Wartober 2021 - Tumblr Posts

All the October Prompts!

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3 

Here’s Day 1 - Coast + Goodnight Kiss

There are ghosts on the tide tonight. 

The splinter of the moon is just bright enough to catch the waves sighing in, each one topped with the silvery shroud of the departed. Tiny, violent epitaphs for a sea of souls that move and roll as if they still had corporeal bodies to relish and slide over the water. 

They don’t feel malignant. Only lonely.

Eugene sits in the wet sand with them in solidarity, watches the sea banshees keen longingly for the shore, busting themselves to pieces on the break before they can set foot back upon the land. For some reason he feels most at home here - in the coastal limbo where sea meets sand. This odd position between solidity and liquidity, where neither state of being can exist without the other...

Read the rest here on my ao3 and validate my need for compliments by leaving a nice review if you please :)

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3

Day 3 - Vessel + Morning Kisses

Dick can tell what kind of day it’s going to be by the mug Nix chooses upon waking.

He shuffles into the kitchen, already running late and nearly nude, if not as naked as the day he was born. Occasionally there will be socks. His hair will be unkempt and sticking up in every direction, inexplicable if Dick has tugged on it through their sex the night before. Eyes closed as he’s drawn to the coffee pot like a moth to the flame, skirting the kitchen table and counter edges from memory.

Dick shakes back his sleeve, mouth tightening in a minute down turn as his watch ticks on insistently.

Nix scrubs a hand through his heavy stubble, peers over to where Dick’s standing in his mild irritation.

“You’ve missed the first train,” he slurs.

Dick tugs his sleeve back down, crosses the three strides it takes to get from the cramped apartment kitchen to the door and plucks his coat from the hook.

“I can make the second if I leave in the next couple of minutes. The benefits of cheap housing, being so close to the station. Are you coming?”

Nix barks a laugh and it’s no indicator whether he’s scoffing at the suggestion he could possibly be ready in minutes or at the notion of showing up for work at all. The possibility of either happening is slim to none and mentally Dick already starts to run down the list of tasks he’ll have to add to his own agenda today to ensure Nixon Nitration’s administrative offices continue to run smoothly without their employer. Not that any of the staff will be shocked by the boss not showing up at the office. The times they actually see Stanhope Nixon’s son per month can be counted on both hands. But Dick’s job is enough work on it’s own. Not particularly challenging, but he would like to stamp it with his own brand of efficiency and work ethic without constantly having to cover for Nix going AWOL.

Dick watches from beneath his lashes, stalking Nix’s movement to the cabinet where the coffee mugs are kept.

“Coffee first,” grumbles Nix, fumbling through the collection of ceramic vessels with a series of soft clanks and clings.

Dick waits, holding his breath. Though there’s a dozen different cups within reach, there will be three that dictate Nix’s current mood and mental state. If he chooses the white, unassuming diner mug, lacking any kind of decoration or detail, a full night’s sleep was had and the day will consist of the usual amount of humorous cynicism. If he goes for the slightly larger jadeite mug with the chip in the handle, the day will only be peppered lightly with bouts of irritability and spells of hopelessness and ennui, and some level of productivity and socialization will be maintained. If he reaches for the hand-thrown extra large stoneware mug with Adirondack pines circumventing it’s convex sides...Dick hopes he doesn’t reach for that mug.

“You sleep all right?” Dick prompts, hoping to get some insight into foretelling the selection before it happens.

Nix cuts a sleepy side-eyed glance at him across the counter, flashes that smirk that even in his bedraggled, rugged state makes Dick’s heart do a tiny wet flip-flop.

“Well not for the present company’s lack of trying.” He lifts a brow and drops his gaze lewdly down Dick’s front, rests it suggestively at the crotch of his khakis.

To hide the flush he feels spreading from the apple of his cheeks, Dick clears his throat and leans over to snatch his hat off the coat rack.

