Work Text:
Andy's gotten solid now. It's good eating down here in the islands- place called Zihuataneho- lotsa fish and fruit and things like that. The food is fruity and spicy, and it's not like anything I've ever tasted before.
Juicy.
Mhm.
The work ain't even work. It's a pleasure, one of the many small pleasures that make up our lives now. Like warm rain in the night. Like morning sunlight glittering on smooth, glassy waves. Like the wind that smells like cook-smoke and spice. Coconut husk.
Coconut! That's another, the pale soft flesh cut out fresh and roasted a little, all smoky and clean tasting and just a little bit sharp, sweet- the smooth waters they hold inside that just...
Everything is different, but not so different that I'm at sea, adrift in the unfamiliar.
It becomes familiar.
It's because Andy's there. He's more familiar than anything to me. He's more comfortable than my own skin at times.
Other times he's not, but he's seen plenty. That old boy has seen enough.
For a white man he sure looks like he belongs here amongst the sun-blessed brown locals with their bright, wiry black hair and quick, rolling voices and liquid, beautiful eyes. He's like a bird of paradise, and he calls back in their same language, not native by any stretch of the imagination, but you know by it that he's had a lot of practice.
I lie in the sand. It feels good, feels like spitting in Shawshank's fucking eye. Like old lions, we laze about without leave... But always have an eye and both ears out. The memory of danger standing guard at the gates of our idling minds.
Then Andy wanders by, hands in pockets, watching the sea. Tall glass of water, come to share space with me for a while.
I prop myself up until I can see his back, the wind and sun flapping through his shirt, a smear of char or oil on the underside of his forearm, the width of his shoulders and the faint shade of damp around the collar. His hair is wet, half drying and combed back.
I can see the faint rise then drop of his sides, a sigh breathed into the wind.
But damn.
He takes the boat out and comes back with a net of fish. Don't know what they are, he's got a Spanish name that I can't get my teeth around. His smile is soft and absent, intent and patient. I get words pouring into my head without end when I think about his small, simple, complicated expressions.
The work, man it's a joyful thing. To see something you spent weeks on, again and again- to be the one to have it too. To make a fine table and then get to decide where it goes, to eat at it. To decide not to eat at it. To a man to make a life for himself and then get to live it too.
I'd say that much freedom would frighten a man, but it just ain't so.
My head fills with words without end whenever Andy gets one of those infinitely complicated expressions- times I need them most, words desert me completely.
For when we're sitting on the deck out of the rain and Andy's reading a tiny book with a crumbling green cover and I'm resting with a cigarette, a board of chess underway nearby and cushions from the sofa under our asses because it's a nice kind of rain that you wanna enjoy outside and here a man don't even have to fight or bribe a man for the one spot of dry shelter.
I take his Queen, smirking under my hat and taking a long drag to disguise it. Can feel him shift and huff and there's a hot, sharp pinch on my forearm. He's bitten me, lax and stupid grinning like a housecat, twisted on his back on the deck, book closed protectively in one hand and the other resting on his chest. He's reaching towards the board, that whimsical smug little affectionate smile and a wary glare comfortably sharing the same space on his face.
I look down past my elbow to the disarray of his hair and that glint of intelligence as he picks through the pieces, arm crooked at an awkward angle, taking my king without leave or law and snuffling with silent laughter, holding it to his chest along with the book.
Something urgent leaps up into my throat like laughter but warmer, harder, heavier.
"Well." I say- now he's ruined the game and scattered the other pieces in retreat. "I guess you win."
"You think so?" He's looking up, head half resting against the outside of my thigh, looking for all the world like it's a fine place to be.
"Mhm." I say, 'cause he did ruin the game and I don't like that. It's the same 'mhm' my mother used to give me when I chat back.
Andy is a hard man to read. He goes back to his book and it's like it never happened, he's a cold fish. I can't help thinking... He might want me. I couldn't say for sure. It's like looking into the crashing waves trying to divine next month's weather. Motherfucker just bit me. The patch of skin on my arm he took between his teeth tingles with the memory of it. Could feel his mouth, the sharp scratch of stubble. Gone as quick as it came.
Can't blame a man for wanting things to be clear, but relishing the confusion even more.
Most of the folks only speak the words of English they learn from radio and tourists and self teaching books, or at school if the school can afford an English teacher. I wouldn't know where to begin. And... Truth be told.
Truth be told, I'd rather it this way.
