Chapter Thirty #2
Tristan smiled. He met James’s eyes directly. “I want to try tonight. If you do.”
James put his reading glasses on the bedside table. “Are you sure?”
Tristan shrugged. “I just wanted our first proper time to be after a really good day, rather than a shit one on set. And today was a really good day, James.” He pulled a face.
“I know that’s fucking stupid. We petted some cows and watched your friends fight about cake.
It’s not exactly, I don’t know… momentous. ”
“It’s not stupid, Tris. Not even remotely.”
He didn’t say that the ordinariness was the whole point, or that if someone could promise him stretches of years like this, just Saturday afternoons with mud on his boots, Tristan at the fence rail, and his friends bickering nearby, then he could manage the rest.
James held out his hand. “Come here, then.”
Tristan uncrossed his legs and crawled up the bed to him. James gathered him in, settling Tristan on his chest, one arm around him, his chin finding its usual place on the crown of Tristan’s head.
“We go slowly,” James said. “We stop whenever you want to stop. And you talk to me the whole way through, Tris, because I can’t read your mind, and I need you to tell me what feels good and what doesn’t.”
“I know. I trust you.” Tristan rested his head on James’s shoulder. “I did actually do some research.”
“Pornhub?”
Tristan’s blush started at the collar and climbed north at speed. “YouTube, James. There are instructional videos. Very clinical. Very informative. The teacher in the one I watched was wearing a schoolgirl outfit, which was… confusing. But the information was solid.”
“Did that put you in the mindset of learning?”
“He was very thorough, James, and now I feel ready because of him, so don’t you dare say a word against that man. He’s done more for me than any tutoring I’ve ever received.”
James shut his eyes and held the laugh in.
“But seriously.” Tristan turned in his arms. His bravado had softened, and underneath it was the heat that James had been watching build in him for weeks. “You’re the reason I’m ready, Jams. You’ve made me want this.” He kissed James, his hands rising to frame James’s jaw.
They undressed without hurry. James pulled his own shirt over his head and dropped it off the edge of the bed, then eased Tristan’s borrowed pyjama bottoms down over his hips.
The sight of him bare on the white sheets, the scatter of freckles along his collarbones and the pale stretch of his stomach, still stopped James, however many times he’d seen it all before.
James reached over to the bedside drawer and found what he needed. He set the bottle of lube within reach and turned to Tristan, who was watching him with his lower lip caught between his teeth.
“On your back,” James said, keeping his voice low and even. “I want to be able to see your face and talk to you throughout.”
Tristan lay back on the pillows and his knees fell apart.
James moved between them, pressing his mouth to the inside of Tristan’s thigh, working his way up in unhurried passes until Tristan’s hips began to shift.
He slicked his fingers and brought his hand down between Tristan’s legs, resting two fingertips against him without pressing in.
“Breathe out for me.”
Tristan exhaled in a controlled stream, and James eased one finger into him. Tristan’s hand shot to his wrist, and James held still.
“You still all right?”
“Yeah.” Tristan’s grip loosened. “It’s a lot. Not bad or anything, just — my body hasn’t decided what it thinks yet. Keep going.”
James worked him open slowly, because they had all night to do this properly.
He watched Tristan’s expression for every shift, the pinch between his brows that meant discomfort and the slight parting of his lips that meant pleasure, and adjusted his movements accordingly.
By the time he’d worked a second finger in alongside the first, Tristan’s cock was rising to half-mast.
When Tristan’s body began to rock down onto his hand, chasing the pressure, James withdrew his fingers and wiped them on the sheet. He reached for the bottle again, slicked himself, and lined up against Tristan with one hand braced on the mattress beside his head.
“Look at me, Tris.”
Tristan’s eyes found his. James pressed forward, watching him as the head of his cock breached him. Tristan’s hands flew to James’s arms.
“Stay with me.” James held still, just inside him. Everything in him wanted to push deeper, and he overrode it with a discipline that was costing him more than he’d have admitted. “Breathe out.”
