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***
Daniel could not find his breath. His chest constricted, crowded with unspilled air and fear.
Months into having a partner rather more inclined towards violence as solution than himself, and it still rattled his brain and other, less conscious parts. Parts such as slithering fear, ready at any moment to transform into withering cowardice, and – other ones. There were many parts within him that reacted to violence nowadays.
Archie loomed over him the next moment, the deepest frown etched between his brows, hands as if boulders, pounding each side of him, marring Daniel’s suit with vivid stripes of – oh, God.
“Blood?” Daniel asked, managing to still Archie’s right hand, unfurling the crimson left fist and staring at it with a dawning sense of horror in the gaslight. “Is this yours, by chance?” he asked carefully.
“No,” Archie replied, unconcerned. “Not all, anyway. Are you all right? Had he –“
“He had.” Daniel matched him in tone, “but I believe you have repaid him handsomely for it.” In truth, his side, where their quarry had given him a punch that nearly sent him reeling into the nearest brick wall, hurt like damnation, but something was preventing the pain from realising fully. The rush of fear, perhaps; the shock of the tête–à–tête not going quite according to Daniel’s plan.
Quite immobilised now, however. Daniel could not help staring at what he hoped was just an unconscious brute of a baronet, as opposed to body, mere feet from them. The alleyway, gritty with rain-sodden dirt, was barely illuminated, and yet, when Archie, eyes at half-mast, began to lean down towards him, Daniel grew aware of the myriad dark windows that surrounded them.
“No,” he managed, his lips mere breaths away from his lover’s. “The situation has not yet been resolved.” He watched with unwarranted disappointment Archie’s reluctant posture of a soldier-at-arms return. “That is… I shall ask the proprietor to allow me a phone call. Stay here and make sure this – well. Keep him where he is, hmm?” Archie’s look was letting Daniel know quite eloquently what he thought of the plan better than words could. “You are covered in blood, my sweet,” Daniel said, smiling this time, pitching his voice low enough that only Archie and the patter of the rain would hear. “I shan’t be a moment. I will let the office know to make haste.”
He left Archie to his disinclined vigil, his gaze upon their not-so-innocent victim echoing Daniel’s own thoughts. The brute had proved smarter than he looked, worming his way into the innermost sanctity of the Home Security Office, preying on his own, this close to betraying his king and country. That they had managed to uncover and now subdue the baronet at all was a miracle in itself.
Daniel found himself emptying his stomach at the mouth of the alleyway. First, at the thought of what could have happened had Archie not been quick in his movements, and then at his own unspeakable disappointment that Archie had not done away with this traitor as he had with the one in the limestone caves.
Now, everything willing, the baronet would hang. Daniel winced and brought up more of his earlier dinner. Raw, but nearly unburdened now, he felt an odious thrill before disgust overtook him once again.
He spat one final spot of bile, then wiped his mouth with the small bit of silk that had some how survived nearly a half hour of brawling (or, truthfully, some brawling, followed by cowering against the wall as a giant, berserk creature finished the business for him) in the pocket of his suit jacket.
Without looking back, he hurried to the entrance of the hotel. The sooner they were done with the disgraceful business, the better.
*
They spent the night separated by several offices, plied with tea and interrogated in the same breath. At least, Daniel assumed that the same was happening to Archie. He could not be sure, but as Vaizey was absent from Daniel’s interrogation, it felt a safe assumption that his nephew was under his watch.
At least Daniel could handle this part with aplomb, if a certain weariness at having to do so.
“Again, da Silva. Are you quite certain you want to tell me that Sir Chisholm, a baronet, the son of one of Britain’s most influential politicians, coming from one of the oldest families of London, was the infiltrator?”
Daniel examined his own nails, otherwise unmoving in his seat, and sighed. “I am not certain which part of these circumstances is so difficult to understand, Stedman,” he said, injecting as much ice into his tone as he was capable of. It was a lot. “You’ve got him in custody. You’ve got the files we’d extracted, as well. What am I still doing here answering the same tedious questions?” He lengthened the first syllabus of tedious enough that Stedman, when Daniel deigned to look up at him, cast a truly venomous look his way. Daniel bore it out of custom.
“We do, as you say, have him in custody,” he gritted out between his teeth. “Barely, da Silva.” His fist pounding on the desk echoed across the darkened room. “The man has suffered a severe concussion brought on by your brute’s own hands. He nearly snapped his neck, for God’s sake!”
