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“Are you truly sorry for this sin?” Father Murray asks, his voice muffled slightly through the mesh window of the confessional.
Tim pauses, thinks it over. They had arrived back in D. C. late last night. Hawk had kissed him in the shadowy front seat of his car and it had felt like a kiss goodbye, too many secrets spilled between them when they had an inch of freedom and now they were back to how it was before. Tim hadn’t slept, lain awake in his empty bed thinking the weekend over and over -- the molten mortification of letting liquor get the better of him, the hot sting of Hawk’s hand on his cheek, the pierce of his words as they argued. It was torture, the way he remembered the fierce look on Hawk’s face, the searing feel of his teeth against Tim’s bruised lip, how he still ached from how rough they had fucked.
He had forced himself into work as soon as the sun had come up to make up for slipping out early on Friday but he needn’t have bothered, the office in chaos due to the engagement and Tim was able to slip away again before lunch to St Joe’s for morning confession.
“Son,” Fr Murray says slowly. Tim clenches his fingers together, focuses on the rub of his knuckles. It’s not entirely pleasant but it’s easier to ground himself on that than on the roll of his stomach. “You have been here before --” Tim waits in silence for the priest to gather his thoughts. It hangs heavy, the sound of Tim’s own breathing loud in the tight space. “You must focus on your transgression, repent for your sins properly. You need to listen to what God is telling you when you pray on this.”
“Yes, Father?” Tim says, eager for absolution. When he closes his eyes he can see Hawk beside him in the sand, haloed in marian blue sky, Tim’s pure adoration of him spilling out obviously between them. It had been hot, the sun making everything blur at the edges. Hawk was an apparition, a visiting Sight, tangible and corporeal, made real on this very beach just by the mere absence of non-believers.
“Listen, son. You must listen so you can stop this inversion --” the priest says, his tone disapproving. There’s judgement there and Tim feels a fan of feverish heat, sweat gathering at his temples. He has the urge to purge himself, anything to get rid of the sour taste in his mouth, the guilt he feels at how he acted the past few days, the lies they had woven, the ease at which he had concocted a story.
“A decade then?” Tim asks, finds his teeth clenched together. It comes out decate, sharpened like his mother’s tongue. Saliva floods his mouth, the want to vomit nearly overwhelming now. “The Sorrowful Mystery?”
Fr Murray heaves a sigh. “You’re not listening -- you need to truly repent --”
The door to the confessional bangs closed behind him, the sound echoing through the grand chapel. People are beginning to filter in for lunchtime mass and Tim blends easily into the crowd of devout Senate staffers, brim of his hat tipped down over his brow.
He makes it to the bottom of the steps, retching into the shrubbery by the gate, all yellow bile and acrid coffee.
*
It takes Hawk four days to come, his knock gentle on the crooked panel of his door. Tim wasn’t expecting it, the noise loud in the silence of his room. He’s stopped listening to the radio -- unconsciously -- and had spent the past few nights with only the sound of the street for company.
It’s nearly poetic, he thinks as he turns down his stove, the room smelling like vegetable broth. Just like his first visit but this time, it’s the good kind, homemade from the nice deli on the corner. Grandma Gaffney had sent him an unexpectedly direct postal order for his birthday, buy yourself a treat -- she’s doting, he’s sure now -- and he’d found himself buying vegetables with it, no appetite for anything else. He had stretched it for the thin broth, a batch of oat cakes that needed butter, having bought a set of mass cards instead.
He had wrote her one to say thanks, promising that he’d head up to New York soon in his best handwriting and it was only when he was licking the envelope closed that he realised the missal could be misconstrued for a funeral card.
“Skippy?” Hawk asks when he cracks the door open, his voice low in case of prying ears. He steps inside the gap, pausing when Tim doesn’t open the door further.
He could say no to him. He should say no. Should tell him and his lies to fuck off. That he won’t be part of this tangled web of dishonesty anymore, that he’s not prepared to just get used to living like another person only to get a scant moment of being himself with the one he loves.
It gets easier. Hawk had promised him that like it was something Tim wanted to hear. You have no choice.
Tim’s trying to figure out how to take a deep enough breath to speak when Hawk pushes past him, a palm splayed on his chest.
He goes with it -- of course he does -- and lets Hawk kiss him, his tongue wet and forceful. Hawk’s palms are warm on his cheeks, Tim’s face cradled between them. It’s restricting in a way that Tim never expects but loves all the same. The way his hands cut out any other sound, the way it forces his thoughts inwards -- the roar of his own blood in his ears, the mechanical sound of his breathing in his sinuses, a feeling of being underwater, blocked out from the real word, with nothing but Hawk’s mouth on him, his thumbs pressing into his skull.
Hawk gets him onto the bed, his knee pressed into the vulnerable curve of his groin. It makes him jump, instinct making him cant his hips out of the way but it brings him closer to Hawk’s leg and it’s easier to just grind against him, going for what he wants.
