It’s just that Sebastian loves giving Jim reasons to regret pulling him out of messy situations. Like the one four days ago. The one where Jim, James Moriarty, literally risked his own life for the fucking disaster in front of him, splashing into the kiddie pool like an oversized man-child.
“I should have left you bleeding on the floor,” he snarls, taking another delicate step into the pool and planting both feet in the freezing water, refusing to back down despite Sebastian’s incessant splashing. A flicker of surprise crosses the man's face, as though he hadn't realized who, exactly, had lugged his unwieldy carcass out of that mess.
“I should have taken the tire iron myself and finished the fucking job,” he hisses next, striding towards Sebastian, but having to stop because of the full-body shiver that punches through him. He can’t feel his toes. Is he getting frostbite?
Sebastian, because he has a bloody death wish, just laughs at his dark threats, and it’s that, and the sweltering heat, and the fact that this whole week went tits up so fast, that makes Jim pick up the hose from where it’s been filling the pool.
He indulges in a dark grin as Sebastian finally shuts the fuck up and protests, “Hey, that’s not fair!”
“Darling, don’t you remember who you’re talking to?" Jim sticks his thumb over the end of the nozzle and proceeds to spray Sebastian in the face for as long as he can with the water, reveling in the undignified shouting and choking that follows.
Jim realizes his mistake a moment too late, though, as he feels Sebastian’s foot hook around his ankle, and his leg is yanked out from under him. He goes down hard into the pool, knocking his hip, but the freezing cold water both cushions the fall and dulls what pain he’d have felt.
Aware that he has no time to waste, Jim pops up with a gasp and shudder, but surges forwards and gets on top of Sebastian, who’s still floating mostly on his back. Jim shoves him under the sloshing water and keeps him there for a good few seconds before Sebastian manages to get his hands underneath himself and sit up, spluttering.
“You’re such a fucking arsehole,” Jim hisses, face uncomfortably close to the sniper’s, eyes narrowing when Sebastian starts with that giddy laughter again. His pale hands tense against Sebastian’s dark biceps. “A masochist who thinks it’s funny to piss off the man that saved his life, who was worried yesterday that the humidity would drown him?”
He manages to get his arm planted more firmly around one of Sebastian’s. “What about me drowning you?” Jim proceeds to slip the man’s arm out from under him and shoves his head back underwater, feeling the back of his skull bounce against the inflated seat. It quashes the small, momentary flash of regret he had over exacerbating the concussion, and where the fuck had that come from?
Sebastian comes up spluttering, and Jim is gratified to see some actual concern behind his eyes. Good. Keep him on his toes. “Are you worried about that?” He shoves him under again.
--
Eventually, the struggling wears both of them out. Sebastian proposes an uneasy truce, and so they settle back against their respective sides.
Jim sips from his margarita and flips lazily through a book (propped on a floating book holder found on Amazon). He glances up occasionally to take in Sebastian’s state.
The man hadn't bothered to change into the neon swimming trunks Jim bought him and was currently lounging in the kiddie pool wearing only his briefs, which, when wet, left nothing to the imagination. Jim did his best to be professional, but, well. Sebastian was a good looking man, and he was… proportional, to put it politely. He’d only stepped out briefly to find and bring some towels closer to their makeshift respite from the heat, and to retrieve the case of nice beer Jim knew he liked and prop it against the side of the pool.
He was slowly sipping his way through the fourth one when Jim felt his foot slide out from where it had been propped against the plastic floor and stopped its trajectory against the inside of Sebastian’s thigh.
There was no way the scarred man hadn’t felt it, but he continued sipping from his drink slowly and staring up at the blue sky, making no indication that anything had changed. Curious, Jim let his foot stay there instead of retreating. Still, no reaction.
Jim continued to glance at Sebastian when he felt he could, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, turning pages of his book but completely ignoring it. It didn’t take long before he felt Sebastian’s thigh muscle tense under the ball of his foot, but he didn’t shift away. Jim glanced down, and through the soft ripple of the water in the pool, understood. Oh, is that how it is?
Biting the inside of his cheek to hide a grin, Jim shifted as if getting comfortable, letting his foot slip a few inches further down Sebastian’s thigh and towards his crotch, eyes on his book. He almost wants to compliment his sniper on keeping such a cool facade, but then he hears it, a careful and slow inhale of breath. Jim glances up without shifting his head and Sebastian’s gaze has fallen down to stare at him.
Jim meets his gaze steadily, unsure if Sebastian can see his eyes from behind his glasses and the angle of the sun. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so scorching as the sudden heat behind Sebastian’s eyes, despite being miserable in the flat for the past handful of days. This close to his groin, Jim can certainly feel the soft jump of Sebastian’s cock as it twitches, ignoring the cold water or what Jim can only imagine is the uncomfortable confines of wet cotton bravely trying to cover a single shred of Seb’s dignity.