“But he didn’t,” Daniel pointed out needlessly, much as he had earlier. He longed to also point out that “his own brute” was none other than Sir Maurice’s nephew, and to mind his tongue. He desisted. “And the man had half a stone on Curtis. It was hardly an uneven match.”
Untrue, of course. The baronet did indeed have half a stone on Archie’s build, but it was no lean muscle, the man clearly gone to seed as he worked his plots. He had several inches on Archie, as well, but once Archie had thrown off his English mildness for his Viking strength, all bets were, so to speak, quite off.
He’d looked terrifying, of course. Gone white, head as if cleared of all thought but one, he’d grown brutal. Vicious. Dark, like the sun going down on the Empire at last.
Daniel suppressed a squirm in his chair.
This was a problem he had not, he could admit to himself, predicted, when their professional partnership began in earnest. That he popped a beast of an erection after each similar encounter, would, one of these days, land him in serious trouble.
Luckily, however, this room was quite dark. Far from achieving its intended target – that of scaring the living daylights out of him after hours of debriefing-cum-interrogation – it soothed him. If nothing else, it helped him hide.
“I need to know how you managed this,” Stedman continued undeterred. “Blow by blow, da Silva.”
Daniel’s eyebrow quirked of its own accord. Truly, a small part of him felt for the man. Stedman had been blind to his friend’s deceptions and been, apparently, led around by the nose by Chisholm for months. Nevertheless, making Daniel pay for his own folly was, if nothing else, ungentlemanly.
Of course, Daniel knew all about that.
When Stedman growled at him wordlessly, Daniel waved his hand in as camp a manner as he was capable of, slowly crossed his legs and said, “We all have tricks up our sleeves, Stedman. Now. Shall I teach you a few?”
Stedman, it had to be said, was still aware of office proprieties. He did not punch Daniel in response.
*
As previously agreed, dawn found Daniel slinking through the servant’s entrance into Archie’s residence, gratefully bestowing upon Archie’s footman his coat and hat. He noted the alarmed look Hopkinson threw his bloody jacket’s way, but waved him off with a request for tea and a tumbler of whisky to be taken to Archie’s drawing room, if he would be so kind.
He did not know whether to expect Archie to be home yet until he walked through the doorway and saw him slumped in a chair with his feet extended towards the fire, fast asleep.
Daniel paused in the doorway, allowing himself this unguarded view of him.
You’d have thought the chair was built for a child, with how Archie filled it out. His arms hung down in his rest, right hand ungloved, shirtsleeves rolled up to nearly his elbows. He must have been waiting up for Daniel, for he had not changed his clothes, either, and his trousers bore the signs of recent struggle, spots of dirt and blood caked all down his legs. His valet must not have been aware of his master’s state, Daniel thought with a smile. He would be horrified. Or Archie hadn’t cared.
His hair was a mess, too, as if he had spent the night with his fingers buried in it. In truth, that must have been what happened. God knew the man hated bureaucracy.
His face in repose was…it gave Daniel pause. Of course, he had seen Archie asleep plenty of times before. Been privy to him in nearly every sort of state, from calm to ecstasy to everything in between, but this – this never failed to make his heart flutter just a little bit differently.
This was a man who’d earned sleep after a battle. A twin battle, as they had become accustomed to now. One with the enemy, the next with their own kind, as they defended their actions.
He had never wished to put Archie in this position, but as Archie had spent month after arduous month letting Daniel know, he’d put himself there when he browbeat Daniel into accepting him as a partner.
Daniel knew better than to believe the white lie, but it seeped into his bones now, and he let himself believe.
Yes, Archie had earned this rest. The frown between his brows was shallow, a mere ghost of the one he’d worn in the alleyway. His generous, sweet mouth hung slightly open, all tension having seeped from it. Good. Colour had returned to his cheeks, as well, and he no longer looked the terrifying warrior of justice.
A man, at rest, was all.
Daniel moved quietly into the room and took up his own vigil in the other chair by the fire, his thoughts calm but too present for him to be able to lose consciousness altogether.
He waited for Archie to wake.
*
He was nearly at the bottom of his whisky when Archie woke with a start. Daniel watched with a certain amusement as focus came back to his lover, bit by bit. Eyebrows drew together, left hand flew up to test a likely crick in the neck, feet found solid ground. Finally, a swish of cloth as Archie twisted and pinned Daniel with his gaze – confused at first, then alert, as if a man sipping spirits by his side was another national emergency.
“Cheers, darling,” Daniel said, lifting the glass in a bit of toast.
