Page 39 of It Takes Two to Tumble
“Mr. Farleigh died a few hours ago,” Ben whispered, stepping into his room and waving Phillip in.
“I’m so sorry.”
Ben made a gesture that struck Phillip as very... clerical. It was halfway between a shrug and a nod, and seemed to acknowledge Phillip’s sympathy without making a fuss. Phillip realized Ben, for all his youth, for all his good humor and abundant cheer, was practiced in this situation.
When the door shut behind them, Phillip drew Ben close, trying to offer whatever small mote of comfort or understanding or even fellowship he could. Ben felt solid in his arms, strong and broad and hearty, but the way he sighed as he sank against Phillip’s chest made Phillip feel like he was holding something unspeakably fragile.
It was Ben who reached behind Phillip and turned the key in the lock; it was Ben who changed the embrace to something warmer, kissing below Phillip’s ear, sliding his hands to Phillip’s hips.
“You must be tired. We don’t need to,” Phillip said, but it likely didn’t sound terribly convincing because at the moment Ben had him pressed against the closed door, their bodies flush together and their mouths a hair’s breadth apart.
“I lost track of where want crosses into need a while ago, Phillip. But this feels a lot like need. I need to be with you.” He pushed his hips forward, as if Phillip needed this explained to him. “Together with you.”
Phillip’s blood heated. “That can be arranged,” he said gruffly before cupping Ben’s face in his hands and kissing him. Ben seemed to melt into his embrace, his strong body going almost boneless in Phillip’s arms.
“We don’t need to fuck,” Phillip growled. The silence stretched long enough for Phillip to worry that he had shocked Sedgwick with his language. “There are people who don’t, you know. And that’s enough.”
Ben nodded. “I want to fuck.”
Oh God. He somehow made the word sound sweet and filthy all at once, and it went straight to Phillip’s groin. “I want that too,” he whispered, and tipped Ben’s chin up for a kiss. He wanted everything. He wanted closeness and honesty and safety and time, and out of those the first two were the only things he could even partly manage.
They fell onto the bed, clothes in a heap on the floor, Ben’s weight a welcome presence on top of Phillip.
“Yes,” Phillip said, arching helplessly up towards Sedgwick’s body. At the sweep of Ben’s tongue inside his mouth, Phillip let himself acknowledge exactly what he wanted. “I want you inside me,” he said.
The other man went still, and Phillip feared he had miscalculated. “I thought we’d do it the other way around,” Ben said, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
Phillip ran his hand up Ben’s back. “So had I, at first.” Now they were both whispering. “And I’ve never... I’ve never been the receiving party.” Which seemed a laughably formal way to discuss getting buggered but Phillip found himself wishing for lovelier language than he knew.
“But you want to?”
Phillip’s chest felt tight. “With you, yes.” It shouldn’t cost so much to admit it. Hell, it shouldn’t feel like an admission at all. He had fucked men and they had liked it; he didn’t think any less of them for it, but it seemed too open, too vulnerable, for Phillip himself to actually want. With Ben it didn’t matter, though—he was already about as vulnerable as a person could get; mere physical vulnerability hardly seemed to signify.
“Well, I’ve never been either party, so it seems only right and proper that you ought to do it to me first. That way I at least know something of what I’m doing when we do it the other way around.”
There would be another time. Phillip’s mind latched on to that with disproportionate relief. “All right,” he said. “I’ll fuck you, then.” He felt Ben’s cock twitch against his belly. “You like when I talk like that?”
“I like everything about this.” Ben kissed Phillip’s neck, then his collarbone. “I like you. So much.”
Phillip continued smoothing his hands up and down Ben’s back, as if soothing him, but really he was the one who needed soothing. He felt that this would be irrevocable, that this next hour or so would either burn every bridge he hadn’t yet destroyed, or build new ones to places he hadn’t ever been.
He rolled them over and felt Ben’s sigh of pleasure as Phillip settled over him. Phillip kissed each of Ben’s palms in turn before holding his hands to the mattress and kissing him deeply on the mouth. He kissed down Ben’s body, licking the scruffy underside of his jaw and sucking on the place where his shoulder met his neck.
Ben sighed, resting his hand on Phillip’s head. Phillip flicked his tongue over one flat, tawny nipple and felt it pebble beneath his touch. Ben’s hand tightened in his hair. Phillip ran his lips along the taut muscles of Ben’s chest and abdomen. He tried to make every touch, every kiss, every caress into an offering, and he knew it fell short. But he kept doing it anyway.
Ben was, frankly, slightly concerned. Even though he devoted an unconscionable amount of time over the past week to imagining Phillip inside him, the first touch of Phillip’s callused fingers against the skin below his bollocks made him shiver in a way that wasn’t entirely pleasurable. Even the warm wet heaven of Phillip’s mouth on his cock wasn’t enough to completely distract him from his misgivings.
When Phillip produced a jar of some kind of salve from his clothes press, Ben nearly changed his mind. But then Phillip sat on the edge of the bed and kissed Ben’s knee. “There are a lot of other things we can do,” he whispered.
Ben shook his head. He knew Phillip would be satisfied with more of what they had already done. But Ben wanted this. It was just him and Phillip. There was nothing about this act that could be scarier than actually falling in love with the knowledge that they would soon be parted—that, hell, everyone was parted, everyone lost one another at the end. “I want you,” he said, smiling despite himself. When Phillip returned to stroking slick fingers over his entrance, Ben let himself relax into the touch. And when Phillip slid a finger inside him, Ben was able to accept it after only the barest moment of hesitation.
But then—“Oh, hell,” he groaned when Phillip slid another finger inside and did something that made Ben feel like he had been lit up like fireworks.
“Yes,” Phillip urged. “Yes. That’s why I wanted you to fuck me.That,” he said, as his fingertips twisted over that place again. “Oh God, look at you.” Phillip’s eyes were darting between Ben’s face and where his fingers slid in and out of Ben’s body. “Yes, just like that. Let me in.”
That was what Ben wanted too. He tried to relax even further into the sensation. “I want more.”
“Not yet. I don’t want to hurt you.” He slid another finger in and pulled at Ben’s cock with his other hand. “You’re beautiful.”
