Kaine

The switch had been jarring, at first. You’d been so patient, so gentlemanly in those first days after he’d impulsively kissed you in the empty set of a hospital parking lot. Not the most romantic setting for your first kiss, sure, but you’d looked so damn handsome under the wan gleam of the moon, and he’d been buzzing with adrenaline from leaping out of a fifth story window an hour prior, so he just couldn’t help it.

Those following days had been mortifying for him—but he suspects merely amusing for you, as you waited for him not to panic whenever you tried bringing it up. He noticed the lingering touches, the hungry sweep of your eyes when you’d duck into his trailer to call him to set, the fleeting glances to his mouth while he spoke. Anyone could’ve read that as what it was. And Colt did, for the most part.

But despite his occupation consisting of being thrown off buildings and set on fire on a regular basis, Colt can be quite the coward. Especially when it comes to pretty, outrageously charming men.

It took him a week and some change to muster up the courage to properly ask you out, which only stepped into his reach upon realizing that if you hadn’t gone running for the hills yet, then you probably wouldn’t any time soon. And maybe after a particularly lewd dream involving you, too, though that he'll keep to himself.

“Colt,” he feels vibrate against the hollow of his throat. He hums absently, fumbling for the back of your shirt, only to shove it out of the way and slide his palms up your warm back. “Stop thinking.”

“Yep, right, sorry. No more thinking. All empty up here. Starting now.”

Your airy puff of laughter falls against his overheated skin, drawing up goosebumps in its wake. His fingers flex against the broad expanse of your back.

He’s half-hard already, though he’s certain it can’t have been more than a few minutes since you hauled him into this tiny bathroom, hidden away in the mansion rented out for the wrap party. Much to his embarrassment, you’re quick to take note of this, and reach down to drag your knuckles along the top of his belt, hooked underneath his shirt.

“Eager,” you hum, low as if to yourself. With a final kiss to his pulse point, you straighten back to eye level. You meet his gaze, steady and collected as ever, and Colt has the itching urge to shrivel under your quiet scrutiny, feeling heat bloom up his face, near feverish at the tips of his ears. He clutches you tighter, drawing you in closer in hopes of getting your mouth back on his, but you only smile—so tender it’s almost patronizing, and his cock gives a feeble throb in his jeans.

“You really want this, huh, angel?”

The pet name dunks him into a full-body warmth, pooling like slow-moving magma low in his belly. A frustrated sort of groan wobbles out of him, lunging forth in search of another kiss. Ever quick, you dodge him, sliding the hand in his hair down to his jaw, where it grips him steadily. You click your tongue a few times in soft reproach, but press a thigh to his aching crotch nonetheless.

“You look so pretty like this, you know that? I figured I’d appreciate the view for a minute, but it seems someone’s too needy.”

Your name falls from his lips in a ragged huff, unbalanced and more pathetic-sounding than he’d like to admit. His hips, driven by their own volition, roll in erratic grinds against the meat of your thigh, seeking far more than what the meager friction provides.

You smile at him once more before pressing a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth, then to his chin, and finally to his lips. Allowing him to part your own with his tongue, your second hand dutifully works on his belt and fly. His heart kicks out wildly, a jackrabbit against his breastbone, when you manage to shove his jeans halfway down his thighs with one hand.

A few seconds of nothing at all precedes the sensation of your hand cupping the tented front of his boxer briefs, and it’s in spite of himself that a wet moan cracks through his chest. You swallow the sound happily, thumb sweetly scrubbing across his bearded jawline while your palm follows the length of him, up and down.

“Hmmn—Jesus,” he manages, molars gritted to dust as he tries not to buck too desperately into your warm hand. Only grinds and chases after it when you teasingly withdraw.

There isn’t a single light on in the bathroom, but the moonlight pours in through the tiny overhead window and somehow you stand out in stark relief against the dim blue background. Your eyes, faintly narrowed and a far darker shade than usual, track his every movement, attention evenly split between his face and the rolling of his hips. You’re looking at him as though studying some fascinating experiment, drinking in every minute reaction at the smallest exploratory motions of your hand. Colt burns with arousal.

“Could you come like this?” You ask after an amount of time that is completely lost on him, and the sudden breathy quality of your voice sounds something like awe. Like you’ve made some big, beautiful breakthrough.

Colt, on the other hand, is clawing at your back in a way that’s sure to leave marks and too focused on the blissful angle he’s found, dragging his cock right up against the hollow of your palm. It takes a moment for your words to reach him, and an even longer one for him to piece together their meaning.

“Mhm,” he hums, forehead meeting your shoulder, suddenly feeling it very heavy.

In return, you hum as well, learning the rhythm of his pelvis and matching it, slower yet firmer. Colt’s never been one for this sort of stimulation—more often than not the texture of his boxers makes it all more uncomfortable than pleasurable, but the sheer, fiery want swarming him head to toe could make him come with you just uttering the order.

He’s brought back, fleeting but very vividly in the way drunken abstraction often is, to the dream he had of you—no more than a few nights back.

In it, your skin had been so warm under his fingers, your voice so low and wrecked and your eyes lit with such desire he’d woken up hard and panting and mournfully empty.

The memory alone draws a little surge of pleasure forth, twisting into your neck, sucking in your familiar scent with mounting desperation. His skin crawls with hot anticipation, rutting quicker, harder against your deft hand.

