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Jacob is a calm man. He is composed, reasonable, restrained. He repeats this to himself with every step he takes on the carpeted floor of that hotel hallway. It becomes a prayer, perhaps a distant promise to himself. The soles of his shoes leave marks on the yellowish fabric of the floor, rubbing against it, as Jacob swears it. He abandons, he promises himself, every lingering thought of violence. That merciless, dangerously stinging tingle that burns the palms of his hands has to be gone, by the time he knocks on that door.
He continues straight ahead, room 206 passes out of the corner of his eye, followed by 207. A fork in the hallway; he turns right, from 220 to 226, then again, two stairs to the left.
The door to room 237 looks just like all the others, part of an endless succession of walnut and brass that seems to repeat itself, turning back on itself to start all over again. He can hear his voice, even though the door is double-paned and well-made. He’s singing something, barely audible, whispering the words over the hum of what he imagines are his headphones. His voice, however faint, is invasive, intrusive, parasitic. It dissolves like water in the room’s damp air and condenses into it, falling like rain, forming a puddle on the floor, only to reach Jacob’s feet and soil his shoes, seeping in through the cracks in the door.
His anger, he realizes, as he allows himself a single second to listen to him in that peace, hasn’t gone away. On the other hand, now, even though he hasn’t even looked him in the face, it is forced to live with the incessant and uncontrollable sense of tenderness he feels toward the very same addressee.
Jacob never thought he could feel so much—and so absurdly contradictory—for the same man.
He knocks, four times in a row. Sam doesn’t seem to hear him, and frustration erodes the feigned politeness he’s forced himself to put on. He knocks harder; his knuckles ache against the varnished wood of the door. Once, twice, ten times. The eleventh knock is met with emptiness.
Sam stands before him, as his hand suspended mid-air, still clenched into a fist. He considers putting it to good use—striking his cheek, shattering the perfect curve of his nose. Then, he makes the sinful mistake of looking at him.
His hair is tied back; messy strands of honey-colored hair fall frizzily across his eyes, while others escape in stubborn curls from the elastic band holding it in place. His eyes are red, as if tears had smudged them. On his chest, a T-shirt bearing his own name, along with others. The shorts covering his legs, meanwhile, he recognizes as his own.
Sam pulls the headphones down from his ears, hanging them around his neck. He whispers something, which, in the regret of having spoken it, becomes incomprehensible to Jacob’s ears, then forces a smile that puffs out his bloodshot cheeks.
“Jake,” he stammers, in a clumsy attempt to appear unfazed by his presence. “Do you need anything?”
Jacob nods, slowly, unperturbed, as his gaze never strays from the other’s.
“Yes,” he says, with forced composure. “I need to know what the fuck your problem is.”
A nervous laugh escapes Sam’s lips, making his chest tremble. Jacob has to stop himself from reaching out to take the other man’s shaky hands, leaving them to the meager comfort of fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
“I don’t know what—”
He shoves him, pushing him away from the doorway to force his own way in, then closing the door behind them.
He allows himself a moment to look around. The room is a messy disaster of clothes and odds and ends. A mountain of used tissues piles up on the nightstand next to the mirror. It’s all so utterly uncharacteristic of Sam, just as the reason for his presence in that room is.
“Jake—”
“Rolin told me everything.”
Sam flinches, takes a step back, then braces himself against the bedframe.
“Everything?”
“He told me you don’t want to do interviews with me anymore. Is there anything else?”
He watches him lower his gaze, perhaps to hide the flush flooding his face with furious intensity. Even the skin beneath his light hair seems to flush with whatever he’s feeling at that moment.
“No,” he mutters, “there’s nothing else.”
“Christ,” Jacob laughs, his eyes stinging as he tries to condense his disappointment into that sound. “So it’s true?”
“I don't—” He watches him flounder, dangerously himself and yet fragile and uncertain in exposing himself to that storm. He watches him then retreat into the timid guise he wears for others, for the ravenous world eager to tear the flesh from his bones—a world made up of everyone except Jacob—never Jacob, not until that moment. It’s a smile, fragile yet unbearably dishonest. Jacob feels the taste of bile rising sourly from the pit of his stomach up to his windpipe. “It’s better for both of us, don’t you think? I’m not saying always, of course—we’d have more voice for our thoughts, more space for individuality—”
Jake pushes his palms hard against the soft flesh of his chest. Sam almost stumbles from the force.
