Archive of Our Own

John sets the needle of the record player on the right groove and plays the song. It's old-fashioned--perfect for his dad's birthday, if his dad was actually still here. There are candles lit on the table, and the flames are flickering in the warm night breeze that saunters through the open windows. He's wearing a simple suit, dark blue with a white tie and white shoes. He's dressed to dance; the lighting is low, the music is soft, the mood is tender, and all he needs is a partner.

His dad was the one who had taught him to dance. It’s simple, John, he had said. Just count in twos or threes and let the music take the lead; keep your eyes on your partner and a smile on your face, and they won’t mind where your hands go as long as they stay in place. Thus far, no dancing partner had ever arrived, but John had invested more hours and evenings into slow dance practice than he’d ever care to admit.

As a whole, it had been his dad who had taught him most things. Early on, his dad had shown him how to craft a masterful breakfast, how to brew a strong cup of coffee, how to bake a blue-ribbon pie. Even before he had grown his own facial hair, John had learned how to execute a perfect clean shave. A dozen ways to tie a shoe, where your name and address goes on an envelope, how much to tip a server, when the best discounts would hit the stores for various products--that all had come before puberty. And then there had been the awkward but invaluable lessons on dating and sex, through all of which John had blanched and gagged… but he appreciated it all the same.

If there had been anything his father had not mentioned, and John needed the help, he knew he could always rely on a phone call or a chat with the man to come to the rescue. There was nothing his father could not do or did not know.

The only thing his dad had never prepared him for was how to say goodbye.

It's been a year since his dad passed, and John has barely begun to fully register the event. He knows, of course, that his father is gone, but the reality of it hasn't sunk in completely. On most mornings, John still expects to walk into a kitchen filled with baking bread and Frank Sinatra albums. The master bedroom has been left untouched, more out of respect than neglect; the house has yet to be cleared of the worldly possessions of Mr. Egbert, although John has become Mr. Egbert, now.

John has never pictured filling his father's shoes. For all the respect he holds for the man, it was never a goal in life to become him. But now, on the occasional dour day (and those are occurring with more frequency) John wonders if he hasn't been unwittingly adopting many of his dad's principles and trying to meet his expectations after all.

In the end, maybe all John wants to know with certainty is that he'd done his best--that his father would be proud.

Here, in the cleared space of the living room, John considers all this as a softer, piano rendition of a Bart Howard album floats across the room. He steps towards the center of the space, ready to dance with his phantom partner--how he imagines his father looked in his prime, perhaps--when the doorbell intrudes on his musing and performance.

He isn't expecting company. As far as anyone else knows, after the funeral hosted last year, John has been coping just fine on his own, at his own pace, in a normal, private sort of way. It's doubtful that anyone even remembers the exact date of his dad's birthday, or passing, or any other personal calendar event of any significance that isn't Christmas anymore. There's a tentative hope all the same, as he walks across the room and to the front door, that just maybe, by some small chance, someone besides him has remembered.

The man on his doorstep isn’t John’s first guess for a visitor. With one hand stuffed in a side pocket and the other holding a bunch of precisely eight bananas, Dirk offers him a one-sided shrug in greeting.

“Sup.”

There’s an irony in how self-conscious John feels, standing on his own doorstep, dressed in a formal two-piece suit and Oxford shoes. Dirk is garbed in his trademark tee and black cargo pants, complete with triangular shades, and looks altogether more prepared for moving furniture or playing sports than a private evening featuring slow dancing and music from the sixties. The difference in attire is striking and a bit discomfiting. Nevertheless, in the spirit of hospitality, John pushes the door open wider and steps aside in invitation.

“Hey, come on in.”

Dirk glances between John and the candlelit setting visible from the doorway. The movement of his head is nearly imperceptible, but visible all the same. The bananas are shifted about in a moment of hesitance as Dirk lingers on the doorstep.

“You sure? I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No,” John smiles, if faintly. “I was just about to review some old waltz steps.”

“Alright.”

John quietly shuts the door behind his guest and quickly assesses the living room with a more critical eye. He’d tidied up somewhat before arranging the area for his solo performance, but inevitably he catches sight of how crooked a picture frame seems, or how an unfinished glass of water has been forgotten on the mantelpiece. If Dirk notices, he’s courteous enough not to mention it as he enters the room.

