flightforfreedom | Shameless Shipping Post

Brendan had a smartass remark at the ready - didn't he always - but it died on his tongue when Poe hugged him. For a second he tried to keep it together, keep some tough guy veneer going, but he was so tired, and Poe was so soft that it was easier to bury his nose in Poe's hair and rest against him for a moment. He was seventeen; that seemed too old to be this tired of life and have this many people he knew gone forever. After a moment, his arms slipped around Poe's waist in return.

"Manabu would be horrified by us drinking to him," he half-laughed, voice dangerously close to cracking. "He hated that I drank and he'd be hilariously upset if he knew you were enabling it." It should be funny. Under the circumstances, he found himself gripping the fabric of Poe's jacket a little too tightly, as if trying to hold on and avoid reality entirely.

He didn't pull back, arms solid around Brendan as long as he needed it. A part of his brain noted how much warmer Brendan was - just from being inside so long. But it was a nice feeling.

Even if hearing the grief in Brendan's voice wasn't.

"Well, maybe if I do it enough he'll appear just to give me a lecture and I'll be the saviour of the Galaxy." He murmured it, half because he was close enough that he didn't have to raise his voice and half because he was probably crushing his lungs a bit.

"I know I wouldn't be able to stop you, so. Better to have someone to join you."

He shut his eyes for a moment. Poe felt completely different than Manabu and he was profoundly relieved by that fact; he wasn't sure he could handle this kind of contact if it had been a reminder of what used to be. But there was still genuine care and compassion going on, which he felt unworthy of and craved in equal measures.

Denying that he was going to drink would've been an exercise in futility. Instead, he sighed, "It didn't used to matter if I drank or not. Nobody was around to notice. I really have cut back since I realized it was hurtin' people here, I have, it's just... it's not easy, sometimes, trying to move on. I miss him, Poe. I miss him so much."

Oh, shit, now he really was getting teary eyed; he drew away to take his glasses off and swipe at his eyes, quietly furious with himself. He used to be so much tougher than this. Four or five dead people he loved ago he rarely cried at all. Now he barely needed a few words to get it going. "I need a fucking drink," he muttered despondently.

"I know." He did know. He could practically feel the grief coming off Brendan in waves, and as much as he wanted to be able to extinguish it... He knew that Brendan needed to feel it. Needed to process it.

Poe just wanted to make sure he didn't hurt himself in the process.

When Brendan backed away, Poe reached out to gently brush some of those ridiculous bangs from Brendan's forehead, only to have them immediately fall back into place. He gave a sad smile. "I've got it. Go and flop on the couch and put something stupid on the tv."

"Don't try an' fix my hair, that's always a losing battle," he groused, mostly to have an excuse to make a weak joke. He swallowed, not wholly comfortable with how vulnerable he was being, and tried to straighten up. "I'm gonna put Scarlet in her enclosure so she doesn't try to sneak off while we're distracted."

And if that so happened to be a good cover for giving him a few moments to pull himself together, well, it was a coincidence. He put Scarlet away (she licked at him soothingly, forever a loyal quoll daughter) and turned the TV on, flipping through channels with various grimaces. TV in this world was too soft, too gentle, for his liking. He found a Sharknado 2 rerun and, deciding that qualified as tremendously stupid, sprawled out on one half of the couch, looking faintly miserable and distinctly exhausted.

"Got it." He took the alcohol into the kitchen, and ended up deciding on beer instead of anything harder. They'd probably get to that later, but - he was hoping that he might be able to get Brendan to pass out, or something, before they got to that. He saw the cake - icing near by - and had the sudden urge to try to finish it for Brendan.

Shouldn't take too long, and it'd be a nice gesture, right?

Two minutes later, he had realised that he was very wrong, there was a melted patch of icing on the cake, and a fleck of icing on Poe's cheek that he didn't even notice.

Time to flee the scene of the crime.

He came back to the couch, holding out the beer - (he'd poured it into glasses because why not) - before flopping onto the couch beside him. He had the automatic tendency to sit too close, not out of any kind of thought, but because he often ended up cuddling with Finn or Bodhi while watching a movie, so the physical contact of his knee pressing against Brendan's thigh was just natural.

"So, maybe leave the cake for a little while."

Brendan knew the classic 'I did nothing face' well from having pulled it multiple times in his life. Glancing over at Poe's too-casual body language, he was torn between groaning and chuckling.

