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It was dark by the time they pulled into the carport. As Jeff killed the engine and opened the door, the headlights went out. It had been a long drive from Bangkok. It had been a whole ordeal, getting Jeff away from his cats, getting him to believe that they would be looked after properly by the cat-sitter. Needless to say they left later than planned. Barcode was half awake as he slid out of the passenger seat into a sleepy gait. He stretched his legs as he wandered over to the edge of the road, cut directly into the hillside.
The mansion was halfway up a mountain.
It was dark out here. No street lights. He only understood the arms of the mountain that held the valley by the dots of lights from houses below.
The glow of light pollution from the direction of the city was still visible. A soft hum of color on the horizon. The sky glittered with stars.
Jeff wandered up behind Barcode and slid his arms around him to hug him from behind. He rested his chin on Barcode's shoulder.
"I don't want to unload the car," Jeff confessed.
"We could just get the things we need and unload the rest tomorrow," Barcode suggested.
"You're a horrible enabler, little bird," Jeff quipped.
Barcode leaned back against his boyfriend, letting his head drop back onto Jeff's shoulder. "What are the things we need?"
"Toiletries," Jeff cited, "And I'll feel guilty if I don't bring at least one of the guitars inside."
"What about something to sleep in?" Barcode offered.
"I don't think I'll be needing that."
Jeff was incredibly particular - about never, ever, skipping out on brushing his teeth.
It turned out the toiletries were buried in a bag at the bottom of the trunk, under several other bags.
Barcode made a show of how many he could carry in a single trip. He'd been working out. He was more cut than Jeff. He liked to remind Jeff of this often.
He had two backpacks, two duffel bags, and a suitcase.
Jeff had two guitar cases.
They walked up to the house together. There was a locked gate, and beyond, a keypad at the door. Barcode huffed as he dropped their bags in the entryway. Maybe he'd overdone it a little. He was winded now.
Jeff circled the room looking for light switches.
Barcode followed after him as he started turning on lights in the sprawling mansion. It appeared to be mostly one level, raised above the earth slightly on stilts - everything was sleek and modern. Barcode could still see the dotting of houses through the windows overlooking the valley. They lined the entire face of the house.
They found the kitchen. A 'Welcome' basket had been left for Jeff. A few bottles of alcohol, candles, a card with the WiFi information on it, several boxes of guitar picks… And as Jeff went through it, Barcode recognized other things tailored to a singer-songwriter. There were a few boxes of tea, an expensive-seeming jar of honey, lots of ginger. These were things to help Jeff's voice. He'd brought his own set of tinctures for throat care, too.
(His boyfriend-senses were tingling, interest piqued. Barcode would absolutely be making himself useful by regularly preparing tea for Jeff.)
"Extra amp cables…" Jeff noted, a touch amused, "My manager will never let me forget about the time I only brought one to a gig and accidentally bent the jack after two songs…"
Jeff stopped turning over the box of guitar picks and sat it down on the counter.
"I could use a shower," Jeff said, "Want to help me find it?"
He liked sitting in the bathroom with Jeff when he showered. Whether he was aware of it or not, Jeff always hummed while he washed. The way his voice echoed in the bathroom - he made the room sound like something holy, something made for singing in.
But as soon as he saw how big the shower was, Barcode started undressing, too.
He liked washing Jeff's hair for him, liked the way Jeff would close his eyes reverently while Barcode ran soapy hands over his skin…
They were both exhausted, holding each other under the warm spray. Lazy, trailing touches.
Wrapped up in towels, they found a bedroom to retire to.
Damp marks were left in the sheets as they entangled, still dripping, as they started kissing.
And kept kissing.
Barcode found a second wind. He urged Jeff on top of him, slotted between his legs. He sunk his teeth into Jeff's lower lip, wordlessly leading him into the simmering heat they always found a way to build together at the end of long, exhausting days.
Jeff got the memo. He always did.
Barcode was ready to welcome the end of the day this way, with Jeff moaning into the curve of his shoulder, dick pressing into his palm, dragging Jeff over the edge with his fingers.
Jeff had other ideas, apparently.
"Hold that thought," Jeff requested against his ear.
He slid out of bed, and headed back to the bathroom.
He returned a minute later. Barcode felt the mattress dip as he climbed back into the bed.
"Turn over for me?" Jeff requested.
Barcode obliged.
Attentive hands eased his legs apart as Jeff settled between his thighs.
"Told you I needed the toiletries," Jeff said softly, running the backs of his knuckles down Barcode's spine, making him shudder.
"I didn't disagree with that," Barcode pointed out, "I said we needed clothes to sleep in and you disagreed."
"I'm going to fuck you in every room in this house before our time here is up," Jeff vowed. His hand inched under Barcode's thigh, to rest flat, sandwiched between the sheets and his hip. He pressed a kiss to Barcode's ass cheek. With his other hand he spread him open.
