saga/title/fandom: Fear (X-Men)

author: Khirsah

rating/genre: (NC-17) - Drama/Romance

warnings: slash, language, heated sexual content

summary: Bobby’s good at screwing up.

comments/disclaimers: The characters do not belong to me. They are property of Marvel comics. Fear is a direct sequel to Fool, thus continuing my series of almost-yet-not-quite pwp Bobby/Jean-Paul stories. Fool may be found at my homepage http://khirsah.bacchae.org or my livejournal khirsah. Feedback is highly appreciated and always responded to. There will most likely be a sequel to this story. This series falls into a nebulous realm of almost-canon, meaning I am accepting or disregarding canon elements as I see fit. As in Fool, sentence fragments are used as a part of the style. Fool was set at an undisclosed period of time after the events of Uncanny X-Men 414, 415, 418 and 419. Fear makes reference to a scene in X-Men 157. However, while Bobby in X-Men 157 has completely turned to ice, I have chosen to write him still mid-metamorphosis. He’s more fun to play with that way. Dedication: To Fre, who is Jean-Paul. Also to Quiva, who is the best beta friendship could buy. To Rhyannon for her beautiful feedback that always makes me smile. The French within this story was translated by the incomparable Framling. A note about her translation: while Bobby speaks France-based French, Jean-Paul speaks Quebec French. Also, since it is dialog, the French is for the most part written how it would be spoken rather than how it would appear written. For those interested, the translation is at the end of the story.

The window is open, letting in enough of a breeze to keep the small room from becoming stifling. Sunlight pushes across the floor, lighting the boards that aren’t old enough to be worn, hitting a pale ankle as legs cross, then draw up into the creaking leather chair, toes curling against the comfortable armrest.

There’s bird-song somewhere. Splashing from the pool. Bobby likes to swim, but it’s not Bobby down there making so much noise. Wind chimes from the back porch. The rhythmic thwap of a basketball. Someone’s calling for Paige, voice carried by the low wind, but the words are distorted and unimportant.

A low laugh. The strange, almost musical sound of moisture in the air freezing. A cool breeze that blows back the curtains and makes Jean-Paul’s hair fall into his eyes as he sits curled in his chair. The scuff of a booted foot against wood.

“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Bobby says with his very best leer.

Jean-Paul Beaubier doesn’t look up from his laptop. “Non,” he says off-handedly, reaching up to push back a strand of silvered hair. He tucks it behind a pointed ear, mouth pulled into a frown.

Perched on the window sill, ridiculous purple coat settling around his thighs and ice slide slowly dissipating behind him, Bobby pouts. “Not even if I ask nicely?” he says, climbing into the room and pulling off his blue shades. Warren claims Bobby’s new uniform is a desperate attempt to pass for cool. Jean-Paul says it’s a crime against the good taste that Bobby doesn’t really have. Jean no doubt would have said it’s an attempt to mix two differing idols, Scott and Remy, into one untouchable and thus unwoundable façade.

Bobby mostly thinks its better than a blue speedo but admits that all of them might be on to something.

“You did not ask nicely,” Jean-Paul says, fingers moving blindingly fast over keys. “You could not ask nicely using French if you tried.”

“Even if I put my aching, yearning heart into it?” Bobby quips and Jean-Paul finally looks up from the screen to give him a small, heart-breaking smile. It makes Bobby want to reach out and trace the curve of his lips with calloused fingertips. It makes him want to drop down to his knees and rest his head on the other man’s thigh. It makes him want to shatter into a million glistening pieces and knit himself back together again, better and stronger and less like himself. “Even if I climb every mountain? Ford every stream? Follow every rainbow?”

He laughs a little, which is enough to make Bobby grin. “Oui. Even then. Your accent is painful and you used a word incorrectly.”

Bobby cocks his head. “Were there really enough words in that sentence for me to get one wrong?” he asks, kicking off his shoes. His chest aches and his head hurts a little, no doubt from being tossed into a wall earlier. He’s momentarily tempted to complain to Jean-Paul in a pathetic ploy for sympathy, but he’s not quite sure which would be worse: Jean-Paul worrying over him or Jean-Paul not being worried at all.

He settles for sitting on the bed and pulling off his socks.

“Not as such, but you somehow managed,” he says, turning back to his laptop with another small ghost of a smile. Jean-Paul had ranted for over a week when he’d been assigned teaching-only duties but eventually he’d settled into his routine. He barely makes cutting remarks about the Professor’s intelligence anymore and no longer tries to pretend that missions would have gone smoothly if only he had been there to lead them.

“Ah, the cleverness of me,” Bobby sighs, wriggling his toes. “And here I thought I was making headway into this whole French thing.”

“Non. You have all the grace and verbal dexterity of a Bablefish translator,” Jean-Paul assures him, fingers pausing momentarily over the keys. He taps his index finger lightly against the H, strokes his ring finger across the S and does something vaguely pornographic with his thumb to the space bar. Bobby pauses to watch, brows arching a little. Tap stroke fondle. Tap stroke fondle. Then, all at once, tapstrokefondle.

There’s a long pause before Bobby realizes that Jean-Paul is looking at him.

“Er, right,” Bobby says, blushing and turning his attention back to the constricting black leather of his uniform. He’d laughed when he first saw it and demanded to know whether it was Scott, Warren or the Professor that was going through the midlife crisis, but, again, better than a blue speedo even if he didn’t really need the coverage while in ice form. Damn hot in summer, though. “Bablefish? That bad? Come on—I’m better than that. Besides,” he adds, struggling a little with the snaps, “I’m sure I didn’t get anything wrong.”

“You are sure?” Fingers are flying over keys again, moving so quickly Bobby’s half-curious whether he’s writing anything at all. It would be like Jean-Paul to type random strings of letters to intimidate people. But then, it would also be like Jean-Paul to be able to type faster than the speed of sound.

