Archive of Our Own

Dave’s had a long, hot night.  The Vietnamese humidity seems unusually aggressive tonight, and he’s still feeling a little flush from the alcohol.  At least he’s not deep in the jungle, he thinks.  At least he’s not alone.

They’re in the middle of a pretty great fuck, testing the creaky hotel chair’s durability perhaps a bit too vigorously, when a peculiarly strong notion seizes Dave.  “Klaus.  Klaus, wait,” he says urgently.  “Don’t move.”

Dave releases his grip on the sides of the chair and brings his hands up to cover Klaus’s pecs.  He feels hard, small nipples press into the lifelines of his palms.  With a light tug,  he pulls Klaus back from where he’s perched slightly forward to ride Dave’s dick at a brutal pace, erasing the space between them to bring Klaus’s slick, sweaty back to cover his chest.  Klaus groans when Dave slides deeper into his ass. 

“What?”  Klaus asks, panting.  “Already?  We just lit this fuse, baby.  Seems a bit soon for the bomb to go off.”

“Ugh, you’re ridiculous.”  Dave drops his head forward to rest it against the back of Klaus’s neck.  “For the record, it’s been at least ten minutes.”

“Yes, but what was all that posturing about stamina and endurance you were doing with that FNG last night?”

“That was about marchi— No, you know what?  Shut up, thats not why.”  Dave licks the sweat hanging just below Klaus’s hairline off his neck, letting the bite of salt sit on his tongue. 
 
Klaus trills, “Are you suuuuure?”  and wiggles his hips to seat Dave’s cock just that impossible little bit deeper.  “I mean, I would understand.  I’m a professional.”  Dave pinches his nipple in retaliation.  

The other man takes this as his cue to start a slow grind, and Dave lets them both indulge until  the rhythm picks up in earnest.  He interlocks their fingers and pulls both their arms up behind his head, over the back of the chair, kissing a knuckle on the way.  Klaus stills when the stretch makes it harder to move, but it feels like holding a live wire. Electricity coursing just under the surface.

Klaus grumbles,  “Fine.  Are your legs going numb?” He frowns, “Hey wait, I’m offended.”

“No just… just stay like this,” he pleads.

“Yeah sure, I’ll just keep your dick warm in perpetuity.  Am I gonna be compensated for my services?”  Klaus bites his tongue at him.

He sighs, “If you behave, jackass.”  

And here’s the thing:  Dave has no fucking idea what he’s doing.  He has no idea where this is meant to go.  He doesn’t even know where this need is coming from, but it sits heavy and molten in his chest. He wants to savor Klaus.  He wasn’t a blushing virgin when the universe decided to drop Klaus into his lap, but he’s never had such an elaborate…. whatever the fuck they’ve got going on.  Rarely even been with a guy more than once.  All of his past lovers have been single scoop ice cream cones, but Klaus is the whole Sundae,  spilling over its too small bowl and melting all over Dave’s whole life.  This is him trying to lick up every stray, sticky trail.

Dave unlaces their fingers so he can move his own into the hollow of Klaus’s hip bones.  He presses his fingers in hard, letting his blunt nails catch the skin.  He wants to bruise, to leave a mark.  Mean something to someone other than a statistic of how badly this war is going.  Klaus is perhaps a poor choice to hinge that goal upon because: a) he’ll be surprised if Klaus makes it out alive, and b) Klaus seems to change forms as easily as clothes.  But even if Dave is just ghostwriting with chemtrails in the sky, he’ll know they were there however briefly.  They’re two inconsequential men who can still carve their names into each others flesh, be each others memorial.

He holds Klaus like a moment suspended under glass and breathes deeply, trying to fill his nose with the heady, close atmosphere their bodies have created.  It’s musky.  It's smokey, as Klaus often is, cigarette or otherwise dangling from his lips.  It’s even slightly sour, layered with old and new sweat from an entire night enjoying each other.  

