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janedavitt Aug. 24th, 2010 08:18 pm)
janedavitt Aug. 24th, 2010 08:18 pm)Title Close Encounters Part Three
Authorjanedavitt
Web page Jane's Stories
Pairing Shawn/Carlton
Rating NC17
Length 4,900 words
Spoilers None
Part Three
Carlton had been in Spencer's so-called workplace before. Not often, because the disorder there disturbed him. It was the physical expression of Spencer's mind; childish, off-beat, incomprehensible.
It was also, most definitely, Spencer's territory, and Carlton preferred to engage with Spencer on his own turf; the police department, a crime scene, the morgue. Places where his authority was complete and unquestioned. Except by Spencer.
Tonight, with dusk doing the job of a mop and duster, and no lights turned on, the place didn't look too bad. Carlton admitted to himself that he preferred it with no lights for more reasons than that, but didn't let himself think too far ahead. He was in a state where thinking wasn't a good idea. If he gave mature consideration to the madness he'd tacitly agreed to -- sex with Spencer in this distressingly open, accessible space -- he'd find an excuse to leave. When it came to hunting down criminals, Carlton knew, without vanity, that he was a brave man. Courage was part of his duty. When it came to sex with anyone, let alone Spencer, he'd learned to be insecure about his ability to please, trained to that state by countless flicks of the whip. Scornful glances, rolled eyes, heaved sighs, one date even getting out her vibrator, a frankly terrifying piece of competition, before Carlton had finished putting his socks back on (he'd been told six months before that leaving them on during sex was completely unacceptable. When he'd obediently taken them off, she'd stared at his feet and told him to put them back on. Women were a constant mystery.)
Carlton didn't trust Spencer not to raise the bar on mocking his genuine efforts to be a considerate lover. Spencer loved mocking him -- his clothes, his hair, hell, even his name. Expecting his penis to be exempt would be foolishly optimistic and even if the two kisses they'd shared hadn't been disasters, they'd been less of a joint effort and more of a walk down a one-way street.
"Mi casa and all that," Spencer said with an airy wave of his hand.
Carlton cleared his throat. He'd made a huge concession and taken off his suit jacket when he walked in, putting it carefully over the back of a chair, and he felt exposed without it. "I don't -- is this really what you want to do right now?" His head hurt, panic and lust like spiked balls bouncing around inside his skull. "We could, uh, go on a date first? I could buy you some, umm, some food?"
As soon as the words hit the air, he looked around for a wall to bang his head against. Incompetence. He hated incompetence whether it be a confusing report, a poor grouping of shots on a target, or the lamest attempt to procrastinate ever.
"Not hungry," Spencer said and then, predictably, leered. "Not for food, anyway."
There was something just a little off about that line -- and all of Spencer's words gave the impression of being carefully scripted, dreamed up inside his devious brain before being shared, not the off-the cuff drivel they initially appeared. Carlton studied Spencer and decided that incredible though the idea sounded, Spencer was nervous. Eager, definitely, but twitching and bouncing, jittery even, too.
That was reassuring. Company in his meltdown.
"And you, know, Lassie, it's not like this is our first date, before you go thinking that I'm easy."
Carlton was trying to listen to what Spencer --no, Shawn, goddamn it, he'd earned the right to call Spencer that -- was saying, but as he spoke, Shawn was unbuttoning that gaudy nightmare of a shirt, exposing skin instead of his usual T-shirt. Distracting. Very.
"Huh?" Belatedly, Carlton's brain connected 'easy' to 'adjective that will get your face slapped' and he added hurriedly, "I don't think you're easy, Spencer. Just...accessible to many."
Spencer frowned. "I'm going to come back to that one when I decided if it's a surprisingly subtle compliment or pistols at dawn time. Let me refresh your memory. We met. You handcuffed me and threw me against your car. Lather, rinse, repeat, many, many times. We're practically married."
Carlton couldn't help wincing and Spencer gave him an unapologetic smile. "We are," he insisted. "And dating's been fun, Lassie-pie, but I think I'm ready to go past first base."
"If we've been dating, you've two-timed me a lot," Carlton said wryly. He wasn't sure that he completely accepted Spencer's logic -- if cuffing someone and slamming them around constituted courtship then he was a slut by anyone's standards because he did that on a weekly basis. Not that he didn't see where Spencer was coming from. In the early days of their acquaintance, the heated, hectic moments of holding a squirming Spencer close to him, trying to subdue him, had provided fuel for a lot of pleasurable encounters between his hand and his dick. He'd never been sure if Spencer had provoked their not infrequent physical clashes deliberately, but there wasn't much room for doubt now. He had. "Is that behavior going to continue?"
Spencer shrugged. "Not if you keep me occupied. Make playing with me your favorite hobby. A bored Shawn is a naughty Shawn. I had to write that out one hundred times once. On the back of a stamp. Really small writing. Tiny."
"Not acceptable," Carlton told him, automatically filtering out the nonsense, then finding a line and mentally building a wall on it, too high for Spencer to jump. Might as well spell out the facts of his life before Spencer started working on his zipper. Save them both from starting something doomed to fail. "I'm a busy man with very little spare time and I want you to be aware of that -- " He took a deep breath and lost his calm along with his ability to keep his voice at a normal volume. "And if I catch you even flirting with someone else --"
"I need you to finish that thought," Spencer said when Carlton trailed off, miserably aware that he was doing it again, grabbing and holding on too tightly, too soon. He wasn't possessive, he was just -- well, okay, maybe he was a little possessive. When you'd never had much, you clung to the little you did have. "Tell me the consequences. Are we talking a sliding scale? So if I smile at someone else, you hmm, you pout for ten minutes, but if I kiss them, you deal with me very severely later, and if I actually make a date with them, you gatecrash and take me hard against the nearest wall until I --"
Carlton shook his head, trying to dislodge the images of what Spencer seemed to think -- except he had to be joking -- was an acceptable reaction to infidelity for a disillusioned detective with an appalling track record in matters of the heart. "Are you trying to make me angry?"