The realization that he had not heard Jeff pop the cap on the lube he'd just gone to retrieve was a bit delayed. Because it was not a slicked up finger, but Jeff's tongue, that landed flat against his entrance.
A sharp intake of breath, surprised and shocked. He tried to squirm away from the contact, almost involuntarily, but the firm hand on his hip countered the movement. Jeff had him pinned.
"P'Jeff?" he asked.
Jeff only hummed in acknowledgement, which Barcode felt as much as he heard.
Jeff flicked his tongue. Barcode whimpered.
Jeff lifted off to say, "Relax. I've got you."
Easier said than done. Barcode focused on untensing his shoulders as Jeff drew a line with the tip of his tongue, wet and warm.
Barcode heard him moan.
He knew couples did this. He and Jeff had done plenty of less than vanilla things, especially through the filming of Happy Ending with Jeff's cursed notions of method acting. But he'd always assumed this to be an act of service. And Jeff sounded like he liked it.
His hand urged Barcode's hips back into it as he pressed in with his tongue. A confused and desperate moan escaped Barcode's lips.
His hands tangled in the pillowcase as he rutted against the sheets. Jeff soon had him pliant and needy, melting under his touch - as if his body had never known tension.
He was on the verge of begging Jeff to use his dick when he heard the cap on the lube, finally. Jeff pressed kisses up Barcode's spine as he eased his fingers in.
It was too much teasing. The next sound that tumbled out of his mouth was nearing a complaint. He was afraid to find out what Jeff might do if he caught wind of how desperate he was.
As Jeff leaned over him, pressing kisses between his shoulder blades, he said, "My jaw hurts… I didn't realize how much of a workout that would be. My manager won't be too happy with you if she finds out you're the reason I can't sing tomorrow…"
Barcode opened his mouth to argue that he hadn't asked for any of this, but then he felt the tip of Jeff's dick against his ass.
Jeff could be so indulgent sometimes. He fucked Barcode slow and gentle, moaning low and long, finally finding some pleasure for himself instead of dragging it from Barcode until he was on the edge of sobbing. Barcode could hear the relief in his voice.
"I've hit a bit of a dry spell," Jeff whispered, thrusting into him hard enough enough that the bed creaked under their shared weight. He covered Barcode's hands with his own on the pillowcase as he buried himself all the way inside his boyfriend, nudging into the edge of bottoming out. Barcode was breathless, full, pinned down. His lips wordlessly formed Jeff's name as a spark of pleasure ignited. His eyes screwed shut.
"You know I never shut up. Ever," Jeff continued, "But somehow… I'm all out of words. Lyrics won't seem to come to me. So of course it's now that they want me to write twelve songs in two weeks. And then some, so they can tell me they hate a few of them."
"What are you saying?" Barcode whimpered.
"Could I borrow you for a few days?" Jeff begged, "Be my muse again, little bird."
As if Jeff had not just driven him for hours, to the middle of fucking nowhere, where they would stay, locked in a mansion for two weeks.
As if Barcode would let anyone else take the title.
"I'll see if I can pencil you in," Barcode offered deliriously.
He felt a warm puff of breath against his skin as Jeff laughed.
"Is that what this is?" Barcode asked.
"I wanted to fuck you like a rockstar," Jeff explained. His forehead landed against Barcode's back.
Barcode could feel the trails of his hair feathering against his sweat-damp skin. Jeff was finally growing it long again after a few years of keeping it short.
Barcode did not have the faintest idea what Jeff was talking about.
Jeff already was a rockstar.
And they were very much fucking.
Right now, in fact. Jeff was giving it to him so good.
"Listen to you," Jeff praised.
"Don't stop," Barcode begged, "P'Jeff, please…"
He was so close, so full, he couldn't breathe. He could feel Jeff's breath against his skin, coming out hard enough there was enough breath for both of them.
"I've got you," Jeff vowed again.
He let Jeff pull him back into the shower briefly, to clean up.
Barcode, too, felt emptied out of words. Jeff had taken them from him. He leaned against Jeff's side while Jeff brushed his teeth. They hadn't been able to find the fan in the bathroom. The mirror was powdery with steam from the shower. Barcode could feel the vibrations of Jeff's electric toothbrush, through his temple, where it rested on Jeff's shoulder.
Spend and lube were still oozing out of him every time he moved too suddenly. No amount of trying to address it would make it stop. Best to just let it come out on its own. Jeff pulled him back into bed, stringing minty fresh kisses all over him.
He almost fell asleep that way, laying in the dark with Jeff 's arm wrapped around his middle.
"Are you still awake?" Jeff asked quietly.
Barcode hummed.
"Barcode, if you wanted to get married… you know I would do it, right?"
