Wartober/Kisstober - Day 11

Wartober/Kisstober - Day 11

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3

Day 11 - Light + Kisses As A Promise

WARNING: Listen at this point, I'm just writing multiple semi-redundant love letters to Dick Winters and Damian Lewis' body. So if that's not your jam, you're about to have a bad time.

Dick looks good in any light.

Sunlight seems made for him, crowning him as a favorite son - a scion - setting his copper hair aflame with it’s love and claiming him as its own. He lingers in it’s radiance and never seems to burn despite his pale skin. Only wears his freckles like sunspots as his body takes on a golden Adonis glow. He walks under the crepuscular rays and Nixon turns and tracks him like an adoring flower.

Moonlight too, challenges for his affections. It courts him with a covetous lust that's equally strong, if not lacking the same magnitude of violence. He stands still in the night and it gathers and pools like liquid silver along his limbs, coats him in a million fairy lights that dance and sway in the breeze. It turns all his movements fluid, the simplest saunter down the sidewalk becoming a waltz. Like he’s some otherworldly being the moonlight by design is made to accent and enhance.

Candlelight spins him in threads of softest saffron. While it’s embrace is gentler, more forgiving, it cuts Dick into a creature of sharp edges and mysterious shadows. It sighs along his skin, brushing it smooth and velvety to the point where it’s almost irresistible for Nixon to reach out and touch. He loves interrupting the candlelight on Dick’s skin.

Firelight even more. It’s candlelight’s more aggressive sister, licking along Dick’s torso in cinnamons and yellows that burn pure and white at their hottest. He arches his back under Nixon’s touch, sprawled like poured molten magma on the hearth rug, twisting and writhing like a living flame himself. His gasps compliment the crackle of the blaze as it consumes sweet-smelling wood and when Nixon brings him to orgasm with his fingers and mouth and body, Dick combusts in the most glorious explosion of red light, his throat a fiery column as his head falls back in ecstasy.

Even streetlights. The harsh, unforgiving neon of Chicago doesn’t bloat the angles of his face into obscurity the way it does Nixon. He stands in thoughtful observation at the window of the atrociously lavish hotel room Nixon’s booked for the next two days, stripped to the waist and arms crossed over his chest. The garish lights of the city only emphasize his fine bone structure, the fit expanse of muscle that ripples at his back and abdomen as he shifts.

He gives a minute turn of his head at Nixon’s approach from behind and it presents an entirely new profile, his smile lined in vulgar magenta, the outline of his chin in brazen cyan. Instead of making him gaudy or cheap, it sits like paint on his features - a bizarre colored work of art.

He settles back against Nixon’s chest, lifts his arms to make room for the ones slipping around to encircle him from the back.

Nixon peppers a string of kisses across the broad line of his shoulders, nibbling at the ball and tracing the neon highlights with his nose.

“Well?” he mumbles, mouth full of every color in the light spectrum, Dick’s own specific wavelength buzzing like electricity on his tongue. “Told you I’d get you to Chicago. How do you like it?”

Dick overlaps his large hands on Nixon’s forearms, nodding sagely.

“It’s nice, Lew. A bit fast paced. But I’m glad I got to see it.”

Nixon hooks his chin over Dick’s shoulder, gazes out with him at the landscape for a long moment. Though they are the ones trapped behind glass, it’s the bustle of the city that seems like the specimen under observation. It rushes on below their feet, ignorant of their existence and Nixon is grateful. He doesn’t have to compete for Dick here. He doesn’t have to hide his incessant craving for him here. He can touch at will, can reach out and take anytime he fancies, under the witness of all the city lights.

“Where to next?” Dick asks, his eyes glittering with joy in the reflected ambient light of the city.

“Anywhere,” Nixon tells him. He’ll follow Dick to the sun and the moon and back, watching as he eclipses the shine of both as they pass. “Anywhere you want.”

Anything you want. Anything I can get, anything I have, it’s yours. Don’t you see?

“Montana?” Dick suggests. “The Wild West?”

“Sure.” Nixon nuzzles the hollow of his neck, rubs his cheek against him until stubble catches and he’s forced to switch to trailing lips over the edge of Dick’s jaw. The light turns the blonde of his beard beginnings and the tiny hairs on the back of his neck into spun red gold. Nixon presses his lips to them and expects to taste amber and honey and clove. Warm spices associated with fire.

He tastes nothing like he looks. Mint and lime aftershave and the cool green of forests. Nixon drags the tip of his tongue down Dick’s pulse point, delighting at the contradiction.

“South America,” Dick says, that teasing lopsided smile pulling up one side of his mouth. “The tropical rain forests of the Amazon. Lots of bugs. And heat. And sweat.”

He’s clearly testing the limits of Nix’s commitment. He doesn’t realize Nixon is already there, one step behind anywhere he might dream to venture.

He kisses Dick’s cheek, craning his neck around as far as he can to claim the soft dimples at the corners of Dick’s mouth. It’s rose pink at the swell, navy in the crease and the space behind his teeth.

“Won’t have to pack much clothing,” he says pragmatically.

That earns him a chuckle and Nixon thrills. If he can spend the rest of his life making this man laugh like that - contained but earnest, relaxed, happy - he will have done something worthwhile.

Dick slides out of his hold to rotate in his arms. He drapes himself over Nix’s shoulders, let’s himself be walked backwards towards the ostentatious windows until his back is pressed against glass, Nixon pressed against him. His eyes are a giddy prismatic blue with too many colored facets for Nixon to name. They’re all his favorite color simultaneously.

“The peaks of the Himalayas,” Dick murmurs, lingering within kissing distance, close enough that Nixon can feel their breath ricocheting and mingling. “The highest point of Everest so we can look out over the whole world.”

Another kiss. Another seal on the treaty.

“We’ve survived one frozen barren wasteland, what’s one more?”

One day Dick will leave him. Because maybe he’ll grow tired of Nix’s insipid brand of love, where the balance of give and take is always just slightly skewed towards selfishness. Because the wanderlust and call to action is too great and he’s too big to cram himself back into the drab grey box of domesticity for long. Because his lionheart will eventually give out and take him wherever it is good, devout men go.

Nixon won’t be able to follow him forever. But he’s sure as hell going to try for as long as he can.

“To the bottom of the sea,” Dick says, eyes full of mirth and dancing over Nix’s face. He runs his hands through Nix’s dark hair, tugging him even closer. Until he’s a blur of color and shapes and Nix’s vision melts into a soft, fuzzy haze consisting only of him. “Where the shipwrecks are, waiting to be discovered, hulls full of silver and gold.”

Nixon kisses him. Partially to cement the deal. Mostly to shut him up. Weaves his arms around Dick’s light-loved body and tries to hoard it all to himself. Kisses the obstinance off his teeth until he tastes something sweeter. Richer.

He kisses Dick until he’s confident in the sunrise again. Until Dick’s soft sighs and moans loop in his ears like a symphony - an orchestral soundtrack written to accompany the new daybreak promised.

He draws back only when Dick tightens his grip, the arousal sparking hot in his blood. He stares at Nixon, just this side of breathless and his calm starting to unspool. Goddamn, he’s gorgeous like this. Balance tilted in towards Nixon’s center of gravity, tension simmering just below the surface and waiting to be tapped. Cast in a rainbow mold of neon, eyes iridescent with clarity enough to rival diamonds.

Nixon kisses his top lip and then the bottom, and repeats. “I said I’d take you anywhere. And I meant what I said.”

Oh love, don’t be afraid. Don’t look over your shoulder for me. We are stronger than Orpheus and Eurydice. My devotion is not nearly as fragile.

Dick grins, pulls him back in. “Just checking,” he murmurs against Nixon’s mouth. “Take me to bed first. We can figure out the next stop after.”

Dick looks good in any light.

But he looks the best lit from within, reflecting and amplifying Lewis Nixon’s paltry, washed out love back upon him with the force of a thousand suns.

Comments and kudos are always appreciated on my ao3! <3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34466809

Somebody 👏🏻 put it 👏🏻 into 👏🏻 words.

There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?  

There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing.  And like, I find men attractive, yes.  But I also find women attractive.  I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones.  I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.

But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO.  A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women.  It removes a source of pressure and sexism.  Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life.  It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.

This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically.  I read a recommendation for a het romance.  And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended.  The tropes at play were fun.  Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss.  I had a visceral negative reaction.  

Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you.  How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.  

And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men.  Now, there’s no logical reason for that.  Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man.  But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it.  Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.

But I can’t when it’s a het relationship.  There’s too much baggage there.  Too much societal history of abuse.  I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.  

Now some people can.  And that’s fine.  And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender.  That’s also fine.  I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior.  It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.

But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters.  We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic.  We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance.  We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it.   But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us.  And maybe it shouldn’t?  In an ideal world?  But for many of us, that’s the truth.

History hates lovers

I mean, for real though. And go ahead and comment on those old ass fics from five years ago too. It still matters and you don’t sound dumb.

Dear Fanfiction Readers,

If you’re afraid to leave a review/comment because you think it’ll sound stupid, don’t be. Just leave an incoherent reply in all caps. We love that shit.

Sincerely,

A Fic Writer that needs constant validation. 

Wartober/Kisstober - Day 4

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3

Day 4 - Navigate + Slow Kisses

WARNING: POETIC AND OVERLY METAPHORED ALLUSIONS TO SEX AHEAD

Dick has always loved maps.

As a boy he’d been obsessed with charting the world, one latitude at a time. He could see the peaks of the Himalayas on every globe. The jungles of Madagascar in every atlas. The sea currents. The depths of the Pacific Ocean in every naval chart.

He’d trailed bony boy hands over the lines of longitude, zigzagging past the equator and up to each pole in turn, imagining the far off lands detailed in perfect topography beneath his fingertips and what adventures they may hold. Wild animals perhaps. Inland seas the color of blue only dreamt of, brimming over with dolphins bearing their backs of gold. Rubies deep in the planet’s crust the size of a fist, too glamorous even for the most queenly neck. Anything beyond the tidy suburban monotony of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

He’d joined the air force with a head full of boyish fantasies that never quite grew up. A misplaced Peter Pan training to plummet to the ground instead of fly, while fiery flak explodes in every direction. Dick falls from planes and navigation blows away, pulling it with him. A mere leaf in the wind. A tiny insignificant speck in a great big world.

He never lands in the lush tropical jungles of his childhood imagination. He never sets foot on the coastline with water so crystal clear you can see straight to the bottom. He lands in Hell. And there are no fantastic creatures here, no jewels or mountain-whisp clouds to chase. No sunsets over the curve of the horizon.

There’s only death. And fear. And the responsibility of leading men who look to him for guidance out of the smoke and into the daylight. He grips his compass like a lifeline and does his best. It’s almost good enough. They almost all make it to the next day.

Dick gets lost occasionally.

When he’s left to the watches of his chilly billet and the candles in the rest of the camp have long gone out. That’s when the isolation strikes hardest and the ghosts feel free to crowd in. They cast a shade so thick, he chokes, drowning on his own failures, his own insipidity. He wonders if he’ll ever make it out to see the sun again. If he’ll ever find the way back.

And then enters Nix.

With his sly, self assured grin and his dark, sardonic wit. He slips like a wish into Dick’s billet, or the potato cellar of a blown out building, or the back of the jeep when he purposely drives off the marked path. He takes Dick’s hand and cocks that brow that says “Trust me” and by God and all his angels, Dick does. He follows blindly and oh so willingly, grateful for the guide and indebted to Nix for knowing exactly when he’s in danger of venturing too far off course.

