Embry got shot in a raid overseas. Twice. I stole morphine out of the packs of the Carpathian soldiers we killed, the hard stuff.
( the kind of stuff they don't give to good american soldiers, who should have the decency to die before belittling themselves to addiction. not that ash was about to let embry die, ever. not that it made him merciful with him. )
Embry ( is it faithless to unveil his secrets? maybe. but would he accept ash's help? well — he's going to, one way or another. ) is the kind of soldier who gets a head rush at killing. You know the kind. He's probably prowling around like a lion trying to get into another fight right now. He has to be held by the neck and quieted down.
( ash doesn't name what that looks like. he's not sure what it would look like to anyone else, anyway — the bittersweet borderline between violence and love. he and embry have always lived on that tightrope. ash has never felt anything else like it.
he also doesn't mention why embry looks at him. he's not sure he would explain it, even if he could. )
[well, that answers a lot of the gaps embry has been skirting around. he'd known that they'd served together, even knew that embry liked to push when he was supposed to pull and seemed to relish in behaviour most succinctly summed up by the word brat. the kind of behavior that resulted in a fist full of deep chestnut curls, neck and back arched exquisitely while hawk fucked him into compliance. well, as much as embry moore is ever capable of complying. there's a part of him that wonders if ash knows - if he'd even care when he's got tim now and not whatever their previous thing was - but.]
I do know the kind.
[not least of all because hawk was the kind who was on the other side doling out that violence, looking for a place to blow off steam - usually a pretty face who didn't speak a lick of english and taught him a solid chunk of the italian he knows today - sì, molto bene, di più, per favore.]
( somebody lesser than ash, or somebody leagues above him, would probably not let i'll take care of it smart as badly as it does, a specific kind of needling that puts ash's teeth on edge. he wants embry happy. god, he wants him taken care of, and has ever since he first pinned him to a wall and saw his crystal eyes glaze with spiteful anger and something harder to name, something stickier to touch. ash just always imagined he'd be cast the role of caretaker. even now when he pictures the future, he sees nothing but the botticelli softness of embry's face, mr. darcy brooding, the prickly demeanor of a new york socialite made to wear red flannel and attend a cardinal's game. the things they used to laugh about overseas, in between reading czech poems to each other. eternities spent loving him. it seems impossible to have all this love for embry inside him, and nowhere to put it.
other than tim, of course. wonderful tim — good tim, whose only shortcoming is that he isn't embry. )
My hands are never too full for him.
( but, life does go on, regardless. you move on. you marry a woman. you bury her when she dies. you let embry go, because it's what he wants. you hold a little part of him, forevermore, entirely for yourself, and make it a secret, because you're selfish, and because you can't let go of something that's burrowed its way into you.
maybe you do give it someone else, though. if it seems like he might make embry happy. if embry being happy is something he's even capable of. )
He wouldn't let me fuck him before then. He made me wait. I think he thought he was taking care of me, because I was out of my mind with worry about it. And I was angry. So angry, I couldn't see straight, I couldn't sit still. Embry ran into the line of fire like some maniac, laughing, firing off his rounds. He got full of holes. I had to carry him out on my back, evading enemy fire. I wanted to kill him. I thought I might. Instead, I bent him over the burlap sacks of dead Carpathian separatists and fucked him like I was mad at him, because I was. I wasn't nice about it. I made him come all over himself, still bleeding, high off his ass on morphine. Neither of us were happy after one round. Know what you're getting into.
[there it is. all the missing pieces clicking into place - answering the questions he never bothered asking embry because hell would need to freeze over before he ever got an answer. there's been suspicions of course - what are the chances that both the vice president and the president who served together and have clear history both attend the same private club to fuck freely and don't take a swing at it? but it fractured somewhere, and now ash has tim and hawk...well, he's got no one to blame but himself for that, either. of course both embry and tim would fall for a man like him - the most powerful man in the country who has the audacity to be righteous and actually fucking decent underneath his chiseled good looks and level-headed command.
at first he thinks this is going to be some sort of pissing contest - ash feeling guilty for everything with tim and trying to make it right with embry by picking up the pieces no one noticed until now, because hawk still doesn't fully know what to look for in the chic enigma wrapped in tom ford and a shield of breezy wit.
or is this supposed to make him open up about tim - spill all the secrets like the hazy way he clings to mornings when he's allowed, the beauty mark right under his chin that's practically a landing beacon for his lips and earns the most delightful giggles because tim is ticklish, or the way he begs as fervently for release as he does supplicated in prayer - a mantra of please and oh god and more more more -
hawk doesn't realize how hard he's squeezing his phone until he realizes there's not just an undercurrent of rage heating his skin, it's something else entirely.]
Oh, I'll bet he bucked like it was a goddamn rodeo at first.
How many did you go? I just want to get a clear picture here.
( it's a crystalized memory to ash, who can close his eyes and be transported to carpathia — to churches on fire and teenagers with american bullets in their brain, to his sweating body on a suicide sprint at three in the morning, to embry's dimples when he smiles genuinely, because he forgot he's meant to be a forlorn, melancholic prince in this fairytale of theirs. that night in particular has barbed thorns in ash, the fear as acrid a taste as the bliss of wanting him, being allowed to have him in a situation that was so poorly timed, it could only belong to the both of them. embry saying take what you're owed. embry saying i'm done running from you.
what would it be like, to actually live in that world embry gave him for a day, where embry exists wholly as his, where the lines don't blur, where he's exactly as dedicated to ash as ash is to him. instead, his cock is getting hard thinking about embry in the mud, full of holes, begging to ash to stop, to keep going, to stop. talking to hawkins fucking fuller of all people, a man ash would otherwise be tempted to work out some of his embry-based issues on, if either of them were the type to fold instead of staying stubbornly set. )
Twice, that first night.
