Okay, this one-shot should round out the subSpy trilogy... Follows Lose My Heart on the Burning Sands: http://tf2chan.net/afanfic/res/14853.html Which in turn follows It's A Lot Like Life: http://tf2chan.net/afanfic/res/14698.html ---/-/--- "Is it really something worth celebrating, at this age?" The Spy sighs, knotting his tie with practiced hand. "Only a few months back we didn't know if we'd see another one, either of us. Besides, I can't take your prezzie back now. I mean, if you don't want to go out to Tarantino's..." "I do." The Spy says, quick and sweet as he ducks into the Sniper's personal space for a peck. "I'm not putting in that kind of work on my own birthday, and I love you, but you cannot make what I want. Besides... the view is closer to the ocean than ours." "So we're celebrating your bloody birthday." The Sniper rolls his eyes. "Even if I have to wear a suit..." His brow furrows a moment in consternation over his own tie, and though he gets it knotted, the Spy redoes it for him anyway. "Hey... I'd better give you this before the restaurant." He murmurs, as the Spy's hands slip away from smoothing his collar. He goes to his sock drawer, where the Spy has promised not to snoop, and brings out the box-- he hasn't bothered with wrapping it, it's nice enough, and he watches the Spy open it with a barely-contained smile. "A watch that tells time." The Spy laughs, his eyes twinkling up at the Sniper as he pulls it free. "Just what I needed." His fingers brush over the back and he turns it over to read the engraving, his breath sucked in sharp, not what he would call a gasp exactly. Pet Love Always "Just what I needed." He repeats, with reverence in place of his earlier levity. The Sniper takes it from him, with both hands, eyes locked onto the Spy's even as he straps it around the man's left wrist, pulling it just a little tight a second before fastening it comfortably. "You wear this out." He says, voice soft, but with the unmistakable edge that makes the Spy want to kneel, roll over, beg. "When it's too warm or too formal for your sweater, and you feel naked without your collar, you have this now. And no one's gonna look at it and know, it's just your little secret, yours and mine. No matter how respectable you gotta be, no matter where you are, you're mine and I'm going to take good, good care of you." The Spy nods. The Sniper smiles. They share a slow embrace, swaying in each others' arms a moment, and the Sniper smells of borrowed aftershave, simple and clean and masculine, and through the layers of his seldom-worn suit, he is warm, and the Spy has a new cologne, a fougere he never could have gotten away with on the battlefield, mingling pleasantly with the omnipresent air of tobacco, and it is a chore to pry back from each other. "I get my other present after dinner?" The Spy asks, and his voice trembles more than he means it to. The Sniper is good enough to pretend he managed to stay light and teasing. "You were supposed to forget about your other present." The Spy shrugs, raising one eyebrow. They had picked it out together, in the back room of the leather place, where the same young man was working, slack jawed to find that the Spy was pet and not master as they browsed through things. "I'm giving you something else tonight, you'll forget about it by Christmas." "I won't forget in ten weeks if I haven't forgotten now." "Fine, then I'll forget about it and you can give it to me, how's that?" The Spy shrugs. Either way works, the spreader bar is as much for the Sniper as it is for him. He doesn't mind the ten weeks extra time to get used to the idea of experimenting with restraints, but he'd liked the idea of something to hold his legs open no matter how long he holds the position, enough to get over his flat veto on all things restraining. The Sniper promised already that he could undo the straps himself, and he looks at it not as something that holds him down, but as something that offers him support. They meet their 'dates' for the evening before heading to the restaurant, a pair of women they were introduced to through the shop, and the Sniper feels awkward knowing he has about a decade on either of them, but at least they have some common ground. He sits across from a willowy blonde with something fierce and steely in her eyes, directly at odds with her frame and sweet face, and she slyly brings up the subject of pet training, with a glance over at the Spy and the woman opposite him, curvy and quiet, small white hands straying frequently to her choker. It's fine company, and he's happy that, novel as the idea of having friends is to him, the Spy has other well-wishers on his birthday. He orders for the whole table, knowing he can't order for the Spy and let his fake date order for her real one. It's a compromise that both ladies seem resigned to, and one he feels he should apologize for, but in the end they still have a fine time, still join in enthusiastically when the time comes to embarrass the Spy by singing 'Happy Birthday'. Fine company as it is, the Sniper is still very happy when they leave the restaurant, drop their beards for the night off at home, and return to the house alone. In private, with the front door locked and bolted, the Spy is immediately cuddly, with kisses to the cheek that seem unlikely to stop. The entire trip to the bedroom is