The first time he ever read the book was on a plane. He didn’t remember what plane, what city, what year even. All he knew was that it had been a short flight, not quite into the double digits but long enough that the potential for boredom was a true threat. He’d picked it up from an airport newsstand, drawn by the simple cover among so many tawdry romance novels and cheap cookie-cutter crime stories. It sat nicely in his hand, compact and slender, and he’d stared down at it, hypnotized.
Fahrenheit 451, in large yellow letters and then beneath that, in a serious white font, the phrase “…The Temperature At Which Books Burn”. It was so dramatic, yet so simple, and coupled as it was with a small picture of charred pages, he was surprised that it had managed to go unsold for so long. Didn’t people love drama? Didn’t they love destruction? There was another phrase on the cover. “The novel of firemen who are paid to set books ablaze”. Something tickled in the back of his mind, something that said he ought to know this book. Maybe they’d discussed it in school when he wasn’t paying attention?
Shrugging to himself, just a little jerk of the shoulders, he flipped past the first few pages. Copyright information, title page, table of contents, straight on to the first actual page of the story. His eyes caught on the first sentence, stuck fast, lips parting a little. It seemed so familiar, like it had been written only for him, like the author had peeked into his life and summed it up in six simple words.
They’d snatched him up then, Lars and Jason, pulling his hair and punching his arms and, in Lars’s case, winding around him like a climbing vine and peering over his shoulder at the book. Neither of them asked what it was, though Lars tapped the cover thoughtfully, as though he recognized the title. Before he could utter a word of protest, they swept him out of the little shop, dragging him along the concourse.
“But I haven’t paid for the book!”
“Fuck that, we’ll send ‘em a check.” Lars glanced down at his watch and grimaced. “We’ve been looking for you for fifteen minutes, man. The fuck did you wander off for?”
“I told you I was going in there.” He’d ceased to be wounded by the fact that the guys rarely listened to him. It was simply a fact of life that James and Lars had other things to think about than where their wandering guitar player had gotten off to this time. Behind Lars’s back, Jason shrugged and spread his hands wide, a gesture that Kirk understood all too well. I tried to tell him. What can you do, right?
Kirk nodded and sighed and allowed himself to be hustled through the gate and plunked down in a first-class seat, Lars beside him. What else was there to do, after all? Part of him wanted to pull away from the endless touring, wanted to just set down and stay in a city for longer than a few days. He was tired of hopping from motel to motel, from venue to venue. Even the high he got off the crowd was starting to wear a little thin. It was time to stop, time to relax and retreat into his head and just be for a little while. He couldn’t remember the last time he was allowed to just be.
Two hours and three glasses of wine into the flight, he recalled the book. To avoid losing it in the shuffle, he’d thrust it into a side pocket in his carry-on bag and then utterly forgotten about it. Wallowing in melancholy and ennui was seductive, but the memory of how that first sentence seemed to rise up from the page and strike him broke their spell. He needed to read more, find out how it was that one sentence could encapsulate his situation so perfectly.
The book crackled a little as he opened it, and Lars leaned over, resting his head on Kirk’s shoulder with a sweet grin. Kirk rolled his eyes, but it was a fond gesture, and he indulged Lars, lifting the book to the drummer’s face so that he could inhale the new book scent. It was just one of his many charming eccentricities, one of the thousands of things that made him Lars.
“Thanks,” he murmured, shifting back and closing his eyes. Kirk watched him for a second, dark eyes lingering on the pouting curve of his lips. He wondered what it would be like to kiss Lars, had always wondered what it would be like to kiss Lars. Probably quite lovely. There was an excess of passion in Lars that made him intensely difficult but also undeniably attractive. They were idle thoughts, though, and Kirk knew it. Sighing, he turned back to the book. To the sentence.
This time, he managed to push past those teasing words, managed to dive into the story itself. It was fascinating stuff, beautifully written, and though he knew it was regarded as an indictment of censorship, Kirk couldn’t or didn’t or wouldn’t read it that way. The way the story was crafted made it about a man, a misguided, confused man who struggled to grasp the humanity that had somehow eluded him. Perhaps it was the melodrama inherent in his personality, but Kirk ached for the fireman who burned books. He could feel part of himself straining, pained and understanding and sympathetic. He knew what it was like. Oh god, did he ever…
The plane touched down as he read the last page and though the synchronicity should have amused him, it disturbed him slightly instead. The entire world seemed to be going too fast for him all of a sudden, sweeping him along like a feather in a hurricane. He was thoroughly disoriented, muddling through disembarking as vacant eyed as a junkie and chivvied along by Lars at his elbow. James and Jason were deep in a conversation that made no sense to him; it was all snippets of words, one voice and then the other, modulating tones and gestures that he caught out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t until they were all in the limo, en route to their hotel, that Kirk realized he’d shoved the book in his pocket and had been clinging to it the entire time.