"I know I like you when you're angry, my little Hulk," Spencer said, "but this time I really want to know. Give me your limits, Lassiter. Tell me what I can get away with and what will make you walk away. Then go into detail about what I can do to get you looming over me, snarling out something about you, me, and a strip search."
Carlton swallowed, his mouth dry. "If you want out, just tell me," he said hoarsely, the words rasping his throat because they weren't what he wanted to say, but anything else would be so…uncivilized. Not that Spencer was a prime example of evolution.
Spencer did the fingers to temple trick, his faint smile profoundly skeptical as he closed his eyes. "The spirits tell me that Master Carlton -- no, that's not at all funny. You really have to be called 'Bates' for that to work -- isn't being entirely honest and they're looking sad." He opened his eyes. "'Fess up, Detective. You'd like to keep me collared and leashed, with you holding the leash. You want to control me. Keep me safe. Keep me close."
The image was too close to Carlton's earlier fantasy of Shawn curled at his feet, for him not to react, his dick throbbing, hardening. "If you're trying to warn me that you can't stop playing around, this ends now. I don't share."
"I hear that," Spencer said and for once he sounded serious, though that state of being endured for less than a second. "I never thought you would, though, so you wasted your breath telling me that when you could have been using it to compliment me on something. I don't require flowers, but lavish praise? Like oxygen. Or pizza. I need it. Never think you can tell me I'm wonderful too many times. Can't happen."
"Compliments, huh? Such as?" Carlton had long ago realized that when it came to Spencer, his weakness was the fact that sometimes Spencer amused him. Not when he was goofing off at crime scenes, but when he was squabbling with Guster, or just hanging around the station running his mouth. To date, Carlton had always been able to keep a straight face, but it'd been a close call now and then.
"Well, I could give you a list of my favorites, but that would lack a certain spontaneity. Just let yourself go, Lassie. You don't usually have a problem telling me what you think of me." Spencer shut up, his eyes sparkling, expectant.
Carlton smiled, taken from self-doubt and jealousy at the thought of Spencer crooning nonsense at some flattered, gullible female, to good humor. He could've dealt out a verbal slap, but he didn't need to, did he? He'd done a good job of concealing his feelings when Spencer's hands were wandering over his face and hair, but now…everything had changed.
He put his hands on Shawn's shoulders, pulling him in closer with no effort at all, though Shawn's hands remained by his side. Carlton could feel the warmth of Shawn's skin, his bared chest visible through his open shirt. He wanted to touch it, taste it, but he held back. "You're the only person who could get me to kiss them where you did."
"On the mouth?" Shawn shook his head, willfully misunderstanding. "You need to get out more, Lassie."
"The only person who makes me -- sometimes -- want to misbehave," Carlton continued, sliding his hands until they were curved loosely around Shawn's neck. He wasn't exerting any pressure, barely grazing the skin, but Shawn shivered pleasurably without moving away, even as he tossed back a reply.
"Misbehaving? I'd be happy to help you with that."
Carlton leaned over and Shawn's head tilted back automatically, the small gesture making Carlton feel like purring with satisfaction.
"I want to do so much to you," Carlton said and heard the bewilderment in his voice, even if he suspected that Shawn was too focused on his own arousal to notice. His desires were shocking him, literal shivers thrilling through him whenever he dreamed up something involving Shawn naked and God, so very willing. He moved his hands again, cradling Shawn's face in them, his thumbs brushing across the sharp cheekbones. "So much I never even thought about before. I want to -- I need -- Shawn --"
Part of him knew that for all his attempts to slow this down, they'd both stepped out of a plane and there was only one possible direction for them to take. Might as well enjoy the plummet.
He didn't kiss Shawn's mouth yet. He didn't want to take away Shawn's ability to talk. He could -- maybe -- picture himself calling Shawn's bluff and handcuffing him, or returning the favor and blindfolding those sharp, seeking eyes, giving Shawn nothing but darkness to interrogate, but gag him? No.
Instead, he kissed Shawn's throat, his forehead, the imperious beak of his nose, scattered, light kisses that were addictive, intoxicating until by the time he returned to Shawn's throat, where a pulse beat wildly, he couldn't hold back. He licked skin wet and bit into it, sucked heat, scarlet, red, wet heat into Shawn's warm, tanned skin and felt Shawn's hands touch his back, clinging to him.
They stumbled, locked together, to the nearest wall and Carlton turned them so that his back was to it as they slid to the floor. He had a lapful of Shawn a moment later, with Shawn straddling his legs, his arms around Carlton's neck, his mouth hungry. For the first time, Carlton kissed Shawn and got kissed back. It wasn't anything like he'd expected. Shawn was feverishly eager, but clumsy, his mouth slipping over Carlton's, so that half of the time, Carlton's cheek or chin got more attention than his lips. Spencer was moaning deep in his throat, grinding down against Carlton's erection with his ass. It hurt, but Carlton didn't want him to stop, exactly, just slow down. A memory fought its way up through the fog of ardor -- a Golden Lab puppy licking Carlton's face dripping wet when he was twelve, just as uninhibited. It'd humped Carlton's leg and sniffed his ass a few years later, destroying his composure as he tried to talk to its owner, a pretty teenage girl a grade above him.
Eventually, frustrated and mildly confused, he pushed Shawn back, one hand against his chest, and pointedly wiped his face with the back of his hand. Shawn frowned, a puzzled twist distorting his shiny, spit-slicked mouth.
"What?"
Carlton imagined the way the conversation would go if he offered even a mild critique of Shawn's technique -- not well -- and contented himself with a tentative smile. "Just wanted to check everything was okay."
The frown became a scowl. "Lassie, I'm sitting on something hard and pointy, so clearly you're just fine and if I wasn't, I'd have told you."
"About the sitting part…" Carlton cleared his throat. "You're on the heavy side."
Shawn knelt up, prompting Carlton to sigh with unadulterated relief as the pressure on his dick and balls was lifted. It was a measure of how turned on he was that he was still hard despite the pain. He didn't entertain the thought that pain, when it was dealt out by Shawn, was something he'd gotten used to transmuting into arousal.
