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Francis awakes from a dream that he has become trapped beneath a spar. He is on Terror’s quarterdeck as a squall howls at the timbers. There is the hideous squeal of splintering wood, and all at once he is pinned to the deck by tremendous weight. The thing is crushing down on his chest, smothering him, and he cannot even breathe to cry out for help-
He awakes with a gasp to find that while he is not being crushed to death, there is a great weight upon him, one entirely literal.
James has, at some point during the night, moved from lying curled at Francis’s side to draped entirely across Francis’s chest. It is not merely his head that rests on Francis’s breast, but almost his whole trunk. James head is on Francis’s shoulder, cushioned on one of his own arms. One of his legs is thrown over Francis’s body.
He is fast asleep.
Francis is loath to wake him. The sight of him sleeping so deeply and so peacefully stirs him nearly to tears. The warmth of his body is divine; Francis is never so warm as when James lies with him.
But James is heavy. He does not have Francis’s heft, but he has an advantage in height and a great deal of lean sinew.
Lamely, Francis tries to wriggle out from underneath James, but there is little room in the bunk. Short of planting himself arse-first on the deck, he has no escape.
“James.”
The man doesn’t respond, still deeply asleep.
Francis strokes a hand up James’s lithe back. “James. Wake up.”
James starts with an enticing little shudder. Still slurring from sleep: “Yes, sweetheart?”
Francis meets such tenderness with an appropriate dourness. “Move, won’t you?”
James’s eyes open with a few bats of his irritatingly long eyelashes. He cocks an eyebrow, and then closes his eyes once more and settles back down.
“Move.”
“Mmh.” James smiles as he nuzzles Francis’s shoulder. “Don’t think I shall.”
“Move, you great, sodding lump.”
James merely hums and nestles closer.
“You’re crushing me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” says James, and Francis manages a snort at being called dramatic by a man the very definition of theatrical. “Besides, it’s rather enjoyable to have a living creature choose you for its bed, I think. I never mind when Fagin sleeps on my lap.”
“You are considerably heavier than a cat, James. An infinitely more vexing.”
“Hardly.” James lifts his head and by his smile, Francis knows that James is about to be very vexing indeed. He gives Francis a sidelong glance from under his lashes. “And am I not as good as a loyal lap-cat to you, Francis?”
Francis scoffs, his derision no doubt undermined by the fact that his cock is growing hard against James’s body.
“If you mean that you – fucking hell.”
James gives a low, filthy sigh as he writhes against Francis. “Do I not keep myself groomed for your pleasure? Do I not purr when you touch me?”
“And scratch me when you-”
A motion – quick as a cat on a fly – and James straddles him. Their cocks rub together as he cants his hips slowly into Francis’s, providing a delicious but unsatisfying friction.
“I’ll not scratch you,” he says, as he places both hands on Francis’s chest, kneading with his fingers bent just so that his nails dig into the soft flesh like pricked claws. He goes on grinding his body into Francis’s. “So long as you make me happy.”
“And how will I keep you happy, then?”
James drops his head and bunts against Francis’s face, like a cat pressing its cheek to a caressing hand. A ridiculous farce, made more ridiculous by the fact that James has begun to imitate a purr. Francis finds it absurd, but the sound of James’s voice, the sweetness of his touch, even the maddening way he is playacting – Francis is enthralled.
Still he scoffs, or however well he can with James rutting against him. “What in God’s name has gotten into y-”
He breaks off only when James kisses him. When he pulls back his eyes are bright with merriment. This is James at his happiest, playing to an audience; in this case, it is Francis, who is grudgingly enraptured.
James takes Francis’s hands and places them against the small of his back, drawing them up and down. “Will you stroke my back, then?” he asks.
“I’ll stroke a different part of you.”
Francis reaches for James’s cock and is surprised when the man bats his hand away, pawing at him like a cat at a string. His grin is all impish delight.
James wriggles aft, until he settles between Francis’s legs. Francis’s knees splay out, quite the wanton sight. James’s lovely, prideful mouth is mere inches from Francis’s eager prick. “You know that you are…dear to me, yes?”
Such a surprise, that a man who Francis had been determined to hate, and who had loathed him with a similar fervour, is now one who would ask this question.
“I’d gathered.”
For this stilting confession, Francis gets a tantalizing reward, as James presses a chaste kiss to the head of Francis’s prick.
“I hope you understand the depth of my affection for you. But I shall show you, in case you are still in doubt.” James’s tone is at its most affected. “Do you know how cats show affection to each other, Francis?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me regardless.”
“They groom each other.” James is stroking the inside of Francis’s thigh with the tips of his fingers, the blunt ends of his nails grazing the skin not hard enough to scratch.
“Oh, indeed?” says Francis, his sarcasm having a far wispier tone than he’d like.
“Indeed. With their tongues.”
Francis’s breath hitches. “Their tongues.”
“Their tongues,” James affirms. “Everywhere.”
Then James bends his head and licks a blistering, wet path from the cleft of Francis’s arse to the tight opening between his cheeks.
“Jesus fucking Christ-”
The act is filthy; Francis can think of little else more intimate. Never has anyone touched Francis in such a place, in such a way. James looks up at Francis, and even with his mouth obscured – by Francis’s body, of course – Francis can tell James is smiling.