He wonders if you can break a keyboard from typing that quickly. He’s half-tempted to ask how many laptops Jean-Paul tears through in a year. He figures he’ll just save himself the scathing look and keep a secret tally.

If Jean-Paul puts up with him for that long. Of course.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, breathing a sigh of relief as the black uniform drops to the ground. The slightest of pauses in typing is enough to get him to grab it off the floor and take it to the laundry baskets that line their walk-in closet. Whites, darks, brights and blood-drenched uniforms. Nothing unusual about this relationship. “It’s a catchphrase.” He pulls on a robe, belting it tight around his middle. Even alone with his lover, he’s uncomfortable bare-chested. Naked or dressed only in his boxers, Bobby’s too aware of the patch of ice spreading like an oil-slick across his pale chest. It’s bigger than it was three weeks ago, skirting along the edge of one nipple, dipping down into his belly button.

It makes him shudder whenever Jean-Paul brushes it with clever fingers, flush whenever Nurse Annie inspects it with a tsk, and die a little inside when he catches sight of it in a mirror.

Jean-Paul’s watching him, blue eyes moving down to Bobby’s hands as they knot the belt, then up to his face with a look that Bobby doesn’t want to acknowledge right now. Bobby goes to the window instead and looks out across the basketball court and pool to the forest.

A soft click of the laptop closing. The sound of leather shifting as Jean-Paul rises and moves to stand behind him. Bobby’s body is greedy, but he doesn’t lean too far into the palms that press against his back no matter how good they feel. “A catchphrase?” Jean-Paul murmurs, leaning in to press his lips to the back of Bobby’s neck, just where the hair feathers across the nape. He keeps threatening to drag Bobby to the salon he frequents in town if Bobby doesn’t start being more specific when he’s telling the barber what he wants.

“‘Just cut it’ is not enough,” he scolded the last time Bobby came back covered in small bristles and wearing enough cheap hairspray to rival Logan.

“Works fine for me,” Bobby had protested as Jean-Paul stalked toward him with a comb and a spray bottle of water. “At least it’s out of my eyes.”

“Oui, it is good that you are able to see, but the fact remains that I must look at you. Now. Sit.”

And he’d sat and no doubt he’d sit again and probably again, listening to low, grumbling French and smirking just a little inside.

“Mmhmm, a catchphrase,” Bobby says. He does lean back a little as Jean-Paul’s hands slide down his spine and across his hips, moving to press against his lower belly. An index finger traces over the knot of cloth keeping his robe belted on.

“Please tell me you learned it reading ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’,” Jean-Paul murmurs, hands moving up and into the fold of his robe.

Bobby can’t hide his instinctive wince as he grabs Jean-Paul’s wrists, thumbs stroking over the pale skin in apology. “A Streetcar Named what?” he asks, letting out a breath when Jean-Paul’s hands move down to his waist again.

“Idiot,” the other man smirks fondly. “In this case, I do not wish to hear where you learned it.”

“Moulin Rogue,” Bobby chirps, then laughs and turns in his lover’s arms when Jean-Paul smacks him.

“I told you I did not wish to hear this!” he mock-scolds, brows drawn into a ridiculous little scowl.

“Gichi gichi ya ya ta ta,” Bobby teases, shaking his hips and fluttering his lashes. “Mocha choka latta ya ya.”

The scowl deepens, but his lips are twitching, curling up at the corners as if he cannot help himself. “T'est ridicule,” he scolds, thumbs pressing through the terrycloth against the arch of Bobby’s hipbones. “J'sais pas comment j'te supporte'.”

It takes a moment for Bobby to translate, head cocked in a way that Jean-Paul has repeatedly assured him makes him look either like a codfish or a wandering village idiot, depending on his lover’s mood. “Uuuhh... parce que vous m'adorez?” he tries. He’s been listening to Learn French The Easy Way on tape and tearing through the English-French dictionary on the sly as if it were porn. He almost got caught once, by Remy, which would have been enough of an embarrassment for him to swear off romantic gestures his entire life. He has this rather pathetic dream of whispering to Jean-Paul in French as his lover sleeps, but the more rational part of his mind usually retorts that Jean-Paul would hear him in his dreams, wake up and scold him for conjugating something-or-another wrong.

Romance was often touch and go with the Quebecois, but at least it was always interesting. Bobby had never been all that good at romance anyway.

“Non.” He’s smiling, one hand reaching up to stroke back Bobby’s poorly-cut hair.

“Parce que... vous voulez?”

Chuckling. “Mmm... p't'être.”

He grins, leaning in to brush their lips together. “Parce que vous voulez jouer avec ma morue.”

Jean-Paul pulls away, laughing out-right. His eyes do the most wonderful things when he laughs, shining and seeming to almost expand until they’re huge and blue and so very, very bright. “I wish to tangle with your *what*?” he asks.

Bobby’s had years of experience at playing innocent. “What’s the matter?” he asks, blinking. Batting his lashes. “Did I say something wrong?”

“You claimed I wished to tangle with your codfish,” Jean-Paul says, poking him in the chest. Right in the center of the ice.

“I said no such thing,” he protests loftily.

Jean-Paul’s head cocks. “Who is the French expert here, otter pop?” he asks in that imperious tone that makes Kurt spitting mad and never fails to make Bobby grin.

“You?” he tries.

“Oui. And who is the bumbling student?”

He points to himself.

“Oui. Very good. And where is this codfish you mention?”

Bobby snickers and reaches out to grab a loose handful of Jean-Paul’s hair, pulling him in close. “Now that’s just dirty,” he says, shaking his head.

