behindthec | full moons & minor keys... ch. 1b (Reply)

(So, LJ sucks hairy elephant ass and won't let me paste my first chapter as a unit because it is "too large." Yeah, YOU WANT TOO LARGE, LJ?? *grabs crotch*

Honestly.

Anyway.)

No amount of ass-slapping, playful touches for the camera, indulgent cheek-kisses on stage or one drunken smooch could have prepared me for this. And, much as I didn't give a plague-infected rat's ass about anything at this moment, I sure as fuck didn't care that I was registering each sensation with the most unmasculine use of language possible, because it wasn’t like I had control over much of anything just now, linguistic or otherwise.

And so fuck it all to hell, but kissing William Beckett was like flying. There's just no other way to describe it. Well maybe there was, but hell if I knew how. Long before I knew it was happening, he'd pulled me over to his half of the couch till I was straddling those legendary hips and the whole scene was almost pathetic in how high it got me, with my hands keeping a death grip on his shoulders, so terrified he might just vanish into the rapidly thinning air around us.

Eventually he pulled away, enough to meet my eyes, not nearly enough to shatter the intoxicating hold he had on me -- not physical, hell, so far beyond physical -- but a hold nonetheless.

He was breathing like I'd rescued him from drowning -- ironic, as drowning would pretty much sum up how I felt right about then.

"Shit," he choked. No regret attached to the word, simply observation.

I smiled, sort of, I think. "Uh-huh."

He smiled back, let out a stifled, sharp sort of laugh. Those chestnut eyes shone in a way I'd never seen. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he breathed, eyes never breaking from mine, but shaking his head in... wonder? Like he couldn't quite believe... something.

"Uh-huh," I repeated, wallowing once again in my eloquence.

Apparently he took my incoherence as cue to lock our mouths back together, signaling the end of conversation and the beginning of sensation: his hair, its smell (some beautifully ridiculous metrosexual salon shampoo), its texture (like... wheat silk... wheat silk, Gabe, really??), all familiar but all blindingly new. His hands, and yeah, they really are soft and delicate just like everyone assumes, nonetheless holding a crushing power the moment they take to his guitar, but they weren't on his guitar now, no, hell no, they were at the small of my back and slinking lower, pulling me close closer closest till I was pressed flush against his -- oh, god. That.

And that's when he moaned and I lost it entirely, head swirling with a lyric playing out in the voice of one Shaant Hacikyan, but fuck if it wasn't true because I'd never quite heard a moan like that, not even in my fantasies.

He got to my beloved hoodie first, and I vaguely processed the sound of a quick rip of purple fabric as it sailed across the room (noticing only how much I didn't give a shit at this point). I got his belt next and I had to repress a smile at the giant metal "W" flying through the air (never met a more childishly egotistical fucker in my life, bless his heart), and then the skintight jeans, only not, because they got stuck on --

"--that god. damned. fucking. handkerchief!! The seventies are over, Beckett! And it goes in your back pocket, not around your scrawny little pencil-leg, you big fag, and certainly not on the left, because you're not fooling anyone, you couldn't top if the future of your dick depended on it."

I only kept on with it because I was half-tickling him through it all and it made him giggle so hard and I couldn't stop smiling and he couldn't stop kissing me and clawing at my clothes, and by the time I'd worked off the paisley strip of cloth, I had little to complain about... and even less when we discovered neither of us was wearing any underwear.

And so that's how it came to this -- that I was lying stark naked on the unbelievably ugly sofa in my dressing room with an equally naked William Beckett underneath me, staring up at me, that perfectly sunlight-deprived skin flushed crimson, eyes glowing and questioning, asking, begging, and was there even a difference.

I moved my hips an inch or so, coaxed out that moan (all his own), watched his eyelids flutter.

I grinned. Kissed his forehead.

I could so get addicted to this.

Still, my sense of self hadn't entirely abandoned me: my relationship with William was nothing if not sustained by merciless teasing (mine) and precious gullibility (his).

(That one April Fool's Day, oh god... me and the rest of the Cobras, Travis, and all the TAI boys were in on it -- I managed to convince William (in his defense, he hadn't slept in two days) that they'd screwed up at the immigration office twenty-something years ago and had just now discovered the mistake and I was getting deported in twenty-four hours. Our combined acting abilities were apparently stellar; we had him hugging me for dear life with tears welling in his eyes and those gorgeous lips spewing a string of mighty fine curses directed at the American government; it wasn't until he'd scrounged around for a set of car keys, stuffed me into the passenger seat, and was halfway out of the parking lot to locate the nearest immigration office to sort shit out (“or else fuck it, we’ll go to Canada”), that I burst out laughing so hard I was crying and the rest of them came running after us. I managed to scramble out of the car before him and get a head start back to the tour bus, but he's lighter and faster and he caught up with me on the steps, hit me repeatedly with a hairdryer he found on the floor, and designated me -- and I quote proudly -- a "motherfucker ass-licking cuntbeast," (maybe he couldn't play sports to save his life, but Becks always, always won swear fights), before he allowed me to pull him into my arms and kiss his head repeatedly, while he continued to half-heartedly punch various parts of my body at random intervals. It was a month before he'd laugh about it, but it was worth it.)