“Patience,” Hawk orders, one hand coming away from his head to tug on his belt, his fingers twisting in the material. The waistband cuts sharply into his hips and Tim arches away from it, fingers scrabbling for his own fly.
They wrestle for a moment, Hawk glaring down at him, teeth bared. “Restless tonight, aren’t you, Skippy? What’s got you all in a knot?”
Hawk seems to forget himself, forget that he usually gets Tim to do this part, but he’s roughly tugging Tim’s clothes off until he’s lying across the bottom of his bed completely naked, skin too hot to be chilled in the draught from the window, too turned on to be vulnerable in the moment.
Tim watches, glasses slipping down the sweaty bridge of his nose, as Hawk steps back. Watches the heave of his shoulders as he looks down at Tim sprawled in front of him, watches him in silence as he strips out of his trousers, follows the slow journey of Hawk’s gaze down his body.
It’s such a sudden role reversal that it doesn’t feel transgressive to let it happen to him. Even though he’s the one sprawled out, the one that’s completely bare, Tim holds a strange power here looking up at him, allowing it to happen.
Tim tips his head back, pants up at the ceiling. The wait is intolerable, time seeming to stretch, elastic, as Hawk takes care of the minutiae of having sex. The folding of his trousers, the hunting for something slick in the pantry drawers of Tim’s paltry room.
“Is it Lent already?” Hawk asks dismissively, holding up the empty butter pat. “Do you need a fucking allowance for groceries now?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, just reaches down to smear the greasy side of the wrapper between Tim’s thighs. It’s disgusting -- makes him audibly groan at the slippery feel of it -- his stomach twists, half sickened, half too turned on to formulate words. It’s dirty, Hawk’s fingers following the smear of butter until he’s stretching Tim’s rim.
“Gone quiet on me?” Hawk pants, his fingers twisting into his hole. He’s breathing hard, his eyes skittering between looking at Tim’s upturned jaw and where his knuckles are disappearing into him. He uses his free hand to push Tim’s thighs wider, his fingertips pressing into tender muscle. “Do I have to fuck it out of you?”
Tim groans, throat working and trying to swallow. His mouth is too dry, his tongue sliding out over his lips. Hawk answers with his own groan, leaning down suddenly to kiss him properly, his answering mouth wet and hot. Tim licks into it, finally lifts his hands to clutch Hawk to him and suck on his tongue like it’s his salvation.
He should’ve blown him, Tim thinks wildly, should have had his mouth occupied, should’ve asked for Hawk to fuck his throat first but as soon as the thought enters his head, it fetters out, Hawk pushing his knee back against his chest, the wet head of his cock catching on Tim’s rim.
Tim fights the sudden urge to beg.
Hawk’s eyes gleam and Tim finds him staring at them, cataloguing the brief flash of frustration, the confused cock of his eyebrow. Then they’re narrowing, a challenge set in his sights. He pushes in swiftly, all the way to the hilt and Tim’s breath is knocked out of him, leaving him gasping. He twists a hand in Hawk’s undershirt, pulls him closer until Hawk gets the right idea, a hand braced on Tim’s chest as he snaps his hips, picking up a relentless pace.
“Okay,” Hawk says, his hand coming up to sweep Tim’s sweaty hair away from his face. It’s a touch too rough, his fingers tugging on the strands. Tim’s jaw falls open, the wheeze of his breath just on the edge of a whimper and then he’s coming, hot wads of it over his stomach, Hawk fucking and fucking and fucking until there’s nothing more to come.
“Fuck,” Hawk swears, his back bowing and he’s biting down on Tim’s shoulder, hard, working his dick into the hot clutch of Tim’s hole. “Skippy, Christ --”
It seems to take Hawk a long time to gather himself, panting wetly into Tim’s ear. Tim paws at his hip, pushes him until Hawk pulls out, Tim gasping at the sensation.
The rest of the room comes back slowly, the groan of the pipes to the bathroom at the end of the hall and the stink of the boiled off broth, Tim’s spunk on Hawk’s hand at his jaw, the fucking butter.
When he turns his head, Hawk is staring at him, the shadow of a frown on his face.
“Are you okay, Skippy?” he asks, his thumb brushing over Tim’s lip, tender in the way he can get after they have sex like this. A seesaw of behaviour, whiplash.
Tim tries to smile, wants to reassure him but inside is a war of emotion. The pleasant burn, burn, burn in his muscles is already ebbing away, his knees lying limp and splayed, the heat in his stomach calcifying into something sickened instead.
Tim has heard but is he listening?
Hawk smiles softly, his fingertips tracing down Tim’s chest. Still, he can’t find the words and Tim lets the question melt away in the ensuing silence.
*
He goes to St Stephen Martyr on Sunday, sits in the draughty back pews and listens to the murmured Latin responses. He hasn’t confessed here before, there’s a safety in the fact the priests do not know him but he keeps his silence, listening, listening, listening.
Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins.
He hasn’t spoken since Thursday. Managed somehow to make it through Friday at the office without uttering a word. In abstract moments, when his mind has wandered from his silent task, he thinks of this time last week, the feel of ocean breeze through his hair as they reached the shore, the warm sun on his face.
