leather ash
Title: Leather Ash
Author: Brix
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Brian Slade/Curt Wild
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Imitation is the highest form of compliment.
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Summary: Curt catches Brian backstage. Porn ensues.
Author’s Notes: I…don’t really know how this happened. But it definitely, definitely needed to. To Jules, as always, for insisting. I hate present tense, and she made me use it (she held a gun to my head, really! I swear!) and...yeah. I dunno.
It doesn’t happen after Brian’s first show, or his second, or his third. They are well into the Maxwell Demon tour – far enough in that they’ve lost count, in a whirl of color and distance and television interviews – before it happens for the first time.
They are between acts – there’s been some kind of technical difficulty, the kind of thing that Brian doesn’t bother himself with. The kind of thing his managers won’t allow him to bother himself with, really, as the beginnings of an entourage herd him into the wings. It is an odd sort of between time, the breath of air between lightning and thunder, the time between Brian Slade and Maxwell Demon. He can see the transitions in progress, the shifts that he should be making. He can see the danger in it all, the people he will lose.
He doesn’t care.
Wants to be this, to live this, so badly he can more than taste it, he can feel it like ash between his fingers, slick and perfect and coating everything in his life. And he can feel the smoothness of it on his face, on top of the shock of color and chemical that creates his new public persona. The rough edge of the glitter where it scatters over his skin, the plastic diamond flakes that shower before and after him every where he goes – his own physical aura.
But somewhere between, the entourage slips away and he is left in silk and plastic and chalky tasting chemicals that he can feel melting from his skin. The night is cool, here, cool and closed in as if there is fresh air coming from an unknown source somewhere far, far above him, and Brian raises his arms above him to embrace the breeze. The curtains drop black and deep around him, but he knows there are walls behind them. They are false crushed velvet, and he runs a hand along their fabric to keep himself from getting lost in the labyrinthine backstage area.
The fresh air slips into something else altogether, something even better than air – a familiar smell, but untraceable. Something that reminds him of Christmas the way his mother’s kitchen used to, but this is cigarettes and smoke and leather and sweat and something he has yet to name, something that reminds him of grease pencils and coal.
It isn’t but another moment before he feels hands in his coattails, the unsettling crunch of the stiff purple and blue silk being crumpled in someone’s hands before he is yanked backward. And Brian doesn’t even posses the self-duty to wonder if he is being attacked, if there is a crazed fan who has broken into the stage, caused the difficulties with the instruments, with the cameras. If he might be in danger.
Brian is in danger.
There is a low, dry laugh near his ear, and it goes straight down his spine and the hands pull him closer. The voice is deep and coats him in more than the glitter and the ash, it leaves him in that untraceable smell. The smoke surrounds him, and the black velvet crushes under his cheek as Curt presses him against the wall with nothing but hips and hands and the sound of his laugh. Brian tries for the shortest of moments to prevent this, but ends up only pressing back into that amazing smell, the slippery taste of smoke in his mouth from it.
“Tease,” Curt says, mouth brushing the back of Brian’s neck where his hair is pulled into a perfect tie. The fabric is silk there, as well, and Curt’s tongue is shockingly rough against his skin. His first worry is for the costume, and the state it would be in if Curt finished this the way he has already started it. But the way Curt says everything – the low growl in his throat, the way he barely whispers every word – has always undone Brian, before Brian even knew what being undone was like. Before he even knew he needed undoing.
Curt is pressing back, pinning him with his hips against the shift of the black velvet, leather against silk, the fabrics sliding awkwardly with the sweat beneath their skin. The stage lights are very hot, and Brian has a hard time seeing anything but himself when he is there – he knows he is nothing but a flash of color. But the sweat stays all the same. Maxwell Demon does not sweat, but Brian Slade does, indeed.
And Curt likes it. Licks up his neck again, brushes against the bottom of his false hairline, savoring the salt of it before turning Brian in a quick flip. Brian’s arms are still pinned against the wall, the velvet pooling in his hands as he grips at the fabric and wonders, briefly, if he might bring the whole stage down and expose them both for the entire crowd to see. Brian knows that this will make the tickets worth their exorbitant price and that he would very, very much like for the world to see him like this, pinned and wriggling in a most undignified manner against Curt’s eagerly questing tongue.
He thinks, perhaps, Jerry and Mandy might not be so appreciative, and so he does not pull the fabric too hard.