“Fuck,” manages Francis.
James moans as he tongues at Francis’s hole. One of his hands wanders up, and begins to rub absently at Francis’s prick.
“Yes, God, that’s good, oh, yes-” Francis is driven past the point of coherency with this new sensation.
The hand that isn’t pulling Francis off grips one of Francis’s buttocks. So much for not scratching – James will no doubt leave marks in the soft skin. In retaliation, Francis sinks a hand into James’s long, rich hair, tugging it sharply.
He receives a groan, and James lets go of his prick in favour of spreading Francis out with both hands.
Slowly, carefully, James works Francis to the point of madness, licking at that most intimate place with slow, broad strokes of his tongue, and quick flicks of its tip, going so far even as to gently, gently push his tongue inside of Francis.
This becomes too much of not enough. Francis is deliciously frustrated, and needs more.
“Don’t – don’t tease.”
“I never tease,” says James. If Francis were capable of any sort of abstract thought, he would argue that point. He isn’t. “But do you wish me to stop grooming you?”
“No. No. I want – damn it, you know what I want.”
James’s grin is wide, more wolf than cat. “You’d like me to groom you somewhere else, you mean?”
“Yes.” With his hand in James’s hair, Francis attempts to guide James toward his goal, but with a toss of his head, James shakes Francis’s hand away.
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
“James-” Francis is fully aware he’s pleading.
James’s smile has faded, but he is as playful as ever. Now he affects a sterner tone. “No. Tell me what you want me to do, or I won’t do it.”
Francis grinds his teeth. James arches his brows and dares Francis to answer.
“Your mouth,” says Francis.
James makes a great show of disappointment. “I think we’ve already established that part. What would you like me to do with my mouth, Francis?”
Desire makes Francis unbend his pride and choke out the words. “Damn it. My – my cock. Suck my cock.”
James’s smile turns from a grin to a smirk; then from a smirk to a leer. He bends his neck and has the audacity to take a rather lengthy pause. His hair tickles Francis’s bare skin and Francis wonders if he’s going to have to repeat his request, but then-
“Jesus God!”
James laves Francis’s cock from root to tip, and then begins – like a kitten lapping at a bowl of milk – to tongue the underside of the head, just where it meets the shaft. When Francis bucks into James’s mouth, he finds himself pinned down, one of James’s strong arms thrown across his abdomen.
“Damn your mouth – God, please-”
James’s whole body hums with a laugh, and he does nothing but merely taunt Francis’s poor, needy flesh, licking his way up the shaft of Francis’s prick.
“Fuck – James, please, please!”
James now takes Francis into his mouth and begins to suck in earnest. Francis cries out and without meaning to pulls James again by the hair. Rather than a complaint, Francis receives a moan by way of response.
As James works, he makes obscene, wet noises, all the while groaning and sighing around Francis’s prick. He pauses only when pulls off to frig hard at Francis’s cock. “God, you taste so good,” he whispers, before diving right back down to finish what he started.
By the time Francis sees James writhing against the bunk, and knows that the other man is rubbing himself against the mattress, Francis is close. Very close. He is panting great gasping lungfuls of air, and doing nothing but pleading with James.
“God, don’t you stop, don’t you ever stop, that’s so good – I’m going to-”
Immediately, James lifts his head and strokes Francis’s prick fast and hard until with a final ragged groan, every muscle in Francis’s body tenses, he arches off the bunk, and spurts over his own belly. For a moment, he does nothing but shudder and gasp, lost in the blizzard-white haze of his climax.
Eventually, Francis’s body gives out and he collapses, loose-limbed and quivering, onto the bunk.
James has stopped moving, and Francis has enough wherewithal to wonder at James’s eleventh-hour retreat – normally, it is with an encouraging moan that he allows Francis to come in his mouth. The reasoning becomes plain when with all the prim delicacy of the stateliest of spoiled lap-cats, he licks Francis’s skin clean.
Another filthy act; another bit of intimate care.
When he’s done, James sits up and wipes his lower lip with the pad of his thumb. Francis is about to ask – rather blearily, however – whether he ought to reciprocate. He finds his answer, however, in the messy splatter of white across James’s thigh.
“Well, Francis?” asks James.
“Well what?” Francis is beginning to regain some semblance of cognitive ability, though he is currently restricted to words of single syllabic form.
“Do you concede the point to me?”
“Wh – what?”
“Am I not as good to you as a loyal lap-cat?”
Francis rolls his eyes. “Oh, God. Yes, I concede it, damn you. Now lie down and draw up the blankets before you freeze to death.”
At the mention of lying down, James begins to eye Francis’s chest.
Francis realizes what James is about to do. “Don’t you dare, don’t you-”
This is all he manages before James flops right back onto Francis’s chest, planted more firmly than he was when Francis first awoke.
Francis feels his breath leave him in a wheeze. “Damn it, man. You’ll kill me.”
James settles himself with a sigh. “Oh, hush.”
Reluctantly, Francis puts both arms around James. The other man cozies up to Francis more securely, yawns, and puts his head back down on Francis’s shoulder.
Just as Francis is drifting off to sleep, he is roused by a low, rumbling purr.
“For Christ’s sake!”
James breaks up into riotous laughter.