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“There you are. I thought you’d gone for a walk.”
“Mmm.”
“What are you doing?”
“Can’t you see? I’m basking,” said Marston. “Like a lizard.”
Sprawled on a spare plank, legs and arms akimbo, face tipped up to the sun, he certainly resembled a quiescient creature of some kind, but Priestley thought lizard was a bit of a tall order. More like a handsome tomcat, well-fed and satisfied, his stomach upturned to the warm light and practically begging to be rubbed.
He had an arm flung over his eyes to keep out the sun; he wasn’t looking at Priestley, so Priestley could look his fill. And he did: taking in the breadth of Marston’s strong shoulders, the calloused fingertips on his capable hands, the strip of bare white belly visible above his loosened belt.
“Well, you look marvelously comfortable. I think I’ll join you.”
As Priestley settled onto the ground Marston protested, “I’m not comfortable. I’m bloody bored. Look at this weather! We ought to be on our way to the Pole—aren’t you just going mad waiting to get out there?”
“We’ve been out there,” Priestley pointed out. Their spring sledging programme had been a brutal education, endless trips back and forth transferring stores to Hut Point. “Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying the time off.”
“We had an entire winter of time off!” Marston groaned.
“Which wasn’t too bad.”
“No, it wasn’t bad,” Marston said. “In fact I’d go so far as to say it featured some of the most pleasurable evenings of my life to date. But it wasn’t exactly exploration.”
“I think one could make the argument that it was, in a sense.”
“Raymond!” Marston flung his arm away and gave Priestley a delighted look. “That was very good. Your innuendo has improved by leaps and bounds.”
“I have the benefit of an excellent teacher.”
“You flatter me, dear.”
“I’ll flatter you half to death, if you’ll only let me.” It was becoming increasingly impossible to not touch him. So what that it was broad daylight? So what that they were outside, and might be intruded upon at any moment? Priestley had never been drunk, but he had a theory that drink might act on a man the way the sight of Marston was acting on him now.
Marston said, “I’ll let you do that and much more.”
Out of instinct and habit, not quite conscious of the irony, Priestley sent up a brief prayer that God might prevent their being discovered, and then threw himself at Marston.
Marston received him gladly, arms folding him in, hands pressed proprietarily to his back. That wicked tongue protested, as it always did, against the initial chasteness of Priestley’s kiss, begging entry past his teeth, but Priestley teased him, drawing back and sucking at Marston’s lips, at his Cupid’s bow and even the tip of his nose before allowing him to finally invade. When he did press in it was with a happy sigh, a hum of a few triumphant notes. Priestley let a hand come up to cup Marston’s cheek, thumbing at the freshly-shaven roundness of it as he deepened and slowed their kiss.
Beneath him, Marston rocked gently on their makeshift bed. His thigh, slotted neatly between Priestley’s, was somewhat maddening to move against, and his hands were now playing a merry game, squeezing Priestley’s bottom in an insistent rhythm, but Priestley was not after anything other than this, the simple act so pleasing and good that he had long ago in the depths of winter been moved to dismiss the idea that it was in any way wrong.
(Of course, this dismissal had been supplemented by Marston’s handy knowledge of Wilde and Whitman, but it was nothing at all like being tempted or seduced. Priestley had practically been begging him to give him a good reason he ought to do what he wanted to. It was only Priestley’s good fortune that Marston had dearly wanted him to do it too.)
As Priestley’s mouth continued its urgent attempt to possess Marston’s, his fingers, acting selfishly and of their own accord, roamed down Marston’s body beneath him. They soon found that pale strip of bared skin which he had been admiring moments earlier. Abruptly he was brought to the knowledge that kissing was not all he wanted, right now. Not entirely.
Reluctantly he let their lips separate, muttering, “Just a moment—please, let me just—“ Going up onto his knees, he loosened the ties of his canvas trousers, and Marston must have been thinking he was moving far more quickly than usual—but he only pulled the waistband down just below his stomach, to match Marston’s relaxed outfit. Then with infinite tenderness he tugged Marston’s jumper up, to reveal the expanse of his belly and his rosy nipples, peaking now in the chill.
“Are you trying to get me frostnipped?” Marston exclaimed, but Priestley shushed him and did the same, rucking up his jumper and undershirt. Both exposed now, Priestley laid himself down, skin to skin against Marston’s warm chest.
“Oh,” said Marston, a little dazed. “I see.” With his lips wet and swollen still, hair mussed down over his forehead, Priestley couldn’t stand to not be kissing him for another moment.
It had been nice before; it was even nicer now, pressed together like this. Marston seemed to agree, his big warm hands covering with possessive pressure the bared area of Priestley’s back. His breath, coming in hot hitches and half-laughs into Priestley’s mouth, filled Priestley up—turning him into a veritable zeppelin of good feeling, buoyant, soaring.
“What’s got into you?” Marston murmured, as Priestley nosed at his chin, lapping at the soft underside. “You’re like a man possessed.”
It was a simple enough question, but it made Priestley still for a moment to think of the answer. “Dunno,” he said, although he knew. “It’s just—you’re lovely.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
It so happened that neither of them were anything close to adept at taking compliments, and yet they had persisted in lobbing them back and forth for months now. One of these days Marston would simply have to accept that Priestley found him very handsome.
“I’m not. You’re lovely and soon you’ll be off, and I will be too. Like you said. So….” He tried to make it sound casual, tracing gentle shapes into the side of Marston’s stomach, but he worried he came off as desperate as he felt.
“Ah. You’re carpe-ing my diem, are you?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” Priestley propped himself up on an elbow and allowed himself a look at Marston. The sun picked out golden threads in his honey-colored hair. From this angle there was only the merest hint of the jutting brow that often made him seem brooding. He was gazing back at Priestley with a heavy-lidded, satisfied smile.
He licked his lips and said, “I might say instead that you’re geologizing my moraine. You’re trawling my seabed. You’re—“ and now Priestley was kissing him again, and his words were blurred and muffled—“cleaning the porridge from my bowl, you’re hauling my sledge—“
“And might the sledge haul back?” Priestley asked breathlessly.
“If I have anything to say about it.” In a smooth and easy motion Marston forced Priestley onto his back. The man’s full winter weight landing atop him pressed a helpless moan from his mouth, which Marston swallowed quickly with a resumption of their kiss.
Priestley was now the one bucking upwards into their embrace, his arms twined tightly round Marston’s shoulders. Distantly the idea presented itself that one day he would be an old man looking back on this moment, wondering what strange polar madness had taken hold of him, what hysteria had driven him to such vulgar displays. Perhaps by then he’d have tried to make himself forget.
But in the spring sunlight, and with Marston covering every inch of him with weight and laughing kisses and gentle touches, he forced himself to forget about inevitability. He set the unwelcome thought adrift, a floe sent straight to sea. Right now, nothing mattered except this. Closer, closer—he only wanted to be closer.