Nix strips him of the olive military wool that demands strict obedience. The color that barters not a hair of deviation from a pre-drawn map made by men who don’t know what it’s like to nose dive into the inferno of battle. Nix casts it away, tossing it to the floor and covers Dick’s skin with his own hands, paints him with his own array of colors. A black-brown fan of lashes skirting over his collarbone, the red of his mouth at Dick’s pulse point, coral pink tongue in the shell of his ear, the beach sand tan of his calloused fingers tightening around Dick’s naked bicep. Teeth with brightness to rival the Pacific white caps on his chest and abdomen. Eyes the color of expensive coffee from the tropics glancing up over his belt buckle, warm and rich.

Nix kisses him and he can feel the earth’s rotation slow beneath his feet.

Nix touches him and gravity is solid and real beneath his back once more.

Nix traces the constellation of Dick’s freckles with his lips and Dick can set time by the star’s orbit again.

He lets Nix take him apart and put him back together, piece by tattered piece. Until he’s whole and functional again, at least for a little while. Long enough to get his bearings and restart the cycle of playing tour guide through the landscape of dreary Europe, his band of Lost Boys in tow.

He comes to the siren song of Nix’s praises, his lover urging him on with clever fingers that play Dick's body like a well rehearsed instrument. When he’s caught his breath and regained his sense enough to flip their positions, Dick pins Nix down. Cages him against the cot and splays him wide, the scroll of his skin like fine golden parchment in the dim candlelight.

Nix squirms under the tenacious attention, craving speed and friction. But Dick is on a mission. He’ll recommit every part of him to memory, burying it deep in his psyche like treasure. Until the mental image of Nix bowing under his hand becomes as priceless and coveted as monstrous gemstones he can bask amongst at whim. Sorting them like a king sitting on his spoils. He’ll relearn the lines and transits of Nix’s form until he can recite in perfect detail the landmarks of his moles, the patterns of his body hair, the slope and angle of his wrists. He’ll stake his flag here, laying claim to Nix’s body and heart as conquistadors of old did to things and locations too precious to part with.

He can read his future in the curve of Nix’s hip bones. The universe in the earth tones of his eyes.

“Dick,” Nix whispers, something between a whine and a moan. He scraps desperate fingernails along Dick’s scalp, trying to steer his mouth where he needs it most. “Come on. Come on.”

Dick won’t be bullied off course. He runs the tip of his tongue along the shadow of the Adonis belt Nix used to have when he was in peak fighting shape at the start of the war, lingering at the scar just there above the pelvic crest. He lets his lips trek as fingertips do, memorizing the most scenic routes across and over and around this body he loves so dearly.

He steers southward down from the navel, following the trail of dark hair and Nix groans. He heads north to circumvent a nipple and Nix whimpers. He nibbles and sucks contrails on every inch he can find, until Nix bears the purple marks that label him as Dick’s territory and Dick’s alone.

He wrings curses and prayers and nonsense from Nix’s mouth. Until he arches beneath him and cries his release into the hush of Dick’s palm, breathy laughter squeezing through the spaces in Dick’s fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” Nix gasps, chest heaving with blasphemy and bliss. He tugs at Dick until he slides back up the length of his form, letting out the softest sigh for every slow kiss pressed to each body part on the journey up. “How do you do that? Remember exactly what gets me going? You always know.”

“I’m good at cartography,” Dick says.

“The hell does that mean?”

Dick just shrugs, cranes his neck down to pepper his shoulder with kisses.

Nix pulls a face that suggests Dick might be moderately insane, but then he laughs that ruby-ocean-wilderness-touchstone laugh of his and maneuvers Dick fully down on top of him for a long, lazy, silky sweet kiss. And though they’re both sated and satisfied for now, passing back and forth the same oxygen, filling each other's sails - it does not feel like journey’s end.

It feels like a beginning. Each and every time he’s with Nix and resets his course by the steady, unwavering foundation of his being. It’s always a new start. One he hopes against hope never stops resetting.

Because Nix has always been his True North.

Dick kisses his mouth and feels like he’s come home.

Ron Livingston in Beat - Gary Walkow, 2000 (7/10)