"Better?" Shawn inquired, a chill in his voice, settling down across Carlton's thighs.
Carlton leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. Fuck. He'd done it again. Did anyone else have the ability to piss off a date so quickly or was it his own special gift? "I'm sorry."
"And you're allowed to tell me if something's going…" Shawn waved his hand, his fingers wiggling. "You know. Droopy. Suffering in silence isn't sexy. You are. It isn't."
"Is that supposed to be me?" Carlton said indignantly as Shawn's fingers drooped and twitched sadly. He was glad that Shawn's annoyance wasn't for the usual reason, flattered by the implication that he was hot, but even so…"For your information, Spencer --"
"I liked 'Shawn' better, FYI. It's got that novelty factor."
"For your information, Shawn, my… that part is still in perfect working order, it was just -- it needed adjusting."
"Frabjous," Shawn said. He touched his fingers to his wet mouth, then Carlton's and sighed, smiling ruefully. "Hmm. I got carried away, huh?"
"A little," Carlton agreed cautiously. He wanted to glance down and see if Shawn was hard, too, but he couldn't take his gaze away from Shawn's flushed face and the bruise rising on his neck. He'd never left marks on someone before and it made him want to kiss Shawn somewhere that wouldn't show and leave another, one just the two of them would know about. He thought about putting one somewhere that Shawn wouldn't be able to see without twisting around and angling a mirror, a hickey on the underside of Shawn's ass, maybe, and found that he'd turned himself on so much that his breath was coming in rapid, shallow gasps.
"But you don't seem to mind me making hay while the sun shines," Shawn continued. "Not really."
Carlton tried to listen, but his attention was focused elsewhere. Specifically, on one of the nipples he could see because Shawn's open shirt had gotten pushed back and his chest and stomach were exposed now…
"Hey!"
Carlton raised his head, met Shawn's startled eyes and said calmly, "If you don't want me to do this, tell me to stop."
Shawn bit his lip and touched the nipple that Carlton had kissed briefly. "Not too hard," he said and took off his shirt. "They're kind of ticklish."
"Really?" Carlton said with a rising emphasis. "Good to know."
"Now, wait, if I tell you, then you can't use it against me, that's not fair --" Shawn said, only shutting up when Carlton snickered and gave Shawn's left nipple the lightest brush, not with his mouth but his fingers. "And besides, I was totally lying about being ticklish there. I have three tickle spots. They're all in hard to reach areas when it comes to the general public, but I'm hoping that you find at least two before this date is over."
That seemed, unfortunately, to be true. Shawn didn't flinch at all. Carlton abandoned the attempt to tickle and went back to kissing, with tongue and just a little hint of teeth, until Shawn's nipple tasted hot and stiff against his lips and Shawn was making approving murmurs, his hand threading through Carlton's hair.
When it felt as if Shawn's headlong rush had been slowed to something less likely to leave Carlton unmanned and covered in slobber, Carlton went back to kissing his mouth, forcing Shawn to follow his lead this time, patiently instructing him, wordlessly, until Shawn -- so quick -- got the hang of kissing a man.
Which begged the question of why Shawn didn't already know.
Carlton had kissed women -- some -- and men -- Shawn made two. He would've had trouble articulating the difference, but it existed. Maybe it was in the details; stubble against stubble, two people both assuming they had to lead, who knew. Whatever the difference was, it seemed to be a novel concept for Shawn.
Slowed down, schooled, Shawn was perfect, but Carlton couldn't shake the feeling that Shawn's seduction of him was based on a bluff.
With an inward sigh, he stopped them again.
"I need to know something."
"The answer to life, the universe, and everything? Forty-two," Shawn said promptly.
Carlton gave him a half-hearted smirk. Funny. "I've seen you with women, but never with men."
"Gus is sticking pins in a voodoo doll of you right now."
"You know what I mean. Well?"
Shawn stared at him for a moment, then reached out and undid the buttons on Carlton's shirt cuffs. "You want to know how many men I've slept with."
"I think I need to." Shawn was rolling Carlton's sleeves up with a neat precision that managed to be erotic. Carlton suspected he was at the stage where anything that Shawn did was maddeningly arousing. It had been a long dry spell -- he'd stopped counting in months, it was that long -- but that wasn't the reason.
"Is this where we have that awkward conversation about if Shawn's been a good boy and not gone out in the rain without his rubber boots on? Because I have. Been good, I mean."
Carlton worked that out and found that, as usual, Shawn was a few steps ahead of him and had answered the question he'd been asked and the one that would have followed. "Well, okay, then." His ass was close to numb, but the office didn't seem to have anywhere better than the floor. Shawn might've talked blithely about screwing around on his desk, but it was a cluttered mess. Guster's wasn't, but Carlton wouldn't have crossed that line. A man's desk was not to be trifled with, any more than his gun.
"Do I get to grill you now?" Shawn asked. "How many notches on your bad boy belt? Is sixty-nine your lucky number? Are you a cop who tops and doesn't stop or do you like to take your turn with your knees close to your ears and your --"
"Spencer!" Carlton swallowed back his outrage. They were -- some of them -- questions that Shawn had a right to ask. "Okay, you're only the second -- there was a man in college --" He stopped and began again. "I won't tell you his name. He's married now, I think. We didn't keep in touch." He'd wanted to, but Steve had made it clear at graduation that it wasn't an option. Carlton had looked him up when he'd become a cop, a shameful piece of research that'd left him sweating with fear that he'd be hauled up and questioned before being fired.
Shawn wasn't looking sympathetic exactly, but he began work on Carlton's shirt buttons in a respectful silence. Carlton hadn't worn a tie for this meeting, a symbolic omission he was beginning to regret. Shawn would've taken it off him so…inventively.
"And as for the rest…" Carlton told himself not to blush. Not that he had enough spare blood for it. "I remember being very fond of that number in the past and knowing you, I'll end up in whatever position you want me. I'm fine with that. I might have only been with one man, but we, uh, covered all the bases."
"You shock and amaze me," Shawn said and deftly yanked Carlton's shirt free of the waistband of his pants. "I pictured you being the epitome of a model student, burning the midnight oil to get straight As."