They cross the floor, footsteps echoing lightly on the wood and fading into hushed murmurs against the tessellated rug at the center. Dirk stops at the vacant loveseat that John’s father picked out decades ago, and gestures to it with his free hand.

“Mind if I set the bananas here?”

John hums agreeably to this, even though the kitchen is in the next room over. The misplacement of food in his home is old news at this point. He moves to the record player and lifts the needle to stop the music, but Dirk waves for him to abandon that notion.

“Hey, you don’t have to do that. You can keep doing what you were doing. I’m actually kind of curious about how dancing works. It’s not something I ever learned how to do.”

At this, John regards Dirk with faint surprise. Though he couldn’t say why, he was under the impression that there was little Dirk had not researched and learned on his own. To hear such an admission is unexpected... and slightly intimidating. As practiced as he is at dancing, it’s an entirely different feeling having an audience--even if it is one man.

John lowers the needle back into its groove and steps away from the table. He extends a hand to Dirk and offers a watery smile. In the wan lighting, Dirk’s face is virtually unreadable, and there is no movement of acceptance for a long minute; but then, slowly, the other man meets him on the rug.

As Dirk places his hand in John’s, he tilts his head to the side questioningly.

“You did hear me just now when I said I don’t know how to dance, right?”

“I can show you what to do,” John says, and the proposition is received with an agreeable enough shrug of Dirk’s shoulders.

John, though the shorter of the two, takes the lead. He arranges them into a closed position; he draws Dirk’s one hand to his chest, and circles his other arm around Dirk’s waist as he places his hand on the small of his back. He can feel the tension rippling up along Dirk’s spine from the contact, but no protest is made. They have an agreement to dance, and the intimate configuration is warranted.

“Put your other hand up on my right shoulder,” John instructs, and he does his best not to laugh as Dirk’s mouth flattens in a momentary display of uneasiness--but the hand does settle in its designated place, although not without comment this time.

“This is a little gay, John, and that’s saying something coming from me.”

“It’s just what you’re supposed to do! Now just--just follow my lead, okay, and it’ll be easy.”

None of it is easy. John exercises his reflexes as much as his patience as he attempts to lead Dirk around in gentle, circular steps about the room; but Dirk was wholly honest when he had said that he had never learned how to dance, and it’s startling how clumsy he is, stumbling about all over John’s feet, when John knows that the man has catlike dexterity and precision in almost every other facet of life.

Eventually, they concede to defeat. Dirk drops down on the floor in front of the loveseat and leans against it, his face marred by a piteous scowl. John briefly returns to the table and stills the record player, then joins Dirk to sit; he lowers himself onto the empty cushion of the loveseat and rests his elbows across his knees.

“You suck at this,” John laughs softly. He doesn’t mind when Dirk nudges his leg with a fist.

“I told you I never learned. What did you expect?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Alright, now you’re just being cheeky.”

John flashes a grin down at his friend, but it soon disappears. He averts his gaze away, across the room and out toward one of the open windows, and sighs. The sound causes Dirk to turn his head in acknowledgement.

“So, what’s the real occasion for the dance party?”

And here, an entire year after his father’s actual death, seated on a weathered loveseat beside a man who brought him bananas on a whim, John cries his first real tears of grief. The unbidden tears are cold on his cheeks as a breeze caresses his face sympathetically; John dries his face on the inside of his wrists and sniffs deeply.

When John replies, it's with a rasp in the back of his throat and notable spacing between each word.

"It's… my dad's birthday today."

"Ah."

The ensuing silence is palpable. There is no doubt that Dirk is aware of the significance of the date. He, as well as all of the others, had attended Mr. Egbert's funeral. But unsolicited, there is little to be said, and Dirk only observes John, as if waiting for him to take the lead on this matter as well.

John hangs his head over his hands and seeks unspoken counsel with the floor for a time; then, breathing deeply, he decides to open up his private thoughts to Dirk after all.

"Growing up, I hated doing all of these things my dad had me learn how to do. Dance lessons, piano lessons, home maintenance, car maintenance, schoolwork, cooking--like, they're all obviously useful life skills for the most part, but as a kid, they're just so boring, you know?"

"I guess, yeah."