“Wasn’t my intention to keep you up all night-”

“Some parts of me, it was,” Nix drawls.

Dick continues with a grimace. “I just thought,” he insists, “it might be nice to spend some time together. Things have gotten busy at the office lately, and well.”

He trails off, chewing at the inside of his lip. It does seem silly now. Inviting Nix over to spend the night because he’d missed the feel of his skin against his own, missed the timbre of his unguarded laugh. Reckless even. Although the apartment building is the right amount of cordial and distant, he’s still got neighbors. And even the most loyal neighbors can talk. It’s ridiculous. Risking what he has with Nix on a single night’s basest pleasure. He’d told himself once they were back home, he’d figure something out. A way to love him without the secrecy and sneaking around, a way to care for Nix as he deserved to be cared for - without regret. Dick swore to be the first. The first to adore Lewis Nixon and not treat him as a burden to be endured. As a mistake to be suffered.

“Nevermind,” he says, rather glumly. “I’m glad you got some rest.”

Nix leans back to peer around the cabinet door, picking up on the change in his tone. His face softens, eyes opening fully for the first time since entering the kitchen and he abandons his quest for coffee to step around the counter’s edge. He reaches for Dick, runs a cautious hand down his arm.

“Hey, Dick, hey.” His eyes are the perfect compliment to a fine cup of coffee. Dick’s always been drawn to the color of Nix’s eyes.

“It was great,” Nix tells him, sliding his hand up to cup the back of Dick’s neck, gives it a squeeze. “Extraordinary. Transcendent. It always is. But I don’t always need you to fuck me through the mattress to enjoy spending time with you. You could let me take you to dinner.”

Dick can feel the crude words push his flush out to the roots of his hair. “Dinner?”

Nix leans in, eyes flicking between Dick’s and his mouth and back. “Yeah. You know. Dinner. And a movie. And maybe a little necking in the car in the back of the parking lot.”

His grin is annoyingly contagious and Dick stops fighting the magnetic pull, let’s himself be drawn into Nix’s gravity. “Like a date?” he murmurs.

“Yeah. A real date. I’ll pick you up, bring you flowers, spring for dessert, the whole shebang.”

Dick tilts his head, inviting Nix closer, draws his other arm up to cage Dick fully against the door.

“Careful,” he whispers, a hair’s breath away from Nix’s lips. “A man might think you’re sweet on him with all that.”

Nix’s coffee colored eyes twinkle, wide awake. “Good.”

He surges up to capture Dick’s mouth, kissing whatever smart reply he had building on his tongue away. Dick moans, buries his hands in Nix’s wild hair and kisses him back, licks at the seam of his mouth until he opens and allows Dick entrance. He tastes sleep-sour and there’s an echo of last night’s whiskey and that bitter, smoky afterburn that is all Nix and Dick laps it up greedily. All night he’s chased this taste, desperate for it, accenting it with the salt of Nix’s sweat and the sound of Dick’s name from his throat. And he still wants more.

Is this what Nix feels every time he reaches for his flask? Is this what addiction is?

He kisses Nix until his cheeks burn from the rasp of his stubble. He kisses Nix until his lips feel swollen and his heart full to the brim. Kisses him until he’s satisfied he can wait until it’s time to punch out from work and find Nix again to refill his need of Nix’s lips against his.

When Nix draws back, his breathing is just a tad uneven, his pupils a tad too large. Dick smirks, pleased he’s not the only addict between them.

“So,” Nix says, trying and failing to cover his breathlessness. “You name the day. And I’ll come steal you away for a whirlwind courtship. What do you say?”

Dick runs a thumb over Nix’s bottom lip, watches the way it catches in the tacky saliva still clinging to the swell. “I accept.”

Nix grins, catching the pad of his thumb and giving it a swirl with his clever, devious tongue. He releases it with an audible pop and pushes off the door, leaving Dick choking on a rather indignant whimper in his wake.

