due. He rapped at the door with the iron fixture so provided, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat, a ill-behaved wind blowing devilment about him. Sheppard thought of Alaida, the young Greyling who had flown him hence – he hoped for her swift flight home, and took comfort, again, in Tripudio's refusal to fly him hither. "I would hardly fit in the confines of Liverpool square," she had told him, "and am not needed for the particular business you undertake." Her eyebrow had arched – there was mischief in her smile. "I would rather stay here with a book, if you please, and Alaida does not mind the snow." She lowered her head and rubbed her snout against his temple. "Do enjoy yourself," she had murmured, rumbling happily when his ears turned pink.
Sheppard's mind was called back from its aimless wandering by a clattering and commotion from within the house. Hurried footfalls collided with some crash of pottery, and moments after curses were spiritedly aired, the door was pulled inward. Sheppard smiled to see McKay's expressively irritated face.
"Well, come in, come in," McKay said, gesturing urgently, "before the frozen hellhounds of winter follow you and extinguish every fire I have kindled in the house."
"You have kindled?" Sheppard asked, stepping into the crooked hallway and removing his hat, shaking snow upon McKay's well-trodden rug. A broken vase lay further down the hall.
McKay pushed the door closed and turned a key in its lock. "Indeed. The servants have been dismissed to, uh – " He coughed, and folded his hands behind his back. "Spend Christmas with their families," he finished. He squared his shoulders, as though expecting disagreement, as though Sheppard himself might protest the propriety of them being alone.
"Indeed," Sheppard smiled. "Compliments of the season."
"Yes, yes, well, it seemed, perhaps, prudent," McKay answered, and tugged at Sheppard's muffler. "You are indecently clad for this weather, and quite soaked through – come, remove your coat, hang it – I have pegs . . ."
"Rodney," Sheppard murmured, and with his heart still twisting as though this were new, leaned to press his lips against McKay's agile mouth. McKay stilled, hands caught in the wool at Sheppard's throat, and when they parted, he looked at his shoes.
"I am most . . ." he began.
"As am I," Sheppard whispered, and McKay looked up at him with a dazed and chagrined smile.
"We should make our way upstairs," McKay offered. "I have – " He paused, searching Sheppard's face – for what, John knew not, though the trembling in his hands and the sudden tightening of his stomach were perhaps some part of what his countenance betrayed. "The fire is largest there," McKay said carefully. "I have food, and drink, and you might warm yourself."
Sheppard's breath escaped on a barest hint of laughter. "Forgive me," he said, rubbing the knuckles of one gloved hand between his brows. "It is not – " He shook his head. "I am of some years to be so inexperienced in . . . "
McKay huffed, and Sheppard's cheeks warmed. "If you believe me to care whether . . ."
"No." Sheppard shook his head. "I merely feel as I did before I first took flight." He pulled in breath. "Anticipation, glad want, and yet a head of nerves that – "
McKay took his right hand, pulled off his glove and linked their fingers. "We are more than equal to this task," he said decisively, and pulled Sheppard toward the stairs.
McKay's rooms within the home he had inherited from his father possessed a south-eastern aspect, and Sheppard could see whitecaps out beyond the harbour, whipped into a fury by the drawing storm. Snow had gathered in the corner of each windowpane, a dozen drifts to beguile the eye, and Sheppard shivered to think of vessels still drifting out in the frigid reaches of the north.
"The fire," McKay chided, steering him away from the windows with a firm grip upon his elbow. "I do not mean to spend the next three days nursing you through a cold."
Sheppard nodded, smiled, fumbled with the buttons on his coat and shrugged it loose. "I confess that is not my wish." He pulled at his necktie, damp despite the protective efforts of his muffler. "There was no hint of this wind when first I left."
McKay poured red wine into non-descript tumblers. "This is not your first encounter with maritime climates," he chided. "An oilcloth coat, such as the merchants wear, would – "
" – be a most unusual choice for an officer in His Majesty's Aerial Corps," Sheppard said, accepting wine.
"Indeed, and yet – "
"I shall procure said coat when you agree that I am your superior in matters of chess," Sheppard offered, sipping from his glass.
McKay gaped.
"'The first to reach thirty-one' is not a usual measure of victory," Sheppard teased.
"Scoundrel," McKay said, and swallowed a fortifying gulp of the contraband French wine he had secured by means as yet made unclear. "A head of nerves, you claim, and yet here you stand, tongue sharpened thus!"
Sheppard hung his necktie over the arm of a serviceable chair. "You have my trust," he said simply.
"Oh." McKay's bluster died swiftly, and he hesitated for a moment, set down his glass and shook his head. "And you mine, of course, of course, and the measure of your wit, a defense against – indeed, I am shamefully dull this afternoon that I should . . ." He crossed to where Sheppard stood in front of the fire, gently raised a hand to touch his cheek. "Forgive me."
"There is nothing – "
"We are both in possession of a nervous constitution," McKay said, laughing a little.
"You?" Sheppard asked, surprise a sudden warmth within his chest.
"I would have this be memorable," McKay murmured, serious now. "I would have you be glad that you came here, that we drew together, that – "
Sheppard turned his head toward the pressure of McKay's broad hand, closed his eyes. "I beg only," he managed at last, ashamed that his voice was unsteady, "your patience."
"You have it," McKay whispered, kissing his forehead. "John, I fear you do not understand how great my – "
"There has only been mine own hand," Sheppard blurted, his deepest secret, and his face – his neck, his chest – flushed with heat. He opened his eyes, jaw clenched, anticipating rejection, but McKay's brow was creased in consideration, not disgust.