I pulled back, face suddenly dark. "Shit. Can you hear it?"

His eyes flashed panic, darting to the door. "Hear what?"

I effected my best shit-eating grin. "The sound of fangirls screaming everywhere."

His nails dug into my back as he fought his damnedest not to smile, failing dismally under the influence of my laughter.

"You are such -- a fucking -- prick -- Gabriel."

And with each syllable followed one struggled movement after another until he was on top of me, sucking on every available inch of flesh he could find until he slid off the sofa and parked himself between my legs. His gaze darted upward once, meeting mine, asking for the okay (like there was any fucking question of this not being okay) -- and reflected in his eyes I saw all the pent-up emotion, history, memories I'd built with him over the past years, flashing across my blurred mind.

I couldn't believe it had actually come to this, after all.

He lowered first his eyes, then his head, then his inhibitions; I started swearing wildly in Spanish and that's the last bit of anything that's fit to put on paper.

"...Gabe?" Soft. Maybe a whisper. If my face hadn't been pressed close enough against his neck to feel the single syllable's gentle puff of breath, I might’ve even imagined it.

"Hmm?"

"If you tell anyone I said this I'll chop off your balls."

I raised my head and an eyebrow. "Your pillowtalk skills are sorely lacking, Beckett."

He smiled. Squeezed my hand. Melted me into another fucking marshmallow. "That was the best goddamned sex I've ever had."

Hello, self esteem. How nice to see you.

I grinned. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Now shut up and try to restrain your blimp-sized ego."

He knew me too well. "Yes ma'am."

That earned me a pinch on the ass, a hard one. Like everything involving William, it was worth it.

He kept his eyes on me like he was watching TV, waiting for something to happen. For my part, half-falling off the couch and being squashed naked against the person I'd been in love with for over a year, I could only think of two things to say: "By the way, I've been in love with you for a year," which I didn't say, and "You're a cat"... which I did. Because I am brilliant that way.

He blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"If you were an animal you'd be a cat."

...Looks like my pillowtalk skills could use some work too.

I watched a grin creep up on him. "...I see."

"You walk like a cat, all gangly and deliberate and seductive... and you have big cat eyes and a little triangle cat nose, and that little built-in cat smile. And a really intense stare."

He blinked again. "I've been told I walk like a half-drunk runway model with low self-esteem."

I laughed, hard, could almost hear the words leaving Pete's lips, because that couldn't have been anyone but Pete for all its blatant truth.

"You're a schipperke," he announced.

I... what? "I... don't really see myself as the sailor type."

He started laughing and nearly couldn't stop. "Not a skipper, you dumbass, a schipperke. It's a breed of dog. Like a bigger version of Gizmo, kind of. Pretty little things with black fur and sharp features and no tail."

"...You had me up until the no tail part."

He giggled. "That part doesn't apply to you."

"Damn right it doesn't, I have a nice freakin' tail."

He licked his lips, pressed them softly to mine. "Yeah..." he whispered. "You do."

A few more minutes of blissful silence, and... "So."

Leave it to me to ruin everything.

He opened his big cat eyes and fixed on me the stare I'd apparently cursed him with. "So."

I swallowed. "This, uh --"

"This isn't gonna be weird now, is it?"

Oh. This conversation.

"No," I said quickly, way too quickly and with, honestly, a just plain creepy enthusiasm.

"Okay," he replied softly, because there was nothing else to say.

"So," I said again after a minute.

Clearly, several orgasms had done nothing for my verbal abilities. At this rate I might spit out my true feelings in... oh, ten years. (And ew, I seriously just used the phrase “true feelings”. Fuck, am I ever going soft.)

"I'm cold," he said.

Ah, perfect, I thought, and was one millisecond away from pulling him closer and draping the blanket over us that was strewn across the top of the sofa, when he sat up and reached for his jeans.

...Oh.

I followed suit in silence, knowing only a chick would ask something as gay as, "So, should we talk about this?" and that any more attempts at conversation that compared him to an animal would be so, so less than good.

"Dude, I can't find my shirt."

I looked up; at least he was smiling about it -- a good sign.

"Uh... oops." I smiled back, pulling myself to my feet to help him look, and finally located it in the bowl of mac and cheese I'd left on the floor. "Uh... Becks?"

I held up the half-white, now half-orange V-neck. A piece of macaroni punctuated the image by dropping back into the bowl.

"Niiice," he grinned.