Maybe he had dreamed it. He blinked the sleepy feeling from his eyes, and turned in Jeff's arms.
"Is this about finding things to write songs about?" Barcode asked.
"No."
"…I taste that good, huh?"
He heard Jeff let out a breath of a laugh, then complain, "I'm being serious."
It had taken him a long time to understand the way that Jeff thought about things - carefully, seriously, honestly.
His confessions never sounded like confessions, because his decision-making was so linear. By the time he said things out loud, he'd cataloged every pro and every con, and knew in his heart, what he wanted.
Him saying this now...
"I'm sorry. That's not romantic, is it?" Jeff asked, "To say it like that?"
Barcode leaned in to bring their lips together.
"If it was anyone else, I might say it's not," Barcode said, "But coming from you, it is."
Jeff hummed thoughtfully at this. "Thank you for always understanding me," he said.
"I try," Barcode promised.
"I really… would do anything for you, little bird."
Barcode woke up strangely early.
It had been dark when they arrived last night. He hadn't realized they'd left the shades up on the windows. Dawn flooded the room, bright against mountainside.
He pulled on the pants he'd been wearing the day before, and Jeff's t-shirt, and went out to the car to get the rest of their bags.
Jeff never trusted places like this to have the kind of coffee he liked. He always brought his own - an instant coffee he'd grown up drinking because his mother liked it. He drank it with a straw, so it wouldn't stain his teeth.
Barcode fished some of the coffee out of Jeff's bag and made two cups, one with the straw.
By the time he had figured out how to boil water on the particularly odd electric stove top, Jeff was up, too.
"Woke up and you were gone," Jeff said, pulling him into a hug. He buried his face in Barcode's chest and inhaled, "Thought you'd ditched me for the city..."
"That sounds like song lyrics," Barcode nodded.
Jeff groaned.
"I brought the rest of your guitars in. I left them in the front room… not sure where you want to set up."
"I'm not sure either," Jeff complained, "Coffee first."
Barcode hummed in agreement.
There was a deck that wrapped around the side of the house that overlooked the valley. They wandered outside together to drink their coffee and check out the view now that it was day.
"Have you thought any more about my offer?" Jeff asked.
"Offer?" Barcode asked.
Had Jeff been proposing last night? It had felt more like speculation than proposition... But it was hard to tell with Jeff sometimes.
"Moving in together," Jeff explained, not shy about it.
"Oh… I still don't know what I'm supposed to tell my mom."
"I told you I don't mind telling her we're just roommates," Jeff reminded, "We've been friends for a long time. I think she'd buy it. If anything it might be less suspicious than how often you sleep over now…"
Barcode sipped his coffee and the sound of his lips against the rim pulling in air and coffee in unison was almost loud, like the forest beyond the handrail was holding its breath, hanging on what he was about to say next just as much as Jeff was.
"Friends…" Barcode echoed, heart fluttering as he remembered the places Jeff's tongue had been last night, paired with the stare Jeff was hitting him with.
They'd used that word, friends, to hurt each other once. Now it was almost a joke.
Just friends.
"My mom said she would help. If you wanted the four of us to meet to discuss it together…" Jeff continued, as if Barcode was not perfectly capable of remembering every detail of their previous conversation on this topic, "Maybe hearing that my parents are okay with it would help things."
Barcode set his mug on the railing and sighed. "P'Jeff… Why are you asking about this stuff now?"
"Well, I'm older than you," Jeff said, continuing to summarize, "It's less of a big deal, what I do now, where things are in my career. I know it's different for you. I'd be okay with keeping it a secret."
There were times, often, where their wants did not perfectly align. This felt different, though. Barcode sensed it was something else.
"What would it change?" Barcode asked, "Moving in together?"
"Maybe nothing... You know how I am. I just like everything in a nice neat line."
It was the same for Barcode, as Jeff had said the night before. He'd do anything for Jeff. Honestly.
They'd gotten in arguments over it enough times now. He'd nearly trained Jeff to just speak his mind instead of keeping it to himself, weighing all those pros and cons, until he was spiraling.
Though, Barcode was just as bad when it came to this…
"This is my third album…" Jeff offered, "We survived me touring the second. It just feels like… everything is coming together now. I realized it when I wanted to bring you here with me. I wasn't worried you would interfere with my creative process. There's no one else in my life I feel that way about… So, you're starting to feel out of line."
"That sounds like lyrics," Barcode said, blushing.
"I'm being serious," Jeff hedged.
"And you said you wanted me to be your muse for a few days," Barcode reminded.
When Jeff still had not picked up a guitar to start noodling around and warming up his hands and voice by noon, Barcode reached for one himself.
Technically, he'd brought a script he was supposed to be studying. His plans had been to make himself scarce while Jeff found some room to pour his heart out in.
He decided to explore the rest of the house. There was another large bedroom on the far end that had its own bathroom. He pulled the soft case off the guitar and started tuning it with the app on his phone.