Save us from the fires of hell.
It’s gotten muggy in D.C., the summer arriving unannounced and early. Tim had spent the weekend reading -- catching up on work, determined to keep his nose clean and follow McCarthy in whatever he was up to next.
He wouldn’t be able to keep silent forever at work -- in a startling moment of clarity, Tim had decided it would be foolish for him to draw attention to himself -- and it wouldn’t be any use, McIntyre would be relentless, biting at his ankles soon enough.
Lead all souls to heaven.
And no word from Hawk. No plans for the weekend, no invitation left on the notepad on the phone, no memo through Mary’s grapevine anymore.
Tim had fought the relentless urge to go out, to visit one of Hawk’s usual haunts and catch him. But catch him in what? Tim knew there were others, and he knew Hawk kept up appearances, knew he devoted more and more of his weekend to entertaining Lucy. The thought burned through him like a heart all aflame, the need to know where he was and who he was with. It niggled at him, chipped at his resolve to forget all about Hawk and their misdeeds, snagged like a thorn in the soft film of his chest.
He found himself yesterday, thinking of him as he bit into a new season peach, juice bursting bright across his tongue. The first thing all week that had tasted of anything but ash and incense.
Especially those in most need of your mercy.
It was nearly frightening, the realisation that his life was slipping at the edges, some things becoming instinctual and automatic. The need to eat to survive, the pleasure of the flesh to stave off bigger urges, the primal way he did this without thinking, his mind occupied elsewhere.
It had shaken him. He had written another letter to his grandmother, thinking of her in her tiny living room, scornful of the regularity in which Tim attended mass, the contradictory way she told him to clear his plate and watch his waist, the brazen way she favoured him over his sister. He wrote one to Hawk too, words spilling from the nib of his pen. Tim had read them over in the thin moonlight of his bedroom window before he shredded it into the grate.
There was a reassuring solace in his silence at home, no radio to distract him, no one to cajole him into conversation, his mind open and ready to wander, boundless.
*
Hawk is a smart man so Tim isn’t so surprised that he catches on quickly.
“You didn’t call for me,” he says in greeting, his mouth pressed in a line. “I thought we had gotten over that trifle?”
Tim lets him in, thinks of their conversation on the beach once more. The brief surge of emotion giving him the confidence to confess to Hawk that he loved him, to say out loud what Hawk undoubtedly already knew.
It’s the last meaningful words Tim had spoken, he decides in this moment, the last audible sentiment he means to have until it’s returned.
And it’s in that vein that Tim allows him to settle at the end of the bed, to lean back on one arm with the ridges of his stomach flexed beautifully under the crumpled tails of his shirt.
“Oh,” Hawk says quietly, mouth twisting into an unsure smile when he seems to work it all out. Tim thinks it’s beautiful, being the one that needs to be puzzled out for once. “I see. Well,” Hawk says slowly, canting his hips gently but resolutely up at him. “How about you put that mouth to better use then?”
Tim sinks to his knees, the movement practiced and fluid. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine the worn pillowing of a pew ledge, feel the clammy cold of the brass communional rail. Eyes down, gaze averted from the glory of the decorated tabernacle and exposed Host.
But at this altar, Hawk’s thighs are warm, his trousers soft with wear at work. Tim wonders what he did today — can’t ask — as he lays his head against his leg, noses into the heady space between Hawk’s thighs.
He imagines him at his office, Mary’s understanding smile, the two speaking in tongues. Hawk’s sure voice on the phone, the elegant flick of his wrist as he signs something important, as he lights a cigarette, as he undoes his fly.
Tim could close his eyes and be there, tucked into the tight space under his desk. Hidden from view except to all those who already know and understand. He could be kept there, ready for use, a good lap dog never straying from his spot.
Hawk could go on with his lobbying, his voice strong on the phone above him. Faceless, only the sight of Mary’s shined shoe letting him know time has passed.
His trousers smell of Hawk, the musky smell that he associates with Hawk’s own bed, the expensive sheets that still need laundered as often as Tim’s and aren’t. That latent adolescent trait that was hard to shake off now he was in the city, the need to be mothered by a woman more domestic than either of them put together.
Hawk undoes his fly, pulls his dick out of the folds of material. He’s hard already, a little wet at the tip. When Tim opens his mouth, Hawk feeds it in against his tongue, bitter, just a little slippery.
“Gentle,” Hawk orders him when Tim sucks him further into his mouth and there’s a palm to his cheek, pressing him back against Hawk’s thigh.
His balls are still buried in his trousers and somehow, that sends a bigger thrill down Tim’s spine, the idea that maybe only part of Hawk is exposed for a quick cover up, in case someone was to catch them.
It reminds him of sneaking a feel of his own erection, the press of exploring fingers under bedclothes at home, of quick strokes of finger tips through his fly when he was younger, of feeling himself when he was meant to be abstinent. If he couldn’t see, did it really happen? If he hardly felt it, was it really wrong?