Curt rolls his hips against Brian’s, not the way Curt does when he performs. Not the side to side, seductive motion that first hypnotized Brian, but not lacking at all in the vulgarity. It is back to front, this roll, flattening Brian’s spine against the rumpled fabric mass behind him, his jacket crackling from the pressure. And it is too too too much that Brian cannot touch, and he jerks his hips forward when Curt retreats, his fingers striving forward grip anything but the black and the ash, and comes away with nothing but a fist full of the smoke and the glitter that has wormed its way into the creases of his palms.
Curt’s fingers press hard against Brian’s wrists until he can feel his arms gather the heat from the fabric, and he rolls his head back to try and see where their fingers have twined. But it is too dark, and the lights from the stage don’t reach this far back, and another twist of the desire to be caught out coils in Brian’s stomach, makes him jerk forward again. Curt presses him harder, more forcefully, as though the other man feels he needs to remind Brian of his place here. Brian could hardly forget his place – his place is fantastic. Curt chews on his ear – it is not a nip, too hard, too many teeth, and Brian can hear the clink of costume jewelry and enamel meeting far too near the inside of his mind.
The cool breeze from above is gone, has evaporated in the smothering scent of everything that is Curt, of everything that Curt is to Brian. Of everything that makes him wonder how many girls – how many boys, rather – are sitting at home and thinking of him like this, thinking of doing this to him. Thinking of letting him do this to them, and the thrill that runs through him finally makes Curt abandon his ear and he loses the support of one of Curt’s steadying hands as the fingers drop to the front of his costume breeches, pressing hard against the white fabric.
Brian sucks in an undignified whine of a gasp that is lost in the folds of the fabric around him, and his freed hand clutches at Curt, buries itself in the tangle of his disheveled and unwashed hair. The blonde-black strands are coated in nicotine and liquor and sweat, and now the glitter from Brian’s hand as it moves where it will. But it means that Brian can grip, can hold, can keep Curt close to him, and that is what counts. Curt hitches him up, farther against the wall, and for a moment Brian feels his lungs go up and not come down, until he gets his legs around Curt’s waist and then they are flush, save for the fingers between them.
“Someone could come along,” Curt breaths into his ear, teeth ghosting down the line of his neck. “Someone will see.” But the words come out amused, as if he is reminding Brian of something that Brian himself should be saying, dropped lines from a script. His fingers work between them, wrestle with the impossible fastenings on Brian’s trousers and Curt’s voice is deep inside him, coiled in his gut.
“Let them come,” Brian says, and he thinks it must have come out bravely because Curt does not laugh, only pushes against Brian again and they can both feel his legs squeezing around Curt’s hips as they shift dangerously on the slippery fabric. Brian does not trust Curt to balance them and he does not trust himself to stop this. He doesn’t want to stop this – wants it all, and in the next five minutes and then again when the show is over, and again on the roof of the hotel, and again in the limo in the morning. Wants it all the time and always, like a burning hole in his mind, only the burning is Curt’s hand and his mind is his cock.
The heat is the same, though, and it sears his vision like the stars Brian sees when the flashbulbs blind him.
“They will,” Curt says mysteriously, his hand twisting and Brian throws his head back against the velvet, turning his head away as though he might block out all the sensations. He forces his eyes open, desperately, and can see only black and shadow, and has no thought to wonder why an absence of color could have different shades. “They’ll come for you,” Curt reassures him, but his voice is mysterious and not altogether reassuring. He sounds sad, almost, but it is gone, then, in a wash of slick and salt as Curt has managed to use his other hand to free his leather prison.
Brian does grip, then, the fabric above his head, and he pulls – hard – and is grateful then that the stage does not come rending down on them both, because he wants this to be able to continue. Curt presses at his wrist again, his fingers unsympathetic but amazing, and Brian manages to force his face back, far enough to see the glint of light where glitter has transferred onto Curt’s cheek. He lunges forward to reclaim it, treated by Curt’s approving, gravelly noises. But he isn’t sure if it’s because Curt likes the teeth, or because Curt has finally managed to get Brian’s pants low enough on his hips to shift his fingers back, smooth over the naked skin there, everywhere, and the heat blossoms out from the rough crush of the velvet against his lower back thighs neck ass. And Brian doesn’t care, doesn’t give the slightest thought toward the importance of it at all, because it doesn’t matter what Curt likes as long as he keeps touching Brian.
Curt’s voice, twisting and grey and still so near his jaw, like a tuning fork, vibrates up his mouth, fingers probing and Brian arches sharply forward, his back curving away from the wall and his legs flexing hard at that perfect brush of a fingertip. “You’re…”
They don’t use words, Curt and Brian. Yes, Brian confirms, He Is, and does so with a harsh pant of an exhale and a vicious maul of Curt’s mouth. He is wanting, he is ready, he is impatient, he is he is he does he wants. And Curt gives, because Curt knows – and this is why Brian likeslikesloves him – exactly what it is that Brian needs. Fingers, and more heat, and more of that rasping, smooth voice, like a hot stone dropped into his hand with steam rising between his fingerprints.
