[POLITICAL AIDE AU]

[homosexuals]

AKA MATT BOMERCEPTION

a diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

Comments

[hymen]

[ it’s electric, every drag of hawk’s wet fingers, the slow, hot friction of his hips. embry’s cock makes a valiant effort to perk up, hypersensitive and begging for the torturous relief to recover. he wants hawk like this — reduced to the humiliating messes that embry always finds himself in. he wants hawk keening into his palm as he fucks him, preferably shoved up against a wall, his body his to use and misuse. he’d gotten a very small taste of cracking him back when he’d mentioned tim laughlin, and another now with hawk in the throes of grief, but he switches faces so quickly that embry can’t pin him down as much as he dreams of doing just that.

his eyes sweep open when hawk’s fingers pry for entry, and his brain goes for defiance even as his lips part willingly, tongue cushioning hawk’s fingers. they taste like smoke and sex, his own semen still dampening his skin. his breath cascades across hawk’s knuckles, his chin lifting to get a better angle to suck obscenely, tongue curling around each finger. if hawk swapped it for his dick right now, he'd take it without complaint — much complaint, anyway — his desire a hard, glittering jewel within him just waiting to be plucked. his throat rumbles around a soft groan, turning his head slowly to slide hawk's fingers free from the clamp of his lips. ]

You're stalling. What’s wrong, afraid you’ll like it?

[ it’s gratingly romantic, in a way, every languish touch, like hawk wants to learn embry, commit him to memory. embry finds he wants to do the same, to trace hawk’s sharp lines and angles, to know who touched him before and how he likes to be touched best so that embry can win his favor — even while embry shares this moment with a ghost of a memory, a flash of green eyes and dark hair and a presence so overwhelming he shudders. he leans up to catch hawk’s lips, kissing him again with a desperate, needy edge, his hands roaming across the lean muscles of his shoulders and back, and — there. his fingertips snag on an old scar, maybe unfamiliar to most, but he knows immediately what it’s from. ]

Is this from the war?

[ between his hushed tone and the music filtering in from the other room, he could be back there now, stealing moments in an unfamiliar bed. back then he had to be so careful with ash, and nothing’s really changed if he thinks about it. this all feels tenuous with hawk, like with one misstep they could remember all the reasons they shouldn’t be here at all. ]

[homosexuals]

[it shouldn't be funny - but maybe they're just destined to be haunted by the ghosts of former lovers, gone in the immediate sense, but never the lingering remnants that could be triggered by any sense at the most inopportune of moments. hawk is already as vulnerable as it gets, half considering embry's sudden insistence to be the one to actually take control for a change without even knowing what it meant the last time hawk gave it to someone. and he damn sure doesn't know he's the only other person short of the surgeons and today's dead man himself to trace the ugly gash on his shoulderblade, fingertips trailing the ridged edges with a softness that he probably doesn't deserve - and he didn't back then with the way he ultimately abandoned tim, or the doctors that treated him like glass for months after the fact - fuck.

he wishes he had a cigarette. instead, he dips down to shut embry up for a minute with another kiss and try to gain composure from the moment of silence that's lasted a beat too long and the spasm that surely washed across his face, too hard to miss this intimately close with embry underneath him. he pulls back, voice low and rough and hating that it seems like he's still stalling and ignoring the other question.]

Yeah.

[his saliva-coated fingers bypass the rest of embry's immaculate form underneath him, only so he can ghost across his barely dried cock and cup around his balls, teasing at the tempting part between his thighs without any real inclination to breech him just yet. maybe he wants to see how much a fight he'll put up for what he supposedly wants, or so hawk doesn't have to feel guilty denying someone else one thing they've asked for quite so plainly in his bed. can't you just take me to dinner? tim had asked him with an earnestness he'll never forget.]

I was a sergeant. Velletri - I know I told you that before at least. Me and four of my men were ambushed by a squad of Carpathian bastards weeks before we were supposed to get shipped home.

[hawk's jaw tightens hard, eyes narrowing to avoid growing misty even as he knows his cheek is clenched and he must look painfully obvious in blaming himself for all of it.]

I took as much of it as I could up front - all the big guns - doctors told me it was lucky it tore right through.

[it's funny too, how years have passed and the smell of gunpowder and smoke and blood never really feels like it's fully left his nostrils.]

Two of my best...they weren't so lucky. Probably still pieces of 'em scattered on the Cisterna Campoleone, Christ.

[he shakes his head, desperately wishing he could wrap his lips around a filter right now. and sure, the story could stop there, but he's a fucking runaway train now and why not just finish it off and let embry know what he's walked into? give him a chance to walk out while he can.]

Senator Smith got the best surgeons for me without a word - I had maybe a dozen operations or so. Little cabin up in Delaware to recover, but we both know it's never just about letting a body rest.

[there's the ptsd, the self-loathing, the night terrors - the general way he'd felt unfit to come back to polite society for some time. but he shrugs it off, glancing up at embry and utterly deadpanning:]

Sexy, right?

[hymen]

[ he gets it. he gets it more than anyone, because once ash had gotten his head on straight, after he'd held him down by the scruff of his neck and punished him for treating his life like cannon fodder, for getting himself shot and nearly killed, embry had started to see everything differently. he'd seen the good that he could do in those little villages. he'd seen what risks were worth taking and which ones came from the hollow place in his chest urging him to end it all. ash had filled him up, changed him, made him believe in something.

he realizes abruptly that what embry has felt without him, twisting endlessly in the wind, is what hawk feels right now with senator smith suddenly gone from this world. he doesn't know what it's like to care for a father figure, because he doesn't remember his own father, and is ambivalent at best toward morgan's. but he knows what it's like to hurt, and to need someone, and for them to be gone.

hawk's wayward fingers pull a ragged breath out of him, and embry decides that whatever hawk needs tonight is what he'll give. after jenny died, ash had demanded almost more than embry thought he had in him, nearly to the point that he'd considered, briefly, that they might need a safe word after all. he doesn't have any real evidence that hawk could be the same, but he does know that he can't leave him alone, and more importantly, he doesn't want to. ]

Yeah. Real sexy.

[ but he says it in a way that says a dozen other things, like i understand, and i still have nightmares, too, and i'm sorry. he knows hawk knows whatever's on his record better than embry himself, the skirmish he'd been caught in, the bullets he'd taken, how ash had carried him on his back to safety and made all the major american news outlets in doing so. he just doesn't know what happened in the darkness of the carpathian woods that night, and embry intends to keep it that way.

he answers the rest with a hand on hawk's jaw, his fingers running along the rough growth of stubble before drawing him into a kiss, deep and insistent, pressing his tongue into hawk's mouth as if he can touch every single part of him. ]

Changed my mind again. [ he whispers into hawk's mouth, pressing his hips up into hawk's hand. ] Take everything you need. I'm good for it.

[homosexuals]

[the real secret he's kept locked up tighter than goddamn fort knox? is that hawkins fuller has a surprisingly soft center - like some fucking milk chocolate meltaway. it's only by his own efforts that everyone knows he's a ruthless bastard who plays the dc game with the best of them - he's just learned the art of a pleasant smile and a handshake while he holds the knife behind his back to stab them when it counts. he knows when to cash in his favors, play it close to the chest, and offer a helping hand so he doesn't come across like a total tool. but he's no stranger to getting his hands dirty for the sake of the greater good, and it's not as fucking noble or heroic as the movies and even tim tried to make it seem once upon a time. tim, who he only barely confessed his closeness to senator smith to - tim who saw through the ugly parts and spent nights cradled in his arms, peppered with kisses and affection no one else would recognize.

there's a man in there somewhere that he would have been, if it weren't for his father and kenny and the world they live in. in some ways, senator smith had cemented that too - the notion that real love does nothing but bring pain to the people you care about. vulnerabilities of any kind are a risk that are too fucking high to pay.