“You better run,” he advises. “You’ve got sixty seconds if you’re making your train.”

Snapping out of his spell, Dick tsks and glances at his watch again. He bends at the waist to retrieve his poor hat that got abandoned to the floor with all the smooching.

“Are you coming in today or not? I need to tell Janet or she won’t stop hounding me about it.”

Nix, already back at the coffee pot, lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Who can say?” he says airily, reaching into the cabinet. “I’ve got a big date to plan for, might need to take the day off and prepare.”

He lowers his hand and in it is clutched the plain white diner mug.

Dick beams.

“Fine,” he chuckles, already half out the door before Nix can finish filling his coffee. “See you later. Or not.”

There’s the sound of a sloppy, particularly wet coffee kiss being blown at his back as the door shuts and Dick finds himself grinning all the way to the train station.

It’s going to be a great day.

Wartober/Kisstober - Day 4

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3

Day 4 - Navigate + Slow Kisses

WARNING: POETIC AND OVERLY METAPHORED ALLUSIONS TO SEX AHEAD

Dick has always loved maps.

As a boy he’d been obsessed with charting the world, one latitude at a time. He could see the peaks of the Himalayas on every globe. The jungles of Madagascar in every atlas. The sea currents. The depths of the Pacific Ocean in every naval chart.

He’d trailed bony boy hands over the lines of longitude, zigzagging past the equator and up to each pole in turn, imagining the far off lands detailed in perfect topography beneath his fingertips and what adventures they may hold. Wild animals perhaps. Inland seas the color of blue only dreamt of, brimming over with dolphins bearing their backs of gold. Rubies deep in the planet’s crust the size of a fist, too glamorous even for the most queenly neck. Anything beyond the tidy suburban monotony of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

He’d joined the air force with a head full of boyish fantasies that never quite grew up. A misplaced Peter Pan training to plummet to the ground instead of fly, while fiery flak explodes in every direction. Dick falls from planes and navigation blows away, pulling it with him. A mere leaf in the wind. A tiny insignificant speck in a great big world.

He never lands in the lush tropical jungles of his childhood imagination. He never sets foot on the coastline with water so crystal clear you can see straight to the bottom. He lands in Hell. And there are no fantastic creatures here, no jewels or mountain-whisp clouds to chase. No sunsets over the curve of the horizon.

There’s only death. And fear. And the responsibility of leading men who look to him for guidance out of the smoke and into the daylight. He grips his compass like a lifeline and does his best. It’s almost good enough. They almost all make it to the next day.

Dick gets lost occasionally.

When he’s left to the watches of his chilly billet and the candles in the rest of the camp have long gone out. That’s when the isolation strikes hardest and the ghosts feel free to crowd in. They cast a shade so thick, he chokes, drowning on his own failures, his own insipidity. He wonders if he’ll ever make it out to see the sun again. If he’ll ever find the way back.

And then enters Nix.

With his sly, self assured grin and his dark, sardonic wit. He slips like a wish into Dick’s billet, or the potato cellar of a blown out building, or the back of the jeep when he purposely drives off the marked path. He takes Dick’s hand and cocks that brow that says “Trust me” and by God and all his angels, Dick does. He follows blindly and oh so willingly, grateful for the guide and indebted to Nix for knowing exactly when he’s in danger of venturing too far off course.

Nix strips him of the olive military wool that demands strict obedience. The color that barters not a hair of deviation from a pre-drawn map made by men who don’t know what it’s like to nose dive into the inferno of battle. Nix casts it away, tossing it to the floor and covers Dick’s skin with his own hands, paints him with his own array of colors. A black-brown fan of lashes skirting over his collarbone, the red of his mouth at Dick’s pulse point, coral pink tongue in the shell of his ear, the beach sand tan of his calloused fingers tightening around Dick’s naked bicep. Teeth with brightness to rival the Pacific white caps on his chest and abdomen. Eyes the color of expensive coffee from the tropics glancing up over his belt buckle, warm and rich.