Shawshank has left scars on both of us.
I wouldn't mind a nip every now and then from Andy.
Wouldn't mind it at all.
So I find life moves on and I'm waiting for the next moment. Waiting with the patience life has taught me. And Andy pays the feral local kids far too much for the fruit they come galloping down to sell us, and whistles as he waxes the keel of the boat and sits shivering on the deck at the early hours of the morning after staggering from his room in a blind panic, watching the sun crest the waves crest the beach.
I play a little something, sometimes. I've found it's the best way to get him to come sit up by me watching the night go down or the ghosts go by both off shore and not. He closes his eyes and sighs, gives me a view of his face. That face.
There's a real strangeness about him.
Graceful. It's a kind of beauty. Like the Madonnas, looking down with love and agony upon their gaunt, statue sons.
I wonder what he wants for, and if I can get it for him. If he'll ask.
When I'm done with making noise, I hold that harmonica up to the light and watch it glimmer- to think I've had it this long and managed to keep hold of it too. Andy doesn't open his eyes, but he seems to turn to me, minutely.
I look across at him. He's a fine, fine old bird. Far too fine for the likes of Shawshank.
I...
I sigh.
"Keep playing." He murmurs, eyes shut. "I won't bite."
"Oh-yeah?" I call him out with a challenging look.
"Scuse me if I've learned not to take a man at his word."
I give a few quiet notes. The quiet falls again.
"Promise." He says.
"... You're hardly selling it me, Andy." I add, slyly. Like it's a joke but it easily couldn't be.
He sags, eyes falling shut. The faint wind plays his hair across his sun-browned face.
"'bout a trade?" He purrs.
"..." I open my mouth and close it again. Too many ways to say yes all fighting for the same right at the same time.
I thumb the harmonica for a moment. I'll get him that song.
I play another song, a full one this time. He sits up and across from me, watching and listening but his eyes are open and the fierce fragile expanding thing inside of me feels like it's gonna explode.
When I finish, it's with a flourish and a deprecating bow. His head bobs with an answering laugh but he's not laughing at me, or with me. No, I know him well enough to know he's laughing at something beyond my understanding.
Something beyond songs and oceans and libraries of books.
And then he comes up on his knees and hands and crawls right up into a man's space, flooding everything I can see and smell with himself, and I sit still as a board wondering what the hell he's gonna do. My chest throbs with the idea that he might bite me on the neck like that blood sucking count Dracula in the movies. That I might growl a laugh and knock him over and we'll end up scuffling in the sand like dogs.
I can't feel the boards and sand beneath my fingers for the drag of fabric and the living warm sprawled weight of his seat in my lap.
"You didn't say what you wanted for it." He intones, inclining his head, his chin lingering at my hairline. His throat is vulnerable to me. I can see his pulse. I can see it, throbbing through a man with red, living blood.
"Uh...." I manage, to breathe, swallowing because I can't think what on earth to say.
His hands play up my arms, handing me the harmonica to pocket. Thrills are surging up me, my hands are weak, I can feel the heat radiating off him, trapped in shrinking space between us.
A man's going outta his mind, here. I can't hold myself still enough... There's a dark creeping fear on my peripherals. It doesn't belong out here, though. No home for it.
A spark snaps where his fingers suddenly touch mine, folding our hands together with the harmonica caught between, his face bent down so he can look right into my averted eyes. I can see his whole face in my peripheral vision, every which way I look.
He's sitting right on me, looking. I drag my eyes towards his but the heat of it- I can't hold it for more than a second. He's intense, he's too close for me to stand that kind of intensity.
"Red." He says patiently, his voice gentle. "It's okay."
My heart is cracking against my ribs and his voice is so close I can feel it in my chest. It shouldn't ought to bring me to my knees like this.
"'s okay."
His hands, run ragged from the years of slavery at Shawshank and the recent net tying and working the new boats, sliding up my chest.
He's looking at me patiently, with that cautious, calculating, sincere and patient smile. I pull in a harsh breath and shift back onto my hands. I can see him, his pants rumpled and stretched where his thighs are spread out over mine. His shirt unbuttoned, vest showing the very shape of him in fine detail.
"Gimme a kiss." He says.
We find our ways closer and that gap closes, movements stilted and careful. Then his mouth is right up against mine, can feel him, his warmth, a trembling, a shaking, uncertain breath and the wet sound of a hard swallow.