But isn’t He all-seeing? Isn’t Tim always being watched?
Hawk smells stronger like this, his hot skin under the thin layer of his underwear, the musky dank scent of between his legs. It’s familiar in a way nothing else is, this part of him that Tim is already incredibly intimate with.
Tim swallows once and settles, forces his throat to relax. Spit floods his mouth, great washes of it from under his tongue but he’s careful not to swallow too hard, suddenly aware of Hawk’s intention to keep him there for as long as possible.
Hawk leans back on his elbows, his eyes sharp as Tim relaxes into his thigh. Tim’s not sure if he likes him watching, would prefer if they really were at the office for Hawk to have something to do, for Tim to be put to use at keeping him warm and nothing more.
“That’s it,” Hawk says quietly and the praise settles something in him, tamps down the disjointed anxiety of being on his knees like this, of being so unpracticed in this new venture, unsure what to do with his hands, what to do with his eyes.
Hawk is heavy against his tongue, grounding. He tastes bitter at the back of his throat, the stretched skin of his cock velvety soft when Hawk presses against the inside of Tim’s cheek.
It’s slow, the unspoken rule not to suck sinking down through Tim’s bones like syrup and sticking him to the floor. He relaxes his jaw, feels the first flutters of butterflies in his stomach. The room takes on a hazy feel, his mind stretching out in blurred blues and golds, half present in the moment and half on the beach again, sky swimming and floating in a halo around Hawk’s head. The only place they are touching is Tim’s mouth stretched around the length of him, his ear to the warmth of Hawk’s groin.
When he risks a glance up, Hawk isn’t even looking at him and it burns, hot, white down his spine. Yes, yes, yes. Tim supplicant at the altar.
From the corner of his eye, Tim watches as Hawk rolls his shoulders languidly and then, as if Tim’s head isn’t pillowed in his lap, he digs in his pocket for a cigarette. Tim imagines it’s a pen, Hawk hard at work at his desk as if Tim’s not there.
Tim fights a groan, mind swimming, heat zigzagging up his spine until it settles at the back of his throat, choked by the head of Hawk’s cock. He flattens his tongue, slow, slow, slow, flexes it gently. He kneels until his knees ache, his hands arched against the floor, fingertips steepled to the worn rug to keep himself steady. He’s nearly numb, pins and needles dragging up the back of his calves until even that fades to the edge of his subconscious.
Eventually, Hawk’s hand comes down to cradle his jaw, strokes down the side of his neck. His thumb a steady pressure along Tim’s throat. It makes him swallow convulsively, mouth full and wet, spit dribbling down the back of his throat.
Tim doesn’t know what time it is, how long he’s been kneeling there. He comes back to himself slowly, registers the orange glow of his work lamp rather than the dark mahogany of Hawk’s desk footwell.
“Up you get,” Hawk says gently, his hands bracing under his armpits like he’s a child. Tim feels uncoordinated, his limbs trembling as Hawk bundles him onto the bed. Gasps at the feel of Hawk stretching his leg out for him, the swoop of feeling bleeding back into his feet.
They’re both still fully dressed but Tim can feel where his trousers are damp, the lingering curl of heat at the back of his pelvis the only other sign he’s come. Like some mornings when he wakes to find his sheets already wet, the confusion and shame in feeling good about it, of having lost control to his night time urges. Of being brave in his dreams and understanding his wants and needs.
“Well,” Hawk’s still talking. “Wasn’t that unexpected?”
Tim sucks in a breath, feels how sticky his mouth and chin are. His jaw aches pleasantly when he stretches it in a yawn and Hawk is staring at him again, his expression unusually hesitant as they chart new territory. His trousers and shirt are ruined, soaked with Tim’s spit. Tim stares, not used to seeing him in such disarray. He’ll have to wait til they dry, the smell of Tim on him until he gets home.
Has he come? Tim’s head spins, limbs uncooperative so he can’t reach out and feel. Is he still hard? Tim swallows again, tries to taste him.
“I know you’re smarter than to keep this up at work,” Hawk says but he looks suddenly unsure. “Is this just for me? Am I being punished?”
Tim let’s his eyes flutter closed, half wounded. He doesn’t know how to answer that question even if he could. Punished and punisher, saviour and needing saving.
And when he opens his eyes, dawn is breaking through the half drawn curtains and Hawk is gone.
*
“You shouldn’t be here,” Tim murmurs when he arrives at his desk and finds Mary sitting at it. “We’re meant to be heartbroken.”
“I am heartbroken,” Mary snips and Tim feels a jolt of guilt, can see it in the tense line of her mouth how she’s still only seconds from shattering. Tim wonders if he looks like this sometimes, if it’s etched so clearly on his face how his heart has been given freely to another and because of circumstances beyond his control, it has not been returned. “Maybe I’m here to get you back.”
“You’re here to spy,” Tim corrects. Mary pulls a face, slipping out of his chair to perch on the corner of his desk. Tim takes his time, shaking out his coat and hanging his hat before he slides into her place.