“I cannot help this,” Jean-Paul purrs, practically glittering up at him. He wraps his arms around Bobby’s waist, pulling their hips together as his palms slide over his ass. “I am monstrously hungry for seafood.”

“Argh, argh *FOUL*!” he protests, pretending to struggle away. He manages to turn them, fingers curled around the seemingly-frail arches of Jean-Paul’s shoulders. “That’s just disgusting.”

“Mmm, you have too low an opinion of yourself,” Jean-Paul teases, and while this is true, it’s still enough to make Bobby screw up his face and shake his head.

“That’s it,” he says, stepping away and holding up his hands. “I’m going to go take a shower and scrub myself raw.”

“Raw is good,” as he shuts the blinds, smirking at Bobby’s strangled noise.

“I give up. I give in. See how I flee the kingdom,” Bobby says, stepping back, and then back again. Bantering with Jean-Paul isn’t like bantering with anyone else in the mansion: Jean-Paul’s quick and sharp, but he can also be juvenile sometimes despite the famous-rich-powerful-corporate CEO thing he’s got going for him. It reminds Bobby of when things were simple and small. Just him and Hank goofing around while Jean was with the Professor, Warren was on a date and Scott was holed up somewhere contemplating the universe in his belly button. Or something.

Jean-Paul leans against the window sill, watching him. His arms cross over his slender chest and the longer strands of his hair fall into his eyes. He’s handsome in any lighting but absolutely breath-taking when cast in shadows, sharp face softened, mouth full and inviting.

“I,” Bobby says, staring. He wonders whether he’s half this beautiful. He doubts it. He doesn’t care. As long as he’s good enough to keep Jean-Paul’s interest.

Three weeks. It’s amazing Jean-Paul hasn’t realized what a mistake this is already.

“Bobby,” Jean-Paul murmurs, voice soft and throaty and more real than a touch. “Veux-tu coucher avec moi?”

And, sure it’s a play on Bobby’s earlier words, but it’s not, too. It’s serious. And, Bobby thinks as his hands curl and uncurl, it’s so *funny*, too. Funny that even now he can be left breathless. Funny that even now he can feel so weak and so frightened and so needy. Funny that even now that he knows Jean-Paul loves him and he knows he loves Jean-Paul it’s still so ridiculously complicated.

Funny how hard it is to accept what he’s being offered even when he wants it so very badly.

“Oui,” he tries, clearing his throat and dropping his eyes just a little. Jean-Paul’s about to say something else, something that’ll cut down to the heart of Bobby’s conflict with a few choice words and yes, figuring it all out is good, but not now. He’s not ready now. “But only because you asked so very nicely.”

A small, frustrated breath, but Jean-Paul allows himself to be diverted. Bobby can’t fool himself into thinking he won: Jean-Paul is tenacious and will come back to this again and again until Bobby finally cracks open and admits to those little insecurities that are so much a part of him and with which Jean-Paul in all his beautiful, clever arrogance has never had to grapple.

He wonders how that will play out. Thinks it may go something like this: sitting in their bed together (and so strange, so strange to have a ‘their’ anything that sometimes Bobby has to repeat it to himself over and over again: their room, their bed, their closet, their bathroom) blankets rucked up around their thighs, shoulders brushing as Bobby seeks the most casual way to lean over and grab his tee-shirt off the floor.

“You need not get dressed again,” Jean-Paul would say, head cocked. “I have seen all there is to see of you, Bobby.”

“Yeah.” Pulling it on over his head.

“You should not be ashamed.”

“Yeah.” Smoothing it out.

“I enjoy looking at you.”

“Yeah.” Turning on his side and away from discerning eyes.

How many talks before Bobby’s entire torso is made of ice, his entire body, and Jean-Paul is only there because he pities him?

Ridiculous. Jean-Paul doesn’t pity.

“Bobby,” Jean-Paul says, making Bobby shake away the fractures of thought and look up at him. He’s moving closer, fingers unbuttoning his top, pushing the linen away from his pale, slenderly muscular chest. He unbuttons the shirt cuffs, then pulls the hem out of his pants until he’s standing close, looking immaculate even now. “I lov-”

“Why tu instead of vous?”

Jean-Paul pauses, then reaches up to cup his face between his palms, forcing Bobby to meet his eyes. “I love you, Bobby,” he says. Then, firmer, “I love you.”

“I know,” Bobby says quietly, fingers circling Jean-Paul’s wrists gently. “I love you, too.”

He remains standing there, scanning Bobby’s face as if searching for an in, as if looking for a way to say more. Then he sighs and smiles, feet lifting from the ground as he leans in to kiss Bobby’s forehead. “Vous is formal. It is an insult for me to use vous with you.”

He moves his hands to Jean-Paul’s hips. “So I know to run and hide if you vous me?” he quips, thumbs sliding up over the waist of his dark pants, teasing over skin.

“Oui.” He flies in closer, making Bobby take a step back, and then another. Slowly herding him toward the bed.

“Beware the dreaded vous!” Bobby slides his hands around to begin unfastening Jean-Paul’s pants, cursing a little when his fingers fumble. He still hasn’t mastered the art of looking cool in the bedroom. He doubts he ever will.

Jean-Paul bats his hands away and unfastens his pants himself. Bobby’s been working on the whole patience thing, but Jean-Paul’s never had any use for patience. “Patience is for those who are willing to settle,” he said once, brow arched. “I am not one of those people.”

It’d struck Bobby as pretty funny at the time. Later it had made him a little proud that Jean-Paul was with him despite his lack and then, even later, it had just made him all the more nervous. Patience is for those who are willing to settle… Where did that leave Bobby?

He is pulled back into the present by a light tap on his nose. He blinks, eyes focusing, and Jean-Paul is looking at him with that secret little smile Bobby’s never seen him give to anyone else.