Pleasure rolls over itself, snowballing deep in his navel, sparking down his sweat-sticky thighs; he sucks in a shuddering breath and—

You pull away.

He moans in frustrated dismay, ass coming off the wall entirely, chasing after your retreating palm, but within seconds the building crescendo of his orgasm has wilted away, back to a low baseline of thrumming arousal.

You shush him when he makes another pitiful sound into your clothed shoulder, absentmindedly carding your fingers through the hair at his crown. He will admit, the feeling does somewhat soothe the ache of a denied orgasm. A little.

“We’ve got all night, no need to rush.”

Colt huffs. “We’re in a bathroom at a Hollywood party, if there was ever the need for a quickie, it’d be right now.”

Your answering laugh is quiet and deep in the chest, and it rumbles through his own and settles there, warm.

“Not like anyone will come looking for us. Besides…” You pull back, gripping onto his hair just enough to meet his eye. “You’d stay here all night if I asked you to, wouldn’t you?”

Colt blinks. Considers, quite seriously, the risk he must be at of spontaneously combusting. His cock throbs and throbs, and the way you’re looking at him, keeping a lovingly firm hold on his hair, only makes matters worse.

He doesn’t give you the satisfaction of answering that question; you both already know the answer, anyway.

Next your hands find his waistband, hooking two fingers into either side and sliding it down just enough to free his cock.

It isn’t the first time you’ve seen it, but the satisfied sound you make shoots a pulse of heat straight down into it. You reach down, encircle the base with your clever fingers, and Colt sags against the wall. He pulls one hand out from your shirt to latch on to your tricep, shoving out a shuddering exhale.

“Look at you,” you croon, beginning to languidly pump your fist, all loose and steady. Colt’s thighs quiver.

You’re gonna be the death of him. He just knows it, down to his bones.

“Please,” he grits out, hoping to meet your gaze and inspire some kindness but you keep your own low, fascinated by the ruddy, leaking image of his dick twitching in your fist.

You make an acknowledging sound, but Colt has a feeling you aren’t really getting it. The stimulation is somehow too much and not enough, all at once. He gives a few tentative rolls into the circle of your fist, and when you utter no word of dissent, he begins fucking into it in earnest.

His moan falls muffled into your throat, a place where he comes to realize he could stay forever, breathing you in, getting off on your clever hands and dizzying words.

“What would they all think out there, huh? Seeing you like this. So desperate to come.”

He’s close again already; his pace grows arrhythmic, shallow, sucking at the base of your throat when he isn’t tucking low moans into the skin there.

Your free hand smoothes down the back of his head in an almost petting gesture, thumbing his tip once before pulling away entirely.

Colt’s moan warps, halfway through, into a strained sob, bucking into empty space as his cock weeps pre onto the tile below. He cries out your name, a dragged-out sound of raw need.

“I know, I know,” you sigh into his hair, still stroking it with sure fingers.

“You’re being mean,” Colt whines against you, the arm still crossed over your back dropping to your hip and palming it insistently.

“I just wanna make you feel good,” you reply, the fan of your breath sending shivers down his sweaty back. “At least until I can get you in my bed and fuck you properly.”

Shit—Colt damn near comes from that alone. He whines and his hips jerk wildly, taken on life of their own. For the first time since he’s gotten to know you, he tries very hard not to think about you fucking him within an inch of his life, lest he comes untouched, and as much as he wants to release all the circling, built-up pleasure in him he wants to do it when you let him.

So, he just screws his eyes shut, and mumbles a weak, “okay.”

“Attaboy,” you tease, squeezing the nape of his neck once before returning your free hand to his dick.

A steady breath rolls over into a fractured hum, stretching on with your sparse, gentle touches—a thumb across his slit, a drag of knuckles down the underside, then a graze to his balls. Sweat slides down his heaving chest, longing to bury himself back into you but held back by your hand on his nape.

Observing his slow unspooling, you make a low sound, vaguely resembling a growl.

“God, I wish I could fuck you right now,” you lament, squeezing the head of his cock lightly. Colt yelps, skull knocking against the wallpaper. He eyes you through the narrowed slits of his eyes, draws up something he hopes looks like a smirk.

“You could.”

You shake your head. “No. I really want to take my time with that.”

Colt groans—more agitated than pleasured this time, and digs his thumb into the flesh right above the curve of your hip bone. Your ministrations on him are far more relaxed now, lax and distracted, like some absentminded reflex, and it should be frustrating, but he finds himself reluctantly enjoying it. Your collectedness before his shaky, desperate frame.

Your palm begins making these tight, quick circling motions against his tip, thumbing underneath the head with a pointedness so determined he's certain you'll let him come this time. His body responds in kind, kicking into high-gear and frantically chasing release. A very faint, very fleeting thought crosses his mind that you never even had to spit into your palm—he's damn near soaked your palm and fingers with a seemingly endless supply of precome, and the glide is so utterly frictionless, product of your clever motions and his overwhelming want that it makes his head spin.

He's hardly aware of how loud he's being, bucking like an animal into your hand, baring his throat for your nipping teeth, unraveling in your firm hold. You murmur into his skin, things that are completely lost on him amidst the roaring of blood in his ears, the deluge of pleasure bursting through him—so acute it makes his eyes prickle and his vision warp.

