This Week's Topic:

[twopoint]

Hi!

Question: How long does it take after you've edited and posted a fic to be able to re-read it without feeling like you're going to throw up?

(I'm seriously emetophobic, so typing the words 'throw up' is very hard for me, but no other phrase comes close to expressing my feelings on this matter.)

Comments

[two-point.livejournal.com]

Obviously, I'm more concerned with the kissing and less concerned with the fucking, but so be it, edited only to be sure the parts lined up . . .

1.

“Or we could go upstairs. No need to start something we can’t finish in comfort.” Crawford tapped the table and raised a brow.

Schuldig stopped in mid-stretch across the table. “You’re serious?”

“I never propose anything lightly. You should know that by now.”

And Schuldig thought, I’m a goddamn lab rat, put me down in a maze and I’ll beat my head senseless trying to get out. He exhaled and considered Crawford’s offer, one hand pressed to the table, the other . . . reluctantly pointing toward the door. “Lead the way.” Resigned as a prisoner to his sentencing, no way out, but at least his jailor smelled nice. That and his necessary reliance on the normal senses always made for great sex.

“You seem tense. Is something wrong?” Crawford asked in the elevator.

“Nope. Have you been getting any lately? It’s hard for me to believe otherwise, you being so warm and approachable and . . .” Schuldig continued a list of Crawford’s traits, some accurate, most made up, all the way to Crawford’s room, which was also weird, going there instead of to Schuldig’s.

He’d been there a while, judging by the clutter of papers and the pile of dirty laundry that hadn’t been sent away yet. Housekeeping had been kept out; the room smelled of whiskey and cologne and, just barely beneath those familiar scents that turned Schuldig on like Pavlov’s dog, beneath it all the faint odor of stale cigarette smoke.

“Smoking makes you think about me, doesn’t it?” Schuldig sat on the edge of the bed, sprawled there, kicked off his shoes.

“All you are is a collection of bad habits,” Crawford said, checking a message with his phone to his ear, half his attention on Schuldig steadily undressing himself on his bed. “Leave it. I’d like to do that.”

Schuldig’s hand stilled on his shirt button. Again, he had been out maneuvered, but how could he argue with that tactic?

Crawford scratched a note on the hotel stationary, page already filled with other facts and numbers, the undecipherable code of Crawford’s existence. If housekeeping cam through the door, hell, if a target came through the door, they would be unable to learn anything from Crawford’s paperwork.

He snapped the phone shut and leaned back against the wall near the closet so he could appraise Schuldig from top to bottom, as if he’d ordered a German from a service that knew Crawford’s list of particular preferences. He wanted to be certain that his product was delivered to his specifications.

“Well?” Schuldig asked.

“Come here, let’s start again, and be quiet so you don’t ruin it.”

“You forgot to put that on your list.”

Crawford shook his head, perplexed but expecting nothing less, and Schuldig did what he was told.

They stood close, face to face, which unnerved Schuldig to no end, but he didn’t back down. One of the things he’d began to slowly figure out the past year was how to manipulate pretense, how he could use gestures to coerce as much as he used thoughts. The only thing he had to use with Crawford was gestures. “Is this my final exam?” Schuldig whispered, “because Esset would have more agents if the potentials knew what their last test would be like.”

“No.” Crawford bent his knee so he could push it between Schuldig’s. “No test.” And quick as a change of heart, he turned so that Schuldig was trapped between him and the wall. The force of Schuldig’s head knocked against the wall was at odds with Crawford’s mouth, much too light, against Schuldig’s neck, up to his chin, to the corner of his mouth. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Schuldig asked, afraid to move and strangely mesmerized, like a hornet had landed on his shirt.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

2.

Their tongues met before their lips touched, which dismayed Schuldig, his body giving in before his mind could make sense of his position. And then, it no longer mattered much because he knew this script and there wasn’t anything light left about it.

There was no one – and Schuldig had examined and sampled every specimen he ran across – that could kiss him senseless like Crawford. He ground against Crawford’s hip until the only thing holding Schuldig up was Crawford’s knee wedged between his legs, and the hard wall.

Crawford’s fingers made short work of his shirt, tugged his belt free; his hands reached behind, slipped down against the wall, pushed Schuldig’s open pants down to his hips, where they caught and bit into his skin, legs spread too wide for gravity to do the rest, and gripped Schuldig’s ass to pull him closer.