Then it's happening. My mouth finds his, slots into place like it never left and we're kissing each other, with a kind of anguish made up of decades without human contact, assaults and brutality that took us by surprise and the monotone of suffering and hopelessness without end. His breath trembles with laughter, joyful and victorious. A jeering, snarling triumph over our history. He tastes so damn good, he opens up to me, the wet soft sounds between us, the sucking strokes of his tongue.
I can't remember how I pulled him down- whether he rolled me or I rolled him, but his mouth is on my chin, his teeth scraping and tugging, before he seals his lips to mine again, kissing slick and soft and deliberate. He's breathing heavy, I can feel his heart pounding where I'm holding him at the waist, my thumbs fit perfectly in the hollow of his belly just beneath his ribs, my fingers reaching to the hard, well shaped slope of his back.
He turns his mouth to my jaw, branding me with those sucking kisses all the way down my neck- in return I get him anywhere I can, getting every taste of the salt of his neck and his jaw, his cheek, behind his ears. I kiss him on his chest, his throat, the hollow where his bones meet, the crook of his shoulder.
His chest rumbles with deep, rushing breaths and his mouth is so hot, his breath sweet and so good on me. He bites, he pulls my skin up and then works it flat with his tongue until it hurts, and it's so good. He bites hard.
"Andy?" 'Man's voice is hesitant and small, even though I got myself between his open thighs, teasing us together down there with slow, rolling movements. I gotta know that we ain't playing the wrong game here. This is not a power play like days of old.
Andy pulls his head back, eyes heavy and his mouth scratched swollen, his hair combed back now sticking to his temple a little. He makes a acknowledging sound, eyes open and to attention. Looking at me like that- like...
Like...
"Hmhmm..." He chuckles though his nose, drawing his lips into his mouth to taste the kiss again, a hint of scraping teeth visible, the wet sound of his tongue working. It's... It's real saucy.
He's a mean bird, looking at me like that.
I forget myself, glance up into the dusk for just a moment of there's gonna be any hope of coming back down-
"Red?"
His grip is loose and tentative in my shirt, his eyes wide, wide with something that doesn't look near as dark as fear. Looking right at me. Me.
"Uh, yeah...?" My voice breaks. I swallow.
"Do you wanna- I want to... Can we go inside?"
"Inside?" I breathe.
He draws his lips between his teeth again, that startled look becomes wilder and more certain the longer I look at it.
"Inside." He confirms, a whisper, then clears his throat and asks clearly, earnestly: "Do you want to get inside me?"
I can't breathe. I want him. I want it.
"...Yes sir."
"Yeah?" His brow is pinched as his fingers search out mine, the harmonica tumbles somewhere, and I shove it in my pocket before it gets forgotten. He brings my hand to his raw, flushed mouth and scrapes a bite of my palm with his teeth. Sends a jolt, a spark, right to my-
"Ho!"
Those eyes widen. My ring and little finger get sucked into his mouth, a clever light in them watching me as he pulls with his hollowed cheeks and chews with his back teeth. The wet, my black skin in his white mouth. The way it looks. I daren't even think of the filthy nasty cries men at Shawshank would bawl through the bars about men sucking cocks. 'specially black ones. I feel burned out, victorious, vindicated by the sight of us. My skin and his, never seen anything as beautiful as the stretch of that enigmatic mouth on the hands with which I work. Worth Rita Hayworth by the thousand.
We get up, sagging against the doorway, loose and stunned by the need for it. He hooks a hesitant finger under my shirt and steps back into the house, slowly leading towards his bedroom. His room. Not his cell, not his cot, his bed. His bed.
He stops at the kitchen for the coconut fat and that huge, groaning pressure in my chest is back, swollen to bursting, pressing on my lungs and ribs. I just want him to know how much I... I really, really do...
I hold him up at the door just for the chance to press him tight to me and kiss his mouth again, he waves the tin offhand in a gesture towards the bedroom and heaves a nasal breath through the kiss, a moan.
I just want to- just for the moment, get my hands around him. Hold him safe and tight, kiss him right.
"Oh... Red." Arms, heavy and well worked, sun-browned, slung over my shoulder, the other up the back of my shirt, he holds tight, I can feel the strength in him.
"Mh?"
"Mmhh..."
"Mm-mm... Mm-mm-mm."
I'm lost in this man I've known for what feels like lifetimes. I couldn't tell you long my life has been, how many times I've...
I've never done this before.
