How about 28 for McDiarmid/Fraser 🫶
McDiarmid/Fraser 28 (exes, candy-wrappers, and a twin bed)
“Put it out.”
At first, Jock thinks he’s imagined the words. Part of a late post-coital bliss and all, their room still hazy with the pink light that precedes dawn. Children are running outside, down in the parking lot of the resort, surely about to leave for the day and not stuck here until a new truck is driven their way, or they get sent money for the bus fare, far lower South than any London fire brigade should venture. It’s stupid that none of them was carrying their wallets with them. Even stupider still that Stirling was able to get them a room, but no news of a drive back home were in the horizon just yet.
Not like Jock is complaining. He takes another drag of the cigarette, ponders for a moment staring at the yellowing ceiling if he’ll be able to go for a run before,they have to make their way back—and immediately gets slapped in the arm about it.
“Put it out!” Fraser snaps, blue eyes wilder than they should be this early in the morning. Not Fraser, Jock corrects himself; Bill. He had asked Jock to call him Bill when they were two kisses into the room and their mingling breaths still reeked of ale and the artificial tasting strawberries of their dinner ice-cream. “You’re a fireman for chrissake, you precisely should bloody know about the dangers of smoking in bed.”
Jock slowly blinks as Bill snatches the cigarette out of his fingers, watches the cigarette die a hissing death in the half full coffee cup that’s still lying in their nightstand along with the honey caramel wrappers Jock has seen leave Bill’s pockets many times before. Bill seems to relax a little after this small victory, his long wiry body curling underneath the comforter, preserving the infinitesimally minute gap that he had decided to establish in between their bodies the moment his pale lashes had fluttered awake.
“So…we’re not speaking about it,” Jock says, his decision of breaking the silence becoming an almost immediate regret.
“What’s it?” Bill dignifies the question with one of his looks, one that speaks more of sleep than annoyance.
“This,” Jock insists, waving a finger in between their faces. “Us”
“What’s there to speak about?” Annoyance creeps back in, so does the guarded look that Bill usually carries about himself. Jock needs it to go away, for now, needs to speak to the Bill that melted against him last night, the Bill that almost cried when they managed to get a kitten out of one of the burning bungalows unscathed before their truck broke down.
“Dunno,” Jock shrugs, thinks about his words for a second. This would be easier with a fag, and oh, does the thought make him laugh. “Jus’ wandering if you’d want to give it another go when we’re back home.”
“Ta, but no thanks. Already had enough Jock McDiarmid for a fortnight.”
Jock ponders his possibilities for a moment. Which words will get him kicked out of bed, which ones will give way to a possible future where he’s kissing Bill Fraser against his kitchen counter in a week or two.
“Does this have anything to do with that weird toff that tried talking to you before we left yesterday?”
Bill’s face contorts into something ugly, rage and utter misery flashing across his features before he gets out of bed with a sudden tug at the covers, leaving his pale body bare for Jock to gaze at while his voice breaks and composes in the same sentence. “That’s none of your fucking business.”
Bill slams himself shut inside the bathroom, a quiet pause that lasts for more than five minutes elongating until Jock finally hears Bill turn the shower on. For a moment Jock thinks about lighting himself another fag. For a moment he imagines how Bill must look under the water, wonders if he will be looking for the marks that Jock had left the night prior and regretting them. Or perhaps pressing his fingers to them, like Jock would.
Jock McDiarmid sighs in self-inflicted abject misery, still hearing the shower run. There’s no way he’s leaving the bed with how fucking stiff his prick just got.