As a mostly self-taught jack-of-all-trades, due to a lack of traditional upbringing or any present mentor, Dirk is hard pressed to completely connect with the actual experience of a youth resenting the oppressive gifts of responsibility and education from a parental figure; but he's committed to sympathizing for the sake of his friend, and he can understand the sentiments behind the words at least.

"I wish I hadn't been such a little asshole about everything he was trying to show me," John continues, his confession heavy with regret. "Now it's all I have left of him."

"It's not something most kids think about," Dirk says, and it's meant to be a comfort, but John views it as another fault to collect.

"Yeah, but I should have at least listened better. It's not like he was actively trying to make me miserable by teaching me all of this stuff. I thought he was, at the time, but he really wasn't."

"Probably not."

John leans back in the loveseat then and blows air out from pursed lips.

"I wonder if I really knew my dad at all, actually."

Dirk swivels himself around, one arm resting on the cushion of the loveseat, and cocks his head back with interest.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's just that everything I thought I knew about my dad looks so different now," John sighs dejectedly. "And the more I think about it, the more I realize there's so much I don't know about him. It’s like I tolerated him all these years instead of… Well, you know. I just. I know his favorite color, and that he liked to bake, but I don’t know where he went to school, or what he did as a kid, or what his favorite movie was, or--or any of that kind of stuff. And I can’t ask him anymore either.”

There’s a click of tongue against teeth as Dirk rocks his head back and forth in understanding. He scrapes his fingers through his hair and turns back to study some distant point in the room--the ceiling, perhaps.

“I never knew my dad either.”

Dirk says this as if unaffected, as if he were discussing some pedestrian woe like missing out on a hot sale at the store; but his tone is too neutral to slip by John's attention, too emotionless to imply that any genuine recovery has ever been made about the situation.

It's a tenuous comparison: Dirk and the chronic absence of any real father, against John and the pain of being forced to watch his father die. In some way, there is an advantage to never losing what you never had; in another sense, it's perhaps a crueler loss to never have anything worthwhile to lose from the start.

John mulls over Dirk's misfortune as he traces the outlines of the room and its furniture with his eyes. No amount of commiseration will rectify or erase either of their tragic circumstances, but there is a comfort in knowing the pain is not endured alone. It’s possible that Dirk senses this, too, because he contributes his own musings into the halting conversation.

“I saw him, of course. Pictures and videos, proof that he was alive and real in the news and other such historical articles. But that never was going to be the same as personally meeting him or getting to know him.” Dirk’s fingers tease at the fabric of the loveseat, a subtle fidgeting movement that clashes with his aloof exterior. “I learned how to satisfy myself with knowing about him, mostly because there wasn’t any other option. And there was getting to meet Dave, which is one of the best things to happen in my life. But I’m not going to lie, I’d commit a few crimes to be able to meet him for real. In the flesh. Get to meet him in person, even once, and feel like I’d be real to him.”

That’s a side of the mirror John had never considered, and one that incurs a deep-seated pain from the back of his mind. Bereavement is obvious in the face of death, but it’s not only the life of his father he misses--it’s his love. As timeless as love can be, as precious are the memories left behind by his dad, they’re no substitute for the direct and active love he once received. No skill, no photographs, and no letters would ever grant him access to that love ever again. He does, at least, have the knowledge that his father had loved him; but Dirk didn’t even have that, beyond contrived inferences quite possibly forged out of emotional desperation and necessity.

John's forehead is wrinkled with consternation as he questions, “How do you deal with that? Did you ever… find closure about it?"

"Honestly? No, not really," Dirk shrugs, and John's face noticeably falls. "I've learned to live with it. There aren't always any solid answers. Sometimes you just have to make up your own--make do with what you have."

It's the story of his life, an anecdotal testimony of survival, but the inflection in Dirk's voice isn't reassuring to either of them that mere survival is a fulfilling outcome. Even so, his words do carry a truth; sometimes, one's best is all that is available and an option better received than scorned.

The room falls into a rut of somber reflection, one that Dirk breaks out of with a question of his own.

"Were you going to tell any of us that you were doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"You know what I mean, John. This. This…" Dirk waves a hand in a circular motion to encompass the living space. "Reminiscent moping you're doing in memory of your dad."

"I'm not moping," John protests weakly, but any illusion of truth behind that statement collapses the instant he glances away, lower lip protruding sullenly.