“Will you cut the crap? Just tell me what the problem is!” he yells, though he doesn’t want to. He feels that anger taking over. So he fights it, swallows its thorns, trying to digest them without vomiting them up. It’s compassion that he tries to spread over the worn-out ground. “Sammy—it’s me. You can tell me if something’s wrong—it’s us, just us.”
Sam lets his hair down, doing it without thinking. Jacob knows what he’s going to do before he even looks at him. He starts playing with the locks, twisting the ends. He pulls a few strands up to his mouth to snap them off with his teeth.
“I—” he begins, then stops. He swallows, looks up, seeming to struggle with himself to find the right words. “I don't think you've been treating me fairly lately—you're always belittling me, you don't let me speak, you don't let me think. I think I'd be better off on my own, then.”
A merciless vice clamps its rusty teeth around the tattered fabric of his insides. Jacob feels the putrid blood filling his belly. Now it is he who steps back.
He looks at Sam; he can’t help himself. He looks at him with resigned horror and terrifying devotion. He looks at him and he sees it, finally—the crack in the wall.
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Don’t feed me bullshit, Sam—I’m not buying it. Tell me what the problem is, and spare me this crap before I lay my hands on you—”
“That’s the problem, I told you—”
“It isn’t, cut it out—”
“It is—look, you never listen to me.”
“Sam—cut it out, I won’t say it again—”
“It would be better for both of us, really—” “Sam—” “I could focus on Lestat, you could do the interviews with the others. With Del, maybe, with Moses, right?”
Oh.
Oh.
It’s warm, so very warm. That feeling of comfort mends everything within him that lies torn. It mingles, it unravels only to come together again, with that deep sense of tenderness that floods his senses until it overwhelms them, so that with every glance he can’t help but cast his way, Jacob feels the ground beneath his feet turn to liquid.
He laughs; his laughter holds the same warmth he feels in his stomach. It is calm, gentle. It is everything Jacob had promised himself he would be.
Sam’s face is puffed up with offense, unbearably agitated. A sweet pout forms mockingly among the lines of time that decorate his lips.
“Are you jealous of Moses, is that it?”
“No,” he spits out, far too quickly. “No, no, of course not.”
He takes a step forward. He can feel the muddy, crumbling ground of the bridge separating them beneath the soles of his shoes. He reaches out to take Sam’s hand, but Sam pulls it away.
“A couple of compliments—I gave him a couple of compliments. Is that all it takes?”
“I told you I’m not jealous,” yet his voice burns, and shatters everything it touches.
“Good,” Jacob ventures, that years-old wound stinging in his chest once more. “Because you wouldn’t have any right to be.”
It’s painful to hear the sound escaping from the other’s lips. Vulnerable, immeasurably deep. Pitiable, almost.
“I know that,” he murmurs, head bowed. Another strand of hair is torn from his teeth. “I know.”
“You're the one who ended things with me,” he continues, as if he could no longer hold back those murky waters now that the dam he had patiently built has broken. “You didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore.”
“You're married!” He had never heard him shout like that—not so loudly, not without borrowing someone else's voice. “Just as you never fail to remind everyone, Jacob—you’re married.”
Jacob shakes his head, but he can’t shake off the parasitic dread he feels at those words. He feels his face contort into an expression he doesn’t recognize, catching a distorted reflection of it in the mirror in front of him, behind Sam.
“You know it’s not a problem for her, you know—it’s not her fault that you—”
“Maybe it is for me,” he stammers, a single tear staining his face with salt, a hundred more following it down the same suicidal cliff. “Didn’t you ever think it might be a problem for me? Maybe it isn’t for Moses, but for me—”
“I’m not sleeping with Moses, please stop it,” he hastens to correct, his hands clenched around Sam’s arms as he shakes him. Then, as a realization haunts every decent thought, he pulls away from him once more. “And you’re with someone.”