“No angsting in my bed, otter pop,” he says, wriggling his hips and letting his pants drop to the floor.

“I’m not in the bed,” Bobby can’t help but point out, which probably isn’t what he was supposed to say but which turns out to be good enough to make Jean-Paul snort and kick off his boxers.

“And whose fault is that?” Jean-Paul purrs, shrugging his shoulders and letting his shirt drop to the floor. Bobby figures now isn’t the time to point out how unfair it is that Jean-Paul can leave his clothing strewn about while Bobby has to rush to put everything in the laundry hamper right away.

He begins unbuckling his belt instead. “I get the niggling feeling I’m supposed to say ‘Why, that would be *me*, Jean-Paul!’”

“Oui. Very good.”

Bobby smiles, then frowns when he can’t loosen the knot he’s tied. He looks down, scowling, only to have his hands batted away for the second time in one night. “I’m beginning to sense a pattern,” he murmurs, reaching up to brush back Jean-Paul’s hair. He runs the calloused pads of his thumbs over the pointed ear-tips, earning a full-body shudder and a sharp tug of the cloth belt. He does it again, then again, nails lightly trailing up the sensitive outer shell.

Jean-Paul hisses, fingers digging into the knot, then makes a low noise of triumph when he finally gets it undone. Bobby begins to shrug off the robe but Jean-Paul tugs sharply at one end of the belt, pulling it smoothly from its terry-cloth loops. He moves so fast Bobby is only abstractly aware of color and sound until suddenly the belt is looped firmly along the nape of his neck and he’s being pulled in close. He stumbles off-balance for a moment, but Jean-Paul catches him chest-to-chest.

“Wha--” he tries.

“Never be ashamed of being naked with me,” Jean-Paul says, lips so close to his that Bobby can taste the words. Bobby blinks and tries to pull back, a quick flash of panic stabbing through him but Jean-Paul tightens his grip on the ends of the belt and yanks him in again, thighs sliding soft and silken against his hips as he hovers mid-air, legs slowly going around Bobby’s waist. Bobby can feel the prickle of pubic hair against his lower belly, can feel the warm weight of Jean-Paul’s cock and he thinks abstractly that it must be uncomfortable for Jean-Paul to be pressed up against the ice but then Jean-Paul’s tongue is tracing his lips and he forgets everything but this beautiful man in his arms. “Promise me, Bobby.”

“Jean-P--”

A sharp bite. A warning. “Promise me.”

Shaky, needy breath. “I promise,” he whispers against his lover’s lips and Jean-Paul swallows the words down as if internalizing them will make this even more binding.

Bobby slides his hands up Jean-Paul’s spine, flattening his palms over the arch of his shoulder blades before moving back down again. Jean-Paul tilts his head, tongue dipping into Bobby’s mouth and curling up at the very tip, teasing across his hard palate. He licks once, twice, toying across the hard ridges before pushing hot and wet down his throat.

Bobby moans into the kiss, nails digging into pale skin, and allows himself to be pushed down onto the bed. His knees are hooked over the edge of the mattress, thighs spreading eagerly when Jean-Paul presses between them. His cock twitches as Jean-Paul fucks his tongue deep into his mouth, fingers brushing his jaw, his cheeks, beneath his eyes. Jean-Paul has such a difficult time speaking words of endearment, but at times like this Bobby can taste affection on his tongue, can dip his own tongue into his lover’s mouth and fish out all the things Jean-Paul rarely says.

He leans up as Jean-Paul pulls away, chasing his mouth with a low, needy whimper. His tongue slides out to snake along the crease of his lover’s lips, twisting when Jean-Paul’s tongue touches against the tip, then moves along the sensitive underside, lapping along the trace-work of veins. There’s something so vulnerable about the open-air tangle and Bobby whimpers as Jean-Paul wraps his lips around his extended tongue and sucks it down in one smooth, liquid glide.

He cups the fragile-seeming jaw with his fingers, hips shifting restlessly beneath the slender, compact body. Jean-Paul’s teeth rake along his tongue, pulling at the root as he shifts up onto his knees then into a graceful crouch above Bobby. Bobby digs his fingers into silver-black hair, hips lifting as he slides around, righting himself on the bed. He lifts his shoulders as he pivots, fucking his tongue deep into that eager mouth. Jean-Paul’s hands support him as he settles into place, laying him back amongst the pillows before sliding down his neck and shoulders, leaving shiver-trails down his body.

“Feels good,” Bobby murmurs into his mouth before breaking the kiss to gasp in a breath. His lips feel swollen and tender, his body clenched tight as Jean-Paul leans in to kiss down his jaw. His tongue swirls beneath Bobby’s ear, lapping at the small, fine hairs, nosing up to kiss the curve of his skull. He moves like a cat against him, all gymnasts’ grace and Bobby has no trouble gripping his hips and moving him to straddle his lower belly.

“Ah!” Jean-Paul cries, hips arching. He slides a bit against the ice, balls brushing against its lower curve and Bobby flushes and begins to push him back further on his own hips. “Non,” his lover protests, sitting up. He catches Bobby’s hands and lifts them to his mouth to lick and kiss, blue eyes dark and aware. He arches a brow at the low noise caught in Bobby’s throat, lips pressing against one fingertip before opening around it, letting it slide into the maddening warmth of his mouth.

Jean-Paul is a clever man, but there is nothing so clever as his tongue Bobby thinks abstractly as his consciousness shatters into the soft, warm weight of Jean-Paul against him and the wicked play of his teeth and tongue. He shifts, rocking his hips up against the curve of his lover’s ass and is rewarded with a sharp bite just below his second knuckle.