“Daniel –” Archie was out of his chair like a shot, landing beside Daniel on his knees as if he were a young whippersnapper instead of a man who’d spent the night chasing and battling a villain and then his uncle’s officials. “When did you get in? I was waiting, and then I was –“
“Sleeping like a babe,” Daniel said, then put down his dram in favour of running his hands through Archie’s cropped curls and softly down his face. “I did not wish to wake you. You’d been quite worn out.”
Archie’s eyes slipped shut as he kissed the palm of Daniel’s hand, first as if by accident, and then again with purpose. “I’m sorry. Have you been back long?”
“Not at all,” Daniel managed around his curiously constricted throat. “Just enough to take the edge off.” He indicated his tumbler.
Archie’s ungentlemanly snort relieved Daniel of the pressure. “It’s barely eight in the morning, man.” Daniel felt little judgment despite the words.
“We,” he replied, keeping his hand curled around Archie’s stubble roughened cheek, “are celebrating, of course.”
Another snort, then an upward sweep of eyelashes, and Archie caught and held Daniel’s gaze. “Not our usual way of celebrating,” he noted.
Daniel squirmed. Few men have ever been able to force such a juvenile, green reaction from him, but then Archie was unlike most men Daniel had ever met. “Are you certain you are up for the other sort?” He did not wish to presume. His own newly found fetishes aside, he did know the sort of strain these nights could put on Archie. The kind of celebrating Daniel wished for at the moment would, perhaps, be beyond his kneeling, sleepy Viking. “You look rather done in, my sweet. At the very least, in need of a bath.”
“Oh, I’ll give you a bath.“
Daniel felt his own calm mask slipping and the grin that had been threatening to overtake him doing so. “Is that a promise?”
“Better than that,” Archie grunted as he levered himself up off the floor and looked down at Daniel pointedly. Daniel noticed their fingers were now interlocked. “It’s a threat.”
The tea was forgotten entirely. Daniel allowed himself to be herded gracelessly through the doorway, down the hall, and up the stairs, Archie mindless of their connection and any servants who could have seen them.
It took Archie’s man some time to ready the bath in the room adjoining his bedchamber. It had once been a dressing chamber but now served as a bathroom, sans the internal plumbing, which was quite beyond these old walls. Daniel, hidden in shadow in the empty corner by the doorway, leaned against the wall and watched Archie undress without the aid of his valet.
A chest of drawers next to him held a plate of snacks, and Daniel pilfered from it a slice of bread, breaking it into small morsels to pop into his mouth now and again. He was, a realisation slowly dawned, quite famished. His appetite, however, was not for food alone.
Archie did not look his way as he undressed. He was every inch the soldier now, carefully un-donning his regalia. Rumpled waistcoat went first, then the wrinkled shirt. Both folded scrupulously despite their current state; set down on a chair. Shoes were next – one, then the other, helped along by Archie’s socked foot, and carefully set aside. Trousers required a limber digital ability, but Archie was managing it with little trouble. Pop, went the first button. Then the next, and the next, until he was sliding the material, stiffened with the gore of the night, down and off.
Daniel paused in his makeshift breakfast.
Only when he was fully nude did Archie turn and pin Daniel with his gaze. He looked tired, yes. Shadows crested beneath his eyes, deep-set contours lined his mouth. But he did not betray his exhaustion. Daniel did not move from his watch as they gazed upon one another.
“Is the bath ready now, Wilkins?” Archie asked without breaking his gaze. Daniel felt his eyebrow rise without his permission. Other things had risen without his permission also, but the shadows hid that evidence. He was also fully dressed, unlike Archie – and his nudity, too, betrayed no exhaustion.
Perhaps not so sleepy a Viking, after all.
“Yes, sir. Will you require assistance?” came his valet’s insouciant response.
“No, thank you. You may go now.” Equally mild.
The door shut quietly behind the unseen Wilkins. Daniel waited. His heart beat in a telling rhythm, and his throat grew parched. All that bread and no water – he should have known better.
Archie then managed the impossible – he looked like a gentleman even in all his glorious, delicious manly nudity, as he indicated for Daniel to walk through to the bathroom. There was even a slight nod of the head, the sort that was normally reserved for helping ladies out of motorcars.
Daniel slowly pushed off the wall. Everything in his body was spurring him on to get his hands on Archie, hard and wanton as he was, but he would not rush the inevitable. The thrill of this prelude never ceased to turn his limbs to jelly. He would enjoy the moment.
“Shall I join you, then?” he asked, taking a few steps forward, allowing his hips to do as came natural to them.