There's sweat between us by the time we crawl between the fresh, cool sheets. Sweat and raw nerves. I've got him, I tell him that. A man needs to know this when he's...
"I've got you, man. It's me. Just me. Just relax yourself."
"Gonna want to see you." He growls in that kind, fervent tone I've known him to use on the odd occasion. He grins the way that makes me twist inside, gets a hand low on my belly while I've got my hands busy elsewhere, and I've just gotta let him do what he's doing- it's been so long since I've been touched in kindness like this that if I ever have now, I can't be certain it really happened.
"Ohh!"
That's his hand, on my cock. He's squeezing me- his hand, on my cock. I can hardly breathe with how the pleasure of it rockets up my spine. I shake and forget I have hands for a while, letting the tide of it drag me under.
"Look at you." He says to himself reverently, almost silent, working at his lips with his teeth, licking over them in slow swipes of his tongue in a nervous gesture.
Looking up at me like that from a comfortable slouch against the headboard, his ass up on a pillow, his face all looking like that. So... He's so beautiful, I can't describe it. That hair on his chest, his belly that's pale and thick, and his skin is a sweet mix of buttermilk white and golden tan and raw sunburn and warm blooded flush. His cock is blushed that same hard pink.
When I take his cock in hand and give him a little squeeze with coconut greasy fingers he tilts his head to the side and groans, brows knitting and mouth pulling tight.
"That's it." He grunts, rocking into it with eyes closed and head tossed to the side.
"You still want this in there?" I ask when the edge has been planed off with his rough, intelligent hands. His knuckles are wet with me, stilling but not letting go. It feels good to be just held like that, too.
"I sure do." Those smirks of his. Quiet and dark and sure. Hopeful and calm. Gentle. Andy is a gentle soul.
He's a gentle soul, yes Lord. A bird of paradise. I can't take too long working him open, I kiss him everywhere I can. No much kindness is enough, I'll tell you that much. A man deserves to be treated real good, when he-
When he...
When we finally get to it, he's taking me just as much as I am him. His whole pale body flushes up, face calm and relaxed and peaceful.
"That's it. Just like that, Red. Just like that." He says, doesn't raise his voice but it hits me like a shout. He's so hot and slick and silky down there and he's working me over, squeezing me so good and... What I'm doing to him he's giving me right back.
I daren't even say it in my mind. That's what we're doing.
We gather together and he asks me to give him what I've got. That he wants me bad, all of me. Right now. I'm gonna jump out of my skin with that.
I can't keep a straight head, and he's making me slow to nothing so we can rock together like a nice, sweet, sexy dance, he's moaning so deep in his chest it makes my skin vibrate. Then he's got his breath caught, holding me steady with those rough hands, a pained noise trailing out, a question.
"What? Shit, it hurt? Lemme-"
"Keep at it, Red, Red... Just like that. Don't stop that, it feels... Oh... That feels crazy..."
His belly is wet, his cock blurts out a clear stream from the tight cradle of his fist and I can feel him flutter inside. Pulling and pushing. He suddenly plants a hand at my jaw, his mouth tight but his expression is soft and breaking.
"I'm gonna cum." Andy says quietly. In that clear, well pronounced, sincere way. Starting to choke up.
I can feel him while it's happening. Can feel it rage through him. He opens his mouth in a sharp, wailing shout, completely abandoned of that quiet, intelligent collection while I push through him. The tendons of his throat leaping, the agonised crease of his brows. His hair sticking to his temples. He cries out again and body opens deep, sucking my cock in and I'm... I can't wait any more.
It's been such a long time, and I can't wait.
He's sobbing, thrusting like he's trying to bury his cock in me.
"Oh, shit."
"God!" He cries, head down, gasping.
"...Andy-- I'm ready, I-"
"That's it, Red. You did so good. Oh man... Let me have it."
"Yeah... Yeah..."
"Did such a good job, baby."
It's funny, the sorts of things that'll make a man go off like that. And good Lord did I.
***
When he licks his mouth like that a few hours later, I can't help copying it. Didn't realize that's what I was doing until he smiles at me under that hair, leaning up against the headboard still with his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankle. Got my head in his lap and it feels like we're kids.
"You've got these freckles." He ponders. Still feels like I'm inside him, my body is still rushing with the aftermath. I look up and he's still shining slightly with sweat. The sweet ache of release still throbs inside me.
A stupid laugh burbles out of me.
Even now, after all this time.
***