“Jean-Paul,” he murmurs, shifting again. Bobby traces a thumb over the crease of his thigh and moans when Jean-Paul sucks his finger down to the root. His hips jerk up once spasmodically, surprising a low moan from the other man. He reaches down between them, letting his finger slide in and out of those full, wet lips as if he were fucking Jean-Paul’s eager mouth as his other hand wraps around the elegant curve of his erection.

Jean-Paul whimper-moans, eyes flickering shut as he lifts up into the touch. His balls sway gently as his thigh muscles tighten, legs spreading over Bobby’s hips in invitation. Bobby grins and strokes down, twisting a little, just enough to make Jean-Paul bite at his fingers again and purr in quiet appreciation. “Like that?” he murmurs, stroking up again. Jean-Paul’s shaft is thick and warm in his palm. It twitches hard when he teases the fold of foreskin with his fingertips, pushing back the skin to reveal the swollen, dark head of his cock.

“Ah, M’Dieu!” he hisses, biting at the pads of Bobby’s fingers. His cock twitches, precome glistening as it spatters across Bobby’s chest. Jean-Paul leans in to brush his fingers across the sticky trails, swirling them across the cold, dark ice. He licks down the crease of skin between index finger and thumb, biting hard enough to make Bobby hiss between clenched teeth.

Bobby is aware of every inch of their skin combined together in a web of spit and come and sweat until they’re one being, rocking together with growing need, breaths coming in quick, harsh pants. His cock is pressed against the curve of Jean-Paul’s ass, fingers of one hand slipping in and out of that hot, ravenous mouth as the fingers of another tease back foreskin and flicker the nail of a thumb across the slit. Jean-Paul has one hand wrapped around his wrist, keeping Bobby’s hand up to his mouth as he bites down the palm, the other sliding drops of his own precome across the glittering stretch of ice.

“So beautiful,” Bobby murmurs, stroking down then up then down again, pushing back skin and tugging it forward again with every stroke. The head of Jean-Paul’s prick is flushed an angry red, precome spitting out the slit on every down stroke. He lifts up into the touch, urging Bobby faster, sliding the soft skin of his perineum and the even softer sac along Bobby’s jerking cock with each jutting arch of his hips.

When a fingertip moves along the reddish curve where ice meets flesh, Bobby bucks and screams, thrashing hard. Bobby’s fist clenches once around his lover’s erection, drawing an echoing cry as Jean-Paul shoves up into the touch, demanding more, demanding everything *now*. Jean-Paul snarls and bites Bobby’s fingers one last time before pushing his hand down.

Mind lost in whorls of pleasure, Bobby cups Jean-Paul’s balls with his impossibly wet fingers. “Non,” Jean-Paul manages, leaning back and bracing himself on Bobby’s strong thighs, hips lifted high. He wraps his fingers around Bobby’s wrist and tugs his hand down further between his legs, guiding him to brush against his perineum before dipping down across the puckered skin of his opening.

Bobby jerks, eyes going wide. “Jean-Paul--”

“Fuck me,” Jean-Paul says, rubbing against his slick fingertip. “Push up inside and fuck me.”

Bobby’s breath freezes in his chest, caught somewhere just below his throat. He can feel a strange twisting in his stomach, a dull ache that’s both arousal and fear and maybe something else, maybe something like shame. He tentatively draws his finger across the warm skin, feeling the clenching furls with his sensitized skin. Jean-Paul makes a low, growly noise and pushes down a little and Bobby can’t catalogue the emotions that are trembling through him as the very tip of his finger pushes past the tight clench of muscle.

His breath is coming too fast. Blood is roaring in his ears. His cock aches between his thighs, his body aches from the tension threading through it, his lips ache from where he’s biting and there, yes, there is the sharp tang of blood as he bites just a little too hard. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands: one’s still moving up and down Jean-Paul’s shaft, but the rhythm has deserted him, spiraling down somewhere into the mass of his confusion, the other hand curved along Jean-Paul’s bottom as his finger… just… remains. Still. Part-inside and mostly-out and frozen.

Jean-Paul’s opened his eyes and is looking down at him, expression impossible to read. It’s so blank that Bobby can project many things onto it: anger and disappointment and frustration and impatience. Bobby closes his eyes, but they snap open when he sees his father painted across the black void of his eyelids. Watching him.

“I can’t,” he says, pulling his hands away. They hang there in the air, unsure of where to settle, fluttering helplessly until he clenches them into fists and lays them at his sides where they brush lightly against Jean-Paul’s calves.

“Pourquoi?” And of course Jean-Paul would ask why. Bobby doesn’t know why he really thought maybe Jean-Paul would just nod and brush back his hair and let this latest misstep slide.

Bobby looks away. “Because I suck,” he says a little sharper than he should, considering. Jean-Paul arches a dark brow at him and Bobby bangs his fists lightly against the mattress, nails cutting furrows into his palms when Jean-Paul shifts and slides off of him, moving to lay beside him on the bed.

“Bobby…” A warning.

“I don’t know,” he admits, closing his eyes and yes, there’s Dad again. Dad who doesn’t hate mutants anymore and who may not hate homosexuals so very much if Bobby admitted to being one. Not that he ever will. “Too fast.” A lie, but a good one.

Jean-Paul pushes back the longer ends of Bobby’s hair. His fingertips feel so very *good* against Bobby’s brow, stroking down to his temples. Soothing, even though his words are far from relaxing. “It has been three weeks, Bobby.” Three weeks since the first admissions, three weeks since Bobby stopped being ‘practically a virgin’ and went to ‘pretty much non-virginal’. Three weeks since he learned what it was like to have a man’s cock in his hand, two and a half weeks since he learned what it was like to have his erection down a man’s throat, two weeks since he learned what it was like to have an erection down *his* throat and one and a half weeks since they’d given up on the pretense of separate rooms and tried this whole sharing thing.

Three weeks seem like such a long time in the living of them and so very, very short stretched before him now.