Sebastian still doesn’t say anything, so Jim makes a show of actually moving his head and looking up at Sebastian, though his eyes have been on him the whole time, and smiles. Something shifts in Sebastian’s face and he smiles back. Playing coy. Alright. Let’s see how far I can push this before you snap, masochistic little thing.
“Alright, Tiger?” He asks, tone casual, picking up his margarita and sipping the dregs, straw making a loud, undignified slurp as he hits air at the bottom of his cup.
“Perfect,” Sebastian nearly purrs, but before Jim can throw in the towel on this imaginary battle of wills, he continues, “This pool is the best idea you’ve ever had.” And he shifts to slip further down against the pool, propping his head against the rim and moving until Jim’s foot is now resting on his stomach and Seb’s legs bracket either side of the seat Jim’s perched on. He still doesn’t acknowledge Jim touching him, just shuts his eyes and fumbles his beer into the pocket on the side of the pool so he can tuck his arms behind his head to soak in the sunshine, now pleasant instead of burningly awful.
Jim frowns. O-kay. He turns back to his book but shifts his leg again, tucking it up slightly so his pale knee peeks above the water line and his foot is comfortable against the crease of Sebastian’s thigh and pelvis, opposite his rather obvious erection.
He thinks he hears a soft hum from Sebastian, but it might have just been an insect, or the power lines overhead coming into his peripheral senses. He feels the muscle under his foot tense again, and curiously, he presses down a bit more firmly. Sebastian’s leg twitches and Jim can see the muscles of his arms tense from where they’re laced behind his head. Nothing else, no other indication he has noticed or cared, despite them being very aware of what they’re both doing.
Jim decides to wait him out, and goes back to his book, turning the pages occasionally and pretending to be slightly uncomfortable, shifting his position against Sebastian every so often and feeling rewarded every time some part of him tenses or he hears a deep breath let in or out. It takes half an hour, but his patience is finally, finally rewarded when Sebastian speaks, voice shot with a deep seated lust that Jim hadn’t read from his body language.
“Are you going to do something?” Sebastian’s voice sounds as if cars have rolled over it for a few weeks, full of grit and gravel and something heavy.
Jim looks up with a serene smile, “About what, darling?”
He realizes in a fraction of a second that he underestimated Sebastian. He needs to stop doing that. The teasing has obviously gotten to him a lot more than he’d anticipated, and in the moment it takes for Sebastian to suddenly sit upright and shift forwards, Jim’s own interest in the situation spikes abruptly, nearly hurting as he goes from gently amused to rather turned on himself.
Sebastian looks positively like a predator as he surges upwards from the pool to flip onto his knees in a smooth motion, bracketing around Jim and flinging his book, empty glass and entire little inflated table away and onto the sparse grass of the backyard. Jim doesn’t care, just grins up at him, even as Sebastian reaches down to grasp Jim’s erection through his swimming trunks and then presses his hips up against him, straddling the smaller man. “This,” he practically growls, and Jim lets out a high pitched giggle.
“Oh, Sebastian,” he says, emphasizing the last two syllables of his name, and reaching up to hook an arm around the man’s neck, bringing their faces close together, inches apart, “Did the concussion rattle your skull that badly, or did you want another round of attempted drowning?”
The kiss Sebastian presses him down into is more of a biting match than an actual kiss, both of them fighting for control and both drawing blood quickly from the other person’s mouth. Jim wriggles underneath Sebastian, arching up against him and letting the pent up energy of the past week come out full force. Jim doesn’t notice Sebastian has been settling over him until suddenly the back of his head and then the sides of his face are wet and he’s suddenly underwater, Sebastian’s mouth still locked against his.
Jim grabs two handfuls of Sebastian’s hair and pulls viciously, letting the bigger man pull them both further upright as he tries to get out of Jim’s grip.
With a still tight grip in the man’s hair, Jim releases one hand to slip his swim trunks down and out of the way, shifting to get settled against the seat of the pool and the bottom, and brings Sebastian’s head down until his lips are just above the waves they’ve generated from all their movement, steadying his own cock under the water.
He’s pretty sure Sebastian could get out of the hold he has, and he certainly has enough leverage and muscle to keep Jim from pushing him below the waterline, but all Sebastian does is glance up at him, blue eyes blown almost black with want. “Now, I asked you a question, and it wasn’t rhetorical.”
He presses firmly on the back of Sebastian’s head, fully expecting him to resist, but instead, he hears another of those deep inhales, and watches as the sniper sinks down beneath the water and a moment later feels a much warmer sort of wetness around himself. Jim smiles, shifting to fully secure his grip in the man’s hair and is rewarded with seeing the man’s hips hitch forwards in a useless and abortive motion.
What a good boy.
[part one] written by me
[part two] <-- you are here, written by @mathematicallyinsignificant