"Right. And I'm Nataraja."

"Nata-who?"

"My drag name."

John turns a skeptical look onto Dirk.

"You crossdress?"

"No."

"Oh."

Yet another awkward lapse of silence takes place, but this time it is John who disturbs it. He pushes himself up from the loveseat and moves to the table, where he sets the record player to resume from the middle of the album. Then, with a fragile smile, he faces Dirk and holds out his hand again.

"Try again?" It's more of a plea than a request, accented by a strange contrition in John's eyes; and Dirk snorts softly through his nose and picks himself off of the floor to assume the closed position once more.

To soulful saxophone and harmonic chords of sevenths on rich piano keys, John guides Dirk through another series of one-two-three's. Their steps are still unsynchronized and a haphazard mess, but Dirk does improve, and soon they find some semblance of a decent slow dancing form.

It's like this, swaying about around the living room, that John properly looks up at Dirk. Although Dirk isn't nearly as rigid as he was during the first dance session, his discomfort is still obvious, his head angled away slightly so that he isn't ever quite meeting John's gaze. But John has no compunctions about staring at his dance partner, and he takes advantage of the moment to study Dirk's face in more intimate detail.

In the candlelight, Dirk's complexion is an arresting array of dusty creams and greys curved into pronounced shadows, of light poured delicately over cheeks to fall into the darkness gathered just beneath his mouth and along his jaw. For the first time, John notices the edge of sideburns, meticulously trimmed, and he follows its path down to its end, to where Dirk's face slants down to his chin, and then lets himself consider the shape and smoothness of his lips (and how they must taste and feel.)

It's tempting, to succumb to his whims in the moment, to tilt his head up and make their lips meet; but for as much as John entertains the notion of losing himself in Dirk's scent and touch, a rational thought causes him pause. He doesn't know if Dirk would even enjoy such a thing coming from him.

Months had passed since Dirk and Jake had separated. There had been every effort to minimize the side effects of their breakup, including a deliberate aversion of discussing intimate relationships or possibilities of it around the aforementioned two men in question. As a rule, neither of them were particularly vocal about their interests or pursuits, either. It was anyone's guess if Jake or Dirk had found someone else to date, and John was less attuned to their social circle's gossip than most.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, would be what his father would have said. John can hear the adage spoken in that familiar baritone, can picture how his father would have lit his pipe afterwards in contemplation. But John isn't his father after all, and he suffers a moment of harrowing indecision about whether he should express an attraction to Dirk or reserve it for himself.

Dirk had been the only one to remember John on this date--or the only one available to physically be present for it--but that didn't mean that he was vying for John's more personal attention. It could merely be an act of care for a friend, one which would be completely natural. And yet, there's something curious about the way Dirk has allowed their discussion to breach his privacy, and it's no small wonder that he's let himself be led about the room in a dance he presumably has no inherent interest in--not just once, but twice now.

In the event that Dirk harbors no reciprocal attraction for him, John decides it’s best not to initiate anything. For that reason, he’s stunned when Dirk grips him in their already cozy arrangement, causing them to stand still, and dips his head down to bring them at equal eye level.

“John.”

There’s a peculiar, blurry quality to the room, and it isn’t due to a smudge on his glasses. When John blinks back the world into focus, he realizes that his eyes are wet and cheeks are unexpectedly hot. Dirk must have noticed this, which is surely why he has halted their informal dance practice.

Dirk is suddenly all too close. Even in the low light, John can see Dirk’s freckles and the texture of his lips--can now smell sweet citrus coming off of him--and it becomes all too much for John to keep his breathing steady. The last coherent thought he processes is the wide-eyed shock on his face in the reflection of Dirk’s shades, before the man lifts them off of his nose and pushes them up into his hair to better look at him.

Never before has John’s heart pounded so quickly in his chest--not when he woke up from his first nightmare, not when he tried out for soccer as a kid, not when he first used his powers, not even when his dad died. Looking into Dirk’s eyes right now is like gazing into molten gold; and as if caught in the searing heat by a furnace, John feels overwhelmingly breathless.

“John, what’s wrong?”

Under Dirk’s scrutiny, John feels his knees go weak. He’s more aware than ever before of how they stand chest to chest, how his one arm holds Dirk to him, and how warm the man is in this loose embrace. He can’t think, can’t process anything other than those eyes and how they’re like pools of fire, and John can only swallow thickly.