"I did that, too," Carlton admitted. "I only met, uh…"
"Let's call him Lucifer, corrupter of innocents. Lucy for short? No?"
"I only met him my final year and he didn't corrupt me. He just…broadened my horizons. Temporarily."
"And now here I am doing it again," Shawn said. "What comes around, goes around."
"Why?" Carlton said, helpless not to ask, even if it opened the door for so many insults. "Why me? You've made it plain just how dull you think I am, you go out of your way to insult and bedevil me -- Why do you want to fuck with me this way, too?"
Shawn stood without warning, leaving Carlton feeling bereft. "Ooh. Head rush." He held out his hand and Carlton took it, allowing himself to be hauled up. "The thing is, Lassie," Shawn said, leading them over to his desk, "you're one of three men in my life who call me on my bullshit and try to make me behave."
Easy enough to guess who the other two were.
Shawn studied the surface of his desk with pursed lips. He set his laptop aside, then cleared the desk by simply tilting it until everything slid off it and crashed to the floor. "Housekeeping for the week: check," he murmured. "Where was I? Oh, yeah. So my dad's, well, he's Poppa bear and he's too rough on me and Gus is Mommy bear and he's not tough enough, but you…you're just right, Lassie-bear."
And you can't sleep with either of them, for pretty much the same reason, and you need to get close to someone you can't intimidate because even you must get sick of running the show sometimes…
Carlton nodded to himself. Limits. It all came down to them. Okay. He could give Shawn that small mercy and set him some. It wasn't a question now of worrying that he wasn't going to come up to Shawn's standards -- the kissing had told him that he didn't have a lot of competition -- more making sure that he wasn't boring when he imposed some much-needed discipline.
And even if the rest of the world thought that the dictionary could have used a picture of Detective Lassiter in place of a definition of that word, Shawn didn't seem to agree.
"One last question," Carlton said, spinning Shawn around to face him then beginning to unfasten his jeans. "Do you think I'm boring?"
Shawn gave a chuckle and kicked off his jeans with an unselfconscious lack of grace and a wiggle. He was naked under them, a discovery that made Carlton forget to breathe for the space of a few seconds as he took in the view. Not bigger than he was, thank God. Shawn would've been insufferable. Now, their relative dick size would never get mentioned, he was sure of it. "Oh, Lassie, you can bore me anytime you like."
"How about now?" Carlton said and pointed at the desk. "I've got what we need. You just have to decide if you want to be looking at me or the desk when I do it."
"Interesting choice," Shawn said thoughtfully and fell to his knees. "Let me get back to you on that after I say hello to Mr. Pointy."
"Don't ever give my dick a nickname again, Spencer," Carlton said without much hope that he'd be obeyed.
"I promise I never will. Well, not aloud, anyway. Can you lip read? Does mouthing the words count?
Carlton let Shawn divest him of everything he was wearing beneath the waist -- that would have needed to happen, anyway -- but he didn't let that clever mouth get even a taste of him. With a silent apology to his erection, which had been eagerly anticipating something it hadn't gotten in years, namely a mouth on it, not Carlton's lube-slicked hand, he stepped back.
"I wanted to fuck you," he said, the crudity deliberate. He wasn't blushing now. Time for a limit. "If I'd wanted a blow job, I'd have told you."
"I'm not sure you call pull off a line like that when you're wearing a shirt, Lassie. I think you need something in leather. Maybe a few studs."
"I think I can pull it off just fine," Carlton told him and ran his hand over the darkly red length of his dick, not bothering to hold back a moan of pleasure at just how good it felt. "Desk. Now." He smirked at Shawn. "I'll make sure I fuck you just right, Goldilocks."
"Make me," Shawn said with a flirtatious glance upward under demurely lowered lashes, which prompted a tussle that Carlton enjoyed more than he should. They'd danced to this song before, but never alone, never with both of them naked. He'd been wearing his shirt, but it'd gotten torn off him somewhere around the time he'd taken a fistful of Shawn's hair and used it to hold Shawn in place for a kiss that had left Shawn's lip swollen and Carlton with a bitten tongue.
Panting, victorious, he bent Shawn over the desk and pinned him there with his body, pushing Shawn down against the smooth, hard surface until Shawn's hand groped for his and slid into it, an oddly poignant surrender.
It was then that Carlton realized the lube and condoms he'd slid into his jacket pocket -- with a feeling of unreality because they were there in case he and Shawn got to fuck and dear Lord, how bizarre a notion was that? -- were out of reach. He swore under his breath, then put his mouth next to Shawn's ear.
"If you move, one inch, one single fucking inch, I'll tie you to your chair and jerk off in front of you," he said. "I put you here fair and square and you stay here, got it?"
"Woof," Shawn said, but he stayed put when Carlton straightened and walked over to the chair with his jacket draped across it.
Good behavior deserved a reward. Carlton placed the lube where Shawn could see it and ripped the condom packet open, tossing it down next to the bottle while he contemplated the possibilities.
"No second thoughts?"
"Lassie, if you think I'm capable of thinking with you looming behind me ready to nail my quivering, virginal ass…"
"Your what?"
Shawn twisted around enough to meet Carlton's incredulous eyes. "Oh, didn't I mention that? I've never taken it up the ass. I can say stuff like that to you now, right?"
"But you said --" Carlton replayed Shawn's earlier words in his head and discovered, too late, that Shawn had neatly sidestepped the question of how many men he'd slept with and never gotten around to what he'd done with them. "If you think I'm going to -- not here. Not like this."
"You're such a romantic," Shawn complained. He wriggled off the desk, red marks from Carlton's fingers showing starkly against his skin here and there. "Fine, if you're going to be like that --"
Carlton closed his eyes and heard the thud as Shawn fell to his knees again, getting his own way, just like always.
Two minutes into the blow job, he realized that he was going to have to show Shawn how to do those, too.