They’re much too close, Tim can feel the heat of her body through his trouser leg and Tim wonders what Mary’s game is, what scheme Hawk has dreamt up now, what people are meant to think if they walked into the office and saw them.
Young lovers? A futile plea to rethink the separation? Determination or deluded devotion forcing one of them to beg for another try.
“You don’t always have to play along, you know,” Tim finds strength to say. “You don’t have to do his bidding.”
Mary let out a wry laugh. “Your hypocrisy knows no bounds.”
Tim rears back, her words stinging across his face. In the few short months he’s known her, they’ve become closer friends than he had ever expected. Shared a vulnerability that was at first manufactured but had grown into something brutally honest, something Tim has with no one else except in a confessional.
“I’m here to see if you’re okay,” Mary carries on as if she hadn’t just spoken. “Hawk is worried you’re giving up political life for a monastery.”
It’s a joke but they both know that the thought had crossed Tim’s mind once, the assumption from a young age that he’d enter the priesthood, quipped to Mary on one of their early dates when the other conversation had run dry. He’s not sure if he had ever told Hawk this, too distracted or too embarrassed by how much he had already slipped about his faith.
“I’m repenting,” Tim tells her, wills her to understand.
Her face softens. “And are you finding clarity in it?”
Tim’s breath catches in his throat. In the long stretches of silence at home, Tim’s mind prostrate in prayer, he always seems to return to Hawk. His face never far from his mind's eye, the phantom feel of his fingers on his jaw, the taste of his skin. He is listening but all that seems to come to him is Hawkins Fuller, bathed in divine light and sacrosanct.
“I thought so,” Mary says and it’s contemptuous, jealous, yearning. Tim feels a pang for her misfortune but not for the ruthless way she dealt with it, even if he’s complicit. “Well then I’m also here with a warning.”
Tim scoffs, unusually impatient with her this morning. He puts a hand to her hip, pushing her off his blotter. Half of him is annoyed no one’s here to witness him doing it. Look. He can be this affectionate with women too. He can touch them in all the soft places he shouldn’t.
Mary’s face twists into a final smile and she cups a hand on his jaw. Tim feels a swell of embarrassment, nearly leans into the sisterly feel of her palm.
“Don’t torture yourself,” she finally says, stepping up off his desk. The shuffle of feet outside the door is louder now, Monday morning ready to begin. “Whatever set of rules you’ve figured out for whatever--” she waves her hand about --“this is, they aren’t worth it.”
Tim looks away from her, knows that Mary and Hawk -- two peas in a pod, really -- think he’s playing some sort of game.
“Anyway, silence doesn’t suit you.”
*
He faints on a Tuesday.
Somehow, word gets to Hawk.
“Christ, Skippy,” Hawk chastises, his broad palm sweeping up Tim’s clammy flank. “I can nearly count ribs.”
It’s not that bad, Tim knows. Wants to tell him to fuck off. He eats his three meals a day except on Friday, the same as he’s done every year of his life. This is no different — he’s finding sustenance in prayer, fasting helps him clear his mind, alleviates his need for outward pleasures once a week so he can devote his mind to talking to God.
McCarthy had spoken to him this morning about the success of the new closed hearings, a heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder in such a way that had nearly made him buckle. They’re aiming for the Bureau of Congressional Relations next, McCarthy’s heard they’re riddled over there.
“Whoa, sonny Jim,” he had boomed, sweat gathering on his lip. Tim had felt a roll of revulsion, stomach empty except from a hurried cup of coffee before he was sent on an errand to the Capitol. “Can’t let a fit fella like you go down on my watch.”
And Tim hardly had time to work out his meaning, McCarthy’s other hand coming round to slap at his behind, fingers groping as if he was Ms Kerr working through her lunch in an empty office.
Panic had lanced through his heart, his blood pressure dropping so swiftly he had staggered back to his desk and fell into the space behind it.
He’d been sent home after some mother hen clucking from the other women in the office and gratefully limped the whole way, head swimming and light. Hawk had turned up a few hours later, before the end of the work day, his brow creased in concern.
He’d probably urge him to go home if they were speaking but in the ensuing silence, Hawk seems to come to his own decision, his palm coming up to cradle Tim’s face. He sighs, a long drawn out thing that makes his whole body sink into Tim’s mattress. They haven’t spent this long at Tim’s rooms in a row before but Tim likes having him here, seeing the shiny coif of hair splayed across his worn pillow, Hawk’s tailored suits strewn across the threadbare carpet.
“I don’t like seeing you like this,” Hawk whispers and says nothing more.
Tim lifts his leg, drags his knee up the inside of Hawk’s thigh. Hawk smiles at him softly, his fingers working behind his knee to pull Tim’s leg up to lie across his stomach. There’s a pleasant stretch in his muscles, Hawk’s skin warm against the side of his knee, his belly rising and falling rhythmically with his steady breathing.
“Do you need me to take care of you? Is that what this is about?” Hawk asks quietly and it’s much deeper than just that, Hawk honestly asking if Tim needs to be kept, if Tim needs Hawk to be the one to do it, if Hawk knows to be there to be the one to do it.