It builds quicker than ever, almost too intensely, his steady quivers deepening into involuntary, full-body jerks. His jaw falls open right as he feels himself approaching the summit, tensing in preparation.

Then you're gone again, and he's ripped right back down. With a wet sob, his tears finally spill over, searing against his warm cheeks. He knows better than to seek you out with his hips again—but they don't seem to get the memo and continue twitching, grinding into nothing.

His mind is empty, scraped hollow and reduced to its most basic instincts; he doesn't register his own frenzied weeping or the near bruising grip he has on you, only tightening as his pleasure slips away like a receding tide. All that he processes is his arousal, so trapped and pressurized it almost hurts, and you, brushing the hair out of his eyes and cooing, as though comforting a small, startled animal.

"Please, please," Colt manages, voice thick with tears, wet-cheeked and aching. You tut softly, and lean in to kiss each streak of salt on his face. It's so tender it makes Colt choke on a sad bleat, sniffling.

"You think you can do one more?" you ask, and maybe if he weren't so muddleheaded he'd catch the fond, facetious lilt of your tone, but panic rises before he can quell it, and his grip on you tightens abruptly. Tears threaten to gather again.

"No, no—I can't, please, I can't do it, I'm sorry—"

"Hey, hey." His teeth clamp shut, blinking hard so your warm expression comes into focus through his tears. "I was joking, angel. You've been so good, so patient. I think you deserve to come, hm?"

Colt's tongue, suddenly, feels stuck to his palate, thick like honey. He nods, though, quite fervently, and flushes warm all over at your sweet answering smile. You lean in to kiss him, closing the gap between your chests and caging him in with your forearm pressed to the wall behind him.

When you finally take him again, it's with a firm, committed grip and quick motions. You're crowded in so close to him he can barely fuck into your fist, pelvis trapped against the wall. He's completely at your mercy, subject to whatever you may decide as his bliss swells, even quicker this time around.

He trusts you, and the way you're looking at him, swiping rogue tears away with your free hand on his cheek, entranced by how he cries—it all makes him shudder.

Pleasure becomes greater than him, so all-encompassing he can't keep his eyes open, rolling so fiercely through his limbs like a ceaseless electric current he briefly fears his legs giving out. It's sharp and blunt and sweltering all at once, crowding into every inch of him, throbbing in his cock, pouring out into your fist.

You watch him unblinkingly.

His own orgasm takes him by surprise. Strikes all at once, so intense he's silent through most of it, shaking and spurting over your hand, onto the floor below. He pulses with it, wave after wave of devastating pleasure, and you pump him through and whisper candied praise into the shell of his ear, coaxing every last drop of come and shudder of bliss out of him, until he sinks against you with a high moan, spent.

His cock continues to twitch through the aftershocks, softening in your still palm, which you're kind enough not to move anymore. His head feels stuffed full of cotton and air, though terribly heavy against your shoulder. Your arm comes off the wall, running a hand along his firm upper arm.

"I love watching you come," you chirp, all warm and lighthearted like you've just won the lottery. Colt grumbles incomprehensibly against your collarbone, letting his eyes slide shut as the world drifts back to him in chunks. You soon release his arm to make him decent, keeping your dirtied hand hovering off to the side.

"Okay," you say, wrapping an arm around his mid back. You pull him off the wall, and turn him over—he goes like a ragdoll in your grip. "There you go, good?" you ask once plopped him down on the toilet seat lid.

Colt manages an inelegant nod, humming his confirmation for good measure. He's better than good—better than great, in fact, but no such word is really coming to mind at the moment and he doesn't feel like speaking, anyway.

You nudge his legs apart in order to crouch down between them. With your elbows perched atop his knees, you peer up at him, eyeing him thoughtfully to make sure he's being honest.

He leans into your hand when you reach for his cheek like a purring cat, certain that were he able, he absolutely would be doing so. Your thumb stretches out, delicately tracing the slightly puffy skin under his right eye, and he watches, then, as your gaze falls to your other hand, still bearing some pale streaks of his come. You quietly regard it, look at him thoughtfully, and then bring your knuckles to your mouth.

His crotch throbs when you lick the come right off your skin, holding his eye with something like a challenge gleaming in your own. You move to your thumb next, sweeping your tongue across the webbing at the base of it. You peer up at him through the fan of your eyelashes and Colt thinks he could almost get hard again, just by watching you. He doesn't think he's ever watched something more erotic, and it's in a stranger's bathroom at a wrap party after the most intense orgasm he's ever had.

Once satisfied, you lower your hand, and reach out with both to zip his fly and do up his button. You lightly smack the outside of his thighs and rise to your feet.

"You with me?" you ask, reaching out, palms upward. He makes haste in taking them, letting you pull him to his feet. He can't help but kiss you again, holding on to either side of your face like you might duck away. You don't; you simply indulge him.

It’s surely nearing midnight when the doorbell rings; a brief, jumping tune that cleaves impersonally through the silence of the dim house. It feels almost mocking in nature, when set against the quiet simmer of anxiety that’s become an unwelcome constant over the past several weeks. 

From your place in the bathroom, rinsing your toothbrush clean, you still. You make a move for your phone to check the time, but realize upon palming an empty pocket that you left it on the bedside table in your room. A long, unnerved stare into the darkness beyond the bathroom stretches endlessly, of such unblinking intensity you could almost swear you begin to see movement in the black. 