Part Four
Author
janedavittWeb page Jane's Stories
Pairing Shawn/Carlton
Rating NC17
Length 4,900 words
Spoilers None
Part Three
Carlton had been in Spencer's so-called workplace before. Not often, because the disorder there disturbed him. It was the physical expression of Spencer's mind; childish, off-beat, incomprehensible.
It was also, most definitely, Spencer's territory, and Carlton preferred to engage with Spencer on his own turf; the police department, a crime scene, the morgue. Places where his authority was complete and unquestioned. Except by Spencer.
Tonight, with dusk doing the job of a mop and duster, and no lights turned on, the place didn't look too bad. Carlton admitted to himself that he preferred it with no lights for more reasons than that, but didn't let himself think too far ahead. He was in a state where thinking wasn't a good idea. If he gave mature consideration to the madness he'd tacitly agreed to -- sex with Spencer in this distressingly open, accessible space -- he'd find an excuse to leave. When it came to hunting down criminals, Carlton knew, without vanity, that he was a brave man. Courage was part of his duty. When it came to sex with anyone, let alone Spencer, he'd learned to be insecure about his ability to please, trained to that state by countless flicks of the whip. Scornful glances, rolled eyes, heaved sighs, one date even getting out her vibrator, a frankly terrifying piece of competition, before Carlton had finished putting his socks back on (he'd been told six months before that leaving them on during sex was completely unacceptable. When he'd obediently taken them off, she'd stared at his feet and told him to put them back on. Women were a constant mystery.)
Carlton didn't trust Spencer not to raise the bar on mocking his genuine efforts to be a considerate lover. Spencer loved mocking him -- his clothes, his hair, hell, even his name. Expecting his penis to be exempt would be foolishly optimistic and even if the two kisses they'd shared hadn't been disasters, they'd been less of a joint effort and more of a walk down a one-way street.
"Mi casa and all that," Spencer said with an airy wave of his hand.
Carlton cleared his throat. He'd made a huge concession and taken off his suit jacket when he walked in, putting it carefully over the back of a chair, and he felt exposed without it. "I don't -- is this really what you want to do right now?" His head hurt, panic and lust like spiked balls bouncing around inside his skull. "We could, uh, go on a date first? I could buy you some, umm, some food?"
As soon as the words hit the air, he looked around for a wall to bang his head against. Incompetence. He hated incompetence whether it be a confusing report, a poor grouping of shots on a target, or the lamest attempt to procrastinate ever.
"Not hungry," Spencer said and then, predictably, leered. "Not for food, anyway."
There was something just a little off about that line -- and all of Spencer's words gave the impression of being carefully scripted, dreamed up inside his devious brain before being shared, not the off-the cuff drivel they initially appeared. Carlton studied Spencer and decided that incredible though the idea sounded, Spencer was nervous. Eager, definitely, but twitching and bouncing, jittery even, too.
That was reassuring. Company in his meltdown.
"And you, know, Lassie, it's not like this is our first date, before you go thinking that I'm easy."
Carlton was trying to listen to what Spencer --no, Shawn, goddamn it, he'd earned the right to call Spencer that -- was saying, but as he spoke, Shawn was unbuttoning that gaudy nightmare of a shirt, exposing skin instead of his usual T-shirt. Distracting. Very.
"Huh?" Belatedly, Carlton's brain connected 'easy' to 'adjective that will get your face slapped' and he added hurriedly, "I don't think you're easy, Spencer. Just...accessible to many."
Spencer frowned. "I'm going to come back to that one when I decided if it's a surprisingly subtle compliment or pistols at dawn time. Let me refresh your memory. We met. You handcuffed me and threw me against your car. Lather, rinse, repeat, many, many times. We're practically married."
Carlton couldn't help wincing and Spencer gave him an unapologetic smile. "We are," he insisted. "And dating's been fun, Lassie-pie, but I think I'm ready to go past first base."
"If we've been dating, you've two-timed me a lot," Carlton said wryly. He wasn't sure that he completely accepted Spencer's logic -- if cuffing someone and slamming them around constituted courtship then he was a slut by anyone's standards because he did that on a weekly basis. Not that he didn't see where Spencer was coming from. In the early days of their acquaintance, the heated, hectic moments of holding a squirming Spencer close to him, trying to subdue him, had provided fuel for a lot of pleasurable encounters between his hand and his dick. He'd never been sure if Spencer had provoked their not infrequent physical clashes deliberately, but there wasn't much room for doubt now. He had. "Is that behavior going to continue?"
Spencer shrugged. "Not if you keep me occupied. Make playing with me your favorite hobby. A bored Shawn is a naughty Shawn. I had to write that out one hundred times once. On the back of a stamp. Really small writing. Tiny."
"Not acceptable," Carlton told him, automatically filtering out the nonsense, then finding a line and mentally building a wall on it, too high for Spencer to jump. Might as well spell out the facts of his life before Spencer started working on his zipper. Save them both from starting something doomed to fail. "I'm a busy man with very little spare time and I want you to be aware of that -- " He took a deep breath and lost his calm along with his ability to keep his voice at a normal volume. "And if I catch you even flirting with someone else --"
"I need you to finish that thought," Spencer said when Carlton trailed off, miserably aware that he was doing it again, grabbing and holding on too tightly, too soon. He wasn't possessive, he was just -- well, okay, maybe he was a little possessive. When you'd never had much, you clung to the little you did have. "Tell me the consequences. Are we talking a sliding scale? So if I smile at someone else, you hmm, you pout for ten minutes, but if I kiss them, you deal with me very severely later, and if I actually make a date with them, you gatecrash and take me hard against the nearest wall until I --"
Carlton shook his head, trying to dislodge the images of what Spencer seemed to think -- except he had to be joking -- was an acceptable reaction to infidelity for a disillusioned detective with an appalling track record in matters of the heart. "Are you trying to make me angry?"
"I know I like you when you're angry, my little Hulk," Spencer said, "but this time I really want to know. Give me your limits, Lassiter. Tell me what I can get away with and what will make you walk away. Then go into detail about what I can do to get you looming over me, snarling out something about you, me, and a strip search."