Tim doesn’t say anything, stares into the blue, blue, blue of Hawk’s eyes and finds him staring back.
They match their breathing, the slow suck of air into their lungs. Restoration, revival, renewal. Tim twists himself into his embrace, his leg still stretched over the cradle of Hawk’s hips but they push no further, Hawk’s palm a steady sweep up his thigh, fingers brushing through the hair there.
He fights to keep his eyes open, to keep Hawk in his sights for as long as he’s got him. He hates his body in these moments, these moments of painful human weakness where he has to sleep, has to look away from him to eat, has to fucking blink. It chips hours, minutes, and seconds away from the precious time he has with him right here in front of him.
Someday soon, Tim won’t have him at all. Hawkins Fuller will be Lucy Smith’s to have and to hold, to meet his gaze across pillows in the dewy morning, to share breath, to drink from the same cup, to feel him inside herself, be fulfilled and kept forever.
Tim falls into an exhausted sleep but is met with the slack line of Hawk’s face in the morning, his nose tucked in close on Tim’s pillow, both of them still sharing the same rhythm of breath. A reprieve, bright respite, brought forth like a feverish dream. Tim clutches him to his chest, feels the weight of his body press down on him. Tethered together and in sync, meeting in the middle.
*
Mary invites him to another party, this time much more circumspect than the last one. Tim meets her by the street car and they cut a familiar silhouette as they walk up to Dupont Circle arm-in-arm. Her friends think he’s shy and he only speaks, quietly, when it would be rude not to.
Mary catches him in the kitchen, consternation evident on her brow. “Please, have fun. I don’t want you to be here and not enjoying yourself.”
Tim doesn’t remind her that they’re both miserable and this is a foolish endeavour. “I am enjoying myself,” he murmurs instead and Mary gives him a pitying glance, gathers him up in her arms in the way she has done a few times before.
“Wouldn’t this be easier?” she asks, pulling back to stare at his face, something determined in her eye.
Tim feels his mouth turning up in an abject smile. He’s a nervous laugher, tension always bleeding out of his chest with a giggle. “Would it?”
She tastes of gin and limes, her lipstick smearing over his mouth. Tim’s not sure who initiates it, both of them meeting somewhere in the middle, but he’s the one to break it, laughing against her teeth.
“Shouldn’t I be worried about your propriety?” Tim asks, leaning back. He doesn’t know how to hold her, her delicate frame under his hands. He isn’t used to the height difference, the softness of her skin, the powdery smell of her make up. Her hands -- small and delicate -- twisting in the back of his shirt and keeping her close to him. But he could break away, easily move her about the kitchen whatever way he wished, and that’s something he’s not used to grappling with, the way he won’t be met with resistance if he decided to push her away.
Mary smiles a little sad smile and steps back, Tim finds space to finally breathe. “At a party like this?”
“Even more so,” Tim finds himself joking, chest heavy and light at the same time. Maybe it’s his own gin cocktail soaking into his system, maybe he’s light headed and faintish again. “We’ll gain the judgment of the subversives.”
“The very worst kind,” she agrees sarcastically with a freer smile. No harm done, just another layer to the strange little friendship they’ve struck up and can’t let go of. Mary’s smile twists and she suddenly looks nervous. “This won’t make it back to our little friend?”
“Oh, I’ve finally gained that confidence then?”
Mary sighs, finally stepping out of his embrace. It leaves Tim leaning up against the kitchen sink and he realises how close they were twined, like two lovers locked together away from the party. “We’re all trying our very best, Tim. Playing with the hand we’ve been dealt.”
“Then why must I feel so foolish for doing so? Why am I made to feel small about it?” Tim manages to bite out. It’s the most words he’s said in over a fortnight. His head aches at having to formulate them on his tongue, of having to actually articulate the warring emotions snarled in his chest. He licks his lips, feels the waxy remains of her lipstick at the corner of his mouth.
Fuck this. Fuck them all.
Tim bites back more words, eager to be at home where there’s no one to argue with, no one to poke holes in his own thoughts and decisions. Where no one will hold a mirror up to his own confusion about it all.
The music from the wireless in the living room grates on him, the din of laughter. All of Mary’s friends who aren’t under constant surveillance by their colleague at the State Department, who aren’t practicing clenching their assholes to thwart a polygraph, who don’t face the outing by a web of coward politicians, eager to save nothing but their own career.
Tim doesn’t know why you’d ever speak again, a spy at every corner. That’s what clarity this silence has brought him. The realisation of how tenuous this. Of how his happiness is determined not by his own actions but the ones around him. The futility of loving something that you’re not allowed to have, no matter how pure and perfect it is.
He finds himself walking towards I Street without really realising how he got there, doesn’t remember saying goodbye to Mary or any of her friends. He hasn’t his coat, a cool chill this early in the summer still.
His shins twinge at the speed he’s walked, following the unknown path until he’s staring up at Hawk’s apartment, the curtains half open to reveal the glow of his bedroom lamp.
