inthewildwood | fanfiction: with his educated eyes (Reply)

Title: with his educated eyes
Fandom: The Black Tapes Podcast
Pairing: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand
Summary: Words don't seem like the right thing to use just now.
Rating: E

“Wait, wait,” Alex laughs, pushing at Strand’s (Richard’s? Given the position they’re in, first names seem appropriate) shoulders. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, but it’s in a better state than hers’, which is already in a heap on the motel floor. “Do you want to take your glasses off?”

He blinks owlishly at her. His eyes are wide behind the plastic frames, pupils round and dark, and his face is flushed down to the neck. “I’d like to see you,” he says, voice slightly breathless. “Does it bother you?”

A warm current runs through her at his words. “It’s fine,” she says, running a hand through his hair. The glasses were pushing a bit against the bridge of her nose, but it’s a discomfort she can live with. She presses her thumb to the crease between his eyes, gently smoothing it out. “I didn’t know how much you could see without them.”

“Not much,” he says, staring at her- drinking her in like it’s a hot summer day and she’s a cold glass of water. Alex has never been especially self-conscious- she looks fine, and she knows it- but she’s not used to being looked at like this, with so much reverence. His gaze is bordering on astonishment. Alex feels heat curl low in her stomach, working its way upwards, and she pulls him in for another kiss.

The motel room bed they’re sitting on isn’t exactly built for two, but as they didn’t book it in anticipation of having sex in it, it’s what they have to work with. Alex is sitting back against the headboard, knees spread, and Strand (screw it; Richard still feels foreign to her, a little too formal, and she’s certainly not calling him Dick) is leaning forward against her, one hand in her hair and one braced against the wall as they kiss. She slides one hand around the nape of his neck, tickling at his skin with her fingernails- thanks to her nail-biting habit, they’re not long enough to actually scratch- while she works at the buttons on his shirt with the other hand, trying to free them without actually ripping them off entirely. The shirt is one of those button-downs with the miniscule buttonholes, so it’s more of a challenge than she expected- but when has she ever backed away from a challenge?

He groans when she finally gets the shirt off and runs a hand down his chest, tweaking one of his nipples a bit before grabbing at his hips and pulling him in closer. It’s not an easy thing to manage in their position, and she finds herself sliding down on the bed so that she can get under him and hike one of her knees up over his hips. The flush on Strand’s face has darkened from pink to red, and when he moves one of his hands down from her hair to palm at her breasts through her bra, she hopes her moan of encouragement is taken in the spirit she intended it. With things as they are, he can’t very well reach around and unhook her bra without losing his balance, so she does it for him and shrugs the bra off letting it slide onto her stomach and then down to the floor. He moves downward, kissing her neck, the hollow of her shoulder, the dip between her breasts, before he starts softly kissing the underside of her right breast. She makes a breathless, delighted sound, and cradles the back of his head in one hand, pushing his mouth where she wants it. Her nipples are even more sensitive than usual, bumpy with gooseflesh in the motel’s air-conditioned atmosphere, and when he kisses them he leaves them wet and warm. And speaking of wet and warm-

“Erm,” he says, as she reaches for the button on his trousers. He pulls free of her hand, and she can’t help but make a small disappointed sound as he goes. He looks scarcely less chagrined, but he still clears his throat, shaking his head slightly as he prepared to speak. “I didn’t prepare- that is, do you have any- it would be irresponsible not to-“

“Condoms, you mean?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. The flush on his face is now more embarrassed than aroused, but he nods. She reaches out to run a hand through his hair again. “Well I’m on the pill, so . . .”

“Still.” He’s got that familiar determined, I-know-what’s-best expression again. “It would be irresponsible not to.”

“Well look at it this way.” She leans forward and pecks him quickly on the lips. “The last person I slept with was Amalia, a year and a half ago-” He makes a small surprised noise, which she ignores, “-and I know neither of us caught anything, because she got every medical test you can think of before she left for Russia. I don’t need an encyclopedic list of your other partners, but I’m assuming there’s been no cause for concern?”

“No,” he says, “no, there hasn’t,” There’s that look on his face, like he doesn’t want to let this argument go quite yet, but his face is at eye level with her breasts, which is a pretty good distraction if she does say so herself. He practically face plants back onto her, tongue moving against her skin while she reaches, again, for his trousers. She gets them unbuttoned and unzipped without any interruptions this time, and quickly reaches in and wraps her hand around the length of him.