Nix kisses him and he can feel the earth’s rotation slow beneath his feet.

Nix touches him and gravity is solid and real beneath his back once more.

Nix traces the constellation of Dick’s freckles with his lips and Dick can set time by the star’s orbit again.

He lets Nix take him apart and put him back together, piece by tattered piece. Until he’s whole and functional again, at least for a little while. Long enough to get his bearings and restart the cycle of playing tour guide through the landscape of dreary Europe, his band of Lost Boys in tow.

He comes to the siren song of Nix’s praises, his lover urging him on with clever fingers that play Dick's body like a well rehearsed instrument. When he’s caught his breath and regained his sense enough to flip their positions, Dick pins Nix down. Cages him against the cot and splays him wide, the scroll of his skin like fine golden parchment in the dim candlelight.

Nix squirms under the tenacious attention, craving speed and friction. But Dick is on a mission. He’ll recommit every part of him to memory, burying it deep in his psyche like treasure. Until the mental image of Nix bowing under his hand becomes as priceless and coveted as monstrous gemstones he can bask amongst at whim. Sorting them like a king sitting on his spoils. He’ll relearn the lines and transits of Nix’s form until he can recite in perfect detail the landmarks of his moles, the patterns of his body hair, the slope and angle of his wrists. He’ll stake his flag here, laying claim to Nix’s body and heart as conquistadors of old did to things and locations too precious to part with.

He can read his future in the curve of Nix’s hip bones. The universe in the earth tones of his eyes.

“Dick,” Nix whispers, something between a whine and a moan. He scraps desperate fingernails along Dick’s scalp, trying to steer his mouth where he needs it most. “Come on. Come on.”

Dick won’t be bullied off course. He runs the tip of his tongue along the shadow of the Adonis belt Nix used to have when he was in peak fighting shape at the start of the war, lingering at the scar just there above the pelvic crest. He lets his lips trek as fingertips do, memorizing the most scenic routes across and over and around this body he loves so dearly.

He steers southward down from the navel, following the trail of dark hair and Nix groans. He heads north to circumvent a nipple and Nix whimpers. He nibbles and sucks contrails on every inch he can find, until Nix bears the purple marks that label him as Dick’s territory and Dick’s alone.

He wrings curses and prayers and nonsense from Nix’s mouth. Until he arches beneath him and cries his release into the hush of Dick’s palm, breathy laughter squeezing through the spaces in Dick’s fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” Nix gasps, chest heaving with blasphemy and bliss. He tugs at Dick until he slides back up the length of his form, letting out the softest sigh for every slow kiss pressed to each body part on the journey up. “How do you do that? Remember exactly what gets me going? You always know.”

“I’m good at cartography,” Dick says.

“The hell does that mean?”

Dick just shrugs, cranes his neck down to pepper his shoulder with kisses.

Nix pulls a face that suggests Dick might be moderately insane, but then he laughs that ruby-ocean-wilderness-touchstone laugh of his and maneuvers Dick fully down on top of him for a long, lazy, silky sweet kiss. And though they’re both sated and satisfied for now, passing back and forth the same oxygen, filling each other's sails - it does not feel like journey’s end.

It feels like a beginning. Each and every time he’s with Nix and resets his course by the steady, unwavering foundation of his being. It’s always a new start. One he hopes against hope never stops resetting.

Because Nix has always been his True North.

Dick kisses his mouth and feels like he’s come home.

Wartober/Kisstober - Day 11

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3

Day 11 - Light + Kisses As A Promise

WARNING: Listen at this point, I'm just writing multiple semi-redundant love letters to Dick Winters and Damian Lewis' body. So if that's not your jam, you're about to have a bad time.

Dick looks good in any light.

Sunlight seems made for him, crowning him as a favorite son - a scion - setting his copper hair aflame with it’s love and claiming him as its own. He lingers in it’s radiance and never seems to burn despite his pale skin. Only wears his freckles like sunspots as his body takes on a golden Adonis glow. He walks under the crepuscular rays and Nixon turns and tracks him like an adoring flower.