Only when the bell rings again, do you move. Your toothbrush slips into the cup by the sink alongside a dry, months-abandoned second. A thick swallow tightens your throat, switching off the bathroom light on your way out and letting your feet’s muscle memory guide you down the hall and through the living room. There, the darkness is notably weaker, abated by the wan threads of moonlight that spill across the floor, through the fine curtains.  

Your front door has no peephole, and although you've been meaning to get a doorbell camera installed you've not had the time nor energy these days to follow through. 

You fleetingly wish you’d grabbed your gun—then, just as swiftly, discard the thought. You're out of that life, of standing on complete guard whenever there’s an unexpected visitor at the door, of reaching for the nearest firearm at the first inkling of danger. It’s been years, coming up on four now since you left, but old habits die hard.

Your palm hovers steadily, for only a beat or two, above the handle. 

Fuck it, you think rather blandly, and tug the door open. 

The pause that follows is surely not as long in reality as it feels to you, but it is stark and charged nonetheless. 

Naturally, being closer to his eye level, your gaze latches on to Court, first. Scanning over his face, his bearing and his clothes, his bandaged palm, the nearly faded, yellowish bruise across his cheek. Battered, as per usual, but staggeringly intact. Relief swathes you whole; the months worth of built-up unease weighing your collarbones down unfurls all at once.

Next, your attention dips, settles instead on the shorter, scrawnier frame of a tired-looking Claire beside him. She’s fairing significantly better, but a pale pink burn on her cheek reveals a preview of what she must have been through in these weeks of radio silence. 

“Hi,” she says, voice turned inward but not necessarily out of shyness. You sense her exhaustion like a plume of thick smoke clinging to her lanky frame. 

She’s moving before you even fully get your own greeting out, sinking into your arms and clinging with a ferocity that stuns you, considering her state. You cup the back of her head, hair soft and clean, which hopefully means the worst has passed. Claire lingers in the embrace, clutching the back of your worn sleep shirt and burrowing her temple into your collarbone like she plans on staying there a while. 

In the meantime, you look back up to find Court staring right back. There’s that hardness to his jaw, faintly tighter than where it would naturally rest that suggests a degree of discomfort from him. Your heart clenches just at the sight of him, relief and concern equal parts to blame for your sudden breathlessness. You long to kiss him, to check out what’s got his hand cloaked in such thick dressing and ideally look over the rest of him, too—knowing when there’s one injury on the man there is always more. 

After a minute, Claire pulls away, and your hands follow her, soothing against her back. 

“You guys eat?”

Claire sniffles once and nods, dragging the heel of her palm against her eye. 

“We got Burger King on the way here,” Court offers, at which you give a faint smile. 

“Okay. Why don’t you head to the guest bedroom, kid? I’ll find you a toothbrush and some pajamas in a minute,” you tell her, pressing one hand fleetingly to her cheek before she nods and retreats. 

Now alone, the two of you turn back to each other. The breeze swings between you, beckoned in by the open door, and when you manage to tear your eyes away from Court’s steel blue pair, you finally speak. 

“You gonna stand guard there all night?”

He huffs; a flicker of amusement amidst the tension stretched through him like a taut wire. With shuffling feet he enters. Shuts the door behind him with a dull click. 

“Hey,” you murmur, planting both hands on either side of Court’s neck. Much to your satisfaction, some of his tension bleeds away at the touch, stepping even closer to circle you in his arms. 

“Hey.”

“You had me worried,” you chastise, but all of your frustrations ebb away at the feeling of him finally back in your arms. 

“I know,” Court sighs, ducking forward to plonk his forehead onto your shoulder, and you take the opportunity to press a long, warm kiss to his temple. “I’m sorry.” His back muscles ripple like weaseling little fish underneath the skin, against your circling palms; a testament to weeks worth of tension left to fester in his body.

“I’ll make you some tea, okay?”

Court expels a shallow puff of air against the neck he’s burrowed into, nodding once, sluggish, and then pulling back entirely. You gently usher him off into the kitchen, where you coax him into a stool by the island and then switch the kettle on. From there, you turn toward the hallway and stroll out of the kitchen, dragging a palm across the set of Court’s sunken shoulders when you walk past him. On the way to the guest bedroom, you stop by the storage closet and grab a thick quilt folded atop one of the metal racks drilled into the wall.

However, when a tentative knock on the cracked door gives way to a long beat of silence, you peek inside to find Claire curled up on the twin-sized bed, sneakers haphazardly kicked off by the rug. Your heart twinges with sympathy, carefully shouldering the door open and sidling inside, quiet so as not to disturb her well-earned rest. You shake the quilt out and then drape it over her small frame. She doesn’t so much as stir.

Making a mental note to lay out a new toothbrush and some clothes for her later, you back out of the room, and very heedfully shut the door.

Back in the kitchen, Court hasn’t moved an inch from his seat, forearms crossed over the laminate counter, head wilted. Neither of you speak upon your return, not for the few minutes in which you prepare two cups of tea, but Court does lift his head at one point, following your movements around with fond, tired eyes.

With a generous squeeze of honey into both mugs, the drinks are ready, and soon carried over toward the kitchen island. You slide one toward Court’s folded arms and settle into the stool beside his.