"You tried to ice it, didn't you?" he didn't even sound mad, just sort of resigned to his friends having next to no knowledge of how baked goods worked. Apparently people didn't bake in space, judging off of Poe - which was an unfairly small sample size to base his judgment off of, but was currently the only space-dweller he had to use as an example. "Well, at least now if I cry it'll be in memory of the cake. RIP, chocolate raspberry bunt cake, your death was both tragic and avoidable."

Poe was even worst than most, but at least he gave a very apologetic look about it.

"I figured, how hard could it be? It's a cake, you put icing on it. I didn't realise it was secretly like trying to do the Kessel run on half a bottle of rhodian beer." He shifted even closer, his side pressing up against Brendan's as he got comfortable.

"Sorry, cake. We barely knew ye."

Brendan sighed, but the warm weight of Poe's body next to his was innately calming, and he found himself leaning against Poe in return, sipping at his beer to attempt moderated drinking for once. Something about Poe made it hard to seriously be annoyed with him, so he let the cake go as a lost cause.

"I'll just guilt you into buying me a new one later." He shrugged, shifting to get more comfortable on the couch. "For now, we have the Sharknado Trilogy and decent beer. That's... more than I usually have. Thanks, Poe."

Poe took a drink, before turning his head to give Brendan a sympathetic smile.

"Anytime. I mean it. You need me, just call and I'll be here as fast as I can."

He sank into the touch, eyes turning to the movie and he - didn't understand anything of what was happening. But he didn't really care. He just nudged Brendan with the side of his knee every once in a while to remind him that he was there.

Brendan wasn't tired, but that was a good excuse to get progressively further into his beer and lean more against Poe. Poe was soft-spoken and careful with his words, very different from Manabu. Different was good. He couldn't deal with more reminders of what once had been right now, even though some part of him wanted Poe to curl up against him the way that Manabu had during movies like this.

He needed affection and it needed, after what happened back home and then here, to be safe, stable, reliable. Poe was those things when it came to helping people out. He might not haven been the closest friend Brendan had, but there was a kindness in his countenance that suggested he would have listened if Brendan opened up, if Brendan needed someone to hear him out. It was easy to relax and end up pressed against Poe, as if in a daze, a little sleepy, a little warm, and before he knew it he had his arms around Poe like he was trying to cuddle the man into being Manabu.

I'm a terrible person, Brendan thought, and then made no move whatsoever to move away. But if he doesn't mind then I don't.

The only indication that Poe even noticed what Brendan was doing was when he stilled, slightly - a pause as he assessed the situation.

But he didn't pull away.

Physical affection was natural for him, and as a grief response? A lot more healthy than Brendan drinking and crying alone over cake for his birthday. Touch was grounding, and Brendan seemed like he needed it.

So there was absolutely no personal investment in how Poe shifted deeper into Brendan's arms, his hand coming up to rest on Brendan's wrist where it wrapped around him.

Pure altruism.

Right?

For a few minutes, or more accurately a dozen, Brendan didn't move, didn't disrupt the content, settled-down feeling that came from every point of contact he had with Poe. He just shut his eyes and breathed it in. Poe was a better person than Brendan deserved to be friends with. It had been a very long time since Brendan got to properly hold onto someone and frankly he was running on fumes emotionally, these days.

Maybe that was his excuse for how, when his eyes opened, he found himself staring at Poe's lips. Manabu had never been big on kissing or making out. It had been centuries, in teenager terms, since Brendan had gotten to properly make out with someone, and Poe was so very not Manabu it wouldn't have the immediate guilt-inducing response somebody else might. Oh, he'd looked at the natives, thought about just banging someone from his school, but they didn't care, not the way Poe did; they wanted to brag about being with an imPort, any imPort, Brendan just happened to be there. Things were different with Poe, and what he needed now was someone who cared beyond him being a 'sexy imPort' who was, for very limited definitions of the word, famous.

He kissed Poe impulsively, hated himself immediately, and so he kissed Poe harder as if that could sear the guilt away from him, burn it off and into ashes, so he could just feel normal for a moment.

Somehow he didn't expect the kiss.

He opened to it automatically, pure instinct rather than anything else. He'd slept with enough friends not to be too thrown by it - platonic affection could sometimes turn very not-platonic when surrounded by pilots hyped up on adrenaline and grief.

The guilt hit him approximately 1.5 seconds later, when he thought about who the grief was for. A name, rising to his lips but not leaving them, because the word aloud would just leave a bigger hole.

His hand on Brendan's wrist tightened, and had he been a stronger man would have probably pushed it away. Grief was grief but this was also a seventeen year old kid that he had sworn to himself he was going to protect, to make sure that he was safe while Manabu couldn't.