It’s a long moment before John finds his voice.

“I, um, think I should turn off the music if we’re done dancing.”

A crease forms between Dirk’s brows, and he shoots John a piercing, worried look.

“John, the music stopped a while ago.”

“Oh.” Eyes widening with embarrassment, John collects himself and pulls away. “I’m going to go get changed, then. Shed the suit. Heh.”

John’s steps are stiff and awkward as he hurries up to the staircase and out of the living room. More out of puzzlement than decency, Dirk remains standing in the center of the room, where he speculates on John’s unusual emotional state. It’s not until there is a series of audible and heavy thumps upstairs, along with an impressive string of curses, that Dirk decides to forsake any propriety, and goes up to check on John.

When Dirk opens the door to John's bedroom, he is greeted by a ridiculous sight. Staggering about his bedroom with his dress shirt pulled over his head, John is half undressed and struggling like a cat caught in a bag. His suit jacket has been draped over the computer chair, and his glasses are on the desk, but progress has stopped there.

As Dirk steps closer, he notices two main things: first, John is trapped in his shirt most likely as a result of failing to properly unbutton the garment; and secondly, John has a remarkably toned body, with more abdominal muscles than he last remembered seeing, which is altogether an insidious thought if the situation is to remain innocuous.

Upon hearing footsteps by him, John stops mid-step somewhere by the bed, and wiggles side to side. His voice is muffled as he calls out to Dirk from the confines of his clothing.

"Help me get this off! I forgot to unbutton the top, and then realized I hadn't unbuttoned the cuffs, and I can't figure out how to get out now!"

Dirk presses his lips into a thin line between his teeth to keep from laughing, though he’s unable to restrain a smile. In two short steps, he reaches John, and after a moment of searching for the edge of the shirt, he locates it and unravels the garment back down from over John's head.

Now freed from the cloth trap, John squints up at Dirk with a sheepish grin. His hair is messy, and his face is flushed, his cheeks rosy most of all, and John is breathy as he offers a simple word of appreciation.

"Thanks."

But the curve of John's mouth gradually flattens and his smile fades away into an expression of mild apprehension as he notices how intently Dirk regards him; again, Dirk gazes down at him, eyes locked with his, and this time there is no excuse for retreat. Whatever nerves John had left behind in the living room have now followed him here. Returning in full force, a nervous energy sets in the lines around his mouth and eyes.

Locked in a dance downstairs, there had been room for doubt as to Dirk's sentiments towards John; but here, as Dirk stares at him after a fashion that leaves John feeling veritably undressed in far more than a physical sense, there is no question of intimate intent.

Entranced by the smoldering attention, John’s voice is barely more than a whisper as he utters Dirk’s name questioningly. As if in response, wordlessly and without breaking eye contact, Dirk takes one of John's hands in his, and works open the button at John's cuff with deliberate motions. A knot forms in John's throat once Dirk has unbuttoned both cuffs and, leaning in close, brushes his fingers against the collar of the dress shirt to unfasten the last button there at the very top.

John's breath fully leaves him as Dirk slides his hands underneath the shoulders of the shirt, his palms warm on John's skin, and the cotton fabric hisses as it falls back and crumples onto the floor. For a moment, Dirk thumbs at John’s shoulders, as if memorizing the texture of the flesh there; and then he tilts his head down and presses a chaste kiss at the corner of John's mouth.

Chastity is fleeting as John's hands are quick to find purchase at Dirk's sides. The simple sensation of being grabbed, of being touched for mere want's sake, stokes Dirk's ambition. With a sense of somatic purpose, Dirk trails his lips down, past John's chin, down the contours of his neck and into the recess of his collar bone. Some bending is required for Dirk to gain access to those sensitive areas, where John's pulse thrums beneath his skin and where his breathing quickens at the touch; and it's not long before he drops into a crouch, and then onto his knees, as his mouth travels further south, across the expanse of John's chest and abdomen and navel.

There is no inquisition made for Dirk's actions. His intentions are unmistakably clear, only made more defined as, in a flash of teeth, he slants his head and bites onto the end tip of John's belt. Wondrously, his eyes never disconnect from John's; he's keenly searching for any response, for every hitch of breath, for the slightest tremor caused by his hands and his mouth--and he finds all of it, as John increasingly unravels before him.