Moonlight too, challenges for his affections. It courts him with a covetous lust that's equally strong, if not lacking the same magnitude of violence. He stands still in the night and it gathers and pools like liquid silver along his limbs, coats him in a million fairy lights that dance and sway in the breeze. It turns all his movements fluid, the simplest saunter down the sidewalk becoming a waltz. Like he’s some otherworldly being the moonlight by design is made to accent and enhance.

Candlelight spins him in threads of softest saffron. While it’s embrace is gentler, more forgiving, it cuts Dick into a creature of sharp edges and mysterious shadows. It sighs along his skin, brushing it smooth and velvety to the point where it’s almost irresistible for Nixon to reach out and touch. He loves interrupting the candlelight on Dick’s skin.

Firelight even more. It’s candlelight’s more aggressive sister, licking along Dick’s torso in cinnamons and yellows that burn pure and white at their hottest. He arches his back under Nixon’s touch, sprawled like poured molten magma on the hearth rug, twisting and writhing like a living flame himself. His gasps compliment the crackle of the blaze as it consumes sweet-smelling wood and when Nixon brings him to orgasm with his fingers and mouth and body, Dick combusts in the most glorious explosion of red light, his throat a fiery column as his head falls back in ecstasy.

Even streetlights. The harsh, unforgiving neon of Chicago doesn’t bloat the angles of his face into obscurity the way it does Nixon. He stands in thoughtful observation at the window of the atrociously lavish hotel room Nixon’s booked for the next two days, stripped to the waist and arms crossed over his chest. The garish lights of the city only emphasize his fine bone structure, the fit expanse of muscle that ripples at his back and abdomen as he shifts.

He gives a minute turn of his head at Nixon’s approach from behind and it presents an entirely new profile, his smile lined in vulgar magenta, the outline of his chin in brazen cyan. Instead of making him gaudy or cheap, it sits like paint on his features - a bizarre colored work of art.

He settles back against Nixon’s chest, lifts his arms to make room for the ones slipping around to encircle him from the back.

Nixon peppers a string of kisses across the broad line of his shoulders, nibbling at the ball and tracing the neon highlights with his nose.

“Well?” he mumbles, mouth full of every color in the light spectrum, Dick’s own specific wavelength buzzing like electricity on his tongue. “Told you I’d get you to Chicago. How do you like it?”

Dick overlaps his large hands on Nixon’s forearms, nodding sagely.

“It’s nice, Lew. A bit fast paced. But I’m glad I got to see it.”

Nixon hooks his chin over Dick’s shoulder, gazes out with him at the landscape for a long moment. Though they are the ones trapped behind glass, it’s the bustle of the city that seems like the specimen under observation. It rushes on below their feet, ignorant of their existence and Nixon is grateful. He doesn’t have to compete for Dick here. He doesn’t have to hide his incessant craving for him here. He can touch at will, can reach out and take anytime he fancies, under the witness of all the city lights.

“Where to next?” Dick asks, his eyes glittering with joy in the reflected ambient light of the city.

“Anywhere,” Nixon tells him. He’ll follow Dick to the sun and the moon and back, watching as he eclipses the shine of both as they pass. “Anywhere you want.”

Anything you want. Anything I can get, anything I have, it’s yours. Don’t you see?

“Montana?” Dick suggests. “The Wild West?”

“Sure.” Nixon nuzzles the hollow of his neck, rubs his cheek against him until stubble catches and he’s forced to switch to trailing lips over the edge of Dick’s jaw. The light turns the blonde of his beard beginnings and the tiny hairs on the back of his neck into spun red gold. Nixon presses his lips to them and expects to taste amber and honey and clove. Warm spices associated with fire.