Schuldig had just began to fumble with the buttons of Crawford’s shirt when everything stilled, Crawford’s hands on his ass, Crawford’s mouth on his mouth, the distant voices in the other rooms. The constant murmur and chatter died away, like the silence in the eye of the storm, an eerie calm. Schuldig muttered unintelligibly against Crawford’s lips, tried to push him away, but the silence opened up into a greater silence and Schuldig’s fingers loosened their hold on Crawford’s shirt, quit pushing and reached up to tangle in Crawford’s hair, held him in place and drank him down straight.

Schuldig had never known quiet, not like this. There had to be a period of his life before the voices started, but he had no conscious memories of what it had felt like. Schuldig’s walls were exceptional, the best, as noted in his files, the organization had seen few telepaths who constructed them so well, but this silence made Schuldig’s walls seem incomplete, like the half-wall separating the hallway from the restaurant down below, a wall of whispers and light, transparent but effective. Crawford’s wall, as Schuldig was eagerly discovering, were thick enough for them both.

He’d had tastes of Crawford’s mind, bitter spoonfuls offered seldom, resentfully, but those instances had been constructed for a specific purpose, for they bore no resemblance to unfettered access to the whole thing.

Schuldig moaned and tore at Crawford’s mouth as he reached deeper into the silence. He didn’t search for images or thoughts, though he could sense them, orderly and contained, within the vault. What he craved was the composition, the design of Crawford’s walls. The perfect hiding place.

Half in, half out, he drew back and searched Crawford’s face, reached to remove his glasses so he could see him, really see him. But Crawford beat him to it, moving away to place the glasses on the table and reclining on the bed, waiting to see what Schuldig would do next, say next, just waiting.

Schuldig found it difficult to move away from the wall, pinned against it, another specimen. “How do you do it?” he asked, because no one had figured out how to lock themselves up that tightly, no one that Schuldig knew and he had been given every resource to train himself how to be the perfect machine. But walls like Crawford’s were a liability, if the organization ever became aware of them.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

3.

“I’ll show you sometime,” Crawford said, and patted the bed. Schuldig didn’t move. “I’d rather not show you tonight.” Crawford laughed and the sound broke Schuldig’s blank stare and forced his feet into motion. Stumbling over his pants, abandoning them along the way, he threw himself onto the bed like an over-anxious puppy.

“How? I mean you don’t have to show me tonight, but who taught you?”

“Do you want to fuck or talk, or both? Wait – don’t answer, my memories too long.” Crawford had sense enough to realize they’d be locked in this neutral state of anticipation until he gave some answer. “The categories and the various levels came naturally. They taught me to organize the walls, same as they taught you, but I never let them know there was a basement, a hidden room.”

Schuldig straddled him and started to work again on his shirt. “So no one knows?”

“Leave this on,” Crawford tugged the sleeve of Schuldig’s own shirt. “Just you.”

“They can’t hear us here, can they?”

“The terrain doesn’t offer any obstacles, but it’s too remote and our job here is too small for them to have any need to monitor our actions. And we’ve proven ourselves; they’re not watching you like they were last year.”

“Why me?” Schuldig leaned down for a kiss that went on a little too long before he drew back to hear Crawford’s answer. He also hoped the quality of the kiss would improve the quality of the response.

Crawford searched his face again, deliberated, considered, for so long that Schuldig was certain the answer would be profound, complete. Instead, Crawford said, “I have no idea.” And flipped Schuldig onto his back. Before Schuldig could waste time with another unanswerable question, “I think you have an uncategorized talent for wasting time,” Crawford said and bit Schuldig’s mouth lightly before getting mixed up in the same too-slow kisses as before.

Schuldig slid into Crawford’s perfect quiet, and he remained there as Crawford played his desires, weary of pushing any thoughts into that white room, the time wasn’t right, not yet. He was still a visitor in that strange place and he wanted to know it well before he made us of it.

Crawford’s thoroughness, his carefulness, was no longer surprising; they were stuck together now, like it or not. They couldn’t get away from each other alive, not with their shared knowledge, because Crawford’s silence revealed Schuldig’s questions and neither trait was beneficial to their employers.

Crawford’s slick fingers sought out and Schuldig’s body took. When they finally got around to the actual fucking, it was like an afterthought of an already realized goal.

“What now?”

“We’ll figure it out as we go.”

[voksen.livejournal.com]

I hate you so much. you can't ever see anything I write because the stuff you "hate" is so indescribably better than anything I have ever written that it makes me feel like a total dumbass. god damn it.

p.s. write more

[two-point.livejournal.com]

I think you're lying.

But in order for me to know for certain I would have to see some, oh, I don't know, kink bingo? Because AS THE TOPIC OF THE WEEK SHOWS -- fic is only good if it's not one's own fic.

[voksen.livejournal.com]

my aim sn is vouksen. :)