So instead of the word Sunset leaving his lips, all that came out was a whispered, half aborted, "Brendan--" but it was mostly smothered in a hard kiss that Poe was pressing deeper by the second.

He wasn't even tipsy enough to use that excuse on himself.

At least Poe processed alcohol properly. With Brendan's faint but real healing powers here, he couldn't feign being intoxicated in the least. He was painfully, incredibly sober and he hated what he was doing but he needed the way kissing Poe blew every thought out of his head so he didn't feel so raw and jittery, so completely hollowed-out.

He kissed his name off Poe's lips because he needed a moment to think up words to explain himself that didn't make him sound like he was using his friend, even though he could fully admit to himself he was, to at least some degree. He slipped the hand Poe didn't have a grip on into Poe's hair and shut his eyes. Poe's hair was a mess, the texture oddly smooth, a perfect sensory distraction from the chaos that was his life.

Whatever he had intended to say, all he ended up doing was licking and nipping at Poe's lower lip before murmuring, "You can stop me if you want. But, for reference, we're not going to jail, y'know. I'm legal in this state." It was probably best to inform the guy from a literal different planet that consent laws were different here, before Poe mistakenly thought of himself as a creeper picking on a child or something.

It had been an eternity since Brendan felt like a kid.

Besides, people needed to do a lot more than make out before they threw anybody behind bars, at least as far as Brendan knew. If he could ignore how long it had been since he'd been with someone that way, if Poe said stop, if Poe pushed him away, this wouldn't go any further than a few desperate kisses, and that was... probably not ethical, probably still a jackass move, but legally sound. If it went further, they were still legally sound, but that was in the future and the future was too distant and unpredictable to give more than a passing thought before he shifted to half-straddle Poe's hips, to get a better angle to get his tongue into Poe's mouth.

"Oh good," Poe said, unable to stop a weary sort of sarcasm mumbling from his lips. "I wasn't really worried about that before--"

And he wasn't really worried about it now.

He just remembered how fucking stupid he could be, at seventeen. Brendan was older at 17 than Poe had been at 25, but that didn't mean he wasn't capable of some really, really stupid decisions.

He should push him off. Laugh it off. Ruffle his hair.

Not slide a hand onto Brendan's hips and pull him closer into his lap, or grasp another hand around the back of his neck, fingers slipping through a mess of curls. Not let his lips part, inviting Brendan's tongue, a low groan rumbling at the back of his throat.

He definitely shouldn't be feeling the way his blood is quickening, his body responding despite whatever conflicted feelings his mind through at him.

But in the end, there was only one real answer, and when he stole a breath, he gave it.

"... Anything you need, Brendan." He leaned in to take another kiss, murmuring against his lips. "I've got you."

"I've broken that law before," he shrugged, because at the time it had made sense. At the time it had all seemed like a good idea. This, on the other hand, seemed like a bad idea already, from the first moment. People who cared about each other shouldn't hook up like this. There was no way this could end well.

But he wanted this, he loved it, and he felt incredibly overheated when his brain processed the friction of being in Poe's lap; he shifted to try to find a comfortable place to settle and stopped breathing for a moment when Poe messed with his hair. Poe was surprisingly gentle for someone making a terrible decision. Thankfully he wasn't Manabu-level gentle or Brendan wouldn't have been able to keep going.

He wasn't sure what he wanted. He kissed Poe back intently, trying to ignore what it was doing to him and failing because the word 'anything' was a lit match to the gasoline of a teenage imagination. What didn't he want, if it was with somebody he trusted not to hurt him? A wellspring of ideas flashed through his head and they all involved Poe staying the night and not leaving in the morning, they involved not being alone night, involved-

"Bed," he murmured quietly, breathlessly, "I can't-"

Couches, Poe might recall from the haze of Brendan's shared memories, were his and Manabu's thing.

"You can still stop if you want, I just need to not do whatever we're doing here," Brendan finished weakly, grip on Poe tightening. "Please."

"Bed." He said it with a heavy confirmation, even though Brendan shifting in his lap was distracting him.

The words got to him, though. He didn't know how far Brendan and Manabu had ever gotten. Neither of them had sounded like the relationship was particularly physical, which - while Poe didn't really understand that on an emotional level - he could at least think about on an intellectual one.

But Brendan needed a distraction, not a reminder. He could do that.

Terrible decisions weren't as terrible when you convinced yourself it was 100% to help another person.

So he thought about Manabu and thought about how Manabu would touch Brendan, and the guilt slid through his chest like a hot knife through butter, right to his heart. He was helping. He was helping.