He tastes nothing like he looks. Mint and lime aftershave and the cool green of forests. Nixon drags the tip of his tongue down Dick’s pulse point, delighting at the contradiction.

“South America,” Dick says, that teasing lopsided smile pulling up one side of his mouth. “The tropical rain forests of the Amazon. Lots of bugs. And heat. And sweat.”

He’s clearly testing the limits of Nix’s commitment. He doesn’t realize Nixon is already there, one step behind anywhere he might dream to venture.

He kisses Dick’s cheek, craning his neck around as far as he can to claim the soft dimples at the corners of Dick’s mouth. It’s rose pink at the swell, navy in the crease and the space behind his teeth.

“Won’t have to pack much clothing,” he says pragmatically.

That earns him a chuckle and Nixon thrills. If he can spend the rest of his life making this man laugh like that - contained but earnest, relaxed, happy - he will have done something worthwhile.

Dick slides out of his hold to rotate in his arms. He drapes himself over Nix’s shoulders, let’s himself be walked backwards towards the ostentatious windows until his back is pressed against glass, Nixon pressed against him. His eyes are a giddy prismatic blue with too many colored facets for Nixon to name. They’re all his favorite color simultaneously.

“The peaks of the Himalayas,” Dick murmurs, lingering within kissing distance, close enough that Nixon can feel their breath ricocheting and mingling. “The highest point of Everest so we can look out over the whole world.”

Another kiss. Another seal on the treaty.

“We’ve survived one frozen barren wasteland, what’s one more?”

One day Dick will leave him. Because maybe he’ll grow tired of Nix’s insipid brand of love, where the balance of give and take is always just slightly skewed towards selfishness. Because the wanderlust and call to action is too great and he’s too big to cram himself back into the drab grey box of domesticity for long. Because his lionheart will eventually give out and take him wherever it is good, devout men go.

Nixon won’t be able to follow him forever. But he’s sure as hell going to try for as long as he can.

“To the bottom of the sea,” Dick says, eyes full of mirth and dancing over Nix’s face. He runs his hands through Nix’s dark hair, tugging him even closer. Until he’s a blur of color and shapes and Nix’s vision melts into a soft, fuzzy haze consisting only of him. “Where the shipwrecks are, waiting to be discovered, hulls full of silver and gold.”

Nixon kisses him. Partially to cement the deal. Mostly to shut him up. Weaves his arms around Dick’s light-loved body and tries to hoard it all to himself. Kisses the obstinance off his teeth until he tastes something sweeter. Richer.

He kisses Dick until he’s confident in the sunrise again. Until Dick’s soft sighs and moans loop in his ears like a symphony - an orchestral soundtrack written to accompany the new daybreak promised.

He draws back only when Dick tightens his grip, the arousal sparking hot in his blood. He stares at Nixon, just this side of breathless and his calm starting to unspool. Goddamn, he’s gorgeous like this. Balance tilted in towards Nixon’s center of gravity, tension simmering just below the surface and waiting to be tapped. Cast in a rainbow mold of neon, eyes iridescent with clarity enough to rival diamonds.

Nixon kisses his top lip and then the bottom, and repeats. “I said I’d take you anywhere. And I meant what I said.”

Oh love, don’t be afraid. Don’t look over your shoulder for me. We are stronger than Orpheus and Eurydice. My devotion is not nearly as fragile.

Dick grins, pulls him back in. “Just checking,” he murmurs against Nixon’s mouth. “Take me to bed first. We can figure out the next stop after.”

Dick looks good in any light.

But he looks the best lit from within, reflecting and amplifying Lewis Nixon’s paltry, washed out love back upon him with the force of a thousand suns.

Comments and kudos are always appreciated on my ao3! <3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34466809

Wartober/Kisstober - Day 15

I’ve decided to combine @rubinecorvus Wartober 2021 and @raincoffeeandfandoms Kisstober 2021 prompt challenges for double the fun and double the headache. :3

Day 15 - Spirit + Kisses In The Rain

WARNING: Chick flick moments ahead. And yes I did listen to Easy On Me on repeat for this one and I make zero apologizes, SO THERE. xD

“Come home,” Nixon says.