By the time he was warmed up, strumming easy chords from a song he remembered without looking it up, Jeff had found him.
When Barcode glanced up, Jeff was snapping pictures of him bent over the guitar on the floor on his phone.
Jeff glanced out the door, at the bedroom tucked away behind him.
"We should sleep in here tonight," Jeff said, "Looks nice."
"Sleep?" Barcode asked, raising an eyebrow.
"And other things," Jeff said, sliding his phone back into his pocket. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. "Which one of us is writing a record, by the way?"
"Ah, sorry…" Barcode said, de-positioning the guitar and holding it out to try to tempt Jeff into taking it.
"No. Don't stop," Jeff commanded.
Barcode hesitantly re-situated the guitar in his arms. "Come sit with me, Phi…"
Jeff obliged, wandering across the small room and sitting cross-legged across from Barcode on the floor.
"I was thinking… I love the way your voice sounds when you sing in the shower. Bathrooms have such nice acoustics…" Barcode explained.
"They do," Jeff agreed.
"Do you remember what the first song was? That made you want to be a musician, Phi?"
"Why don't you want to marry me?" Jeff asked back.
Barcode went offline.
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable.
When his soul had returned to his body he was quick to defend himself: "It's not that I don't," Barcode promised, "There was a day once I might have fainted at the though of you even saying those words to me…"
"Was?" Jeff hedged, "Once?"
Barcode's fingers dropped from the fret board. He watched Jeff's eyes track the motion. He was frowning, genuinely upset about the topic he'd thrust upon a room too small to hold its echoes.
Bathrooms were not designed for these kinds of conversations.
Even in mansions like this one.
"P'Jeff… I'll ask you again: Do you remember what the first song was? That made you want to be a musician?"
He watched Jeff's lips part, to argue.
"That feels like a question I should be able to answer about my husband," Barcode cut in, "I already know that I'm going to marry you… I can't picture it being anyone else. So what's the rush? You have a record to write. I won't get in the way of your career. It's too important to me."
Jeff blinked, caught off guard. His mouth opened and closed a few times.
Barcode couldn't help but smile as he sputtered.
"Would you let me… cage you?" Jeff asked.
"Phi… if you don't start writing these lyrics down, I'm going to have to do it for you."
Jeff still looked a little stricken.
"Do my remembering for me, then," Jeff requested, "I'm entrusting you."
Barcode nodded diligently.
And the thing was: Jeff had packed guitars - and at his manager's request, amp cables - but somehow, neither of them had brought any fucking paper. And there was none in the house. They looked together for a bit, and ended up fucking on a sofa in one of the spare rooms. Jeff was still weirdly emotional. Barcode could feel glimpses of it, with Jeff kissing him every few seconds… There was nothing "rockstar" about it, despite his claims the night before.
They made tea together afterwards, for Jeff's throat.
"P'Jeff, remember the wrapper you kept from that water bottle we bought together in South Korea? The one you keep beside the mirror at your front door?"
It was Barcode's idea, then, post-nut-clarity, perhaps: to unfold the cardboard boxes that held the tea and the guitar picks, and the backside of the honey wrapper from the gift basket.
They both had loose receipts in their bags, too. Together they came up with enough paper-like surfaces for a few songs. There were precisely two pens in the glove box of Jeff's car. One of them was completely dried out and unusable.
They started on the bathroom floor, at the far end of the house, overlooking the valley.
Jeff played for Barcode, the first songs he had ever learned. He played them through enough times that Barcode could hum along on the choruses.
"Even if I was in a room without echoes, I'd still have you," Jeff noted, in between songs, "We could get a house like this. Something outside the city. I could meet you out here. A place that's just for us… No one has to know. Would you like that better?"
"A windowsill for me to fly to," Barcode supposed.
That felt like less of a big deal, somehow. It wasn't him encroaching on Jeff's place. It wasn't committing to an apartment together. It was… something more distant, more suited to who they were, and where they were.
And Jeff needed to get out of the city. His lifestyle was going to send him to an early grave if they didn't start doing something about his stress levels.
Jeff's expression softened. He looked at peace for the first time since they'd woken up. "That sounds an awful lot like lyrics, Code" he noted.
Barcode watched him pick up the pen and write something down, in the tiniest script possible to save paper space.
"As your muse, I guess I'll allow it..." Barcode said, watching him struggle, ballpoint pen faltering against receipt paper on a tile floor, then, "Thank you for always understanding me, P'Jeff..."
"I try," Jeff assured.
oh my talking bird
though you know so few words
they're on infinite repeat
like your brain can't keep up
with your beak
and you're kept in an open cage
so you're free to leave or stay
but sometimes you get confused
like there's a hint that i'm trying
to give you
the longer you think
the less you know what to do