Carlton swallowed, his mouth dry. "If you want out, just tell me," he said hoarsely, the words rasping his throat because they weren't what he wanted to say, but anything else would be so…uncivilized. Not that Spencer was a prime example of evolution.
Spencer did the fingers to temple trick, his faint smile profoundly skeptical as he closed his eyes. "The spirits tell me that Master Carlton -- no, that's not at all funny. You really have to be called 'Bates' for that to work -- isn't being entirely honest and they're looking sad." He opened his eyes. "'Fess up, Detective. You'd like to keep me collared and leashed, with you holding the leash. You want to control me. Keep me safe. Keep me close."
The image was too close to Carlton's earlier fantasy of Shawn curled at his feet, for him not to react, his dick throbbing, hardening. "If you're trying to warn me that you can't stop playing around, this ends now. I don't share."
"I hear that," Spencer said and for once he sounded serious, though that state of being endured for less than a second. "I never thought you would, though, so you wasted your breath telling me that when you could have been using it to compliment me on something. I don't require flowers, but lavish praise? Like oxygen. Or pizza. I need it. Never think you can tell me I'm wonderful too many times. Can't happen."
"Compliments, huh? Such as?" Carlton had long ago realized that when it came to Spencer, his weakness was the fact that sometimes Spencer amused him. Not when he was goofing off at crime scenes, but when he was squabbling with Guster, or just hanging around the station running his mouth. To date, Carlton had always been able to keep a straight face, but it'd been a close call now and then.
"Well, I could give you a list of my favorites, but that would lack a certain spontaneity. Just let yourself go, Lassie. You don't usually have a problem telling me what you think of me." Spencer shut up, his eyes sparkling, expectant.
Carlton smiled, taken from self-doubt and jealousy at the thought of Spencer crooning nonsense at some flattered, gullible female, to good humor. He could've dealt out a verbal slap, but he didn't need to, did he? He'd done a good job of concealing his feelings when Spencer's hands were wandering over his face and hair, but now…everything had changed.
He put his hands on Shawn's shoulders, pulling him in closer with no effort at all, though Shawn's hands remained by his side. Carlton could feel the warmth of Shawn's skin, his bared chest visible through his open shirt. He wanted to touch it, taste it, but he held back. "You're the only person who could get me to kiss them where you did."
"On the mouth?" Shawn shook his head, willfully misunderstanding. "You need to get out more, Lassie."
"The only person who makes me -- sometimes -- want to misbehave," Carlton continued, sliding his hands until they were curved loosely around Shawn's neck. He wasn't exerting any pressure, barely grazing the skin, but Shawn shivered pleasurably without moving away, even as he tossed back a reply.
"Misbehaving? I'd be happy to help you with that."
Carlton leaned over and Shawn's head tilted back automatically, the small gesture making Carlton feel like purring with satisfaction.
"I want to do so much to you," Carlton said and heard the bewilderment in his voice, even if he suspected that Shawn was too focused on his own arousal to notice. His desires were shocking him, literal shivers thrilling through him whenever he dreamed up something involving Shawn naked and God, so very willing. He moved his hands again, cradling Shawn's face in them, his thumbs brushing across the sharp cheekbones. "So much I never even thought about before. I want to -- I need -- Shawn --"
Part of him knew that for all his attempts to slow this down, they'd both stepped out of a plane and there was only one possible direction for them to take. Might as well enjoy the plummet.
He didn't kiss Shawn's mouth yet. He didn't want to take away Shawn's ability to talk. He could -- maybe -- picture himself calling Shawn's bluff and handcuffing him, or returning the favor and blindfolding those sharp, seeking eyes, giving Shawn nothing but darkness to interrogate, but gag him? No.
Instead, he kissed Shawn's throat, his forehead, the imperious beak of his nose, scattered, light kisses that were addictive, intoxicating until by the time he returned to Shawn's throat, where a pulse beat wildly, he couldn't hold back. He licked skin wet and bit into it, sucked heat, scarlet, red, wet heat into Shawn's warm, tanned skin and felt Shawn's hands touch his back, clinging to him.
They stumbled, locked together, to the nearest wall and Carlton turned them so that his back was to it as they slid to the floor. He had a lapful of Shawn a moment later, with Shawn straddling his legs, his arms around Carlton's neck, his mouth hungry. For the first time, Carlton kissed Shawn and got kissed back. It wasn't anything like he'd expected. Shawn was feverishly eager, but clumsy, his mouth slipping over Carlton's, so that half of the time, Carlton's cheek or chin got more attention than his lips. Spencer was moaning deep in his throat, grinding down against Carlton's erection with his ass. It hurt, but Carlton didn't want him to stop, exactly, just slow down. A memory fought its way up through the fog of ardor -- a Golden Lab puppy licking Carlton's face dripping wet when he was twelve, just as uninhibited. It'd humped Carlton's leg and sniffed his ass a few years later, destroying his composure as he tried to talk to its owner, a pretty teenage girl a grade above him.
Eventually, frustrated and mildly confused, he pushed Shawn back, one hand against his chest, and pointedly wiped his face with the back of his hand. Shawn frowned, a puzzled twist distorting his shiny, spit-slicked mouth.
"What?"
Carlton imagined the way the conversation would go if he offered even a mild critique of Shawn's technique -- not well -- and contented himself with a tentative smile. "Just wanted to check everything was okay."
The frown became a scowl. "Lassie, I'm sitting on something hard and pointy, so clearly you're just fine and if I wasn't, I'd have told you."
"About the sitting part…" Carlton cleared his throat. "You're on the heavy side."
Shawn knelt up, prompting Carlton to sigh with unadulterated relief as the pressure on his dick and balls was lifted. It was a measure of how turned on he was that he was still hard despite the pain. He didn't entertain the thought that pain, when it was dealt out by Shawn, was something he'd gotten used to transmuting into arousal.
"Better?" Shawn inquired, a chill in his voice, settling down across Carlton's thighs.
Carlton leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. Fuck. He'd done it again. Did anyone else have the ability to piss off a date so quickly or was it his own special gift? "I'm sorry."