Tim is suddenly ravenous. His stomach an endless pit and desperate to be filled, to be satisfied, to be fed from the Hand that feeds.
“What if I had been with someone?” Hawk hisses through clenched teeth when Tim finds himself at the door. He looks angry but his hands are wrenching at Tim’s collar, hauling him into his apartment.
Tim gasps, wriggling out of his hold to keep on his feet.
“You couldn’t have called?” Hawk asks, the thread of anger petering out into something more teasing now that Tim’s standing, panting, in front of the fireplace.
Tim glances around his home, finds no trace of anyone else having been there recently. What was he thinking? Tim wouldn’t have been able to stand it if he had caught Hawk at something, with someone. It would be a sick punishment, a thorn in his side.
“Still not talking?” Hawk says, a wry smile twisting on his face. He reaches forward, angles Tim’s jaw easily up to him. “That’s fine. I’ll talk enough for the both of us.”
Heat rolls down his spine and Tim opens up gratefully to him, winds his arms around Hawk’s shoulders to pull himself up into his mouth. Divine salvation. Hawk licks wetly into his mouth, his teeth scraping over Tim’s lips. It’s dirty -- Tim has missed this -- Hawk’s tongue flat against his teeth and then pushing against Tim’s, both of them battling for the upper hand. To give freely and to take.
“Oh,” Hawk breathes when he pulls back, his hands smoothing over Tim’s skin, his fingers everywhere. He licks properly at Tim’s mouth, a sure swipe with the flat of his tongue over the corner of his mouth. “Have you been up to no good?”
Tim chases it with his own tongue, Mary’s lipstick still tacky there, and he feels a roll of guilt, fights the urge to beg for forgiveness. Hawk’s face breaks into boundless amusement and he kisses him properly again, lips bruising. They twist through the living room, Hawk manouvering him easily but Tim could skirt the furniture in his sleep, could be struck blind and he’d still be able to find his way into Hawk’s bed. “There you are. Eager for it aren’t you? You know you need me. Nothing else will do, will it?”
It is futile. He has prayed on it, he has asked for forgiveness, has absolved himself but he’s still here, all paths lead to Hawk, is resolute in how this righteous pleasure is the glorious gift he deserves.
“Have you been thinking about this?” Hawk asks rhetorically, both of them stumbling into the side of the bed. “Thinking about what you’d do when you saw me again?”
Hawk steps back, tugs on Tim’s tie. “Take it off.”
Tim strips easily, staggers back on unsteady feet in his haste to rid himself of his clothes. Tie, shirt, vest. Hawk is smiling at him as he bends to kick out of his trousers, his underwear. Tim would lay his life down for that smile, to tease it out of Hawk and know it was all for him.
“Tell me what you want,” Hawk tries, only the once to coax it out of him. “Come on. Tim, what do you want and I’ll do it for you.”
Tim stifles a moan into Hawk’s waist, presses his mouth to where Hawk’s bellybutton peaks out of his unbuttoned shirt. Hawk is usually not so magnanimous. He makes the decisions here, is used to getting what he wants, seems to know what Tim needs before he has the wherewithal to want it.
“Do you want to suck my cock?” Hawk asks, his fingers trailing down the back of Tim’s neck. “Do you want to ride me? Suck on my fingers, stuffed from both ends? What if I let you fuck me?”
Tim’s head spins. That’s not been on the cards before and it seems so out of reach that Tim’s breath stutters, like he’s been gut punched. Hawk laughs, low, a rumble deep down in his chest and Tim wonders what his face must look like, his eyes shining in adoration.
“Only if you ask,” Hawk tells him, his mouth curling in a sly smile like he knows Tim won’t be able to resist talking now. And would it be his reward? Or would it be his downfall? The temptation too great, of having Hawk spread out below him, the divine heat of him enveloping him. “Only if you beg.”
Tim could come at the thought, could let his imagination run wild with it but he isn’t sure if that’s what he wants, the downfall too great.
“Off,” Hawk reminds him, his hand brushing over Tim’s mouth. His fingers slip past his lips, Tim presses his tongue between them, sucks on his fingertips. He’d swallow him whole if he could, wants to taste anything that Hawk deigns to give him. Hawk draws his jaw closer and Tim gets to work, pulling at his fly with his teeth. “Good boy, my good boy,” Hawk murmurs, moving his body slowly as Tim undresses him.
He’s hard, his cock rising red and wet when Tim works Hawk’s underwear down over his thighs with his teeth. Tim licks at the base of his erection, presses his nose into the hair in the crease of his groin, lavs a tongue across the heavy weight of his balls.
“You just want to be full, don’t you, Skippy?” Hawk whispers, his voice caught on a groan. It settles on Tim’s shoulders, praise slithers down his spine and he spreads his knees, feels the flex of his own dick heavy between his legs. “So full so you can’t speak. I can do that, Skip. I can fuck you until you taste it, gonna fuck you until you finally break --” Hawk cuts off, moaning loudly at his own words. His hands scrunch through Tim’s hair, pulling him close so Tim’s mouth smears across the base of his dick, teeth dragging over the sensitive skin of his abdomen.