Sam laughs, drenched, utterly frantic. Something has snapped; Jacob can see it clearly.
“I don’t care,” he snorts, smiling. “You know I don’t care—do you want me to break up with her? I’ll call her right now, I’ll tell her—”
He doesn’t seem to be joking; he doesn’t even seem lucid as he fumbles with his sweaty, clumsy hands on the phone, searching for the name in his contacts, letting the line ring once, twice, before Jacob snatches it from his hands and throws the device onto the bed.
“Are you crazy?”
Sam nods, and Jacob falls deeper into that abyss of incomparable sensations whose depths he cannot fathom. There is an eclectic courage that constantly overlays that man’s painful shyness. He can’t stop his hands from caressing a wet cheek.
“I don’t care,” Sam repeats, his voice high-pitched, broken, desperate. “I only care about you—why isn’t it the same for you?”
They’re close, too close. They share the same breath, as they’ve done too many times and never with such sincerity. Sam’s breath is warm and sweet, just as he’s always remembered it.
“If it were just us,” he begins, then. He feels he owes him that honesty. He feels he owes it to himself. “If it were just us—if I didn’t have them, if it were just about us—you know I’d choose you, you know it.”
Sam shakes his head, but does nothing to pull away from his touch. Jacob wipes his tears with the tip of his nose.
“I don’t love anyone the way I love you.”
It’s a faint, tentative, trembling touch. It’s enough. Jacob can taste Sam seeping from his lips. The salty memory of a thousand sweet nights makes his knees buckle, causing him to fall backward onto the bed as he continues to pull him close, one arm around that tiny waist—so small he wonders if he can hold it in one hand—the other cupping his face.
“I only love you, though,” he says bravely, as only Sam can be.
Jacob nods, pressing his face against the other’s. Sam's scent confuses him, unsettles him. It’s everywhere around him—in the face pressed against his own, in the breath blowing on his lips, in the dirty sheets beneath his body.
“Let me stay,” he pleads. “Tell me you want me here.”
“I always want you here,” Sam moans, chasing his lips in the innocence of a dirty, wet, ravenous kiss, deep and uninhibited.
Jacob pushes him away, if only for a second. He forces him to turn, to press himself against the mattress in turn, crushing the majesty of that body beneath his own.
“Call Rolin after we are done” he orders, firm and unyielding. He does so on his lips. “Tell him you’ve changed your mind, that you want to do everything with me—anything, even the things you were already doing alone. Alone with me.”
Sam nods, already lost, defeated.
He slips his hands under the hem of his shirt, pressing his palms first against his stomach, then against his chest. It feels like a reward. Sam’s skin is burning hot to the touch and trembles with every concession offered to him. Small, fragile moans spill ceaselessly from his swollen lips, still damp with saliva. His thighs are clenched, Jacob notices with a smile as he sits on them.
“My baby, ” he murmurs, almost teasingly, as he pulls the T-shirt off his body. “My poor little, sensitive Sammy.”
The shorts follow immediately after; the fabric, too loose on his thighs, slips off easily, revealing that perfect trail of golden hair, framing the pink, swollen erection like the wings of an angel, descending to the already damp and eager hole, which throbs at the mere thought of being watched.
“I’m sorry,” Sam hears him murmur, but he can’t bring himself to pay attention. It sounds distant, like background noise. He extends two fingers to that wet spot, finding it already relaxed.
“Did you touch yourself?” he asks then, with euphoric surprise.
Sam fidgets, tries to hide his flushed face in his arms, but fails miserably.
“I was nervous,” he stammers. “Jake, please—I’m sorry, it’s just—I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Jacob smiles, feeling the madness of that very expression making him moody. He leans down to kiss that pretty ring of muscle, invigorated by the way Sam’s body trembles beneath him.
“You're so good, you know that?” he breathes against his skin. Sam struggles, writhes, tries to deny it in the incoherent sounds that take hold of him. “So sweet, so pretty.”
“No,” he tries to spit out, his thighs trembling at that adoration.
“No?” Jacob laughs, “You’re not pretty? You’re not sweet?”