spent in contact, and once there, the Spy is again totally glued to the Sniper's front a long moment. "Down, boy." The Sniper chuckles, and he undoes the Spy's tie, and unbuttons his shirt, and puts his collar on before carefully removing his watch, giving it a place of honor on the nightstand. He understands the Spy's need for contact. Outside of the Castro, there is still the near-constant masquerade, the awkward double dates when he would rather just be alone. But none of the restaurants in the Castro are Tarantino's, and the Spy will not eat Italian just anywhere, the Sniper hates to eat anyplace where the view is worse than his own backyard... He offers murmured reassurances and strokes the Spy's face until the clinging is more lust than desperation. "Bet you want your last present." He leers, getting the Spy's shirt the rest of the way off. "Sit on the edge of the bed like a good pet, eyes on me." The Spy complies with alacrity, as he almost always does, and the Sniper has never known an ego stroke quite like the loving hunger he finds in the Spy's eyes at times like these. He strips out of his suit, far enough back that the Spy knows he doesn't yet get to touch, birthday or not. The Spy keeps his hands to himself even as the Sniper moves to the bed to help undress him in turn, and then he is given the Vaseline from the nightstand drawer and it's the Sniper who moves to his hands and knees in the center of the bed. "You're gonna start out nice and slow." He orders, smirking back over his shoulder, loving the Spy's hard swallow and darkening eyes, the twitch to one hand that he's learned to read desire in. "You're gonna do just what I tell you. You're gonna make me come before you do, too. Make me come first and I'll light your cigarette after, but if you blow it early on me, you're not getting a smoke." It is not a dire threat. There are times the Spy is not awake long enough after sex to smoke one... That it is a threat at all is what matters, and the Spy nods eagerly at the challenge set. "Oui, Maitre." "Gonna show me a real good time, Pet?" "Oui, Maitre." "Okay. Start me up. Nice and slow until I tell you to speed it up." The Spy kneels behind him, lips at the small of his back as the first finger teases its way in. He relaxes under the traveling line of gentle kisses, as the fingering goes from something his body merely accepts to something it craves more of. With each ragged 'more', the Spy gives it, until he is nuzzling at one flank, in a light sweat of his own as he milks the Sniper's prostate, as he tries to ignore his own erection. "Good... good boy." The Sniper turns to smile at him, shifts his weight and extends a hand back to awkwardly pat at the Spy. "Bet you're good and ready to fuck this arse, yeah? You want to give me a good time?" "Oui, Maitre..." The Spy moans, nuzzles up the Sniper's side a moment and then kisses his way back down his spine. "All right, Pet. Give me that nice big cock now. Slow-- you remember the rules." The Spy slides in achingly slow, the rules his constant mantra. Exactly as slow as he's told, exactly as long as he's told, the thought of disappointing the Sniper is a thing he feels he couldn't bear. He rests his forehead against the Sniper's back, feels the burning of the Sniper's skin. Making love to him is like standing naked beneath the desert sun, like being burnt by something so much more alive than he thinks he could ever know. He has felt that way since they began, and likes it that way. The Sniper is the sun, and he is the Moon. His is to obey, to reflect, his is to bear a constant chill, a dark side, the marks of countless craters... His is to worship his own personal sun, the way the Sniper soaks up the real thing. He wraps his arms around the Sniper's waist, curls to fit as close as he can as he is buried to his hilt in even pressure and slick heat. At the Sniper's word, he moves. At the Sniper's word, he speeds. There is only so much abandon he will allow himself, and he allows it only when the Sniper gives permission, but even under his strictest self-control here, in every other aspect of his life he feels completely free. He has a job to do, a Master to please, and beyond that there is nothing. When the Sniper comes, it takes all the control that the Spy has, but he waits for spoken permission. When the Sniper says 'come', he does. He doesn't realize he's finished until he opens his eyes to find himself lying on his back, with the Sniper over him. "Happy birthday?" The Sniper grins. He nods, and receives a warm kiss, before the Sniper places a cigarette between his lips and gives him a light. "Let me get your blanket." The Sniper says, after a pass with a washcloth, damp and hot against the Spy's rapidly cooling skin. The Sniper joins him, in the cocoon of blankets, putting his cigarette out before the Spy can fall asleep with it. "Well, I had a good time, too." He says, holding the Spy close. "You should do this every year." "I could." The Spy sighs, melting into the drowsy security he gets from the collar, the blanket, and the Sniper. He doesn't have to be too old to celebrate his birthday, after all...
B-but what about the spreader bar?! this was great! love the story!
Loving the details put into the City.
Loved the comparison to the Sun and the Moon, very clever and true in more ways than one. What a lovely read.