He shudders against her, mouth still moving. She twists her wrist a little, experimenting- she’s not sure yet what he likes, after all- and another shudder runs through him. His hands leave her sides, fumbling at the zip of her jeans, and she starts to wriggle into a position where he can slide into her without interruption. To her surprise he doesn’t immediately move over her once she kicks the jeans off; instead, he keeps sliding downwards until one of her knees is over his shoulder and his face is resting against the inside of her thigh, and then-

“Oh, fuck,” she whimpers as his tongue moves against her. There’s a bit of stubble on his cheeks that rasps against her thighs as he moves, and somehow that only makes it better. She throws her arms up over her head, letting her body roll in response to the hot bliss moving through her. He’s really good at this, which she hadn’t expected somehow- well okay, she hadn’t expected any of this to happen at all, but when she’d let herself wonder, she somehow hadn’t pictured him as being all that good at sex. Something about him being too buttoned-up, she guesses, although in retrospect, it was a silly line of reasoning. One of them was married once, after all, and it wasn’t her.

She wants to draw her thighs together, trapping him in place until she goes over the edge, but she also doesn’t; she wants to play this out to the end. So she slides out of his reach, and when he looks up at her- mouth red and wet, chest heaving- she smiles at him and crooks a finger. “Come here.”

He does as he’s told, and she puts her hands on his shoulders before swinging herself over so that he’s the one sitting against the headboard and she’s on his lap. She lowers herself onto him slowly, letting out a hiss of air between her teeth once she’s fully settled and he’s inside her. She feels- well it’s not like she hasn’t had sex before, she knows what it feels like, but she’s still astonished all over again at how heated she feels, how full and stretched and fulfilled. He’s got both hands wrapped around her waist, mouth slightly parted, looking up at her with huge, dark eyes. He’s waiting for permission, she realizes, and she traces a finger down the side of his face and to his lips. “You want to move?”

“Nnrgh,” is all he says as she pushes her finger into his mouth and his lips wrap around it reflexively. She shifts her hips a little bit, not too much, but in their position it’s impossible not to feel every tiny movement like an electric shock. He starts to move under her, hips jouncing like the last of his precious self-control has slid out of his grasp, and she’s happy to be along for the ride. She grabs his shoulders, grinning and leaning in to kiss him again- she can taste herself on his mouth- tightening her legs around his waist so that she doesn’t get dislodged by accident and land on the motel room floor. They’re rocking together now, speeding up at the temperature between them rises and the fire in her stomach grows more intense, and she knows this has to end sometime, even though she also wants it to go on forever.

He comes first, letting his mouth drop away from hers and pressing his face to her collarbone like he’s too shy to let her see him. She follows moments later, bucking her hips as lights explode behind her eyelids, and wraps her arms around Strand’s shoulders to steady herself until it’s over. She feels like hot rubber, loose and wobbly, and she’s not entirely sure she could stand up on her own if she tried. For several seconds after it ends, they stay where they are, heavy breathing loud in the sudden silence of the room.

Eventually, she slips away from him and rolls over onto her side. As before, it’s more than a little crowded, but she doesn’t mind. She kicks back the covers and pulls them back up over the both of them as the sweat dries and turns cold on their skin. She rests her head on his chest, which is still rising and falling rapidly, and turns her face so that she can rub her nose against his neck. The sensation apparently startles him into laughter. “That’s cold.”

“It’s the only cold part of me right now,” she says, curling in closer. “How about you? You warm enough?”

“More than thank you.” It would almost sound like his usual, professional voice, but there’s an undercurrent of tenderness in it that there wasn’t before. Or was there? She’s not sure. She’d like to think she’s a good observer- her job does require it, after all- but this crept up on her and took her by surprise, so she’s honestly not certain how much she’s missed.

But it doesn’t matter: not when he’s lowering his head slightly to lay a kiss against her hair, or when his arm is wrapped around her shoulders, holding her close against him like he’s worried she might slip away otherwise. She’d like to tell him he doesn’t need to worry about that; that whatever has happened or will happened, she’s rooted firmly in place, too sure and solid to slide out of his reach. But telling him involves words, and words don’t seem like the right thing to use just now, when the language of their bodies is already speaking loud and clear. So she lets her head rest on his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow to normal, and silently tells him I’m here, I’m here, I’ll always be here.