They had elected to move to the chair when the crumpled sheets became too unruly.  Dave’s spent the last five years having clandestine relations in the army, and most didn’t even get the luxury of a bed.  Here, after four months with Klaus, they’ve used the comfort of one so thoroughly, they’ve come out the other side.  It brings a new creative and playful flavor he didn’t know he was craving.

Klaus pulls him from his reverie with a delicate whisper.  “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be doing?”  He sounds timid, a surprising turn coming from the most cocksure person Dave has ever met.  

He nuzzles close into Klaus’s ear, hot breath against his skin, “Just… exist.  Breathe with me.”  Dave takes a deep breath, feels his chest expand until its flush against Klaus’s back and keeps going, lifting his lax partner, growing lightheaded from the inrush of oxygen. He feels bubbly and buoyant like a pot boiling under pressure just before the steam escapes, so he lets his air out slowly and feels the motion carry through the body above him.  A gradual shift.  Now, he feels held down, held together by Klaus’s weight but not in a violent, suppressive way.  Instead it feels like hitting a guardrail, a reminder to avoid the cliff. Klaus joins in, matching, mirroring.

The cycle repeats.  In, out.  Build up, decompress.  Weightless, contained.  And so it goes, until all is still and soft.  There may be a world out there with guns and bombs and overbearing families, but this room is narrowed to the steady flow of two people breathing in sync.  Dave opens his eyes to look down the blanket of Klaus’s body over him, a roadmap of hills and valleys he hopes to lose his way on forever.  

Klaus’s face is usually a jumbled mix of expressions, both masked and brazen, but now it is neutral, uncomplicated.  A tiny upturn pulls at the corner of his lips .  Dave asks, “What are you feeling?”

“Emptied out, but like not in a bad way?  Calm.”  Dave hums encouragement in his ear so Klaus continues,  “Like, like my mind’s full of static. Snow on a TV screen.  Instead of noise and flashes, layered burn-in.”

“Is that what its always like?”

“Only on good days,”  Klaus chuckles lightheartedly.

Dave lets himself feel the sorrow for both of them and kisses his cheek.  “I’m sorry, baby.”

Klaus’s voice lilts softly, “Eh, y’know, all that pressure made us diamonds.” 

“Diamonds are an industrial abrasive,” Dave says matter of factly.

“You turn my brain to jello and wanna have philosophical conversations?” Klaus snorts but remains loose and coating Dave like thick, sweet molasses.  “C’mere, you’re too coherent.”  He  directs Dave into a tender kiss , little more than a peck, with a hand to his cheek. “Breath my air,” Klaus says.  He opens his mouth close but far like he does when he wants Dave to shotgun him.  Dave follows suit, and again, they begin to breathe.

In, out.  Back, forth. Yours, mine.  The air ebbs like a river between two banks, and Dave feels frothy and floaty, dizzy.  He can tell Klaus is not much better even with his arms looped loosely around Dave’s neck.  Eventually, as their breath grows thin, they have to lean closer and closer.  It’s Klaus that breaks, running his tongue just on the inside of Dave’s bottom lip and dragging them into a proper kiss.

They make out like fools until Dave remembers their original intent had been orgasms. He taps Klaus’s knees.  “Lift your legs,” he tells him.  Klaus huffs like asking him to move in this state is a personal insult.  He takes the initiative and slips his hands into the damp space between their bodies to grip Klaus’s thighs and tug.  It takes an awkward moment before Klaus contributes to moving his own damn limbs because he’s a bastard, but he obeys when Dave tells him to grab and hold his knees up. Dave quickly accomplishes his goal of rearranging them to bring his legs to the inside and lets Klaus release his own down to lay draped open over his thighs.

“And what exactly did that accomplish?”  Klaus asks, obviously starting to congeal back into his sharp edges.  That’s ok, Dave plans to wreck him again but in the opposite direction, pull him out and snap him like spun sugar instead of melted down to syrup.