"Here." I grabbed my hoodie and helped him into it (as if he couldn't dress himself for Christ's sake), and zipped it up. "Be good to it," I smiled.

He was nodding absently again, and for a second I worried he was going to start crying again and oh fuck Bill please don't start crying again.

"Thank you," he said simply. "For... you know. Just... for understanding. I guess. I -- I don't know." He laughed nervously, looked down, and fuck, was he blushing?

It was then I realized I was resting my hands on his hips. Shit, because we weren't there anymore and now I was just his creepy faggy friend who was trying to feel him up, or --

"I -- sorry." I dropped my hands.

"Oh fuck that, Gabe, come here."

And he cupped my face, kissed the hell out of me, and my hands flew right back to his hips. When that pesky need for oxygen overtook us, he stayed in my arms, resting his head on my shoulder, and I held my breath with some vague, desperate hope that it might freeze time.

"I should go," he whispered into my neck.

"You're breaking my heart, you know that?" I whispered back in Spanish.

And fuck it all when I felt his lips smile against my skin before his mouth formed some words of his own -- in fucking French.

I pulled back to look at him. "What was that?"

That impossibly melting smile, dripping with mischief. "None of your business, angel."

"Cunt," I smiled weakly, hit with a slight shiver on hearing that pet name he always let slip, angel, on these rare occasions when no one was around. ("Damn Catholic upbringing," he'd explained so long ago. "I hear Gabriel, I think archangel. Blame it on God if you must.")

He squeezed my hand one last time and headed for the door, and I half-followed before realizing that was probably unnecessary at best and at worst, just plain weird. At the door, he glanced down at the mass of purple clinging to his frame and smiled at me. "I can't pull this off the way you can."

He had a point there.

"No, you can't." I forced a smile. "You're lucky you're gorgeous."

He was still smiling softly as the door shut behind him.

And it didn't matter worth shit that I'd be seeing him in maybe twelve hours' time; he might as well have just boarded a one-way spaceship to the moon for how alone I felt.

I leaned back against a wall, squeezed my eyes shut, and indulged that melodramatic sigh that had been threatening to escape for the past ten minutes.

At which point came a knock. On the door. The door he'd just left through.

There he stood across the threshold, looking small and helpless, hands tucked into the pockets of my hoodie, eyes fixed tentatively on me.

"Can I stay here tonight?"

It was like a parody of a fantasy or something; it was nothing like him. William was so independent, so private, even so distant at times – but at that moment he looked like vulnerability embodied, like he genuinely needed me.

I’d never known William to genuinely need anyone.

I could only nod.

We made up some semblance of a bed, crawled in with just our jeans on, and when he thought I was asleep he curled around me and rested his head on my shoulder.

God help me.

I woke up alone with a blinking cell phone:

1 Text Message From:

Beckster (BRING IT!!! in my pants)

Unsurprisingly, we'd entered our own names into each other's phones so long ago; surprisingly, we'd been sober. (It’d happened in the midst of the “in my pants!” phase circulating through the FBR bands as this fantastically immature inside joke that basically involved adding the phrase randomly to the end of any half-conducive sentence.)

(For the record, in his phone I was “Gabrielle--W's trannie mistress”.)

I clicked on the message.

"See you @ soundcheck. hoodie smells like you. i like it. p.s. u snore like a girl. its cute."

William was always in conflict over whether to use proper language in cell-speak. I'd worn him down a bit over time (my threat of "If you send me another grammatically correct text message I'm deleting you from my phone" had a small effect), but his roots stuck.

I dropped the phone on the pillow and shut my eyes just before they began to sting.

Things didn't improve much when I noticed he'd left his jacket on the chair. After getting over the shock of his having left that jacket anywhere not within a two-foot radius of himself, I pulled it onto my pillow, curled up in bed and smelled it like a sixteen-year-old lovesick nutcase, until I'd smelled it so much that it seemed like there was no smell left.

Neither of us bothered to switch the jackets all day, and for a second on stage I froze up when I realized we still hadn't switched and imagined what a good portion of the audience must have been thinking.

I smiled into the mic and told them I'd stolen all of Bill's clothes and made him wear purple just because it looked so terrible on him.

I was always good at joking. Too good.

And, y'know, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, and all that jazz.

But he played along, smiled good-naturedly, flipped me off, and to the ear-splitting delight of however many gazillion females (and a few males, no doubt), we stripped down to our jeans and switched jackets onstage. I pulled his hair, he tried to tickle me, I drenched him with a bottle of water, he stole my hat, everything half back to normal and I prayed to every god I knew that I wouldn't get a hard-on in front of two thousand people.

One of those gods must have listened, but I can guarantee it wasn't the one ruling that infamous church of hot addiction.

That self-righteous asshat of a conscience was telling me this was only going to get worse.

Consciences, self-righteous or otherwise, had this revolting tendency to be right.

/ch. 1.