Lars saw him to his room, assuming perhaps that he was jet-lagged or drunk or both. Kirk was content to let him think so because it kept him from asking awkward questions. What’s wrong? He didn’t know. Do you feel all right? Yes. No. Do you need anything? He needed so many things and couldn’t articulate a single one. Perhaps it was jet-lag. Perhaps he’d simply worn himself too thin. Perhaps all he needed was a shower and clean sheets and the deep, blessed darkness of sleep.
So he showered, water turned on too hot, fingers scrubbing against his scalp in a futile attempt to massage the barrage of questions out of his mind. It should have been satisfying to sluice off the smell of the plane, to scrub away the stale sweat and grime that coated his skin, to rinse out the grease that clogged his long hair. It would have been, perhaps, if he’d managed to keep his brain quiet while he washed. Usually he could lose himself in the ritualistic nature of bathing, going from step to step without actually thinking about what he was doing, body moving in the familiar rhythms. Not today. The water may as well have been fire and he may as well have been a page, withering and crisping and flaking away into nothingness.
He padded back out into the bedroom, white hotel towel wrapped around his waist, hair hanging in damp strands across his shoulders. His skin was flushed from the heat of the shower, fresh and clean from the scrubbing he’d given it. He didn’t feel clean, though. It was almost as though the doubts in his mind were leaking down into his body and seeping out through his skin. Surely anyone who saw him would see that. Surely…
The knock came as expected, nearly fifteen minutes after he was out of the shower, promptly an hour after they’d arrived at the hotel. He toyed with the idea of ignoring it for once, of just shedding the towel and curling up in the bed and pretending he was gone. Most of his recent existential pain stemmed from answering that knock. How easy would it be simply to deny himself the option of opening the door? Too easy, as easy as living and breathing and dying.
He answered the door.
They didn’t say a word to each other, hadn’t since the first few times when he’d attempted to make awkward conversation and been met by stony silence. It was to be expected. Neither of them needed this, but the knowledge that they both wanted it and wanted it desperately hung over them like an executioner’s axe. One wrong word, one false move, and everything they had could fall to pieces, fragile as a straw bridge.
There was a tenderness in their touching tonight, though, which was the one thing Kirk had learned never to expect. Tender was not a word that came easily to James, and usually his hands were rough, almost impartial. He took what he wanted and gave Kirk what he could, and they simply left it at that, an uneven exchange at best but one that Kirk had come to terms with. The feather-light touch of James’s fingertips across his chest was too much to bear. It was too much like his dreams.
They fell to the bed together, James’s clothes falling away like autumn leaves, useless drifts on the floor that Kirk would have been happy to leap into. He’d stolen a shirt once and slept with it on his pillow so that he could smell James all night. It was pathetic, and he’d never done it again, but for that one night he’d been able to pretend, and it had been glorious.
James’s scent was strong in his nostrils now as they writhed together on the bed, all teeth and nails and searching fingers. The gentleness was gone from James’s touch, replaced by his usual hunger, and Kirk was pathetically grateful for it. Fucking James was all right, it was justifiable. As long as it never strayed close to the boundary of love-making, he could rationalize it away. He wanted, James wanted, and they satisfied each other.
There was a pause and the weight on his chest lifted as James sat back. Kirk, knowing what was coming and hungering for it with a need that frightened him, spread his legs wide and arched his neck. He knew how he must look, desperate and spread out like a whore, and knew also that that was the way James wanted him. Maybe that was why he did it. He couldn’t deny that the way James’s eyes darkened made his skin crawl with lust, or that the growl that stuck in James’s throat was nearly enough to push him over the edge.
Fingers sliced up into him, two at once without warning, slick and heavy. James liked it that way, all at once, forcing and taking and holding Kirk open. He liked the raw vulnerability at his fingertips; he’d confessed as much on the second night together, and the admission thrilled Kirk at the time. Now, though, he wondered. Was it truly about vulnerability or was it about control? He didn’t dare ask.