“Jake,” he whines, an harm thrown to cover his face.
Jacob laughs. Two of his fingers reach that gaping hole, getting in without the faintest resistance. Sam, inside, is as warm as a summer fire. He feels him squirm, as he thrusts ever so slowly, opening his fingers up in his insides. He gets them out as quickly as they were in, crawling up to Sam’s face.
“Here,” he whispers, offering what he himself would relish to taste. “See it for yourself.”
His eyes are impossibly large, moist, and filled with a lust he rarely sees in him. His lips part shyly, yet his tongue sticks out with obscene vehemence. He caresses it before sinking into it, and Sam begins to suck greedily, as if it were Jacob’s flesh, and his own seed, being offered to him.
“Well?” he asks insistently, as he pushes himself into that hot, wet pit. “How are you?”
Sam moans, deep and stubborn, closes his eyes, seeking the comfort of sucking those fingers, even as they’re being taken from him.
“Jake—”
“Tell me, you have to tell me,” he insists, gripping his face tightly with the same hand soiled by him. He pulls out his own throbbing cock with his free hand. He slaps it against the other’s ass like a promise.
“It’s good,” Sam whispers then, hastening to press his thighs against him. Jacob pushes him away.
“What’s good, Sammy?”
They are copious and fervently beautiful, the tears painting his face.
“Me,” Sam sobs. “I’m good.”
“You are,” Jacob promises, as he reaches for a kiss. “You are baby, you are so good.”
He sees him nod, distant and lost. There is no longer any consciousness behind the cloudy blue of those eyes, only a deep longing, and the obsessive awareness of belonging to him.
The pleas Sam spits into his mouth are weak, desperate, pitifully fragile. They are feeble, obscene, ferociously vulgar. Jacob feels his body burning with the need to have him with him, for himself, inside, outside, all around—to fuck him until he’s ruined, and then to make love to him, to put the pieces back together. He feels his body burning with the need to belong to no one else but him.
“Did you really think I was fucking him?” he asks, then laughs as he hoists Sam’s knees onto his shoulders, those legs far too long, curled around his body.
Sam turns bright red, though he finds it unnatural to blush on skin that’s already crimson.
“Please—”
“No one can be as good as you,” he promises, as the tip of his cock forces its way into Sam’s body. “No one makes me feel as good as you do.”
Sam’s nails tear at the skin on his back, with the force he uses to brace himself. Jacob feels him grow impossibly small beneath his body, just as he feels him grow incredibly hot in the tight grip around his cock.
“Don’t deny me this anymore,” he begs, as he thrusts into him, while Sam’s fervent purring corrodes his senses.
“You fuck me so good,”
“Never keep yourself away from me again,” he gasps, as sweat drips from his temples. “You are the air I breathe, baby.”
And he is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. He is more beautiful than anything he's ever seen, as he lets himself be swept away by every surge of desire. He is beautiful in the fragility of his sensitivity, in the way pleasure corrupts him, leaving no room for sanity. He is beautiful when he comes, shy and hurried, when he apologizes for his inability to hold back, to wait for him, to live up to whatever bullshit he’s gotten into his head. He is beautiful, wet with his own seed, pink in every piece of flesh that covers him. His swollen chest is beautiful, his nipples hard and obscenely sensitive, over which Jacob leans to suck.
He is beautiful when he trembles, overstimulated, and begs to stop and then to never stop—
“Never, Jake—never. More, more, more,”
And Jacob doesn’t stop, and he licks and sucks and bites, and thrusts, again and again and again, until he feels Sam succumb yet once more.
He fears he’ll black out, from the fury of his crying, from the force of the trembling that ravages him, and yet he doesn’t stop. Jacob pulls out of him; not out of mercy. He grips his cock in his hands, feeling the hot, purplish tip, stained with Sam’s insides. He takes the man’s hand and places it on himself, feeling it limp, weak, yielding. He fucks that grip all the same.
Sam moans, mouth open, tongue hanging out, as Jacob cums on his face. Thick and copious.
“Never do that again,” he gaps, for the last time, before collapsing on that unresponsive body, until he forgets the outlines from which he begins and Sam ends.