Fingers hooked into John's waistline to keep him close and to assist when the leather strip snakes beyond reach of mouth, Dirk eventually maneuvers the length of John's belt free of loops after prolonged and arduous effort; but the belt does come loose, finally, and it is with teeth still that Dirk manages to unclasp the last of it. The metal knocks loudly on the floor when the belt falls, and there is little left between John and a clean state of undress, which will take little time to remedy. Only one last button clings fast, the silver of it consequently darkened by Dirk's mouth as he tongues the tiny thing out from its snag.

Throughout this entire, far too sensual assistance in disrobing, John's mind has reeled helplessly. If he had only a fraction of rational thought left, he might have interrupted Dirk's shameless ministrations along what is fast proving to be the whole length of his body; but he is virtually held hostage by those electric eyes, and it's all he can do to refrain from releasing incoherent babbles.

When Dirk at last pops open the fly of his pants and yanks the zipper down with his teeth, John comes undone.

Pupils dilated, panting heavily, John hunches forward and shakily steadies himself against Dirk. Belly against forehead, fingers against the nape, John against Dirk--positioned together in half of a lover's embrace, at the mercy of a consuming heat from a man who has never been less than an irresistible conundrum--John is yet unable to take the lead in this arrangement.

It is Dirk who guides John in this affair, who demonstrates his expectations guilelessly. Before John's pants are fully removed, Dirk savors the sensitive shudders and gasps he elicits from John with every grasp of his hands on thigh and ass, and it's not quietly that John moans his name when Dirk roughly and wetly drags his tongue over the hardened rise of John's arousal through the front of his pants.

John's voice cracks when he speaks, and not without considerable effort.

"Dirk, I--" A sharp intake of breath as Dirk nips at a tender bit of thigh requires John to rework his communication, tone imploring and needy. "The bed?"

Arms snug around John's thighs, Dirk hoists him up and takes him to the bed. The mattress creaks faintly from their combined weight as John lands on his back, and Dirk, on his hands and knees, finds a comfortable position intimately between John's legs.

John's pants and boxers (featuring the infamous Ghostbusters' green slime creature, as Dirk would later note) are then forthwith pulled off and disposed of to join the assortment of other clothes on the floor. Not a thought is spared for the disorganization, not when Dirk insistently continues lapping at whatever exposed flesh he can find; and John, gathering fistfuls of bedcovers, arching his back and hips up, whimpers at how agonizingly slow Dirk has set the pace.

"Please," John rasps, and though he doesn't state explicitly what he wants from Dirk, it's obvious all the same what he is requesting.

In this moment, hands propping John's legs apart and up, and mouth hot against the hollow of his thighs, Dirk acknowledges John's plea with the same careful, gentle movements, but this time his tongue makes direct contact where it matters most, up the rigid lines of John's balls and trailing slickly along the length of John's erection.

A stuttered gasp escapes from John, his body stiffening as Dirk swipes his tongue around the head of John's hardened cock and licks away a stray drop of precum at the tip. A great show is made of swallowing that small taste, but not much more teasing comes from Dirk, and just as well; writhing on the covers, John is lost in unintelligible murmurs for more, his voice strained and thin.

For only a short-lived moment, Dirk pauses, eyes gleaming with satisfaction at the sight of John helplessly strewn about on the bed under him; and then, in one motion, jaw and throat consciously lax, he slips John's cock into his mouth and slides it as far back as it will go.

Weak whines from John are instantly replaced by guttural, lengthy groans. His hands fly to Dirk's head, fingers threading through his hair, and his hips soon move in time with the rhythm of Dirk's head bobbing between his legs.

There are no words, but the room nearly echoes from the sounds of John's moans of pleasure amidst the slick noises of Dirk's mouth full of dick; and there is no lack of encouragement from John as he gradually does assume control of the pace, letting his body communicate what words cannot for preoccupation.

Even with John's cock thrust down his throat, Dirk doesn't resist when John's hands become more forceful, when each upwards jerk of the hips begins to slam into his chin. From the moment Dirk entered the room and laid his eyes on John, his goal has been nothing if not to be an instrument of pleasure for the man now fucking his face without a single conscious thought for anything else. It's difficult, what with his mouth pried open and stuffed, but a ghost of satisfaction does manifest on Dirk's face--lights up his eyes, as if they could be any brighter with John in focus.