“Alright,” you sigh, turning to face Court with your whole body, “tell me.”

Court blinks down at the twirling teabag in his mug, fiddling with the paper end between three fingers, and after a long, smooth pull of breath, begins talking.

Last thing you'd heard from him, Court was to fly out to Bangkok for a regular job—before he went radio silent for just over two months. What you didn’t know was that Court’s target was apparently also Sierra, nor anything about Carmichael’s corruption—though that part didn’t surprise you as much.

He tells you about the encrypted drive, and Lloyd Hansen, and the chaos in Prague, and Cahill, all with a careful neutrality to his tone that sets you on edge. You stick a leg out, settling it against the footrest of Court’s stool and pressing your shin to his bouncing calf.

A long beat follows. Steam curls through the air between you, wisping against Court’s stubbled jaw like comforting hands. You set your mug down, nearly empty, and reach for one of Court’s forearms, thumbing over the faded tattoo there.

“Fitz?” you ask, treading very carefully. The line of Court’s mouth tightens—a fleeting twitch of motion—before he looks up, meets your eye. Shakes his head.

A long, thready sigh squeezes out of you. Your fingers tighten reassuringly, and Court then moves to cloak his own free hand over yours. He’s wearing this sad, lipped sort of smile now, a meager attempt at unimpassioned dismissal.

“It’s fine, it’s how—it was never gonna be old age, so…”

“Still. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” Court grates, nodding stiffly. “Me too.”

With another slow exhale, you push yourself to your feet, drawing your arms around him and into a firm embrace, head craned low to press your mouth into the top of Court’s ruffled hair. 

For a long moment, he remains stony and sober beneath you, something that had once bothered you, years ago when he was nothing more than a nameless agent you'd be told to patch up, and you were a dispensable cog in the machine that made him so. You understand now he can't help it—rather than a front he puts up it's his nature. One forced and beaten into place, but his nature nonetheless.

Eventually, though, when the embrace stretches on long enough, his arms slide up, large, rough palms encircling your bicep and shoulder.

"How's she holding up?" you ask next, because you know better than to focus on him too much; the trick with Court is to pry him open in tiny increments, coaxing that tightly concealed vulnerability out of him before he even knows it.

Court shifts against you—possibly in a shrug.

"As well as she can be, considering. She's a strong kid."

"Yeah, she is," you sigh, craning your neck back to peer down the hall where she sleeps. Your chest aches for her—so young, and already so wounded by the world. Court expels a wary breath, smoothing a palm down your bicep to latch under your elbow.

"I hope it's okay that I... came here. If I even suspect they know we're here, I'll be gone before—"

"Hey, none of that," you butt in, turning back to him, sternly holding his gaze. "You know I like having you here. Both of you. It's a big house, gets lonely sometimes."

Court's eyes flick all across your face, quietly analytical in that charming way of his—though now you almost feel the urge to shrivel underneath such close inspection. He's been through hell these past weeks, no point in making him feel guilty for how worried and alone you've been during them.

He seems to do so, anyway.

Before he can speak, you take his jaw in one hand and lean down to kiss him—finally giving in to the nagging urge that's been screaming at you since you first opened the front door.

At that—amusingly so—Court melts, his bandaged palm drifting outward to curl around your hip, mouth warm and pliant against yours. The kiss is soft, chaste, more of a greeting than anything else. You'd missed him so terribly it's almost humiliating, and now having him back has brought all that longing swinging back into your chest like an anvil. You aren't even togther—not officially, but you have a toothbrush for him in your bathroom and a vivid mental map of every corner of his body and the first place he thought to go to when everything went to shit was here.

That’s got to count for something.

You nip at his lower lip, just to tease, and crack a sly grin when he sucks in a small, sharp inhale in response. He chases after you when you pull away, brows slightly furrowed.

"Down, boy," you chuckle, weaseling your palm against his lips when his mouth wanders down your throat. "Let me check you over."

"I'm fine," he mumbles against your loosely sealed fingers, shifting in his stool to bracket you properly between his strong thighs. "Peachy."

"Court," you press, letting your hand sink, fingers sliding lazily down his chin. He reaches up to your own jaw, scraping one calloused thumb against your own stubble—somewhat longer than how you tend to keep it. You've been taking so many shifts at the hospital that your free time has been limited to showering and sleeping. Shaving has been moved to the backburner.

He meets your gaze yet again, with that privately discerning edge that suggests a deep consideration. His face softens impossibly; it was staggering, seeing it happen the first time, back when all you knew him as was just another dead-eyed mercenary capable of unspeakable violence. By the time you met him you'd long come to terms with the fact that no amount of good you could do as a doctor would ever couterbalance the suffering most of your patients inflicted on a regular basis, so you'd cared very little to connect with any of them beyond stitching them up scribbling away all sorts of painkiller perscriptions.

But Court had, even then, snagged your attention. While still stoic and stone-eyed, almost unnervingly so in the face of some of the injuries you've seen him bear, he'd crack the occassional joke with you—mostly lame puns or give it to me straight, doc quips while he was near delirious with blood loss. He had sensed your early apprehension around him and broadcasted every slow movement, apologized whenever the pain made him jerk sharply away from your touch, and once—minutes before passing out in the middle of the medical tent in a temporary base set up somewhere in Poland—denied attention from any other medic on location aside from you. You'd been halfway across the base, not on active duty but as always on call, when you were paged and informed an agent was causing a scene, asking for you by name.