( the curiosity of wanting to know what hawk and embry get up to is it's own sisyphean curse — he doesn't want to know, but he also wants to torture himself on the knowledge, of thinking of them together, of embry wanting someone else. he's jealous, thoroughly, through the marrow of his bones, through every blood cell, every fiber of himself. he's also hard, and it's not the worst thing he's ever gotten hard about. )
I made him kiss my boots. Before then. ( ash thinks of an email he sent a lifetime ago. i don't have to be that kind of man, if that's not what you want. i'll be any kind of man for you. it still feels true. ) On his knees, sucking the hard laces of my Army-issued pair, fresh out of the box. Good discipline for a soldier out of line.
( not one american politics would approve of, so he's told. still, it was pretty effective for him. )
He was very out of line that night. He wanted punishment. Deserved it. Begged for it, even. I was happy to oblige. Do you need some inspiration?
( it's not the shitty are you so uncreative that you need me to dominate him for you? and more the desperate, almost hopeful do you want to know what i'd do to him, if i could? do you want to know what he likes? do you want to touch something so precious to me? )
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( the kind of stuff they don't give to good american soldiers, who should have the decency to die before belittling themselves to addiction. not that ash was about to let embry die, ever. not that it made him merciful with him. )
Embry ( is it faithless to unveil his secrets? maybe. but would he accept ash's help? well — he's going to, one way or another. ) is the kind of soldier who gets a head rush at killing. You know the kind. He's probably prowling around like a lion trying to get into another fight right now. He has to be held by the neck and quieted down.
( ash doesn't name what that looks like. he's not sure what it would look like to anyone else, anyway — the bittersweet borderline between violence and love. he and embry have always lived on that tightrope. ash has never felt anything else like it.
he also doesn't mention why embry looks at him. he's not sure he would explain it, even if he could. )
I'll handle him. Thank you for telling me.
no subject
I do know the kind.
[not least of all because hawk was the kind who was on the other side doling out that violence, looking for a place to blow off steam - usually a pretty face who didn't speak a lick of english and taught him a solid chunk of the italian he knows today - sì, molto bene, di più, per favore.]
You've got your hands full. I'll take care of it.
no subject
other than tim, of course. wonderful tim — good tim, whose only shortcoming is that he isn't embry. )
My hands are never too full for him.
( but, life does go on, regardless. you move on. you marry a woman. you bury her when she dies. you let embry go, because it's what he wants. you hold a little part of him, forevermore, entirely for yourself, and make it a secret, because you're selfish, and because you can't let go of something that's burrowed its way into you.
maybe you do give it someone else, though. if it seems like he might make embry happy. if embry being happy is something he's even capable of. )
He wouldn't let me fuck him before then. He made me wait. I think he thought he was taking care of me, because I was out of my mind with worry about it. And I was angry. So angry, I couldn't see straight, I couldn't sit still. Embry ran into the line of fire like some maniac, laughing, firing off his rounds. He got full of holes. I had to carry him out on my back, evading enemy fire. I wanted to kill him. I thought I might.
Instead, I bent him over the burlap sacks of dead Carpathian separatists and fucked him like I was mad at him, because I was. I wasn't nice about it. I made him come all over himself, still bleeding, high off his ass on morphine. Neither of us were happy after one round. Know what you're getting into.
no subject
at first he thinks this is going to be some sort of pissing contest - ash feeling guilty for everything with tim and trying to make it right with embry by picking up the pieces no one noticed until now, because hawk still doesn't fully know what to look for in the chic enigma wrapped in tom ford and a shield of breezy wit.
or is this supposed to make him open up about tim - spill all the secrets like the hazy way he clings to mornings when he's allowed, the beauty mark right under his chin that's practically a landing beacon for his lips and earns the most delightful giggles because tim is ticklish, or the way he begs as fervently for release as he does supplicated in prayer - a mantra of please and oh god and more more more -
hawk doesn't realize how hard he's squeezing his phone until he realizes there's not just an undercurrent of rage heating his skin, it's something else entirely.]
Oh, I'll bet he bucked like it was a goddamn rodeo at first.
How many did you go? I just want to get a clear picture here.
[what the fuck is this.]
no subject
what would it be like, to actually live in that world embry gave him for a day, where embry exists wholly as his, where the lines don't blur, where he's exactly as dedicated to ash as ash is to him. instead, his cock is getting hard thinking about embry in the mud, full of holes, begging to ash to stop, to keep going, to stop. talking to hawkins fucking fuller of all people, a man ash would otherwise be tempted to work out some of his embry-based issues on, if either of them were the type to fold instead of staying stubbornly set. )
Twice, that first night.
( the curiosity of wanting to know what hawk and embry get up to is it's own sisyphean curse — he doesn't want to know, but he also wants to torture himself on the knowledge, of thinking of them together, of embry wanting someone else. he's jealous, thoroughly, through the marrow of his bones, through every blood cell, every fiber of himself. he's also hard, and it's not the worst thing he's ever gotten hard about. )
I made him kiss my boots. Before then. ( ash thinks of an email he sent a lifetime ago. i don't have to be that kind of man, if that's not what you want. i'll be any kind of man for you. it still feels true. ) On his knees, sucking the hard laces of my Army-issued pair, fresh out of the box. Good discipline for a soldier out of line.
( not one american politics would approve of, so he's told. still, it was pretty effective for him. )
He was very out of line that night. He wanted punishment. Deserved it. Begged for it, even. I was happy to oblige. Do you need some inspiration?
( it's not the shitty are you so uncreative that you need me to dominate him for you? and more the desperate, almost hopeful do you want to know what i'd do to him, if i could? do you want to know what he likes? do you want to touch something so precious to me? )