Archie’s expression shifted. He never could keep up an act, no matter how small. If Daniel could draw this out even further, they would enjoy the aftermath greatly.
“You damned well shall,” Archie said – nearly growled, really.
A shiver ran down Daniel’s spine and he gave him a grin; licked his lips. “Shall I undress here or –“
Archie’s patience snapped first, as always. Marching over to Daniel’s side, he nearly tore the buttons of his waistcoat straight off. Up close, he smelled worn out – sweat and the minute stench of blood mingled across his skin. Daniel abhorred violence; always had and always would, but… He did, from time to time, long for the days when this sort of scent would wither his arousal rather than spur it further to life. As it was, his life was at a point where he was ready to swoon into Archie’s arms like a maiden at the mere whiff of him. It was unconscionable; disgusting, really. Not to be borne.
He licked his lips and allowed his arms to fall by his sides as Archie took care of his clothing. Daniel noted with some amusement that it was with a lot less care than he had taken with his own apparel.
“Impatient this morning?” Daniel drawled, as his erection was finally freed from its confines and he was made to step out of his drawers and trousers in one go.
“Impatience does not even begin to cover it,” Archie replied, rising, and took Daniel by the shoulders, turning him around and straight-up marching him up to the bath. “Get in,” he commanded.
Daniel was ready to die of ecstasy. He did as bid, stepping into the bath in a manner that he hoped uncovered many of his body’s mysteries to his appraiser. Judging by the utter silence behind him, it had worked. Archie, never a man of many words to begin with, really lost his vocabulary whenever his blood went south.
His beautiful, brilliant brute.
Daniel allowed himself a genuine groan of pleasure as he sank into the hot water. He closed his eyes and tipped his head against the porcelain, immersing his body in the steady buoy of heat. He truly was exhausted, and perhaps it would have been wise for them both to simply wash as necessary and have a kip before attempting anything overly athletic.
Of course, it was not wisdom which had brought them crashing together in the first place.
Rousing, Daniel slid open his eyes and was faced was a whole lot of man as Archie had leaned over the bath in an uncharacteristically silent move and propped his arms on either side of it, bracketing Daniel in. His gaze scorched.
Daniel smiled, slipping his eyes shut once more, and made ripples in the water with a sweep of his hand. “Would you like to join me? I’m certain I could probably make room.” He spread his legs in slow invitation.
“You,” Archie whispered, and his voice had grown hoarse, stilling Daniel where he lay. “Daniel.”
Daniel took a steadying breath and opened his eyes. He still had not grown tired of hearing his given name on Archie’s lips. Just now, it had sounded like a benediction. So far from how he’d ever thought of his – granted, rather Biblical – name. He felt spots of heat prickle his already heated skin, every single one sparking as if Archie had touched it.
Before he could think better of it, Daniel reached out and cupped his hand around Archie’s prickly cheek. “What?” he asked in an echoing whisper.
Archie breathed in deeply, shutting his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, there was no longer room for benediction. He was all pupil and ardour. Daniel, to his utter humiliation, swallowed loudly enough to be heard.
“You utter fucking sod,” Archie said and gripped Daniel’s wrist. For a wild moment, Daniel froze, seized by a nauseating wave of nearly physical fear. “How could you run off like that?” Archie went on. “We had not even formulated a plan, we had not – you always do this!” His voice had risen, and he was pinning Daniel with his gaze.
Oh.
Daniel bit his lip and did not attempt to escape the iron grip on his wrist. He would never have been able to, even if he tried. “But I did have a plan,” he managed as mildly as he could.
“You should have apprised me of it,” Archie replied, and this was no game at all anymore. He sounded bullheaded, obstinate, and – and hurt, as well, lurked beneath his brows. “Dammit, we’re partners, da Silva.”
Daniel felt his lips quirking. Aroused partners, at the moment, a quick glance confirmed.
In truth, he had had his own way of working for too long. Accommodating a partner – a partner he was overly fond of, to boot – had at times felt like a burden he had been forced to carry. If he was honest with himself, at times he hoped that Archie simply would not follow him to danger. At times, he wished to still be working in the shadows, soundless, dangerous, and entirely alone.
Honesty, however, went hand in hand with reality. And, as reality had shown him time and again, he needed Archie by his side now. Regardless of wants or desires, his shoulder felt lighter with Archie stood by it – a steady, immovable force.
“I…” After all this time, these words were still difficult to utter. He tried again, stripped as he was, entirely undefended. “I’m sorry, Curtis. I forget myself sometimes. You’re quite right – I should have warned you.”