It’s not even that he doesn’t *want* to… want to… do that and God, is it normal that he has such a hard time even thinking it?

“Please,” he murmurs, turning his head to look at Jean-Paul. “I want to. I do. I promise. Just—not right now.”

“Bobby.”

“Just a few days more,” he promises, rolling over and wrapping an arm around Jean-Paul. The look in his lover’s eyes is enough to make his entire body ache, is enough to make him tremble with a strange sort of panic. He always fucks up, always, and, hell, he knew he’d shatter it all apart eventually but three weeks is just *too* *soon*. “Please, Jean-Paul. I promise,” and he’s close to promising anything if Jean-Paul will just lean in and break the distance between their mouths.

Jean-Paul closes his eyes and sighs, and Bobby can only imagine what he’s feeling. He wonders if he’s hurt him: if Jean-Paul sees this as a rejection. Jean-Paul was convinced Bobby was straight. Maybe he thinks Bobby’s been fooling himself all along and has finally come to the one thing he can’t trick himself into believing is okay. Bobby wants to protest, wants to tell him it’s not true… but he can’t. He can’t find the words against that imagined argument, so he just bites his lip again and watches Jean-Paul with wide, panicked eyes.

His lover finally sighs and turns into him, arms wrapping around his neck. “You will make this up to me, oui?” he asks only half-joking and Bobby nods quickly, hand moving to his hip.

“Yes, yes, I promise.”

“Good.” He leans in finally and kisses him, lips soft and sweet and so achingly tender against his. The slide of their mouths is a gentle give-and-take. The ghosting of Jean-Paul’s fingertips along his jaw-line is a silent I love you I need you don’t screw this up.

“Love you,” Bobby whispers into the kiss, tongue sliding out to trace along Jean-Paul’s lower lip. He shifts closer, drawing their bodies flush together, legs tangling automatically. He whimpers when their cocks brush together, still hard, still slick with precome. They slide wetly as Jean-Paul shivers and rocks up, rubbing his sharp hipbones against Bobby’s slightly sturdier frame.

It always strikes Bobby at times like this how very fragile Jean-Paul can be. Most superheroes are thick with muscle, bodies sculpted by training and hardship and ropy scars. Bobby’s not built like the others, but he’s not small either: he’s built like a swimmer, shoulders broad and arms strong from the formation of ice slides. He’s had to carry so many people up those slides that his body has grown to accommodate him. So, not large, not over-blown, but strong. Sturdy.

Jean-Paul is built like an acrobat. His body is used to flying quickly through the air, has become stream-lined until he’s long and lean and wordlessly graceful in Bobby’s arms. His hipbones arch like fragile wings, his collarbone an echo of that simple flight of bone and skin. It draws his tongue with its shadows and secret hollows, begs for his teeth with its pale rise. Jean-Paul’s chest expands beneath him as he murmurs in appreciation, fingers sliding up the knobs of Bobby’s spine.

Bobby moves down further, kissing across his lover’s shoulders, lightly sucking on pale skin. He reaches up to cup Jean-Paul’s face. A thumb slides along the violet-tinged skin beneath an achingly blue eye. Jean-Paul turns his head to kiss Bobby’s palm and Bobby kisses down his chest as his fingers slide deep into black-and-silver hair.

His tongue flickers out to tease a nipple at the same moment his index finger glides over the outer curve of Jean-Paul’s ear. Bobby sucks in a breath when Jean-Paul shudders below him, his tongue laving over puckered skin. He takes the very tip of his lover’s sharply pointed ear between his thumb and forefinger, gently rubbing the cartilage. Jean-Paul jerks again, back arching up off of the bed, hips rubbing hard and almost desperate against Bobby’s belly. Bobby can feel the slick slide of his lover’s prick, gliding up over ice then down against skin. Each brush over the line of demarcation is enough to make Bobby gasp and drive down his hips in response. They squirm together, trying to find a rhythm, Jean-Paul’s heels digging into the mattress as he shoves his hips up in a silent demand.

“God,” Bobby breathes, and for a moment there is a cloud of frozen air about his face. Jean-Paul shudders at the freezing air across his nipples, mewling helplessly when Bobby shifts to the other nipple and touches his cold lips to the straining tip.

“Oui, oui, please Bobby,” Jean-Paul says, neck arching. He rubs his face into Bobby’s hand, twisting and snarling when Bobby pinches his ear-tip. Their bodies slide together wetly, precome making the glide of skin on skin easy and quick. Bobby’s breathing hard, muscles quivering as he bites at Jean-Paul’s nipple, tugging the bud with his teeth as his thumb-tip presses up into the furled curve of his ear.

“*Bobby*,” and it means God Yes and Please and Do Something Now. He nods even though Jean-Paul is too far gone to notice and drops his hand to the pillow before pushing himself down the elegant sprawl of his lover’s body.

Jean-Paul spreads his thighs for him, eager, as Bobby pauses to flicker his tongue over each rib, then down the flat of his belly. Jean-Paul has a body anyone would kill for, but it’s his now, it’s Bobby’s, soaked in sweat and trembling with need and he did this, he made Jean-Paul cry out and he made his cock jerk precome onto his belly. He’s more proud of this than he ever was of being an X-Man and saving people’s lives because no one ever thanked him for saving the day but Jean-Paul always curls up in his arms after orgasm, boneless and nuzzling and wordlessly loving in ways that made him forget to breathe.

Bobby slides his tongue into his lover’s belly button, fucking it gently and riding the impatient buck of Jean-Paul’s hips. His hands cup the proud arch of hip-bones that frame and present the dark curl of pubic hair and long, beautiful cock. He pulls back enough to look, lips curving a little because it’s either that or gape at just how perfect this is and, really, three weeks is long enough to be past the constant state of awe-struck wonder.

“So beautiful,” he says quietly, mostly to himself. Jean-Paul’s prick is lying against his flat belly, twitching slightly. Demanding his tongue. He leans in, nosing up his balls, slithering out his tongue and hooking it under the soft curve of flesh. Bobby teases at the delicate crease before flattening his tongue and guiding Jean-Paul’s balls into his mouth.

“Oh,” Jean-Paul murmurs, hips jerking in a quick, hard little thrust. Bobby moans around him, shifting on the mattress as he reaches up and slides his finger along the underside of his prick. He presses that one spot just below the head and rides out Jean-Paul’s quick, furious rutting, tongue sliding wetly over his sac as he moans in appreciation.

“Harder, touch me harder,” Jean-Paul hisses, twisting down against Bobby’s mouth. His long fingers tangle into the sheets as if he’s keeping himself from reaching out to grab at Bobby’s hair. Bobby suckles once, twice, before moving back, allowing the sac to slip wetly past his lips. A silver trail of spit connects him to Jean-Paul for a moment, glistening as he reaches up to wipe his mouth with a shuddery sigh. “Please,” Jean-Paul says, closing his eyes.

“Oui,” Bobby says, then, softer, “love you,” as he wraps a hand around the flushed shaft. Sometimes he wonders what it must feel like to have cold fingers pushing back foreskin and a cold thumb smearing across the glistening head. Jean-Paul is so warm in his hand, so incendiary. He can feel the heat radiating up through his palm and twining around his wrist, his arm, snaking down to his core as he strokes him. A splash of come across the pale crease of his wrist is enough to make him hiss and jerk up. The thick, pulsing heat of him is enough to make him lean down and take the head into his mouth.

He opens his throat wide, sliding down with a low, shivering moan. Jean-Paul’s prick jerks in his mouth, butting up against his soft palate as Bobby moves down. He braces against the bed, one hand pressed against the mattress to keep his weight off of the slight man and the other wrapped around the base of his prick, slowly stroking.

“Bobby, Bobby, oui, j’taime,” Jean-Paul murmurs, hips pressing up. Bobby pauses, breathing through his nose, then slides down further. He’s very aware of the details of this act: the way the bed creaks when his lover digs his heels into the mattress, the subtle lift of slender hips, the way the foreskin slides back with the pressure of his tongue, the way, so deep in his throat, he can no longer so much taste Jean-Paul’s come as he can smell it. He slides his tongue along the undershaft and rides out the sharp, needy buck of his lover’s hips.

“Please, Bobby, s'il te plaît. S'il te plaît.” The catch in Jean-Paul’s voice is enough to make Bobby whimper and rub his own cock against the mattress, is enough to make him move his hand and try to take more. His throat muscles close in momentary protest and he thinks, God, I’m gagging I’m gagging I want *more* before they loosen and he can swallow down another half an inch. Another inch.

“M’Dieu, oui, Bobby, so good, you make it so good,” Jean-Paul breathes, every other word caught on a gasp. His hips twist, moving in a rough circle and Bobby follows him, suckling deeper, taking more.

It’s almost a surprise when his chin brushes Jean-Paul’s balls. He moans, which is enough to make his lover sob out his name and twist beneath him and beg for more more more please more *now* in broken, lilting French. His lips are stretched around the base and Jean-Paul’s cock is filling his throat, jerking with each swallow.

Bobby thinks how strange it is that he’s done this before but never so much, never so completely. He’s shaking with it, trembling with the feel of Jean-Paul so deep inside of him, so much a part of him now. He wonders if he should be frightened or nervous. He wonders if he’s doing this right.

He begins to move, tongue swirling as he lets his lover’s cock slide past his lips then back down his throat in a long, liquid glide. His nostrils flare as he buries his face against the dark, faintly damp curls and Bobby can feel the stretch of his throat muscles as they move around Jean-Paul’s cock. He aches with Jean-Paul, his own cock jerking helplessly between his thighs, demanding touch, demanding warmth, demanding spit and tongue and just the faintest scrape of teeth as he’s swallowed down down down. He closes his eyes and melts into the ghost-sensation, melding with Jean-Paul in his imagination until their mouths are one, their erections are one and they are united in the sharp, aching necessity of orgasm.

Bobby whimpers around Jean-Paul’s prick, sliding up and down the thick length. His lips are stretched around him and glistening with spit and come, one hand buried between Jean-Paul’s legs as the other remains braced on the mattress. He cups Jean-Paul’s balls in his palm and strokes his fingers over the soft skin of his perineum. At Jean-Paul’s choked cry, Bobby presses up, stimulating his prostate from the outside, loving the way his lover sobs and fucks wantonly into his mouth.

He’s so lost in the smell and taste and feel of him that Bobby isn’t fully aware when Jean-Paul’s murmured cries and endearments become demands.

“Non, non, Bobby, pull up. Not this way, please,” as he tugs his hair, hips rocking up toward his mouth even as he pulls him away.

Bobby lets himself be pulled off of Jean-Paul’s cock, groaning at the loss. It slips from his mouth, impossibly slick, and lays against his lover’s belly. Precome spits from the tip, pooling against his pale skin and Bobby has to close his eyes against it as he’s tugged up to meet Jean-Paul’s mouth. “Why,” he murmurs, tongue pushing in restlessly, tangling immediately and not allowing Jean-Paul to answer. He presses their bodies tight together, but Jean-Paul is pushing at his shoulder, turning him onto his back.

“I need to be able to look at you,” Jean-Paul breathes, straddling Bobby’s slim hips and moving up over him. His palms press against his chest, sliding over skin and ice and this is his true way of expressing his love. Words can so often be lies, Bobby knows, but this, this soft touch and those warm eyes that have to meet his as they come together—this goes deeper, touches truer than anything else.