"And you're allowed to tell me if something's going…" Shawn waved his hand, his fingers wiggling. "You know. Droopy. Suffering in silence isn't sexy. You are. It isn't."
"Is that supposed to be me?" Carlton said indignantly as Shawn's fingers drooped and twitched sadly. He was glad that Shawn's annoyance wasn't for the usual reason, flattered by the implication that he was hot, but even so…"For your information, Spencer --"
"I liked 'Shawn' better, FYI. It's got that novelty factor."
"For your information, Shawn, my… that part is still in perfect working order, it was just -- it needed adjusting."
"Frabjous," Shawn said. He touched his fingers to his wet mouth, then Carlton's and sighed, smiling ruefully. "Hmm. I got carried away, huh?"
"A little," Carlton agreed cautiously. He wanted to glance down and see if Shawn was hard, too, but he couldn't take his gaze away from Shawn's flushed face and the bruise rising on his neck. He'd never left marks on someone before and it made him want to kiss Shawn somewhere that wouldn't show and leave another, one just the two of them would know about. He thought about putting one somewhere that Shawn wouldn't be able to see without twisting around and angling a mirror, a hickey on the underside of Shawn's ass, maybe, and found that he'd turned himself on so much that his breath was coming in rapid, shallow gasps.
"But you don't seem to mind me making hay while the sun shines," Shawn continued. "Not really."
Carlton tried to listen, but his attention was focused elsewhere. Specifically, on one of the nipples he could see because Shawn's open shirt had gotten pushed back and his chest and stomach were exposed now…
"Hey!"
Carlton raised his head, met Shawn's startled eyes and said calmly, "If you don't want me to do this, tell me to stop."
Shawn bit his lip and touched the nipple that Carlton had kissed briefly. "Not too hard," he said and took off his shirt. "They're kind of ticklish."
"Really?" Carlton said with a rising emphasis. "Good to know."
"Now, wait, if I tell you, then you can't use it against me, that's not fair --" Shawn said, only shutting up when Carlton snickered and gave Shawn's left nipple the lightest brush, not with his mouth but his fingers. "And besides, I was totally lying about being ticklish there. I have three tickle spots. They're all in hard to reach areas when it comes to the general public, but I'm hoping that you find at least two before this date is over."
That seemed, unfortunately, to be true. Shawn didn't flinch at all. Carlton abandoned the attempt to tickle and went back to kissing, with tongue and just a little hint of teeth, until Shawn's nipple tasted hot and stiff against his lips and Shawn was making approving murmurs, his hand threading through Carlton's hair.
When it felt as if Shawn's headlong rush had been slowed to something less likely to leave Carlton unmanned and covered in slobber, Carlton went back to kissing his mouth, forcing Shawn to follow his lead this time, patiently instructing him, wordlessly, until Shawn -- so quick -- got the hang of kissing a man.
Which begged the question of why Shawn didn't already know.
Carlton had kissed women -- some -- and men -- Shawn made two. He would've had trouble articulating the difference, but it existed. Maybe it was in the details; stubble against stubble, two people both assuming they had to lead, who knew. Whatever the difference was, it seemed to be a novel concept for Shawn.
Slowed down, schooled, Shawn was perfect, but Carlton couldn't shake the feeling that Shawn's seduction of him was based on a bluff.
With an inward sigh, he stopped them again.
"I need to know something."
"The answer to life, the universe, and everything? Forty-two," Shawn said promptly.
Carlton gave him a half-hearted smirk. Funny. "I've seen you with women, but never with men."
"Gus is sticking pins in a voodoo doll of you right now."
"You know what I mean. Well?"
Shawn stared at him for a moment, then reached out and undid the buttons on Carlton's shirt cuffs. "You want to know how many men I've slept with."
"I think I need to." Shawn was rolling Carlton's sleeves up with a neat precision that managed to be erotic. Carlton suspected he was at the stage where anything that Shawn did was maddeningly arousing. It had been a long dry spell -- he'd stopped counting in months, it was that long -- but that wasn't the reason.
"Is this where we have that awkward conversation about if Shawn's been a good boy and not gone out in the rain without his rubber boots on? Because I have. Been good, I mean."
Carlton worked that out and found that, as usual, Shawn was a few steps ahead of him and had answered the question he'd been asked and the one that would have followed. "Well, okay, then." His ass was close to numb, but the office didn't seem to have anywhere better than the floor. Shawn might've talked blithely about screwing around on his desk, but it was a cluttered mess. Guster's wasn't, but Carlton wouldn't have crossed that line. A man's desk was not to be trifled with, any more than his gun.
"Do I get to grill you now?" Shawn asked. "How many notches on your bad boy belt? Is sixty-nine your lucky number? Are you a cop who tops and doesn't stop or do you like to take your turn with your knees close to your ears and your --"
"Spencer!" Carlton swallowed back his outrage. They were -- some of them -- questions that Shawn had a right to ask. "Okay, you're only the second -- there was a man in college --" He stopped and began again. "I won't tell you his name. He's married now, I think. We didn't keep in touch." He'd wanted to, but Steve had made it clear at graduation that it wasn't an option. Carlton had looked him up when he'd become a cop, a shameful piece of research that'd left him sweating with fear that he'd be hauled up and questioned before being fired.
Shawn wasn't looking sympathetic exactly, but he began work on Carlton's shirt buttons in a respectful silence. Carlton hadn't worn a tie for this meeting, a symbolic omission he was beginning to regret. Shawn would've taken it off him so…inventively.
"And as for the rest…" Carlton told himself not to blush. Not that he had enough spare blood for it. "I remember being very fond of that number in the past and knowing you, I'll end up in whatever position you want me. I'm fine with that. I might have only been with one man, but we, uh, covered all the bases."
"You shock and amaze me," Shawn said and deftly yanked Carlton's shirt free of the waistband of his pants. "I pictured you being the epitome of a model student, burning the midnight oil to get straight As."
"I did that, too," Carlton admitted. "I only met, uh…"
"Let's call him Lucifer, corrupter of innocents. Lucy for short? No?"
"I only met him my final year and he didn't corrupt me. He just…broadened my horizons. Temporarily."