He rolls them onto the bed roughly and Tim bites out a grunt, lets Hawk wrestle him onto his hands and knees. His mouth is gentle for a moment, brushing over the nape of his neck and then his teeth are scraping down the ridge of his shoulder blade, Hawk’s hands pressed to his hips.
“Just like this,” Hawk’s saying, his words slurring and swimming in Tim’s ears. Hawk’s hand slides down his side, he can feel the wet press of his cock against the crease of his ass, and then it sweeps away quickly, coming back with a stinging smack to his flank.
Tim’s body lights up, the bite of Hawk’s hand radiating across his hip and back.
“Good boy,” Hawk says, his fingers stroking across Tim's warm skin. “You like that, don’t you? A reminder of who you belong to.”
Tim hangs his head, wants to roll his cock into the blankets and press back into the stinging soreness of Hawk’s hand in the same movement. He can feel, rather than hear, Hawk’s breathing, his belly moving quickly against the curve of his thigh.
“Who do you belong to, Skippy?” Hawk asks, voice low and rough but far away, disappearing somewhere behind him. Tim closes his eyes, feels the echo of his voice like when he’s the last one at church. The high ceilings of Hawk’s apartment making it like he’s being pressed into the dark of Hawk’s bed but the whole world is behind him, watching as Hawk thumbs at his hole, spits on it to ease his finger in.
Tim’s hands scrabble behind him, his fingers clutching at Hawk’s wrist. They slow, their unconscious rhythm together stuttering.
“What is it?” Hawks asks, his voice coming closer as he leans up against Tim’s back. He takes a moment to inhale against his jaw and then Tim turns, is able to lick at his mouth, tries to breathe what he wants into Hawk’s very lungs.
He hadn’t expected to come round tonight, hadn’t had a chance to prepare himself. Now, sandwiched to the soft covers of Hawk’s bed and the broad expanse of Hawk’s chest, the feel of his fingers are a touch too rough.
“I’ve got you,” Hawk whispers, unbearably kind. “I’ll make it good.” And when his hand comes back, air ghosting over the sweaty small of his back, Hawk’s fingers are covered in jelly, slippery and wet as they work into him. “I’ll look after my boy if he looks after me.”
Tim’s moaning continuously by the time Hawk pushes into him, the wet stretch of Tim’s hole around the head of his dick. Time stills, whittles down to the count of breaths, until he pops in and then it’s a smooth glide, slick squealching loudly between them.
“Fuck,” Hawk finally speaks, like he forgot he was meant to be keeping up a running commentary. Tim mewls below him, his fingers clenched and white in the pillow. He could bite through it, chew on the fabric that smells so much like Hawk, like both of them. “Fuck, Skippy. So tight. So good, my good boy. You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”
Tim rolls his hips back against him and then they’re locked in a new rhythm, Hawk’s thighs slapping against the back of Tim’s legs, their combined weight shoving them up the bed, the headboard snapping off the back wall.
They’re bathed in silverly light, Tim wonders if the neighbours can hear him moaning like this, his voice unlatched as he lets it all out. Hawk was right, he is going to fuck it out of him, fuck him until his resolve breaks and he finally speaks.
One of Hawk’s hands comes round to cradle his balls, his thumb moving wetly along the sensitive underside of his cock. The other twists in the twine of Tim’s scapular -- he forgot to take it off -- pulls it taut around his throat. Tim moans loudly again, the material cutting at his windpipe. The front badge of Our Lady of Mount Carmel flaps against his jaw, the edge of the worn fabric rough against his stubble there.
“Come on, Tim,” Hawk begs, his voice close to his ear and that’s what undoes him, his tongue unravelling in his mouth, cut free by the timbre of Hawk’s voice, the naked need in it. “Who do you belong to?”
And Hawk understands, Tim knows he does. Understands how big this is, how this isn’t something that can just be buried in bedcovers, hidden behind a closed door. It’s not something that’s dirty like that but it’s something to be shared, to be cherished, to be shouted from top floor windows and bared open for the whole fucking underbelly of government to see.
How there’s nothing wrong in it, nothing deviant. Not when it feels like it’s been anointed by God when they’re together. Tim has repented his sins and found nothing left to fast for, nothing to remain avowed for, the press of Hawk’s lips to Tim’s open and receiving mouth like divine communion itself.
“Who’s my brave boy?” Hawk asks, his palm smoothing Tim’s hair away from his forehead, his thumb tracing between his brows gently, the drag of his nail in the shape of a cross.
“I’m yours,” Tim finally breaks, voice hoarse. Hawk’s face cracks into a beaming smile and it swells in Tim's chest, a heaving sob ripping out from deep down inside. It's a dam breaking, a great flood. Tim gasps a wheezing, deep breath. Hawk is patient, waiting for it. Understands that Tim needs to get this out, a dark confession. “I belong to you, Hawkins Fuller, I belong to you. I am made in your image. I am yours, I am you.”