Fic: Manu Forti
Feb. 14th, 2006 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneThe lesson here was supposed to be, “If you want kiltporn written, write it yourself!” The final result was closer to, “If you want kiltporn written, you’ll end up with almost 2,000 words of John!angst (with incidental kiltporn) and have to be satisfied with that, dammit!” So, um, yes. Can we just blame this on Valentine’s Day, maybe?
Title: Manu Forti
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~1850 words
Summary: John is forty-six and he is not the one getting married. Um, and also, there are kilts.
A/N:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
siriaeve dragged me with her to Scotland and thus inadvertently spawned this story; she also did double-duty and beta’d. Thank you—you’re the best evil co-conspirator ever.
Manu Forti
John is sixteen and he thinks that maybe he is going marry Lisa Graham. In the backseat of his father’s Mazda RX-7, she softly sighs and lets him run his hand up her thigh. Smooth skin, warm and trembling as his fingers trace a tentative path up under her skirt. She is sweating, not-unpleasant musky girl-odour, undulating beneath him and touching his hand through the fabric. Urging him upward, he thinks he hopes, as his fingers skim the border of her white cotton panties, and maybe he will marry her, and everything will be all right.
John is forty-six and he is not the one getting married. The Becketts are in the place of honor at the wedding table: Carson and Laura, smiling smiling smiling. John leans around the bride and groom to catch the best man’s eye, and he smiles a little bit too, here among friends, safe.
The hors d’oeuvres have been cleared away, the main course not yet come. John fiddles with his fork, happy yet distant—overwhelmed, maybe. The newlyweds are fulfilling their task as newlyweds and grinning at each other stupidly, the former Ms. Cadman (Captain Cadman still) occasionally doing something lewd to Carson’s leg under the table. Their hands, joined on the white damask cloth, gleam with bands of gold.
John has regrets. Mostly, he doesn’t think this is one of them.
There is the sound of a shifting chair and a clattering of silverware. The best man rises from the table and exits the room with a sort of awkward dignity. He pauses in the doorway, looking uncomfortable; but then, he has looked uncomfortable all afternoon. He catches John’s eye—just a moment, his head tilting slightly to the side—before pacing away in a final swirl of tartan twill.
John puts his fork down. He picks his napkin off his lap and lays it down gently beside the fork. Another breath, and then he, too, is standing. Cadman shoots him a sly look, but only for a second, her attention sliding off him and back to the only man that, in her mind, at this moment, really matters.
Rodney is standing in the vestibule, behind a potted plant. His eyes are wide and blue, and there is too much in them, too much for John to take in all at once. So instead he ghosts a pair of restless fingers over Rodney’s sleeve, catching the pads of his thumbs on a trio of cold silver buttons, thunk thunk thunk.
They can’t do anything here. They shouldn’t do anything here. But John suddenly wants nothing more than to bury his face in Rodney’s neck. Rodney, as if straining to feel a mouth that isn’t there, tugs anxiously at his collar. Feeling vaguely drugged, John reaches out and pulls lightly at the knot of Rodney’s tie; if anyone asks, he is merely straightening it.
He isn’t, though. In point of fact, he is kissing Rodney, suddenly and fiercely, without a conscious thought. Rodney’s fingers are rough on the back of his neck, against the final points of his spine, and this is not a thing for them to be doing, a half-step away from an open doorway, less than ten yards from a room full of people who are here to celebrate something else and don’t need something like this to spoil it for them.
But John...John needs Rodney’s hands and Rodney’s mouth. Wonderfully familiar, taste and touch and smell—all his, year after year, his. And yet here there are foreign textures, foreign sensations: the awkward shape of the ceremonial sporran, which John scrambles to push aside; the tiny sword that is like a bad joke waiting to be made—is that your dirk are you just happy to see me?; the odd but oddly alluring press of Rodney’s bare knees against his own clothed ones.
Any minute now, the waitstaff is going to come around with golden-rimmed plates full of delicately arranged food—chicken or fish; vegetarian option—and not long after that, Rodney is meant to stand, raise his glass, make his speech. But instead they are stumbling backward, past the plant, behind a slightly tatty-edged red velvet curtain. The space behind it is big enough to hold a disused piano and a oval-backed chair with a broken leg; also it is big enough to hold the two of them, hands shaking, panting into each other’s mouths. John’s whole face feels slack, eyes and mouth heavy with lust, and he looks blurrily into Rodney’s giant, black pupils. We shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, they say, but they are and they will and they want to. John wants to. He wants to have this.
He backs Rodney up against the piano—lid closed, thank God—and hooks his fingers over the wide leather belt. Rodney’s shoulders roll back as John lets his hands rove down over the rough green and blue twill covering the thick, solid columns of his thighs. Rodney’s legs part to accommodate him, and when John looks him in the eye, he knows that this is what they’ve both been thinking about, in each breath and every moment, all day.
A part of John still doesn’t want to want this. It wants to be out there, eating the chicken or the fish (or even the vegetarian option); toasting and being toasted; holding hands on top of the table, fingers clinking together, bonded by matching bands of gold. This man, this other self, will make love to his wife in a soft bed, in a nice hotel room; he will part her skirts and run his hands up her smooth thighs, just like he did with Lisa Graham in the backseat of his father’s Mazda RX-7, thirty years ago.
He thought maybe he would marry her, because it seemed like the kind of thing he should want to do, like he could win a battle and even the war just by wanting it. But he can’t remember what she looked like anymore, and neither can he picture the face of his phantom bride. All he can see are Rodney’s wide blue eyes as John slips his hands up under the kilt that Carson, over loud and extensive protests, made him wear. But Rodney isn’t complaining now. No, Rodney is not saying a thing.
Rodney’s thighs are hairy and warm, slick with perspiration from the heavy press of fabric. That fabric is now tenting out, beckoning John onward and upward, and Rodney, a closet traditionalist, is not wearing anything on underneath. John himself, no longer a hesitant schoolboy, eagerly strokes him, hiking the kilt upward around both their thighs. Rodney moans, biting his lip against the sound, and John rubs his cheek, stubble-rough, against the side of Rodney’s throat, reaching around to grab his ass.
Sometimes, he thinks, he would like to write an ode to Rodney’s ass. No vows, but an ode to those generous curves, that warm weight in the palms of his hands. Rodney’s shoulders are polishing dust off the lid of the piano and he’s fumbling at John’s fly, fingers troubled by the unfamiliar buttons of the rented tux. John leaves off composing in order to help him, reluctantly pulling a hand away. Rodney moves with him, winding a leg around John’s ankle; the white hose slip and slide down Rodney’s calves, pooling around his shiny black shoes.
They’re going to, they’re going to: somehow, they’re really going to. It should feel weirder, kinkier, but instead it just feels like the only right, necessary thing, with the quiet music and murmurs drifting in from the other room. So John slides a slick finger up between Rodney’s cheeks, and Rodney adds his own murmur to the mix.
Rodney’s hands clenched against the piano lid, exhibiting a flexibility John didn’t know he had. Rodney’s legs looping around his, the other stocking sliding down, joining its twin. Pulled flush against each other behind the waving curtain, and outside the band plays on: Irving Berlin, “Cheek to Cheek.”
Later, Carson will lead his wife out onto the floor for the first dance—or, more likely, Cadman will drag him, ushered by laughter and clapping and a roomful of satisfied grins. Rodney, as best man, will have to dance with one of the bridesmaids—Sergeant Mallory, perhaps, or Cadman’s fresh-faced cousin from Indiana in her delicate seafoam dress. And John will dance too, as it is his duty to dance: straight-backed and elegant, an officer and a gentleman. What every mother would want, would wish for her darling daughter to win.
Rodney grunts and bites his lip: as many times as they’ve done this, it’s still not easy with only sweat and spit. John’s kisses are messy and fleeting, just as this fuck is messy and fleeting, John kneading the globes of Rodney’s ass and pushing into him, banging awkwardly up against the discarded piano while Rodney’s free hand fists the wide lapels of John’s tux. A tenuous balance, and each second holds the possibility that they will lose their grip and topple over, shouts and loud noises and everyone gathering around, watching.
But it is just them, only them, and when John comes, it is to discover that he is still resisting the same old urge: to bury his face against Rodney’s throat and breathe him in, inhale his scent and his character and the unspoken everything of what this is when it’s not sordid sex between courses, backstage at another man’s wedding. He does resist, however, because Rodney is saying his name—frantic, John, John—and John pulls himself together enough to offer up his handkerchief for sacrifice, catching Rodney’s come.
A ruined handkerchief and Rodney pinned between him and an old block of wood: this is what he has, he thinks, as the band strikes up another tune, moving through the Berlin catalogue: “Let’s Face the Music and...” And he should feel like he’s lost something, something important, all those battles and indeed the war. Lisa Graham in the backseat of his father’s Mazda RX-7 and the promises that even then he knew better than to make.
That life, as often and as obstinately as he flirted with it, was never his to have. Yet he doubts he’ll ever be fully able to let it go, that shining green light, beautiful in its very intangibility.
Beneath him, Rodney is solid and warm, a mess of bruised shoulders and disarranged clothes and swollen lips. He looks disheveled, debauched, a dirty little secret hidden away behind this curtain. But his hands have stopped shaking. They do not shake as he reaches out and cups John’s face with a startling lack of gentleness. Strong hands, and steady, pulling John up like he’s lifting a veil of fabric from his eyes. Pulling him up in a silent gesture of acceptance—acceptance of this strange thing they have, that they are. Steady hands, and strong: welcoming him home.
John turns his cheek.
**************
NOTE:
Oh my God, I am such a dork. But yeah, a lot of Scots immigrated to Canada, so Rodney is probably of Scottish origin. The tartan of the Clan Mackay looks like this, and its motto is Manu Forti, which means “With a strong hand.” Yes, I do research for my porn. *headdesk*
Title: Manu Forti
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~1850 words
Summary: John is forty-six and he is not the one getting married. Um, and also, there are kilts.
A/N:
siriaeve dragged me with her to Scotland and thus inadvertently spawned this story; she also did double-duty and beta’d. Thank you—you’re the best evil co-conspirator ever.Manu Forti
John is sixteen and he thinks that maybe he is going marry Lisa Graham. In the backseat of his father’s Mazda RX-7, she softly sighs and lets him run his hand up her thigh. Smooth skin, warm and trembling as his fingers trace a tentative path up under her skirt. She is sweating, not-unpleasant musky girl-odour, undulating beneath him and touching his hand through the fabric. Urging him upward, he thinks he hopes, as his fingers skim the border of her white cotton panties, and maybe he will marry her, and everything will be all right.
John is forty-six and he is not the one getting married. The Becketts are in the place of honor at the wedding table: Carson and Laura, smiling smiling smiling. John leans around the bride and groom to catch the best man’s eye, and he smiles a little bit too, here among friends, safe.
The hors d’oeuvres have been cleared away, the main course not yet come. John fiddles with his fork, happy yet distant—overwhelmed, maybe. The newlyweds are fulfilling their task as newlyweds and grinning at each other stupidly, the former Ms. Cadman (Captain Cadman still) occasionally doing something lewd to Carson’s leg under the table. Their hands, joined on the white damask cloth, gleam with bands of gold.
John has regrets. Mostly, he doesn’t think this is one of them.
There is the sound of a shifting chair and a clattering of silverware. The best man rises from the table and exits the room with a sort of awkward dignity. He pauses in the doorway, looking uncomfortable; but then, he has looked uncomfortable all afternoon. He catches John’s eye—just a moment, his head tilting slightly to the side—before pacing away in a final swirl of tartan twill.
John puts his fork down. He picks his napkin off his lap and lays it down gently beside the fork. Another breath, and then he, too, is standing. Cadman shoots him a sly look, but only for a second, her attention sliding off him and back to the only man that, in her mind, at this moment, really matters.
Rodney is standing in the vestibule, behind a potted plant. His eyes are wide and blue, and there is too much in them, too much for John to take in all at once. So instead he ghosts a pair of restless fingers over Rodney’s sleeve, catching the pads of his thumbs on a trio of cold silver buttons, thunk thunk thunk.
They can’t do anything here. They shouldn’t do anything here. But John suddenly wants nothing more than to bury his face in Rodney’s neck. Rodney, as if straining to feel a mouth that isn’t there, tugs anxiously at his collar. Feeling vaguely drugged, John reaches out and pulls lightly at the knot of Rodney’s tie; if anyone asks, he is merely straightening it.
He isn’t, though. In point of fact, he is kissing Rodney, suddenly and fiercely, without a conscious thought. Rodney’s fingers are rough on the back of his neck, against the final points of his spine, and this is not a thing for them to be doing, a half-step away from an open doorway, less than ten yards from a room full of people who are here to celebrate something else and don’t need something like this to spoil it for them.
But John...John needs Rodney’s hands and Rodney’s mouth. Wonderfully familiar, taste and touch and smell—all his, year after year, his. And yet here there are foreign textures, foreign sensations: the awkward shape of the ceremonial sporran, which John scrambles to push aside; the tiny sword that is like a bad joke waiting to be made—is that your dirk are you just happy to see me?; the odd but oddly alluring press of Rodney’s bare knees against his own clothed ones.
Any minute now, the waitstaff is going to come around with golden-rimmed plates full of delicately arranged food—chicken or fish; vegetarian option—and not long after that, Rodney is meant to stand, raise his glass, make his speech. But instead they are stumbling backward, past the plant, behind a slightly tatty-edged red velvet curtain. The space behind it is big enough to hold a disused piano and a oval-backed chair with a broken leg; also it is big enough to hold the two of them, hands shaking, panting into each other’s mouths. John’s whole face feels slack, eyes and mouth heavy with lust, and he looks blurrily into Rodney’s giant, black pupils. We shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, they say, but they are and they will and they want to. John wants to. He wants to have this.
He backs Rodney up against the piano—lid closed, thank God—and hooks his fingers over the wide leather belt. Rodney’s shoulders roll back as John lets his hands rove down over the rough green and blue twill covering the thick, solid columns of his thighs. Rodney’s legs part to accommodate him, and when John looks him in the eye, he knows that this is what they’ve both been thinking about, in each breath and every moment, all day.
A part of John still doesn’t want to want this. It wants to be out there, eating the chicken or the fish (or even the vegetarian option); toasting and being toasted; holding hands on top of the table, fingers clinking together, bonded by matching bands of gold. This man, this other self, will make love to his wife in a soft bed, in a nice hotel room; he will part her skirts and run his hands up her smooth thighs, just like he did with Lisa Graham in the backseat of his father’s Mazda RX-7, thirty years ago.
He thought maybe he would marry her, because it seemed like the kind of thing he should want to do, like he could win a battle and even the war just by wanting it. But he can’t remember what she looked like anymore, and neither can he picture the face of his phantom bride. All he can see are Rodney’s wide blue eyes as John slips his hands up under the kilt that Carson, over loud and extensive protests, made him wear. But Rodney isn’t complaining now. No, Rodney is not saying a thing.
Rodney’s thighs are hairy and warm, slick with perspiration from the heavy press of fabric. That fabric is now tenting out, beckoning John onward and upward, and Rodney, a closet traditionalist, is not wearing anything on underneath. John himself, no longer a hesitant schoolboy, eagerly strokes him, hiking the kilt upward around both their thighs. Rodney moans, biting his lip against the sound, and John rubs his cheek, stubble-rough, against the side of Rodney’s throat, reaching around to grab his ass.
Sometimes, he thinks, he would like to write an ode to Rodney’s ass. No vows, but an ode to those generous curves, that warm weight in the palms of his hands. Rodney’s shoulders are polishing dust off the lid of the piano and he’s fumbling at John’s fly, fingers troubled by the unfamiliar buttons of the rented tux. John leaves off composing in order to help him, reluctantly pulling a hand away. Rodney moves with him, winding a leg around John’s ankle; the white hose slip and slide down Rodney’s calves, pooling around his shiny black shoes.
They’re going to, they’re going to: somehow, they’re really going to. It should feel weirder, kinkier, but instead it just feels like the only right, necessary thing, with the quiet music and murmurs drifting in from the other room. So John slides a slick finger up between Rodney’s cheeks, and Rodney adds his own murmur to the mix.
Rodney’s hands clenched against the piano lid, exhibiting a flexibility John didn’t know he had. Rodney’s legs looping around his, the other stocking sliding down, joining its twin. Pulled flush against each other behind the waving curtain, and outside the band plays on: Irving Berlin, “Cheek to Cheek.”
Later, Carson will lead his wife out onto the floor for the first dance—or, more likely, Cadman will drag him, ushered by laughter and clapping and a roomful of satisfied grins. Rodney, as best man, will have to dance with one of the bridesmaids—Sergeant Mallory, perhaps, or Cadman’s fresh-faced cousin from Indiana in her delicate seafoam dress. And John will dance too, as it is his duty to dance: straight-backed and elegant, an officer and a gentleman. What every mother would want, would wish for her darling daughter to win.
Rodney grunts and bites his lip: as many times as they’ve done this, it’s still not easy with only sweat and spit. John’s kisses are messy and fleeting, just as this fuck is messy and fleeting, John kneading the globes of Rodney’s ass and pushing into him, banging awkwardly up against the discarded piano while Rodney’s free hand fists the wide lapels of John’s tux. A tenuous balance, and each second holds the possibility that they will lose their grip and topple over, shouts and loud noises and everyone gathering around, watching.
But it is just them, only them, and when John comes, it is to discover that he is still resisting the same old urge: to bury his face against Rodney’s throat and breathe him in, inhale his scent and his character and the unspoken everything of what this is when it’s not sordid sex between courses, backstage at another man’s wedding. He does resist, however, because Rodney is saying his name—frantic, John, John—and John pulls himself together enough to offer up his handkerchief for sacrifice, catching Rodney’s come.
A ruined handkerchief and Rodney pinned between him and an old block of wood: this is what he has, he thinks, as the band strikes up another tune, moving through the Berlin catalogue: “Let’s Face the Music and...” And he should feel like he’s lost something, something important, all those battles and indeed the war. Lisa Graham in the backseat of his father’s Mazda RX-7 and the promises that even then he knew better than to make.
That life, as often and as obstinately as he flirted with it, was never his to have. Yet he doubts he’ll ever be fully able to let it go, that shining green light, beautiful in its very intangibility.
Beneath him, Rodney is solid and warm, a mess of bruised shoulders and disarranged clothes and swollen lips. He looks disheveled, debauched, a dirty little secret hidden away behind this curtain. But his hands have stopped shaking. They do not shake as he reaches out and cups John’s face with a startling lack of gentleness. Strong hands, and steady, pulling John up like he’s lifting a veil of fabric from his eyes. Pulling him up in a silent gesture of acceptance—acceptance of this strange thing they have, that they are. Steady hands, and strong: welcoming him home.
John turns his cheek.
**************
NOTE:
Oh my God, I am such a dork. But yeah, a lot of Scots immigrated to Canada, so Rodney is probably of Scottish origin. The tartan of the Clan Mackay looks like this, and its motto is Manu Forti, which means “With a strong hand.” Yes, I do research for my porn. *headdesk*
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Date: 2006-02-14 08:44 pm (UTC)