"And now here I am doing it again," Shawn said. "What comes around, goes around."
"Why?" Carlton said, helpless not to ask, even if it opened the door for so many insults. "Why me? You've made it plain just how dull you think I am, you go out of your way to insult and bedevil me -- Why do you want to fuck with me this way, too?"
Shawn stood without warning, leaving Carlton feeling bereft. "Ooh. Head rush." He held out his hand and Carlton took it, allowing himself to be hauled up. "The thing is, Lassie," Shawn said, leading them over to his desk, "you're one of three men in my life who call me on my bullshit and try to make me behave."
Easy enough to guess who the other two were.
Shawn studied the surface of his desk with pursed lips. He set his laptop aside, then cleared the desk by simply tilting it until everything slid off it and crashed to the floor. "Housekeeping for the week: check," he murmured. "Where was I? Oh, yeah. So my dad's, well, he's Poppa bear and he's too rough on me and Gus is Mommy bear and he's not tough enough, but you…you're just right, Lassie-bear."
And you can't sleep with either of them, for pretty much the same reason, and you need to get close to someone you can't intimidate because even you must get sick of running the show sometimes…
Carlton nodded to himself. Limits. It all came down to them. Okay. He could give Shawn that small mercy and set him some. It wasn't a question now of worrying that he wasn't going to come up to Shawn's standards -- the kissing had told him that he didn't have a lot of competition -- more making sure that he wasn't boring when he imposed some much-needed discipline.
And even if the rest of the world thought that the dictionary could have used a picture of Detective Lassiter in place of a definition of that word, Shawn didn't seem to agree.
"One last question," Carlton said, spinning Shawn around to face him then beginning to unfasten his jeans. "Do you think I'm boring?"
Shawn gave a chuckle and kicked off his jeans with an unselfconscious lack of grace and a wiggle. He was naked under them, a discovery that made Carlton forget to breathe for the space of a few seconds as he took in the view. Not bigger than he was, thank God. Shawn would've been insufferable. Now, their relative dick size would never get mentioned, he was sure of it. "Oh, Lassie, you can bore me anytime you like."
"How about now?" Carlton said and pointed at the desk. "I've got what we need. You just have to decide if you want to be looking at me or the desk when I do it."
"Interesting choice," Shawn said thoughtfully and fell to his knees. "Let me get back to you on that after I say hello to Mr. Pointy."
"Don't ever give my dick a nickname again, Spencer," Carlton said without much hope that he'd be obeyed.
"I promise I never will. Well, not aloud, anyway. Can you lip read? Does mouthing the words count?
Carlton let Shawn divest him of everything he was wearing beneath the waist -- that would have needed to happen, anyway -- but he didn't let that clever mouth get even a taste of him. With a silent apology to his erection, which had been eagerly anticipating something it hadn't gotten in years, namely a mouth on it, not Carlton's lube-slicked hand, he stepped back.
"I wanted to fuck you," he said, the crudity deliberate. He wasn't blushing now. Time for a limit. "If I'd wanted a blow job, I'd have told you."
"I'm not sure you call pull off a line like that when you're wearing a shirt, Lassie. I think you need something in leather. Maybe a few studs."
"I think I can pull it off just fine," Carlton told him and ran his hand over the darkly red length of his dick, not bothering to hold back a moan of pleasure at just how good it felt. "Desk. Now." He smirked at Shawn. "I'll make sure I fuck you just right, Goldilocks."
"Make me," Shawn said with a flirtatious glance upward under demurely lowered lashes, which prompted a tussle that Carlton enjoyed more than he should. They'd danced to this song before, but never alone, never with both of them naked. He'd been wearing his shirt, but it'd gotten torn off him somewhere around the time he'd taken a fistful of Shawn's hair and used it to hold Shawn in place for a kiss that had left Shawn's lip swollen and Carlton with a bitten tongue.
Panting, victorious, he bent Shawn over the desk and pinned him there with his body, pushing Shawn down against the smooth, hard surface until Shawn's hand groped for his and slid into it, an oddly poignant surrender.
It was then that Carlton realized the lube and condoms he'd slid into his jacket pocket -- with a feeling of unreality because they were there in case he and Shawn got to fuck and dear Lord, how bizarre a notion was that? -- were out of reach. He swore under his breath, then put his mouth next to Shawn's ear.
"If you move, one inch, one single fucking inch, I'll tie you to your chair and jerk off in front of you," he said. "I put you here fair and square and you stay here, got it?"
"Woof," Shawn said, but he stayed put when Carlton straightened and walked over to the chair with his jacket draped across it.
Good behavior deserved a reward. Carlton placed the lube where Shawn could see it and ripped the condom packet open, tossing it down next to the bottle while he contemplated the possibilities.
"No second thoughts?"
"Lassie, if you think I'm capable of thinking with you looming behind me ready to nail my quivering, virginal ass…"
"Your what?"
Shawn twisted around enough to meet Carlton's incredulous eyes. "Oh, didn't I mention that? I've never taken it up the ass. I can say stuff like that to you now, right?"
"But you said --" Carlton replayed Shawn's earlier words in his head and discovered, too late, that Shawn had neatly sidestepped the question of how many men he'd slept with and never gotten around to what he'd done with them. "If you think I'm going to -- not here. Not like this."
"You're such a romantic," Shawn complained. He wriggled off the desk, red marks from Carlton's fingers showing starkly against his skin here and there. "Fine, if you're going to be like that --"
Carlton closed his eyes and heard the thud as Shawn fell to his knees again, getting his own way, just like always.
Two minutes into the blow job, he realized that he was going to have to show Shawn how to do those, too.
Part Four
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I'd have commented sooner but it's hard for a puddle of goo to type!
(I think this is an icon Shawn would appreciate. *g*)
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Thank you so much for the kind feedback. I was dithering, trying to decide what worked for this version of them in my head and basically when it came down to it, for me, Shawn's a leap first, look later guy who talks a good game and so it worked for me that he was the less experienced here. Not sure he'd ever have admitted it to anyone else, though :-)