“We don’t have enough time,” Curt says, again in that tone that makes Brian wonder if this is something he should be saying, the light amusement laced with something deeper, something Brian doesn’t have the focus to sort out right now, and will forget about before the night is over. Even so, Curt presses forward again, a deep press and Brian feels his head snap back again, some deep sound pulling out of his throat that sounds as though it was planted there by Curt, as if it belongs to the other man. It is no sound that Brian can make on his own; he has tried, and does not know where it hides when Curt is not there to coax it free.
The velvet scratches his exposed skin as Curt piles him into the wall, both of their legs flexing indelicately in an effort to keep them upright as the fabric shifts dramatically under their motion. Brian thinks – or tries to think, because thinking is very, very hard when the burn of Curt has spread across his entire body, and he can feel the makeup shifting on his face from the heat of it – for a brief moment, that it is only his fingers tangled in the apron of the black that keeps them upright while Curt reassembles his footing. Brian wonders how Curt has the focus for this, grasping with thighs at the perfect lines of Curt’s emaciated hips, when the man can barely make his way through the back page of the music magazines without collapsing into another and another and another subject. But Curt has and always will surprise Brian with his reserves, and now is no exception. The hand pinning Brian’s wrist slips away and tangles into the fabric to find purchase for them both, knocking them askew with a harsh thrust that leaves them breathing smoke and stagelight, but still upright.
However much time Curt calls ‘enough’ is decades more than Brian needs. Any second – any absolute pure moment that he can spend like this, pressed and inhaling and feeling absolutely full, hands on his skin and Curt’s perfect everything under his fingertips – is enough time. Brian will not count the seconds, not when there is still so much to come, still so much waiting for him in the wings of his life. He will take Curt with him, drag him along because someone needs to drag Curt, and Curt needs dragging.
Brian can feel the stickiness where Curt’s skin disappears below his mottled waistband, the transition from slick skin to damp leather, and scratches with his carefully polished nails at the soft, wet cotton of Curt’s shirt, suddenly aware of the state of his own dress, the ruffs at his wrists tickling at his own fingers. Curt drives him against the black fabric again and again, their hands shifting and gripping from the cloth to one another, words lost in the smother of the curtain, if there were any to begin with.
The sounds from the audience, far down the tunnel they have created for themselves, begin to rise. It takes Brian a moment to understand why this would be, until a flush of blue light creeps into their haven. It makes Curt gasp a strangely foreign and erotic sound into his powdered hair, which in turn makes Brian’s fingers scrabble in the blackness above his head. The cool breeze is back, but it feels like a slap across his exposed, overheated, sensitized skin. Curt bares his teeth at the feel, his face screwing shut as he bruises them both against the wall, Brian’s lewdly exposed hardness draping between them.
Curt spares a hand for him and they both exhale again, sharply, dazzlingly, and Brian comes far before Curt does, adding to the heat and the salt and the sweat between them and knowing that this will show when he goes back on stage, that nothing will cover dampness on silk. He is wet everywhere, from the oppressive heat of the cloth at his back to the silk on his chest and the awful, awful wig on his head that has managed to knock itself every way but graceful on his head since Curt snagged him first.
It’s very well for Curt, he thinks, who only has to take his shirt off and leave his trousers open to look perfectly in character.
Curt makes a strangled yelp of a sound and Brian’s grip in the velvet clenches hard as Curt drives up onto his toes, face buried in the crook of Brian’s neck, teeth digging into the skin and raising welts Brian can cover with the high collar of his ruff.
They slip down, Brian’s grip failing them, and end in a sprawl on the ground, pooled on the black velvet where it is too long for its hangings. The smell of smoke is less here, but the sweat is heavier, as if the two scents have different densities and can separate, like petrol and water, and things are different. Curt has glitter spread all over his body, and Brian wonders how there can be enough left for himself – but there is, he can feel it prickling on his own skin, his reddened mouth pressing against Curt’s cheek and coming away covered in the reflective shrapnel.
The audience roars again, and somewhere, close by, Brian hears the pound of footsteps and the shout of important voices. Curt nudges him – not a push, really, but encouragement, or so Curt instructs him with another soft laugh. “Go,” he says, and his voice promises that this will keep going and going and going because people like the two of them certainly don’t ever wear down.
In the shadow and the smoke, the leather and the velvet and the silk, this is what Brian tells himself, and this is what Curt makes the truth.