John doesn't give him a warning, but Dirk knows the signs well enough to brace himself for the rush of cum down his throat--the tensening of John's gut, the tightening of John's fingers in his hair, the way John's moans collapse into labored gasps--and then finally, as John stiffens almost straight beneath him, he comes.

There's hardly opportunity to taste and mull over the flavor of John, not with how desperately John clutches Dirk's head down onto his dick as he ejaculates. It's all Dirk can do to swallow fast enough, to remind his lungs that air is not as far away as it feels; but it's a reward in its own right when he gulps for the last time and looks up to see John, coated in a sheen of sweat, flushed and smiling… because of him.

After a moment of tonguing John clean, Dirk extracts himself from between John's legs and picks his way over to lie by John's side. Ordinarily, there would be some expectation of reciprocation, but given the circumstances of the night, it's most conducive to support John by leaving things one-sided. That doesn't stop John from trying to return the favor, though.

Despite a breathless and spent state, John rolls over to face Dirk. His lips are clumsy but persistent as they search for Dirk's mouth, and his hands dip down straight for the buckle of Dirk's belt. A perplexed noise comes from the back of John's throat as Dirk gently but firmly guides his hands away.

"Just relax," Dirk urges him, murmurs low in John's ear. At first, there is some resistance, John's hands restlessly working to escape Dirk's grasp, though unsuccessfully.

"What about you? Don't you want to… Want me to--"

"John. Shh."

It's not for lack of want. Even as they lay parallel, in some semblance of post-coital relaxation, there is no mistaking the hardened bulge of Dirk's erection pressing through his pants. But to act in favor of his physical wants would overshadow a delicate moment of selflessness that John needs, one which Dirk would rather not deny for his own immediate gratification.

And try as he might, John's efforts to so much as touch Dirk anywhere below the waist end in failure. In frustrated grunts, he wriggles against Dirk like an agitated myriapod; but he's soon scooped into a snug embrace as Dirk moves to quell his restless groping, arms wrapping around him in a fashion that's all too tender for John to resist anymore.

It comes slowly at first; the first sniffle that gives way to weeping wets the cotton of Dirk's shirt, but it's not until Dirk's hands smooth over his back and a cheek presses into his hair that John goes slack at last and lets the tide of his tears sweep away the remains of his self-control. He sobs hopelessly, shakes piteously in the cocoon Dirk has crafted for him out of his body, and John cries until there are no more tears left within him.

No pressure of consolation or hushing comes; Dirk simply rides out the storm of anguish and raw emotion until it dies down, until John sags limply into his arms and only breathes.

For a time, it seems as if John has fallen asleep, his breathing even, if shallow, and his face is buried in the crook of Dirk's arm; but when Dirk shifts slightly to peer at a clock on the wall, John curls further and attempts to burrow in closer. Even so, when Dirk separates his upper half, just enough to reposition his head so that his forehead rests against John's, and the prelude to departure is hinted, there is no great protest made.

"I should probably go," Dirk tells him quietly, barely audible over the softness of the moment. When John murmurs something incoherently in response, a fond twinge of Dirk's lips appears. "Hey, look at me."

As gently as Dirk speaks, it's as much a command as a request; and though John fails to conceal his reluctance, he obediently moves his head up to find Dirk's eyes with his own. There, the sun sets in the sky, as forehead to forehead, nose to nose, they see each other without pretense, shame, or fear.

"I can come back. I just need to get some stuff done tonight. But if you're up for it, why don't I stop by for another dance lesson sometime? We can try it with some different birthday suits, yeah?"

Despite his obvious disappointment in Dirk's imminent departure, John does breathe out a laugh at that, and he nods in anticipation of what is fast forming as a second date--if what happened tonight could be considered as a first date, at any rate.

And as wearied as John is from the night's activities, and from his inner griefs beside, he barely holds out long enough for Dirk to excuse himself and leave through the front door before he's tapping away at his phone with a budding excitement.

EB: how about tomorrow at 6?

From the bedroom window, John looks out at the doorstep, where Dirk stands and offers him a two-fingered salute before disappearing into the night.

TT: I'll be there.