He was gripping hard around Brendan's back and then pushing them both upright off the couch, taking a hard, deep, claiming kiss in exactly the opposite way he imagined Manabu would.

He liked being handled roughly, so long as it was somebody he trusted not to hurt him. He trusted Poe. He wanted harder kisses, wanted bites, wanted a thousand things he would be ashamed to admit to come morning, but at the moment that kind of claiming kiss took away his ability to do anything other than moan into Poe's touch, which was so much more bold and decisive and already more than anything he'd ever done with Manabu.

Brendan didn't even wait for another greenlight, he yanked Poe by the shirt towards the bedroom, cheeks flushed already, breath shaky, taking the opportunity when he opened the bedroom door to shuck off his jacket. He wasn't anything spectacular to look at, but Poe was, so he focused on Poe, on how good Poe looked, how incredibly dark and perfect his eyes were and how kissable his lips were, and the next thing he knew he had his arms around Poe's waist again, tugging him close to press their bodies together. It was probably not a great indicator of Brendan's mindset that he'd gone from zero to have the start of a hard-on and he'd regret that too, later, but right now he just opened his mouth, silently begging Poe to kiss him senseless. He'd always been in charge with Manabu. He wanted the opposite from Poe.

He trusted Poe not to use the opportunity to break his heart or push him into something he didn't want. If things had gone differently, he could have loved Poe. If things had gone differently, they'd be making love right now instead of making great strides towards what could only be called a pity fuck.

This wasn't even particularly strange, all this considered. At least on a physical level. He'd had enough casual encounters that his body knew the drill and responded before his mind even caught up. His jacket was falling to the floor and he barely even noticed, pressing in Brendan and pushing him back toward the bed at the same time.

It didn't help that he found Brendan stupidly attractive. He wouldn't be able to put a pin in it, if asked, but something about the mess of curls that was always in his eyes, the slightly gangly limbs. Ten years ago, he would have probably hit on Brendan even while he was with Manabu, not particularly concerned about hurting any feelings.

And yet now, here, his trousers beginning to feel too tight as he ground himself against Brendan's body. He did care. Fuck, he cared so much, even know Manabu seemed like he was gone forever. He shouldn't feel guilty, he tried to tell himself. He wasn't trying to be Manabu. Wasn't even pretending to be. Brendan's hunger was fuel for his own, piling the hem of Brendan's shirt up, hands sliding over the skin beneath.

"Anything you want," he reiterated in a low voice - deeper than usual - the husky tones of lust slipping in.

"I can make you forget the rest of the damn universe, if that's what you want."

He'd have to be blind not to notice how attractive Poe was. At the time, when he'd met him, he had Manabu on the brain and so barely made note of it. Now he was keenly aware of exactly how unfairly attractive Poe was, and his body got the memo before his mind did, pulling soft, gasping sounds out of him when Poe ground against him. He wasn't sure which of them was harder. Somehow sex always seemed heightened when it was with someone who cared - something he didn't get to test out with Manabu, which he now regretted constantly.

Brendan's brain shut down for a second when Poe's hands slid over his bare skin. It was so good to have someone quiet all the noise in his head, all the mental torment he couldn't shut off. He shuddered against Poe, swallowing and nodding at the suggestion. God, yes, take the entire world out of the equation, blow every thought from his head, make him feel something, anything at all.

He kissed Poe again in a fog of want and need and murmured, "I want you to fuck me." It went unspoken that Manabu was a bottom. Brendan couldn't take being on top and having any thoughts of him mid-sex, that might really drive him over the edge into the kind of brokenness that resulted in an intervention or testing out if the Porter really could revive the dead. He took one of Poe's hands and brought it to his nipple, ready to let Poe take the lead and ruin him for other men. "'m clean, you don't need a condom, just... please, Poe." His shoulders slumped, and he rested his forehead against Poe's shoulder weakly. "Please."

Brendan basically melted when Poe touched him, the soft sounds doing nothing but fuelling his conviction. Later he might double think what he was doing, but Poe was, at heart, a man of action before thought. Flying was instinct. You had less than a split second to make a decision, or you ended up dead. Earth had been driving him crazy by having him have to constantly think about consequences before he did things, which explained why he wasn't that good at it.

Like now.

Like how Brendan's words went straight to his cock, despite himself, and he groaned, fingers pinching as they were dragged upwards, his other hand grasping hard into the hint of bare flesh at Brendan's hip. If he was working on anything other than instinct, he would try to put the breaks on, say something about how they just just take it easy, he wasn't going anywhere.

But he's pretty sure Manabu would put the breaks on, too.