"Don't touch me! Where is he? I need—he can..." was all that you'd caught before ducking into the tent, where a small flock of antsy doctors and nurses hedged Court in, your Head Physician approaching him with a cartoonishly-sized syringe in hand, brow set.

Court had spotted you approaching in an instant, and the rabid set of his broad shoulders had collapsed.

He managed a thready, "Oh, hey Doc," before buckling against you.

As it turned out, his manic state was not only attributable to the GSW in his abdomen, but to a truly inordinate amount of drugs forcefully pumped into his bloodstream by enemy agents. He'd spent the subsequent two nights sunken in a fever so indomitable you'd almost expected him not to bounce back.

"Okay," Court says, and you blink out of your daze, finding yourself back here—not Poland, not ducking your head to war criminals, not watching Courtland bleed out against your palms.

Your hand slides down the firm curve of his shoulder, and all the way into his palm, where you weave your fingers into his and pull him to his feet. From there, the two of you shuffle into the living room, and you push him into the couch with a soft press to the shoulder.

He sheds his shirt without you having to ask—he knows this routine inside out, and for all of his paranoid rituals, born from the type of life he's lived, this is your own. You know he's more than happy to oblige, if it helps you sleep.

"You know, there are easier ways of getting me half-naked on your couch."

"I don't know," you counter, eyes narrowing pointedly at him but your tone distinctly lacking of edge. "This was pretty easy."

Court makes an affronted face at that. "What are you implying?"

"What's this?" you begin in lieu of answering, taking his badaged palm into your lap, fingertips just barely dipping underneath the bottom edge.

"Switchblade," he pushes out on a sigh. In his eyes you find a glimmer of misplaced amusement; you shake your head fondly. "In and out. Pretty gnarly."

"I bet," you say, trailing your ghosting touch up his arm, following the old, ragged scar stretching up to the edge of his collarbone. You study his bare torso, momentarily setting aside the urge to admire the view in favor of indulging the nervous doctor in you; right above his sharp hip bone on his right side, a pucker of half-healed flesh, unbandaged but still bearing that ruddy tone of recovering skin.

"Those were scissors. Same guy. Only a few inches deep, not the worst of the bunch."

You squint through the dimness—the warm kitchen light offers its tepid glow, just enough so you can search for any abnormal irritation or discharge. You find none, and move to the next: another stab wound in the back of his shoulder; a nasty gash in the thigh; an impressive collection of greenish bruises and half-faded scabs. You change dressings where required, study wounds for any signs of infection or improper healing, feel along his ribs for any fractures—and you know, logically, he's spent the last few weeks in a hospital. You know the government-funded team of professionals who treated him wouldn't have missed something as elementary as broken ribs or developing infection.

But it helps. You have to see it for yourself, that he's joking around on your couch at one in the morning and in no imminent, life-threatening peril. God knows you've seen enough of him in it to last you several lifetimes.

By the end of it, Court is boneless against the cushions, head tipped back and angled toward you. His eyes are shut but you know he's awake; he'd fought the mounting weight of his eyelids as long as he could, just watching you, but he's only human. The lazy back-and-forth sweep of his thumb where he has his hand pressed to the small of your back underneath your shirt speaks to his wakefulness.

You readily embrace the warmth the small gesture brings to your ribcage, shifting and breathing like a neutron star fit to burst. Your hand finds his soft, golden brown hair, combing it through with your fingers, hairline to crown. A pleasant hum rumbles in his chest at that, faintly reminiscent of a cat's purr, and a stupid smile pulls at your lips.

"I missed you," you whisper, hesitant to disturb the intimate silence that has taken root. Your fingers dip lower on your ensuing comb, snaking between his head and the backrest cushion. "It was close, wasn't it?"

Court's eyes scrunch, still closed, but the silence preceeding his answer tells you enough. "A few times, yeah. Was touch-and-go for a minute, according to the doctors."

He cracks his eyes open, just a sliver, to catch your reaction. The fear has never relented—not for a minute since you left the CIA. It's as suffocating as it was then, but something you've had to learn how to live with, only because you had no other choice. Leaving that life hadn't been the hard part, it had been weighing on your conscience for the better part of a decade prior, but you knew once you left, Court could very well leave on a mission one day and never come back. You'd never even know. You couldn't treat him, you couldn't swipe his file if he was under the care of another medic, you couldn't say goodbye. You couldn't bury him.

Court knew this, and still he encouraged you to leave.

His palm glides up the warm skin of your back, thumb following the track of your spine.

"Come on, you know me," he says, urging you close with a steady pressure at the center of your back, "I'm not going out if it's not on your table, Doc."

You huff out a strained chuckle, finally yielding to his wordless ask and letting him kiss you. His body is hard and warm under your lazily meandering hands, sliding from his neck to his shoulders and down his chest. On their way down, you fleetingly tweak a nipple, and grin against his mouth when the kiss fractures. His fingers flex into your back, essentially hauling you into his lap—your head spins.

Licking into his mouth, you settle with your knees buried into the back of the couch, thighs braced on either side of his hips. When Court kisses, it's like he's starving. You've learned to ration your breaths during fleeting breaks, when either of you groans or gasps. He traps your head in place with a hand at the nape of your neck, the other still exploring underneath your shirt. After a while, it gets far too in the way and he pulls it off entirely.