which is why it's a terrible idea to let himself go down this route with embry. to have already broken one of his cardinal rules - kissing him like the air in his lungs was a natural resource that only passed through embry's plush lips. confiding war stories in him that not even his mandated government therapist ever knew the full scope of. but something about all of embry's sharp edges and hidden layers makes hawk want to unravel them piece by piece - even if he knows they're likely wrapped up in ash and greer. normally pretty faces and tragic pasts would make him run clear the opposite direction, but for every amount embry bristles at his sometimes overbearing professional responsibilities that aren't entirely for the sake of the job, there is something alluring that makes hawk want to get closer.

like right now, when he arches up against the hardness hawk's had ever since embry stripped out of his suit and kisses him with a heat that's contagious - that has hawk pressing down against him, fingers feather light up his rib cage while his free hand cups at the nape of his neck to deepen it. god, he could do this all night. nearly as addicting as the numbness that comes from the bottom of a bottle of scotch these last few days - better, if he's honest with himself.]

Yeah?

[it comes out in an amused rasp that's only half-authentic, a little smirk that doesn't fully reach his eyes. this is so different than their first go around - all rough, sloppy and without a care for anything beyond pleasure pricked with an edge of pain. but this? it's intimate. hawk already knows he wants to do this the right way, slow and measured where they can both fall apart and feel raw both mentally and physically when it's all said and done. it's why he reaches over to his nightstand, fumbling with something in the top shelf before his fingers come back glistening.]

Might wear you out, you know.

[he trails his clean hand down embry's front until he reaches one of his thighs, pressing it upwards to spread his legs a little further. there's a pause, like he wants to say something - and he does, maybe, if he wasn't so goddamn wounded and fucked up and trying to hold it together. instead he dips down again for another hungry kiss, nipping at embry's lips and making his way down along his jawline the moment two slick fingers press against the tight furl of his hole and start to push in. it's not soft, but it's more than he did for him the last time, that's for damn sure. hawk hums, low and almost amused at how tight he feels as he laves his tongue along embry's jugular in lieu of something lewd.]

[hymen]

[ this is something new, a side of hawk he hasn't been privy to until this point, and he's drawn in like hawk's gouged a hook in him. he hasn't had this kind of tender fragility in god knows how long. embry hasn't had anything, ruined like bruised fruit left out in the sun too long. this probably isn't the time to tell hawk he hasn't had sex since ash asked him to marry him and he choked out a lie about why he couldn't. there's never going to be a good time for that.

but it is a good time for this — for him to spread his legs wider and take hawk's fingers with a low grunt, his pulse fluttering against the hot press of hawk's tongue at his throat. he bears down until he feels the base of hawk's knuckles, savoring the sudden burn and eager to be stretched out for his cock. if hawk doesn't fuck him — christ. embry might actually have to fire him. ]

It takes more than you think to wear me out.

[ but hawk is talented. the second he starts curling his fingers, embry sees sparks, his spine arching off the mattress as hawk plays him like a goddamn instrument until his body sings and embry is gasping for breath. his cock weeps between them, and embry sneaks a hand out to squeeze at the base, staving off his pleasure so he doesn't come again as embarrassingly quick as before. blindly, he curls his fingers around a fistful of hawk's dark hair, pulling him down for a hot, messy kiss, his hand letting go of his own cock to seek out hawk's, wrapping a firm hand around his length for a hard stroke.

it’s fascinating to look at him like this, to see hawkins fuller with lust painted across his agonizingly handsome face. embry traces the line of one dark brow, then swipes his thumb gently at the shadows beneath his red-rimmed eye, as if he can erase the evidence of his grief. the best he can do is kiss him again, his hand lazily jacking his cock to draw this out, to chase away everything they’re trying to forget — ash, the senator, the mistake they’re making.

hawk’s fingers brush up against something that has embry shuddering into the kiss, keening out a curse as he very nearly gives up his attempts not to come, cruelly abusing the sensitive slit of hawk’s cock in retaliation with a grind of his thumb. ]

Shit. Fuck me, Hawk. [ the kiss breaks as he turns his head away, squeezing his eyes shut. ] Come on. Please.