Tristan breathed out, and James pressed forward. A thin, sharp sound escaped Tristan, and James stopped immediately.
“Okay, sweetheart, okay.” James eased out before Tristan could argue about it, and Tristan’s breath came out ragged. James bent and kissed the inside of his knee, working his mouth along the soft skin there while his slicked fingers found Tristan again, pressing inside him once more.
He kept at it until Tristan sighed and the set of his shoulders gave way. His legs splayed wider of their own accord.
James eased his fingers free, slicked himself again, and lined up a second time.
“Look at me, Tris.”
Tristan looked at him, eyes glazed, and James pushed in. This time Tristan’s body opened for him, letting him slide deeper until their hips met.
James pressed his forehead to Tristan’s and stayed there, buried to the root, Tristan’s chest heaving under his. It was all he could do to hold still.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
James smoothed the hair off Tristan’s forehead. “Listen to me. This might not feel like much at first, beyond the stretch. It might not get you there on its own, and that’s normal, Tris. Don’t chase it. Just get used to the feeling of me, and we’ll sort the rest out between us.”
James moved, slow and shallow, so Tristan could feel the drag of him with none of the force of a proper thrust. Every few strokes he paused and checked in with a murmured “still good?” and each time Tristan nodded.
Once the rhythm had built up naturally, Tristan’s grimace eased, and the hands that had been gripping James’s arms loosened their hold. His breathing steadied from sharp and shallow into deeper pulls, and the tension left his thighs.
There was none of the loud, theatrical pleasure his usual partners performed for him.
Tristan squirmed under him on a deeper stroke, so James pulled back into shallower thrusts, running his thumbs along the creases where Tristan’s thighs met his groin, giving Tristan something gentler to focus on.
He watched where they were joined on each stroke, checking that the slick held, and adding more from the bottle when the drag of his cock caught.
“Still with me?”
“Yeah.” Tristan’s hand rose to the nape of James’s neck, fingers curling into the short hair there. “It’s — it’s fine.”
On any other night, James would have told him that “it’s fine” was hardly a ringing endorsement of his performance.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut. Tristan was lying open beneath him, trusting him with something he’d never given anyone, and there were moments that didn’t belong to comedy, even between two people who’d built what they had on it.
James kissed the inside of Tristan’s wrist. He kept the pace where it was, following Tristan’s body, until Tristan’s hips shifted under him into his first tentative move to meet a thrust rather than lying there, bracing himself.
James held the angle and pushed in again at the exact spot, and Tristan’s breath hitched.
“Touch yourself,” James murmured. “That’ll help.”
Tristan got a hand around his own cock. James watched him work himself, the flush spreading down his throat, and angled his hips for that spot again. The next stroke pulled Tristan’s heels into the small of James’s back, pressing him in deeper.
Tristan came with a long shudder, his body clamping down so hard around James that it knocked the rhythm out of him entirely. James buried his face in Tristan’s neck, spilling into him with a groan.
He eased out carefully, watching for the slightest sign of discomfort. Tristan was trembling. Whether from the cold or the aftermath, James couldn’t tell. He pulled the duvet up over them and held him under it.
Neither of them spoke as James ran his hand up and down the length of Tristan’s spine, feeling the tremors ease under his palm.
“Well?” James asked, when the silence had gone on long enough.
Tristan’s eyes were glassy, his fringe stuck to his forehead with sweat. “Six,” he said.
James raised an eyebrow. “Six?”
“Learning curve, Jams.” Tristan patted his chest. “I’d hate to rob you of the motivation to improve.”
“Then we’ll clearly need a great deal of practice.” James kissed him, tasting salt. “Starting tomorrow morning. And the morning after that. I’m going to drill my way to a ten if it kills us both.”
“Drill,” Tristan said, into the kiss. “Interesting word choice.”
“I can come up with puns too, Tris,” James said.