“This,”  Dave tells him as he catches Klaus’s knees on his own and splays both their legs wide, ratcheting the tension in the room back to where they started, slipping back onto a well-trodden path.  He weaves his fingers roughly into Klaus’s loose curls and pulls his head back, tightening his whole body like a bowstring.  Klaus grunts loudly like the air has been punched out of him, and squeezes down hard on Dave’s cock.  Dave loses focus and has to wait panting harshly against Klaus’s jaw to recapture it.  He spies Klaus’s adam’s apple prominent and bobbing in the corner of his eye, so he scrapes his teeth across it like testing the skin of a ripe fruit. Then, he sinks his mouth onto the flesh of his shoulder and sucks.

His hands drift around to touch Klaus, one cupping his sack and the other stroking.  He squeezes just below the head to get a whine out of the other man, and starts lifting his own hips in short thrusts.  They rock like that for a while with Klaus spread and pinned on top of him before he starts to challenge against Dave’s hold.

“Haa, ahh.  Dave, give me some leverage.  Come on,” Klaus says.  Dave lets go off his hair, but he keeps his neck in its sharp extension, hair brushing Dave’s back.

“Reach around me and grab the crossbar,” Dave tells him.  Now, Klaus can hold resistance against each thrust of Dave’s cock into him, even pull himself against it until Dave is sure this is the deepest he’s ever been in someone.  Klaus winds himself impossibly tighter by anchoring his feet around the chair legs.  He turns his head to lick around Dave’s ear and clamp his teeth in the rim.  His panting breath is deafening so close.

“You wanna come like this?”  Dave asks, keeping a steady stoke on Klaus’s dick.

“Jesus Fucking Christ, you can talk?” Klaus barely manages to get out.  He’s already tight as a vice and hot as a furnace on Dave’s cock.  It’s a foregone conclusion.  Klaus comes sticky and wet across his fingers, and Dave follows when he breathes deep and catches the new sharp, tangy scent of come in the air.

Dave uncoils slowly into the come down.  He’s notices sunlight coming in through the curtains, surprising but not unexpected.  He’s come to think of Klaus as a bit of a time thief since he always loses track of it when they’re together.  Klaus is similarly relaxed, coming back into his body with a sigh.

Reality cuts through the last of their humid haze with the blare of a truly obnoxious car horn.  The noises of the street outside the motel window have been steadily rising, sticking in their ears like a pin in a map.  

You are Here:  Vietnam.  War.

Dave kisses Klaus’s jaw and says, “C’mon rag doll, time to get up.” 

Klaus makes absolutely no effort to move.  He giggles to himself, “I’m deadweight.”  Dave moves his lips down to Klaus’s bicep, right over their regimental tattoo, and bites in just a bit harder than playful calls for. 

“Rude,” Klaus pouts but at least he’s upright. He catches Dave’s eye, “Oh and hey, what the fuck brought that on?”

“Incentive?”

“No, the…”  Klaus trails of and losses most of his steam until he’s almost whispering.  “The breathing thing.”  He doesn’t look at Dave.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”  Dave lets his gaze drift away.  “Was it too much?”

“No!”  Klaus rushes out, then pauses. “…Maybe. Whatever.”  He flaps his hands like he’s brushing the thoughts away and makes his way over to a discarded pile of clothes, no difference whose.  “I think we’re due for transport in, like, an hour, and I’m hungry.  You fucked all the calories out of me.” 

“You know what’s empty calories?  Heroin.”  Dave will never judge someones coping mechanism, but he will take ever opportunity to give Klaus, specifically, shit.

“Yes, not having nutritional labeling on heroin is a grave oversight.  Dave, write your congressman.  P.S. Sir, may I please be excused from this awful war?”  Dave swats his ass.

After they’re dressed, Dave coaxes the curtains open and blinks into the brightness.  Klaus throws open the door, but Dave flourishes a gesture to let him go first.

“Ah, an officer and a gentleman.”  Klaus gives kissy faces with no regard to who may be watching.

Dave rolls his eyes.  “I barely outrank you.  Well, private, lets go pretend like we’re not probably going to die tomorrow.”

“And for nothing!”  Klaus cheers, already halfway down the hallway with his languid stride.  Dave turns back to glance at the small, quiet room full of morning light, and shuts the door.