"You know we have nanites, right," he said instead, his head turning to nip at Brendan's ear. We don't need condoms. We're basically invincible. Except, of course, for the will of the Porter. He was too short to just pick Brendan up from where he was, so he just pressed him back toward the bed. The one thought that did occur was a vague sense of irony - he'd done this before. Recently. The other way around, of course - he'd been so upset that he'd begged Melkor to fuck him until he couldn't remember his name.

The least he could do was pass it forward.

"So yeah, I'm going to fuck you, Brendan," he said as the back of Brendan's knees hit the bed, his voice far deeper and far huskier than it had been even ten minutes ago. He pushed him backward and followed him down, pressing a hard, driving kiss against Brendan's mouth, tongue diving deep as if in warning for what was coming later. His other hand had moved up Brendan's chest, fingers grasping for the other nipple before he twisted them both, groaning into Brendan's mouth. "I'm going to take you so hard that you won't walk straight for a week--"

Any smart reply, or any at all, that he might have had in response to Poe's quip immediately died a swift death when Poe pinched at his nipple. Brendan swore in his increasingly disused Spanish out of some automatic instinct, but it was a good kind of swearing, the kind he never got a chance to do around Manabu. He blinked, dazed, falling onto the bed and swallowing. Brendan steadfastly refused to think about how long it had been since he was with another guy. Depressingly long, long enough to make him an incredibly easy lay, but he'd lived a long time without a sense of shame and didn't intend to develop one now, not with Poe's hands driving him crazy, making him dizzy with anticipation. He wanted those fingers in him and he wanted more of that sharp pleasure that bordered on pain in his chest and he wanted everything else Poe was willing to give, anything, just to blot it all out.

He was almost painfully hard as he kissed back, frantically, enthusiastically, as if he needed to reassure Poe this was a good idea. He shuddered at how Poe used his tongue, his vivid imagination supplying him with a slew of dirty mental images; he pressed his hips upwards against Poe's, letting out a sound that was somewhere between a shudder and a moan at the contact. He wasn't normally this vocal in bed right away - that usually came later - but Poe's touches were rapid-fire sensations that destroyed his already shitty concept of a filter. It was just the right side of overwhelming and he needed more, immediately.

"Sounds like a start," he replied, voice low and slightly snarky, still trying to grind against him impatiently. "If I don't scream at some point, though, you're not doing it right."

Edited (Punctuation fail.) 2017-11-30 15:42 (UTC)

"Oh, is that the bar I'm shooting for?" Hello snark, meet sass, even though the sass is somewhat tempered by the fact that he was shifting his weight, now, leaning onto one side as his lips left Brendan's and went for his throat instead, teeth and lips sucking hard enough at his flesh to leave a mark. Now that he's figured out just how much Brendan liked attention to his nipples, he was trailing bites towards there.

His hips had locked into place between Brendan's legs, though, grinding roughly against him, his now achingly hard cock dragging against Brendan's, the fabric between giving a coarse, shuddering friction to it. Just so that Brendan was fully aware of where this was heading, despite most of Poe's attention now being on the man's collarbone, where his mouth was leaving another dark mark. His fingers were still working at Brendan's nipples, twisting almost in time to the hard rutting of his hips.

"It's a start," he shot back, snarky to the last, and then he promptly stopped making noises that sounded like words as Poe bit him. He made a noise that was somewhere inbetween a gasp and Poe's name, fingers digging into Poe's back and gripping for leverage. He was probably going to leave a mark of his own, but Poe didn't seem to mind, given he went ahead and hit Brendan's every last button anyway.

No one had ever accused Brendan of being patient. He couldn't help grinding against Poe in return, breathing now audible and strained as Poe's fingers worked at him. With anyone else it might have been too much, under any other circumstances, but right now it was all exactly what he needed. He was unbearably hard and the friction was just enough to make his back arch slightly, pushing his hips upward. The sound he made when Poe bit down over his collarbone was an outright whimper, and he didn't care enough to even try to censor it. Everything was good enough to make it not matter. All he needed now was for Poe to keep it up.

"So good," he murmured, back arching again, struggling to move himself in time to Poe's thrusts to get the maximum amount of sensation. "I owe you a blowjob after this, or anything, whatever you need, just don't - don't stop, please-" Brendan cringed slightly, aware he was begging, which he already hated himself for, and shut his eyes to avoid having to look at Poe's face for a moment.

He wouldn't have been embarrassed with Manabu. Shit. He did not want that thought in his head right now. Damnit.

Shameless Shipping Post

Hugs: the one true kink if ever there was one.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject