Chapter Text
James was yammering on about the Graven-Yang deal again. Francis sighed and pushed the salad around his plate. His kingdom for an end to all working lunches.
“And then the old bugger challenged me to a duel with a boot dagger! Can you imagine? I swear, the man was born in 1850.”
Laughs all around. Francis glanced up to see Ned grinning at James like a buffoon, Mr. Franklin chewing serenely at the head of the table like some sort of indulgent uncle. Did no one else get bloody tired of listening to the same rota of five stories from this gasbag? Each one featuring a James Fitzjames more charismatic, more humorous, more dashing than any other risk assessment analyst in the history of man. Francis had never met such a James. He had never even been on one of Expeditions Unlimited’s voyages. Christ, but sometimes Francis wanted nothing more than to knock him down a peg or three. Possibly with Francis’s prick in his prissy little arse.
“Tell us about Birdshit Island, why don’t you James?”
James’s attentions landed on him, mirth dissolving like a veil before his devastation.
A palpable hit, Francis thought smugly.
The meeting concluded and Francis returned to his office. He managed to contain the roll of his eyes until he was safely ensconced by himself.
Any prolonged contact with James got Francis all het up. He wanted to take his laptop out and open it to the last page he’d been poring over the night before: a profile on Fetlife. Usually a futile endeavor, even if it occasionally resulted in a tolerable one-nighter, but last night he’d come across someone very promising indeed. Pun absolutely intended. Francis wanted to get back to it, wanted the easy, sexy conversation, wanted to lose himself in another person and obliterate all thoughts of James Fitzjames.
He couldn’t think on it though. Work was work, and Francis didn’t want his cock involved at all.
When he opened his email, he had several from Mr. Franklin about the same things discussed in the meeting, a meme from Silna, which he chuckled at and sent to J.C., a few expense reports for review, a note from accounting asking him about a discrepancy, and Tom Blanky’s ice report from the Arctic, no doubt peppered with his color commentary. Francis opened it and settled into his office chair as if the email were some great comforting novel. He wished he had some tea.
The Arctic, it seemed, had some ice.
Francis was composing his reply to John Hartnell in accounting when there came a knock at his office door. The walls being glass, he looked up and saw James Fitzjames standing in the hall with a file in hand. All of this would be much easier if he didn’t look so damnably delectable in those office clothes. At what point was someone merely showing off? Francis scowled, definitely at James and not at himself. James made a stupid face and waved the file in greeting when he saw Francis looking at him. Francis sighed and gestured for him to come in.
“How can I help you, James?” he said.
“I’m running the projections for next year.”
“Obviously.”
“You got Blanky’s ice report?”
“James, you know I did.”
James leveled him a flat-mouthed look of consternation.
“Work with me here, Francis,” he said.
“Get to your point and I will!”
“The 2016 Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Islands voyage,” he said. “You took the magnetic readings?”
“James!” Francis said, impatient. “You know I bloody well did!”
James opened the file and laid it on his desk. He had big hands with long, uncalloused fingers, and one of them jabbed at a cluster of bullet points in the center of the page.
“Can you double check this?” he said. “It seems off to me.”
Francis tamped down on another sigh and peered at the readings. The numbers did seem…wonky. He pushed the file to the side and swiveled in his chair to face his computer. He pulled up his file on the voyage in question, including the personal notes that didn’t make it into the official account.
As he tapped away at his computer, James folded himself into a seated position on the edge of his desk instead of sitting in a chair like a normal fucking human being. His shoulders were straight and broad, and the modest musculature of his arms strained the fabric of his crisp dress shirt when he crossed his arms over his chest. The firm length of his thigh likewise filled out his trousers. Everything was bloody slim-cut lately and it drove Francis mad.
The digital copy of the file contained the same errors, and Francis grunted his frustration. James leaned over and looked at his monitor. Francis could smell his shampoo—lilac or thistle or some such froofy thing. He ground his teeth together.
“I’ll have to check my journal,” he said.
James craned himself around to fix Francis with a questioning look.
“Hand-written?” he said. “I don’t suppose you have it here.”
“It’s just in my book case,” Francis said, jerking his head toward the case in question. “Hold on.”
He stood and walked over to it, highly aware of James trailing a little too closely behind him. Gooseflesh rose up on the back of his neck. He shot James a scowl. James half smiled and held his hands up, hanging back.
Francis turned to his book shelves. The top shelf had all his favorite navigation texts and an atlas or three. The rest contained all his voyage journals from the past thirteen years—his entire tenure with Expeditions Unlimited. He found the journal in question and began flipping through.
Christ, his handwriting. He’d been drunk nearly all the time. It was a miracle he hadn’t driven the ship into an iceberg. He shook his head and reminded himself to thank Ned again, and Tom and Silna and Harry, too, for getting them all out alive. For getting him through it when the time came.
“Here,” he said gruffly, thrusting the open journal at James. “Those sevens are ones, and the nines sevens.”
James’s fingers brushed his when he took the journal from him. Francis’s very stupid prick twitched. He took a step back and faced out his window, twisting his hands behind his back. London, congested with building and cars. He could practically feel the smog. Had he once wanted to be here so badly that he left his lush green home, barely to return once a decade?
He glanced at James out of the corner of his eye, the way he chewed his lip, the strong masculine lines of him. Heat gathered in Francis’s belly and he tore his gaze away, annoyed.
Yes. Yes, he’d had to leave Banbridge.
“Thank you, Francis,” James said after a while. “This helps immensely. Jesus, why no one caught this before...”
“The fault is mine,” Francis said, short. “My handwriting is not even legible to me, it turns out.”
James smiled and held the journal up.
“Can I borrow this? I promise I’ll only look at the data and not at any deep personal thoughts.”
Francis snorted.
“As if you could read any of them anyway.”
“Ta, Francis,” James said. “I’ll get it back to you straight away.”
Francis waved him away, and James left his office with blessed alacrity. Francis stood at the window for a long time after.
Back at home, Francis dropped trou as soon as he was through the door. He kicked his trousers and his socks into the hamper, and his button-down followed. He ordered Vietnamese delivery, pulled out his laptop, and sank onto the couch.
Hastily he opened up his computer. It was still open to Fetlife, and the person with whom he’d been corresponding. The profile picture featured an arse held open for his perusal with elegant hands on each cheek, full bollocks tantalizingly rounded and be-furred, and a soft prick leaking from a metal chastity device. The hole at the heart of the photo was a tiny wink, framed by a smattering of dark hair. Francis’s heart flopped about like a choking fish and he felt his face flame.
Christ, you’re forty-nine years old, he thought. Get a bloody grip.
The profile belonged to someone named AmorPhous. Francis’s handle was FrankieSaysHoldStill, but no one seemed to get the reference. Most of the people on the site were younger than he, and thought he was simply declaring his Dom sensibilities, which were likely disappointing in someone looking for that sort of thing. Francis—he simply wanted to savor. To push his way inside. To hold another body in his power and limn any pain with tenderness.
The conversation started last night, when AmorPhous sent him a message that said only “RELAX!” with three crying-laughing emojis. Francis was surprised to find a laugh clapping out of him when he read it. AmorPhous was listed as GQ/NB in his 30s with he/him/his pronouns. There were several photos of objects of various size and origin entering him, only one of his penis free of its cage and looking utterly delectable, and none of his face. While Francis had become preoccupied with the others and even wanked to a staggering completion to them last night, he was disappointed that he couldn’t put a face to it all. He could not, however, fault AmorPhous—he had been too nervy to put his own fearsome mien on this site, as well. You never knew who could be lurking.
“Ha!” he had responded. “Aren’t you a little young for all that?”
“No one’s too young to have such bad taste, darling,” AmorPhous had said, and Francis laughed again.
“I like that hairbrush in your pretty arse,” he wrote.
“Why thank you.” Blushing emoji. “Trying to make room for a monster cock like yours.”
Francis had hardened instantly.
AmorPhous listed his interests as bottoming, cumming while being fucked (Francis had gotten the involuntary twitch of his eye upon seeing that spelling under control since joining the site—an act of desperate self-preservation), cumming untouched, chastity play, cockwarming, size queen, rimming, anal, anal play, anal fingering, object insertion, big dicks, prostate milking, spanking, fisting, hair pulling, toys, double penetration, group sex, natural body hair, pregnancy play. He did not list BDSM, domination or submission, or rope bondage, which was curious on this site but simpatico with Francis’s own preferences. He had a few things listed under Hard No: choking, diapers, age play, humiliation, bloodplay, scat, tickling.
Francis’s profile, he knew, left something to be desired. He listed only a few details—Sober bi male, 45, dad bod—and a handful of interests. Anal, anal play, topping, tit sucking, oral—giving, oral—receiving, dirty talk. There had been too many to choose from and he was overwhelmed when he first joined. Better to keep it simple, he thought.
For his photos he had only three, all of his hard prick with its glistening slit. In one of the photos, he held a Fanta can alongside his cock—he was just as thick and nearly twice as long. He got a lot of attention for that one.
He and AmorPhous got on like a house on fire all evening. Francis found himself as amused as he was aroused. He wanked to a picture of AmorPhous in a gauzy lace skirt and torn tights, an ornate bed post finial protruding from his arsehole. Francis came when AmorPhous said, “I want you to pump buckets of come into me, make me taste it in the back of my throat.”
Afterward he had stayed up too late talking with him, and when he signed off to go to bed at last, there was a vast emptiness he was hard-pressed not to feel encroaching.
By light of day, Francis was embarrassed by his enthusiasm, but now his fingers itched to type out a message.
Had a great time last night.
Urgh.
Thought about you and your delicious arse all day, especially when I had to disassociate at an unbearable work lunch.
Too personal, too complainy.
I want to eat your arse til you come.
Was he being too eager?
He was saved from the question by a new message from AmorPhous popping up.
“Couldn’t stop thinking of what your prick might feel like inside me today. Almost had to have a wank at work.”
Francis’s heart went racing again.
“God, why didn’t you?” he wrote back.
“Nothing handy seemed to stack up.” Sad face emoji.
“Don’t suppose you have a convenient courgette lying about,” Francis wrote.
“Ohhh, naughty. I would have to go to the shops though, and if I’m going to go out…”
Francis’s cock was making its presence known, twitching out the opening in his smalls. He licked his suddenly dry lips, hands poised over the keyboard.
“I don’t have flatmates,” he wrote finally.
“Oooh a big prick and a big paycheck,” AmorPhous wrote. “Some boys have all the luck.”
“I need to eat and take care of some things. Want to say 9?”
There was a long silence, and mortification suffused him. He felt it spill hot down his head and neck and spread across his chest as the minutes ticked on.
“No pressure,” Francis wrote. “It’s silly, just a bit of fun. Think nothing of it.”
“It’s not,” AmorPhous replied in an instant. “What are we doing if it doesn’t lead to this.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Francis wrote. “Fantasy can stay fantasy.”
“Frankie Frankie Frankie.”
A smile touched Francis’s lips. No one but his sisters ever called him Frankie anymore.
“AmorPhous,” he wrote.
There was another long pause. Francis bounced his knee and sucked down a bottle of water. He wanted to pace but couldn’t tear himself from the screen.
Finally, a message popped up.
“We can sit alone in our flats rubbing ourselves raw for the next few weeks, building up increasingly fantastical ideas about each other until we’re inevitably disappointed when we do everything right and proper: meet in some well-lit public place, exchange pleasantries and small talk over coffee as if we haven’t already seen each other’s genitals, and then shake hands somberly over signed consent forms before you drive that great big prick into my eagerly PrEPped arse. Or, I can come round to yours at 9, and we can skip the torture.”
Francis gave him the address.
The knock came at precisely 9pm. Francis ran a hand through his hair and scratched down his beard as he tried to stem the racing of his heart. He shook himself and took a deep breath before opening the door.
It was James Fitzjames. In a blue pleated skirt with lace trim and a leather motorcycle jacket. Francis’s heart fell into the bowl of his belly as James’s face, a moment ago bright and eager, dissolved into shock and horror.
“Fuck,” Francis said.
James twisted up the fabric of his skirt even as he twisted up his mouth.
“Well, this is a turn up,” he said.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“I’ll go.”
“Fucking right you will.”
James’s face pinched.
“Look Francis,” he said, straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders as he looked down that intolerable patrician nose at him. “No one at work knows I’m non-binary and I would appreciate if you would keep it to yourself.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” Francis snapped. “Who would I bloody tell?”
“I’m sure you and Tom and J.C. could have a good laugh about it.”
“You’re saying I would out you for a lark with my mates?” Francis heard his voice go shrill and loud. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
“Keep your voice down!”
“You come to my flat and insult me to my face!”
“Well I hardly knew it was your flat, now did I?”
“You would never have come!”
“You’ve got that right!”
“Right, because I’m such a fucking troll,” Francis sneered.
“Christ, that’s not—” James threw his hands up. “You’re a joyless arse, is what you are, Francis!”
They were both of them panting now, scowling at each other in the door jamb. James ground his teeth together and stepped back.
“Let’s forget all this,” he said. “And when we see each other at work we’ll each pretend the other is invisible, how does that sound?”
“That would be nice for you, wouldn’t it?” Francis said, dropping his voice to a sibilant whisper. “Then you could forget whose hideous troll cock you’ve been gagging after.” He stepped back into his flat, poised to shut the door. “See you tomorrow, Fitzjames.”
Francis swung the door shut with too much verve. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into the wood. When he looked out the peephole a few moments later, James was gone.
He avoided his computer for the rest of the night.