The press of your bare chests makes the breath stumble in your throat, the ever-present warmth in your chest simmering and dribbling low into your groin. Beneath you, he's already half-hard, always enthusiastic when it comes to you. You jostle at a tiny buck of his hips.

Court makes a low sound—your name, possibly, trapped amidst a breathless grunt. He's breathing harder now, shifting restlessly beneath you. His hands can't quite seem to settle in one place.

"Court," you hum into him, planting two fingers to his pec and pressing him firmly against the backrest. The sudden severity of your tone gives him clear pause. "Relax."

His pupils have crowded into the lovely sea blue of his eyes, shrunken them down to twin rings, stark against the flush of his skin. You spread one palm against his chest, just barely catching the frantic kicking of his heart. The other reaches down to encircle his wrist where it'd landed on your hip.

"Relax. Okay? Hold still, I got you."

Court nods, dazed and unblinking as you slowly draw his hand to your mouth. There, you press many feathery kisses, trailing from the shifting tendons of his inner wrist, along the heel of his palm, up his thumb. His breath catches when you reach the tip, grazing the flat tops of your teeth against the pad.

Tentatively, Court sinks past your lips, hooking loosely behind your bottom teeth before searching out your tongue. You seal your lips around the knuckle, buzzing with lust-tinged amusement as his flush deepens.

His thumb flattens on the center of your tongue; in response, you faintly hollow your cheeks, and that does it.

A tremulous groan cracks out of him, head dipping back against the cushion. The erratic roll his hips make feels more automatic than deliberate, but he's quick to steel himself—always so good at following your orders it makes your whole body pulse with heat.

You can feel him, hard against your clothed ass—certain the motionless pressure must be driving him crazy, you decide to spoil him a little and give a few slow grinds of your own.

"Oh—fuck," he groans, low and unsteady. His thumb presses harder on your tongue for a moment, before he catches himself and releases it. You teasingly bite down, hoping he gets the message to be rougher, but he just swallows thickly and blinks up at the ceiling.

After a minute or so, you still, thrilled at the harsh exhale he gives, frustrated. You pull off of his thumb, noting the way he stares at the fine, sagging thread of spit that clings to your lip.

"Talk to me, baby," you hum, dabbing his cheeks and jaw with teasingly innocent pecks. "What do you need?"

Court reaches for your face, catching your jaw again—smearing your own spit against your cheek—to look you in the eye.

"You wanna fuck me?" You punctuate it with a slow roll of your hips. "Wanna be fucked?"

Court can't seem to string an answer together, can't even decide whether to gawk at your eyes or spit-slick mouth. Of course you don't expect him to be able to make such a decision, but asking anyway is part of the fun. It's fascinating just how easily you can get him like this, a bit of a power trip, really, and the glassy arousal in his eyes makes you strain against your sweats.

You feign deep thought, dragging blunt nails down the swell and valleys of his abdominal muscles. They catch on the elastic of his boxers, but wander no further.

"I know," you coo when another tiny noise resounds from low in his throat, "I know. You need me to take care of you, don't you?"

Your name on his tongue has always sounded lovely, but like this—thick with need and wet with spit, it's delicious. You kiss him warmly, just to soothe, and finally relent and paw at his straining cock through the thin material trapping it. You swallow his moan, pressing with a steady, circling motion and absorbing every shudder that rips through him.

He clings to your back, huffing and grinding up into your hand. When the kiss inevitably breaks, you migrate to his throat, where sharp bites are balmed by calculated swipes of your tongue.

"Fff—fuck, oh Jesus," Court moans, finding some sort of fleeting clarity and then reaching between your bodies to palm at your own neglected erection. You can't help but groan into his skin, allowing yourself a few lazy thrusts into his large hand before gently prying it away.

"It's okay, baby," you pant, thumbing at his swollen, leaking slit. "Let me focus on you first. You're so sweet, thinking of me."

Court offers a strained hum in response, squeezing your hip once.

"You look perfect like this, Court. You're perfect, all mine."

Much to his dismay, your hand abandons his cock in order to latch on to the back of his neck, which you guide off the cushion so he can properly face you. Then, you shift your weight, resettling how you’d been positioned earlier, with the cleft of your ass applying pressure to his cock.

For a moment, you stop to think. What he needs right now, what will make him feel the best and keep him happy and blissfully sapped for long afterwards. In the meantime, your thumbs pet the stubble across his cheeks in mirrored motions. His eyebrows are pinched, faintly warped upwards with arousal, pooling with nowhere to go. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you for a second.

He’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

You make sure to let him know this, and grin, catlike, when he squirms and flushes a pretty dark pink in the warm light. He twitches against your ass; you don’t need to look to know he’s absolutely weeping precome.

You lean in, kiss his cheekbone and brow bone, the side of his nose, the corner of his mouth. He murmurs your name again in a shattered voice, gripping your hip with one hand and back with the other so tightly you’re sure he’s trying desperately not to rut against you.

“That’s it. You’re doing so good, Court. You listen so well.”

“Don’t—” It comes out sharp, bladed through his gritted teeth but you can hear the early tones of a whine somewhere in it, and it only spurs you on more.

“What? You’re close already? Gonna come all over yourself, in your boxers?”

You don’t mean for it to come out so sardonic—it’s easy to get carried away when positioned like this, when the eyes on you are so fucked-out and desperate for you—but Court twitches again, full-body this time, and a wet moan cuts through the dense air between you.

One of your hands slip low, pivoting at the wrist to take ahold of the underside of his jaw, careful to steer clear of his exposed throat. You’d made that mistake once already.

“It’s alright,” you murmur, itching to kiss him or to continue mouthing at the sensitive spots at his neck, but the need to watch him crumble eclipses all of it. The spasmodic twitches in his thighs shake all the way up his body, and by proxy through yours. Still, the occasional half-grind against you slips through. You let them slide only because you missed him so much, and he’s been so good.

“You can come. Let me see you come, my good boy.”

Court’s head all but goes limp in your tender yet firm hold, eyes screwing shut, lips parting soundlessly.

His chest swells with a gasping breath, and his body tightens beneath you for a split second, before unraveling.

He comes with a teetering moan, sprouting from deep in the throat but still vaguely whiny in nature. You kiss him quickly so as not to wake Claire, and once his orgasm crests, he lets go and rides it out against your ass, soaking his boxers with his load.

Amidst his frantic humping the arms around your back draw you tightly in, snuffing out every inch of open space between you.

You choke out a moan yourself when your cock presses flush against his tensing stomach, fingers anchoring into Court’s hair.

He pulls away to burrow into your neck, emptying the last of his airy groans against your pulse point as his motions come to a slow, twitchy halt. At no point does he loosen his hold on you. You can feel the wetness beneath you, warm and thick.

Like earlier, you press the loose shape of your mouth into his hair, breathing in deeply, holding the smell of him close and deep in your chest. His breaths fan out across your collarbone, coaxing goosebumps to rise in their wake.

“Good?” you mumble, trying to pull back and get a look at him but rendered immobile by his unyielding arms. He nods against your throat.

You find yourself grinding, smooth and sluggish, against his stomach, eyes shut and feeling the press and drag of his hot mouth against your skin.

Finally (perhaps once he notices your motions), Court’s head straightens, and you get no warning before you’re being manhandled onto your back along the length of the couch.

“Thank you,” he whispers into a too-short kiss, one you can’t even chase after before he’s traveling down your torso in equally fleeting kisses.

“Don’t thank me,” you pant, hands finding his hair again, stretching lazily at his scalp. “That was hot.”

He shoots you a dopey grin, hands cupping your hips before he begins mouthing at the tent in your sweats. Heat flares through you, heels digging into the couch as you try to buck up into the contact to no avail.

Court wastes no time for teasing; he hooks his fingers into both waistbands and pulls your sweats and underwear down with one brusque tug, just enough to free your cock.

He presses damp, open mouthed kisses all along the shaft, glassy eyes pinned on your own. On occasion you’ll attempt to push up against the hold on your pelvis, and his fingers will squeeze once and the corner of his mouth will quirk up.

It’s embarrassing how close you are by the time he enfolds his lips around the head, but getting him off has always been a sort of extension of your own pleasure; it never takes much afterward for you to follow.

Your head spins as he takes you, inch by dizzying inch. He loves blowing you, and you love seeing him like this, hollow-cheeked and focused around you. Working his tongue in ways that make you see stars and taking you to the base, nose buried in the thatch of thick hair there.

“Court—Court, holy shit,” you pant, trying not to abuse his scalp too much but scrambling for purchase amidst the relentless flurry of pleasure swallowing your senses one by one. He’s so good with his mouth it’s unfair, and it’s only made worse by how smug he looks down there.

Your knee presses to his ribs, seeking out contact anywhere. At that, Court rubs a few clumsy circles into your hip bone, and pointedly sucks.

It’s over after that. It only takes a few swallows around your cock before your mounting pleasure reaches a crescendo, and you barely get a warning out before you’re coming into his mouth, down his happily obliging throat.

You muffle your own cry of bliss into the crook of your elbow, fucking into Court’s mouth until your orgasm begins to subside. Even then, you linger for a minute, one hand knotted in Court’s hair, his throat subtly working around your softening length, the soothing stroke of his thumbs on your hips a perfect comedown.

Finally, you squeeze out a heavy breath, tapping the back of his skull so he pulls off. You follow the sweep of his tongue across his lips with drowsy fascination. Wordlessly, he tucks you back into your sweats.

As he crawls back up your body, you steal a glance down at his crotch, and snort at the rather conspicuous stain at the front of his light gray underwear.

“You’re laughing at me?” Court grumbles, pecking up your jaw. “I just gave you life-changing head and you’re laughing at me.”

“Life-changing?” you chuckle, letting him kiss you—too flooded with post-coital endorphins to think it’s gross in the slightest. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”

He snorts, going abruptly boneless atop of you and knocking from your chest a low oof!

“You should shower,” you murmur, tracing the curve of his shoulder blade with a forefinger. He grunts vaguely.

“I need to sleep. For a year.”

“Sure. But a pre-hibernation shower wouldn’t hurt.”

He breathes out, steady and slow and warm against your jaw. Your fingers begin instead an absentminded drumming rhythm against his strong back. An idea strikes, and you grin wickedly at the ceiling.

“I could even join,” you slyly add.