And then all thought fled his mind with a simple crooking of James’s thick fingers. This was what he liked best, the point when time became irrelevant, when everything turned into a series of completely separate moments like frames in a slide show. Later, he would try to go back over them in his mind but they always played out of sequence and strange, as though before he left, James shook up something inside just hard enough to leave Kirk confused. Later, he would wonder about that. Now, he let himself cycle through the build up.
Fingers crooking inside him. Pulling out. Pushing back in. Stretching and burning and owning, and he didn’t like to admit it but that was what he craved the most. That was why he kept answering the door, kept spreading his legs, kept mewling for more. He liked belonging to James, even though it never seemed to last long enough. If they had fucked all night and passed out exhausted, still tangled up in each other, it still wouldn’t have lasted long enough.
He cried out softly when James withdrew his fingers, both in protest of the sudden emptiness in his belly and in anticipation of what would replace those fingers. The absence seemed to stretch, elongating into an entire lifetime while Kirk lay spread on the mattress, panting and twitching with desperate need. He sometimes thought that James did it on purpose, that James wanted him reduced to this humiliating state. Certainly, there was a grim pleasure in his blue eyes when he finally leaned back over Kirk.
The initial thrust was the worst part, and Kirk gave a long shuddering cry as James’s hips jerked forward. There was a long moment of burning discomfort, then James’s hands were on his legs, hooking first one and then the other over his broad shoulders. The shift eased the pain, opened him up more, and he braced his hands against James’s sweat-slick chest, waiting for the rest. It came in one long, smooth glide, and Kirk’s eyes rolled back in his head. They’d fucked in all sorts of places and in all sorts of positions, but this one was his favorite. It was perverse, but he loved that it felt like James’s prick was pushing all the way up into the back of his throat. Such a thorough, delicious invasion was impossible to deny.
They moved together, intimately aware of each other’s bodies as only long-term lovers can be, Kirk pressing his hips up at just the right second, James rolling his down at just the right angle. There was nothing hurried about their movements, nothing awkward about the way Kirk’s hands glided across James’s shoulders, fingers curling into little claws and scraping along sensitive skin. It wasn’t accidental that James’s teeth sunk into the one spot on Kirk’s neck that made his toes curl, or that he released his grip a mere second before it would have started hurting.
Kirk let himself drift in the familiarity, hands shifting in practiced motions up James’s neck to tangle in his hair. It was a signal of sorts, a non-verbal question. Will you make me love you? And James responded the way he always did, shifting his hips and shortening his thrusts as Kirk’s arms tightened around his shoulders. They moved in unison still, James’s prick battering Kirk’s prostate in a bone-deep grind that spiraled him further and faster towards climax with every passing second.
James came first. He always came first, shoulders hunching forward, head curling in as he gritted his teeth. His hair brushed Kirk’s cheeks, tickling and stroking in the way that his fingers rarely did, and Kirk managed to cling tight long enough to register the heavy warmth inside him before it all rushed away. He was dimly aware of jerking up against James and then the pleasure overtook him, wave after rippling wave of the almost transcendental perfection that came of giving himself over to another person.
It ebbed slowly and James cradled him close as they both shuddered through the aftershocks of their coupling. Kirk felt heavy and sticky and stupid lying there in the bed, resting in the questionably safe circle of James’s arms. He both loved and loathed this moment, the blissful knowledge that James was here with him ruined by the certainty that it wouldn’t last.
And of course it didn’t. As soon as he could stand, James was out of the bed, pulling on his clothes, avoiding Kirk’s gaze. At first, that had hurt, but Kirk had grown to appreciate it. It meant that he could watch James with impunity, dark eyes searching across his face for any flicker of emotion. Regret, embarrassment, shame, love, anger. James showed nothing, just like every time before, but Kirk watched him, undaunted by this relatively small failure.
“Night, Kwirk,” and then he was gone, slipping out the door like a wraith and leaving Kirk alone in his bed. The click of the door echoed in his ears, and as the bitterness rose up in his throat he wondered again why he bothered. Why did he allow James to come into his room and, essentially, use him? Why did he allow himself to be cheapened so blatantly? At first, he’d blamed it on lust, then on love, each time mistaking the fire that kindled in his chest at the mere sight of James. It wasn’t quite so easy as that, and he’d more or less given up on defining it fully.
It was love and lust. It was need and friendship and hatred and betrayal. It was the knowing and the not knowing, the certainty and the shattering uncertainty. It was a bundle of contradiction and pain, a cycle of suffering and misery, but it was also a wake-up call, a firm reminder of life’s little pleasures. It was nothing that he could put his finger on and it would consume him utterly one day, but he did know one thing for certain.