Archie’s gaze melted into something less terrifying and he chewed on his lip. His grip on Daniel’s wrist, however, remained unchanged. “Very well. I’m glad to have this sorted. Never again, is that understood?”
Daniel acquiesced with a nod. He could not fathom what Archie was thinking at this moment, despite this man often being such an open book. But even open books contained unfathomable mysteries, did they not?
The silence between them stretched out, shifting in tone. Daniel was aware of the hard porcelain beneath his arse, gripped in his free hand, enclosing him in peacefully warm water. He was also aware of Archie’s gaze now dropping from his face, raking over Daniel’s chest, across his arms, and lower still to where their confabulation had failed to wilt Daniel’s shameless desires.
Daniel drank in the sight of him in return. He knew the bath would not accommodate them both, but all he could focus on was the sharp longing to hold and be held – held down, hard, made to feel every single bone and muscle in his own body in a way that everyday existence could not. As if pulled by invisible strings, he shifted, his hips rising and squirming of their own accord, his breath now coming in short bursts, as if his chest was crowded with it.
“Daniel?” Archie asked and still did not let go of Daniel’s wrist.
Daniel moaned. Beside himself, he was taken over utterly by desire. He’d waited for so long. “Archie, please,” he begged, his face aflame from it, all of him on fire. “Please –“
“Please what?” Archie asked, slowly, as if he damn well knew the answer but wanted to torture Daniel with it. As if...
“You know what,” he groaned.
“Say it,” Archie commanded, twisting around until his face was a mere inch from Daniel’s. Their eyes met and – oh.
This, after all, was no celebration. Daniel was being punished.
His head tipped back of its own accord, his cock so hard, he was viable to blow at the slightest touch. “Fuck me,” he ground out. “Please fuck me.”
Archie’s hold on his wrist tightened imperceptibly then let go altogether. Daniel moaned at the loss even as feeling quickly returned. When he looked for Archie, Archie had turned away. Daniel was thus presented with his round buttocks and firm thighs, the light hair running up his skin, all leading to that unfathomable place Daniel adored. “Archie, what –”
When his lover turned back, his gorgeous cock on fully hard display, Daniel could only watch as Archie sat back down on his haunches and reached one hand into the water. Daniel tensed, as if his body was uncertain which pleasure to anticipate, and then Archie was sliding a slick finger straight inside him. Daniel gasped.
“I did not – know – that –“ He did not really know how he was even managing words just then, but he kept hold of his thought as though it would anchor him in this unmoored state. He swallowed and bore down to meet Archie’s knuckles with a thrust of his own. Sparks flew behind his eyes. “Didn’t know the oil would – would work under –”
His words scattered after that as Archie, pinning him in place, interrupted, “Lean up until your chest is out of water.”
Easier commanded than done, Daniel thought even as he moved. The bath was slick and his body was not currently primed to take direction well, but a lift of his hips was all it took for him to do as told. He hooked one leg over the side, just to hold himself steady. Cold air hit his skin at once and he felt his nipples tighten. Too much, it was all so very much. He was about to wonder why he’d been asked to place himself into such an unnatural position when Archie leaned in and took his nipple ring between his teeth.
Daniel cried out.
Hoisted between Archie’s finger and his mouth, he hung in the infinity of pleasure for one long, glorious moment. Then his arsehole was freed and the curse on his tongue dissipated as two fingers replaced the paltry one. He bit his lip, and then his right foot slipped and he went under, water splashing out over the rim.
Archie swore as his fingers slipped out of Daniel. “Get up,” he ordered, his voice nearly unrecognisable. Daniel’s cock grew impossibly harder. He thought he’d die in this bath, and Archie would have a job of carrying his lifeless body out of it. To get up under his own steam seemed an utter impossibility.
He leveled Archie with a stare of his own. “Don’t think I can, dearest,” he said, his conversational tone belied by his own hoarseness.
Archie’s brows lifted oh so imperceptibly, only Daniel could have noticed.
The next moment, he was forcibly levered out of the bath by his armpits, yelping as his knees, then toes, collided with the hard porcelain. He’d taken half the water with him.
“You –” he began, but was silenced the next moment. Archie’s kiss was bruising and Daniel welcomed it with his entire being. Opened his mouth, slipped him his tongue, and gave him teeth for good measure. Archie gripped him by the waist now, his cock as unsubtle against Daniel’s as its owner. If there was a better time to swoon like a maiden, he could not think of it. “You fucking Viking,” he breathed when they came up for air.
Archie looked as unfocused as Daniel felt, his eyelashes fluttering, cheeks an uneven pink. “I couldn’t get to you in the bath,” he breathed. “And you owe me a fuck.”
Daniel’s stomach did that flippity-flip that came with Archie – good, handsome, proper Archie – engaging in some good and proper dirty talk. He wished to reward him. “What’s stopping you now?” he asked, water still dripping from him, pruning his fingers and his toes.
“Absolutely nothing,” Archie replied and in three strides backed Daniel up against the wall. “Turn around.”
Daniel threw him a grin over his shoulder as he did so. He planted his feet enough apart that it would be easy to access what Archie sought. Then he waited.
Along with being thorough, Archie was also an efficient man. He wasted no unnecessary time, and just as Daniel had laid his head on his braced hands, Archie was behind him, fingers slipping back in easily as air. Daniel bucked, his cock so heavy, balls tight.
“God,” he breathed. “More, Archie, more, I’m ready.”
“You’re not,” Archie replied, and what sounded like a proper threat hung in the air between them. Giddiness welled in Daniel’s chest. No. No, perhaps he wasn’t.
“Keep going then,” he goaded, rewarded with a rough shove of a third finger joining the two. He moaned with abandon. The wall they were leaning on led to Archie’s bedchamber and not the hall. With any luck, no passing servant would hear them.
He heard the ticking of a clock over their breathing and God, he thought he’d counted upwards of twelve hundred ticks before the indelible sounds of Archie oiling up his own cock reached his ears. Daniel braced his arse for entry, but instead found himself twisted around until his back hit the wall.
He caught Archie’s gaze just as Archie leaned down and gripped Daniel’s thigh. Daniel swallowed then obeyed the wordless demand. He wrapped one leg around Archie, then another.
The next moment he was being hoisted up and impaled on Archie’s cock, all breath ripped out of him in a single cry.
“Shh, God, be quiet,” Archie whispered, somehow managing to lever Daniel up on his cock with one hand and shove his right one over his mouth. For once in your life went unspoken. Daniel attempted to breathe through the intrusion of it all, his arousal at such an apex, he did not think he could climb higher.
Then Archie released his mouth, gripped his arse with two strong hands, and began to fuck him in earnest. Daniel shoved his face into the crook of his neck where he found purchase with his teeth. There, he thought, let him try to be quiet now.
Somehow – incredibly – Archie was. He shoved Daniel up against that wall again and again, hard, his cock a punishing girth after the agility of his fingers, an utter force, and all in silence. His breathing and his grip on Daniel’s arse were the only tells that betrayed his tension, his cock the focus of their shared pleasure.
This was no tender lovemaking – the sort that Archie had so surprised Daniel with, that fateful night at the Armstrong’s folly. This was all instinct, primeval, uncontrolled.
Daniel thought he would lose his mind. Arms gripped around Archie’s neck, he clung on as his body and soul endured the most thorough, ecstatic fucking of his whole entire life. His body was no longer just a body but a vessel for thousands of live wires, the sort that had betrayed them at the Armstrongs’ and forced Daniel’s hand – and mouth – to land on Archie. He was sparking from within.
“Jesus,” he gasped as Archie’s chest brushed against his nipples, and his belly caught on Daniel’s cock.
“Didn’t,” Archie managed between thrusts, voice tight. “Didn’t expect to hear that name fall from your lips.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Daniel whispered in his ear, his voice like sand on paper. “I’ll call you by whatever name I like.”
“Daniel,” Archie gasped, and Daniel would have laughed at his outrage, were he capable of it. Archie’s outrage, it seemed, was short-lived, anyway, as he soon commanded, barely in control himself. “Touch yourself. I need you to – I’m going to –”
Daniel shook his head, incapable of making any more words. No, there’d be no need of it, not now, not with how hard inside him Archie was, how relentless, all of his strength and abilities focused directly on Daniel. His proud warrior, his soldier, his – his –
Daniel lost all breath. He knew that he could no longer contain the noises trapped inside his throat and did not care, not anymore. He let them out, the groans and wordless curses, the gasping cries. Archie caught them all between his lips, swallowed them down, met them with his own. For endless moments, they were both of them poised on the razor-sharp edge of ecstasy. The tingling at Daniel’s spine was the telltale sign, electric pleasure blooming out from every nerve, pouring up through his veins, forcing a tremor just before the climax hit. Without touching his cock, he shattered, coming, his shudders lost amidst his cries.
“Daniel…” Archie’s voice was filled with wonder and a lost sort of sadness the moment before he reached his crisis with a dry sort of sob. Daniel was undone by the sound of it. He clung harder, like some primate to a tree, and took Archie’s trembling for his own.
They breathed like locomotives against each other’s necks for a long moment after. Daniel could feel Archie’s cock going soft inside him, and braced himself for the moment when he would slip out. Careful as ever, Archie lifted Daniel up as he did so. The only reason Daniel did not immediately buckle to the floor was sheer force of will. Regardless of anything, he had his pride.
A moment later, he felt Archie’s seed begin to seep from him.
“One moment,” Archie whispered and gave him a kiss. So sweet, that kiss, and chaste. Daniel shut his eyes and willed his legs to keep on standing. His body ached in every possible place it could. Archie, true to word, returned not a minute later, when Daniel felt his hands around his waist.
At the sound of Archie’s muted hiss, Daniel’s eyes fluttered open. “What –“
“Your side…” Daniel followed Archie’s gaze, seeing the purple and green blossom on his left side as if through an unfocused lens. He had forgotten.
“Oh,” he said, blinking. “That.”
Archie did not press him for a bigger reaction, but dropped a tender unnecessary kiss to the center of the mess. Then gently, Daniel was turned. He did not need to be told to spread his legs.
He was sensitive; even the soft cloth that Archie used to clean him up felt like wool. Daniel bore it reasonably well. When Archie was done, he just as gently pulled Daniel away from the wall and walked them both back to his bedchamber. Only then did Daniel place the scent between them – Archie had not bathed, after all. The smell of earlier brawl with the baronet still clung to him.
Daniel smiled to himself. He sensed it on his skin too, now, and would have felt rather like a swine, to slip between clean sheets in such a state, except that he was suddenly exhausted.
Archie did not speak as he slipped in after him, dirtier than Daniel himself.
“You’re filthy,” Daniel muttered into the pillow as he made room behind him.
“You’re hardly better,” his lover replied, wrapped one muscular arm around Daniel’s waist, taking care to avoid the bruise, and dropped a kiss onto his shoulder. “Shhh, sleep now,” he told him, but Daniel did not need the offer. He was already asleep.
*
He came to slowly. First, he noticed that the light had shifted – instead of daylight, a single candle and a fire illuminated the room. When he rolled over onto his back, he winced and found himself alone in bed. He frowned at the clock in the corner. Had he really slept the entire day away? And in such a state –
“Looking for someone?”
Archie’s voice came from behind him, and Daniel twisted around, the pain in his side blossoming into its promised fruition. He ignored it.
Archie sat on his chair, a book open over his crossed legs. Daniel smiled, relaxing back under the covers. “Lost you for a moment.”
“Lost you for a few hours,” Archie replied, smiling back. A half-drunk glass of port was keeping him company, it looked like. “You needed the rest, and I did not wish to wake you.”
Daniel stretched out until his feet and hands pointed in four directions and moaned. “Thank you.” He rarely allowed himself the indulgence of sleeping the day away. He supposed that uncovering and disarming a dangerous spy held its advantages besides saving king and country and all that. “Have you slept?”
“Plenty,” Archie assured him and closed his book. “Dinner?”
Daniel felt his own smile growing as he let the covers slip from his chest down to his waist as he stretched some more. His side did hurt, yes, but uncharacteristically, he found he did not care about the pain at all. “Depends on whether or not a full suit of clothes is required.” He was ravenous, but the room was warm, and so, he presumed, was Archie. He was not ready to fall from paradise just yet.
“Not at all.” Archie walked over to a tray Daniel only now noticed in place of his earlier breakfast. When Archie lifted the cover, Daniel sat up and saw what looked to be a ragout of beef. The smell wafted over the next moment, and Daniel’s thoughts must have shown on his face, for Archie laughed and delivered the tray directly into Daniel’s lap post haste. “Please,” he said, pleasure evident in his face. “Tuck in.”
Forgetting his hard-earned manners, Daniel did. His only nod to civility before devouring the entire bowl was to rest a napkin on his naked chest.
“I presume you’ve already eaten?” Daniel managed through his last forkful of ragout. “Or I should feel like a terrible guest, indeed.” He sopped up the last of it with a chunk of bread, swallowed the lot, wiped his mouth and thus having been satiated, gave Archie a sheepish smile. “Apologies. I must have been starving after all.”
Archie took the tray away still laughing, but when he returned to sit next to Daniel on the bed, his laughter died away until only a slight smile remained. He linked their hands together – his left to Daniel’s right. The crisscross of connection made, he regarded Daniel with a gaze Daniel could not readily read. Slowly, like molasses overturned, it awakened something in him. Something that had been lying dormant for so long, he hardly remembered the feeling of it bubbling within his chest.
Perhaps it was the ragout. But even as he attempted the thought, he doubted the answer to be quite so easy, or so prosaic.
“Daniel,” Archie sighed, then raised their linked hands until his lips could touch them.
No, Daniel thought, a sudden panic rising. Do not say the words.
What was the need to speak them, when Daniel felt their meaning in his very toes? Besides, it would not - it could hardly mean –
Well.
Archie had a tendency, Daniel had learned. Whenever Daniel had tempted fate and landed himself in mortal peril, Archie would satiate him first and then look upon him the way he never… Never quite did under less dire circumstances. Only the mortal peril would inspire that specific gaze, and Daniel did not think that he could bear to hear...anything like the gaze suggested, whilst still in a post-peril haze. Not while his side was still feeling the effects of a desperate baronet caught in a corner.
Besides, what use were words when the room was suffused with the thing they dared not name? It was not the time, now was not the time -
“Daniel,” Archie repeated, resting his cheek against their joined fingers. “Will you stay the night?”
Daniel’s toes uncurled. He chased the relief he should have felt, and found it absent altogether. An absence meant a void, a sort of nothing waiting to be filled, and he surged forward before his mind could get him there. “All right,” he answered, leaning to kiss Archie’s cheek. His knees were trapped between them, but he did not move.
“Good,” Archie smiled, uncomplicated and unconcerned. “Would you like a –”
“I love you, you know.” Daniel clamped his lips together immediately after the utterance. He felt a flush rising up his chest and waited, for one terrible moment of inevitability, when all the cards would fall from the flimsy house he’d built inside himself. It turned out it was not Archie he had to worry about, after all.
Archie’s smile fell away in an instant, to be replaced with such a look of wonder and bewilderment that Daniel had to look away. He attempted to gain back custody of his own hand, as well, but Archie held it just as tightly as he had his wrist that morning.
“Daniel,” Archie whispered, and still, Daniel would not look at him. Not until Archie crooked the only remaining finger on his right hand under Daniel’s chin and forced him. The scar tissue tickled his throat. Daniel bit his lip. “Daniel, I had not –”
“No need,” Daniel managed with as much dignity as the situation could muster. “Really, Archie, I apologise, this is not the –”
“Shut up,” Archie breathed, and then, “I love you, too, you great idiot.”
Daniel swallowed and tried to get away, but Archie – exquisite, determined Archie – would not let him.
“What is the matter with you?” he asked, as if he was wondering why Daniel had quite so many cravats or pairs of shoes. “Why are you squirming?”
“Pardon?” Dignity, it would seem, was not finding shelter in Daniel today.
“Pardon!” Archie parroted, then uttered, “Good God!” and then, right in front of Daniel’s eyes, fell over, laughing. Laughing so hard, his face turned red and the very bed shook with it.
“What’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with you?” Daniel exploded. He was confounded, and had lost any control of the situation he might have had – which, admittedly, was not a lot to begin with.
“God,” Archie gasped, still laughing. “The look on your face, you’d have thought you were sending me to the gallows!”
“Well –”
“Oh.” Archie ceased laughing the next moment, his face sobering, his beautiful eyes pinning Daniel in place. “Daniel,” he repeated, quietly this time, and before Daniel could do a thing about it, reached forward and grasped his shoulders in both hands. “This is not – not your youth.” I am not your duke, he’d said once. Daniel turned his face away. He watched the clock in the corner as it ticked blandly away. He could not find the words to speak. “This changes nothing,” Archie continued undeterred, “apart from making me…an extraordinarily happy man.”
Daniel felt a desperate, superfluous sob building in his chest. He swallowed it down. He longed to believe the words filling his ears, longed to lay his ghosts to rest.
“I shall not fail you,” Archie insisted, and Daniel could not stop himself from turning back to him, their gazes meeting. “Please. Please trust me.”
Not even the low light of the room could darken Archie Curtis’s face, nor wipe the openness from his eyes. Daniel watched him, still mute, as if Archie’s words had taken over his own, and then he leaned slowly in and kissed him.
“I shall endeavor not to fail you in return,” he whispered, speech coming back at last.
He kissed Archie again. Again and again, he parted Archie’s lips with his own, soft and open and, he hoped, eloquent enough for them both. He hoped. He hoped he was enough.
***