"Not even a penny whore?" he asked.
Sheppard shook his head.
McKay blew out a breath. "I have long known you to be a gentleman," he said, "but I knew not the depth of your devotion to that end."
Sheppard blinked, then found himself possessed by laughter, leaning in to meet McKay's kiss with a gladdened heart. McKay relieved him of his wine glass, kissed him warmly, lazily, kisses that spoke of the hours they might waste. "Thank the good Lord in heaven for his birth, and all festivities devised because of such by mankind," McKay murmured, grazing Sheppard's jaw with his teeth. He pressed a hand to Sheppard's chest, encouraged him by touch and word to sit amid the comfort of a wingback chair by the fire. "Your boots, sir, will be ruined if we do not remove them."
"I am able – " Sheppard offered, but McKay's raised eyebrow was prohibition clearly meant.
"Sit," he ordered, kneeling, and Sheppard felt his breath depart as his foot was lifted and his boot eased free. He swallowed and shifted, firming beneath even this prosaic touch, McKay's hands at his ankle, fingers curling to remove his winter stocking in order that it might be hung by the fire.
"Rodney?" he asked, but received no answer save a bowed head, hands removing his other boot, gently baring his toes. Sheppard moved again, uncomfortable, the placket of his breeches grown suddenly too small. How humbling, to be thus reduced, to want Rodney's mouth, his hands, with such consuming force. "Rodney." His voice pitched and shook.
Rodney rested his forehead against John's knee, thumbed the seam at his thigh. "How frequently I have thought of this," he murmured, fingertips grazing fabric, lighting the kindling of the skin beneath. "How deeply I have wanted – " He looked up, cupped John gently, exerted pressure enough to tease, and yet – John seized, voice breaking in surprise, his hips pressing upward into the knowing temptation of Rodney's touch. And oh, oh, so different, so new, this heat and need that was nothing, nothing like the inexpert drag of his own desperate hand. Dazed, undone, he reached for Rodney's shoulder, settled only when Rodney gentled him with a kiss. "First flush," Rodney murmured, and John closed his eyes against words made fond. "Now we may take our time, discover one another."
John shivered, head to toe, and leaned forward into Rodney's embrace.
*****
They slept some hours later, in tangled sheets made damp by sweat. The fire was stoked and quilts piled atop the bed, yet the greater share of warmth in which they dwelled was drawn from the comfort of each other's body. In sleep they touched yet, limbs entwined, John's head pillowed cautiously on Rodney's broad shoulder, cheek a penance and benediction both, pressed to a silvering scar. Their mutual solitude was a marvel that followed John into dreams, marking him with the ache of fragile belonging. To exist undisturbed, to breathe in the scent of another's skin, to sleep side by side – these were December's unexpected gifts.
Come morning, he roused himself to touch, to skim his hand across the planes of Rodney's body while the latter yet lingered in sleep. Slumber afford privacy, and protected thus he might risk such exploration, learn the reach of a dozen stubborn angles despite the hammering of his unburdened heart. The close, gentle gray of that storm-filled morning provided light enough to see the hair upon Rodney's chest, to marvel at the tightening of flesh beneath his hand, to bend and replace fingertip with lips and tongue.
Rodney murmured above him, raised a hand to his hair. "You rise early," he whispered, voice rough and low.
John rubbed his cheek against Rodney's shoulder, felt the texture of his stubble meeting skin over bone. "Early, that it might be often," he suggested, and he did not kiss Rodney's mouth, lest wine and cheese and bread had left their taste, but bent his lips to ear and throat and collarbone, tasted salt on Rodney's sleep-warm skin.
"What have I unleashed?" Rodney asked, hips shifting, itinerant fingers in John's unkempt hair.
"My fealty," John whispered, suddenly sure. "My courage," he said, and shifted to mimic Rodney's evening sprawl, body atop body, arousal matched.
"And my heart," Rodney gasped in confession, hips lifting as John pressed down. "Dear god, come close."
Yet it seemed to John there was no serving Rodney's wish, no means to meld their bodies closer than they had. Thigh grazed thigh, hip met hip, and in the slide of John's hand was a pleasure and a trembling, an ozone scent of the storm within them both. They moved with strange assurance, a dance that spoke nothing of courtesy and rank, but of strength and muscle, sweat and risk. "I am yours," John managed, arms aching with possession. "I am yours," and Rodney arched beneath him, spilling with a cry.
Their breath did not calm for some time after, and John's eyes fell closed as he lay at Rodney's side.
"I wish," Rodney said, and his voice was near, "that this might be our measure, always."
John wet his dry lips and lifted his head. "It will," he said.
"Not such a morning," Rodney countered, and his face seemed strangely pale. "Not every day, nor every evening."
"But more than were gifted in our solitude," John murmured. He shifted to his hip, leaned over Rodney's pink-flushed skin. "I will not mourn your absence when you lie here with me now."
Rodney's eyes closed, and he breathed a moment, opened them again. "What other wisdom do you have to share with weaker mortals this Christmas morning?"
John made a show of careful thought. "That sons of traders must surely have more sheets," he suggested, "if they are in the habit of debauching captains. The quality of these linens is much to be decried."
Rodney stared at him a moment, then laughed incredulously, pulling him down to kiss him, heedless of ill-taste. "I believe I have linens," he whispered, fingers climbing John's bare spine. "But it is cold, and I have no appetite for freezing."
"Move swiftly, and I promise to thaw whatever chills," John smiled.
"Scoundrel," Rodney murmured, clearly amused.
"At your service," John replied, and substituted kisses for the honor of a salute.