He can’t breathe with it. He can’t speak. He can only nod, eyes going wide when Jean-Paul shifts and takes Bobby’s erection between his slender thighs. He’s braced against his chest, face so close Bobby can feel the incredible heat of his breath across his cool skin, mouth a moment from his and yet not touching. Jean-Paul grips his thighs together, trapping Bobby’s cock and slides out his tongue to tease the very tip along the crease of Bobby’s mouth. “Thrust,” he commands, curling up his tongue.

Bobby moans and thrusts up, barely stifling a choked gasp at the tight, hot friction. Jean-Paul’s thighs around him and, no, not as tight as inside him would be but tight, so tight he has to thrust again and again. He wraps his lips around Jean-Paul’s clever tongue and lures it into his mouth, sucking it as if it were Jean-Paul’s cock pushed back down his throat. Bobby grasps his hips and moves him into a better position, bracing Jean-Paul as he moves into the hot, tight heat of him. It’s maddening, consuming and he growls at the tremors that make his body quake and shudder beneath his lover’s twisting form.

“Jean-Paul,” Bobby hisses into his mouth, teeth tugging at his tongue. He moves one hand down across the bridge of his lover’s hipbone and wraps his fingers around his still-slick erection. A tight squeeze and Jean-Paul is jerking and shuddering hard, pushing into his hand in counter-rhythm to Bobby’s deep, almost mindless thrusts.

He’s babbling into Bobby’s mouth, words mangled and unimportant. His cock jerks hard, precome splashing across Bobby’s lower belly. Bobby can taste the building need, can feel it in the way Jean-Paul’s chest expands and his tongue thrusts hard and fast past Bobby’s swollen lips. He tries to hang on for a moment longer, tries to revel in the slide of skin and the drops of come and the growls coming from deep inside the other man. He tries to hold on and stretch this out and make it last, last forever, last until they come apart in one another’s arms.

Bobby slams his hips up hard enough to leave smug bruises later, cries swallowed by Jean-Paul and fed back to him. He twists, the press of his lover’s thighs suddenly soaked and easy and so so very good. Jean-Paul’s come spatters across his belly and the cold impersonal expanse of ice and this is good, too, hot enough to make his skin shudder and his body wish they could do it all over again soon, often, now.

He finally relaxes back with an indrawn breath. Bobby’s body is shivering in the delicate after-quakes and he turns on his side as Jean-Paul slides bonelessly onto the mattress. He wraps his arms around his lover and wishes he knew how to put into words how very *good* it is to have Jean-Paul lift his face and delicately kiss along his jaw as he settles within the circle of his arms. Jean-Paul slides his arms around Bobby’s neck and cleaves to him, long legs tangling, body slipping across his, wet with come and sweat and long, slow kisses.

Bobby reaches up to brush back silver-black hair, smiling when Jean-Paul nuzzles into his hand. Caustic and strong and fierce-tempered, Jean-Paul allows himself to melt into contented adoration in the shivery moments following orgasm. They’re Bobby’s favorite times, times he wishes he could write about, or sing about, or compose aching symphonies to. If he had a gift he would expend it trying to crystallize these moments so he could look back and remember and feel his heart ache and swell all over again.

Bobby has no gifts except for the one in his arms, so he merely breathes in the scent of him and slides his hand up the curve of his hip and waits for it to end.

Jean-Paul’s soft nuzzling eventually grows into gentle kisses which eventually lead to a relaxed smile. He falls back against the pillow, pulling away a little from Bobby, blue eyes closing as he stretches, toes curling.

Bobby smiles and scoots back some as well, giving them room to breathe. The light air makes Jean-Paul shiver so Bobby leans down and pulls up the blankets, covering the pale, delicate skin. He leans in to kiss a sharp shoulder, lips soft and damp, then rolls over to reach over the side of the bed.

“Non,” Jean-Paul says, catching Bobby’s arm. His eyes open, looking at him levelly.

“But I,” Bobby begins, trying to tug away. He thinks of his robe laying alongside the bed. He thinks of the tee-shirts lining his dresser neatly: the ones Jean-Paul always mocks but secretly loves to wear when no one but Bobby is there to see him.

“Non,” again. Firmer.

“Jean-Paul,” he tries, brows drawing together and Jean-Paul reaches up to slide his index finger along the crease before moving down to brush his lips then down again to press against the dark expanse of ice. Hard enough that Bobby can feel it through his deadened nerve endings. Hard enough to make his point.

“Non, Bobby,” he says, leaning in to kiss him. It’s more a brush of lips, a sharing of breaths, but it makes Bobby shudder and lean in, allowing himself to be tugged back against his lover’s body.

“Non,” he agrees quietly, burying his face into Jean-Paul’s neck. Allowing himself to lay alongside his lover naked, if not completely unashamed.

Their breaths even out slowly, synching together as sunlight streams across the floorboards, moving with the setting sun. Outside the splashing in the pool subsides and the birdsong begins. Wind rustles through trees and chimes. The old mansion settles in its foundations. The world is still.

Fin.

Translation:

“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” – Do you want to sleep with me tonight? Made famous in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘Moulin Rogue’.

“T'est ridicule. J'sais pas comment j'te supporte”- You are a ridiculous man. I do not know why I put up with you.

“Uuuhh... parce que vous m'adorez?"- Uuuhh… Because you adore me?

"Parce que... vous voulez mon sexe?"- Because… you want my sex?

"Mmm... p't'être."- Mmm… perhaps.

"Parce que vous voulez jouer avec ma morue."- Because you wish to tangle with my codfish.

"Veux-tu coucher avec moi?"- Do you want to sleep with me tonight? Variation of the first phrase.

“Pourquoi?”- Why?

“S'il te plaît.”- Please.

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