The rain mats his dark hair into a fringe that covers half his vision and he keeps spitting out mouthfuls of waters he’s gathering as he pants. He’s shaking but it has nothing to do with the water soaking him to the bone.

“I can’t,” Dick tells him sadly. “I told you.”

“I know. I know what you said. But just come home.”

“Lew-“

“I signed up for rehab,” Nixon cuts him off.

For a long pause, the rain falls around them, indifferent and cold, misting their breath into little clouds in the space between them.

“You did?” Dick’s voice is soft, hesitant.

Nixon nods, and dares to take a slow step closer. As if Dick is a skittish animal who might run if he rushes the approach.

“I check in next Thursday.”

Dick blinks water from his lashes, frozen in disbelief.

“And I’m gonna go,” Nixon says. “I’m gonna give it my best shot. But Dick, I’m so fucking scared.”

He takes another step, closing the distance one foot at a time. Heel to toe, scraping over the slick pavement. So far Dick hasn't moved. He’s just staring with a hungry intensity, like he wants to believe what he’s being told but can’t help search for a chink in Nixon’s honesty.

“Of relapsing?” Dick croaks.

“Of living without armor. I’m not like you. I don’t charge into battle certain I’ll come out on top. I’m- well, I’m a goddamn coward.”

Dick doesn’t like this admission. His mouth tightens into a line.

“You’re not a coward, Lew. You jumped out of moving planes.”

“Because you did,” Nixon corrects him. “I enlisted for myself. But I survived over there on your borrowed spirit, we both know that.”

Dick turns his head with a huff, jaw set.

“Loan it to me just a little while longer. I swear I’ll give it back once I figure out how to do this.”

Dick shakes his head, indicating he doesn’t know what ‘this’ is.

“Live,” he clarifies. “Charge. Jump.”

Dick’s eyes are wet and Nixon can’t tell if it’s rain or not. His face keeps wobbling between devastation and hope. It makes Nixon’s chest constrict to the point of pain, because he has no desire to be a sadist, to keep dragging this man’s trust through the mud with his negligent callousness. But at some point Dick has become as integral as oxygen and Nixon is terrified of suffocating should he fail to barter another chance he doesn’t deserve.

He holds out imploring hands, begging Dick not to run. “I figure it might be easier if I knew I had something - anything - waiting for me on the other side.”

Dick exhales shakily.

Nixon gears up for the agony of choking when Dick turns and walks away. He’s not ready, will never be ready, but he’ll stand at attention in the rain and watch the love of his life serve a benefiting sentence for his crimes against his steadfast heart.

Then Dick drops his knapsack to splash on the ground at his feet, snaking forward to hook Nixon by the back of the neck and draw him in for a punishing kiss.

Nixon gasps beneath him, trembling, numb fingers clutching at Dick’s shirt front like a lifeline. Dick breathes life back into him, every place their lips connect bursting forth with warmth and color enough to combat the grey of the storm. He can taste lifetimes wasted and never lived on Dick’s mouth, their future washing away with every passing second, like water through Nixon’s fingers.

He wants to stop the world, slow it’s rotation and drag this moment out so he can memorize every piece of it, use it’s light to illuminate the dark cold existence waiting for him without Dick’s fire.

All too soon, Dick withdraws. Nixon whimpers.

Sniffing once, twice, Dick knocks his forehead into Nixon’s, presses in like he’s trying to get even closer and squeezes the nape of his neck.

“Dick?” Nixon breathes in a sob.

He clings to him, heart in his throat. He fears it’s a goodbye kiss until Dick cuts the drone of the rain with a barely audible, gruff promise.

“You got something, Lew. You got me.”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34542667

Leave me comments/emojis/just random noises on my ao3 please and thank you! :D