(3) church on sunday

[waywardious]

He wakes up first, before Vincent who sleeps right through his rustling about as he gets to his feet and hobbles over to his clothing chest, fishing out a fresh pair of breeches. Despite the softness and the warmth of the sheepskins, despite the fireplace that has been burning throughout most of the night, Claude is knackered, his body feeling no less stiff and uncooperative as the range of movements he forces it through broadens. Grimacing, he glances out of the east-facing window, at the morning that's creeping across the sky in pretty touches of gold and pink. All the world really is a stage, like Shakespeare wrote. It looks like an exact copy of something tulle-thin and frilly Marise wore once.

Placing himself in the middle of his practice space, not a piece of furniture in sight to stub his toes on or stumble into, Claude goes through his usual morning routine. Stretches first, working through all positions - first to fifth, dévellopé and battements, though he skips the jumps. If they irritate Monsieur Samson downstairs, they're certain to wake Vincent up and look at him. Claude does, observes him while seating himself to warm up his feet, cracking his toes and over-extending his arches for good measure, too. With the note they ended on yesterday, he doesn't begrudge the other man any additional minute of undisturbed peace. The world will catch up with him soon enough. Reluctantly, he scurries around, placing himself in a split with his back to their little love nest, stretching his right arm over his head, pressing in against the shoulder joint with his left hand to keep the pressure up. Like this, he's staring right at the door, the bare walls, the lamps that have all gone out overnight.

The definition of emptiness.

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[thecountofthree]

Claude mercifully doesn’t belittle him for his lack of restraint and honestly, he probably never will. Never. Presuming that there’s a time span long enough between them to warrant that particular adverb. Running his palm across his forehead, sweat already forming on his skin despite the coldness of the room, he leans into Claude’s embrace further, almost desperately so. The fact that the other man’s drawing away only makes the movement more pronounced – of Vincent following along, grasping for… for straws. He ought to be humiliated by now and maybe, deep down, he is. A little bit. Not by Claude, no. It’s worse than that.

“I…” Pause. Again. He looks down into his lap, at the way his hard cock strains beneath the duvet, the skin underneath growing more sensitive by the minute. He shuts his eyes, tries to imagine something unpleasant to chase away his arousal, a strategy that never works. Not this time, either. When he continues, his voice is slightly flat, eyes still closed. “I probably shouldn’t. It’s…” It’s not proper. What a ridiculous notion, all things considered. He’s sitting here, leaned against a half-naked man with his cock sticking up in the air! Opening his eyes and rolling them for good measure, he finally shrugs. A harsh motion, enough to jumble Claude’s arm around his shoulders. “Well, never mind. So long as it’s nowhere close to where I live, I’ll be glad to come.”

Verbalising the painful aspect of it – of secrecy, of knowing how wrong it all is and doing it anyway - is making his chest hurt. It's also making his cock less stiff and that's something, supposedly. He knows with absolute certainty now that his mother will never succeed in her matchmaking. That the girls will never appeal to him, that he’ll never marry a woman. And maybe the worst part isn’t even her inevitable disappointment, the shamefulness of it all. No, it’s how he’s always wanted to believe in it, just a little bit. That if he only tried hard enough, he’d find a way to be better.

[waywardious]

"It's on the corner of Rue Malher and Rue Pavée, right at the border between 3rd and 4th," Claude specifies rather than outright asking Vincent his address. Leaves the man to determine by his own standards what's too close and what isn't. Heaven knows, if Claude lived with his family still, perhaps even just within the same city limits, the distance from Ganyméde's entrance to wherever the farthest French colonies are located might prove too close, the risks taken into consideration. Thus, there's no attempt from him at sugarcoating the situation, no feeble and inevitably futile comforts to grant. In this particular aspect, reality is shitty. Foul and bone-breaking like the gutter. He can't change it, so he won't try. What he can do is providing a place for Vincent to go that's -- well, if not safe, then safer. Sometimes you have to settle. You don't have to like it and God knows, Claude doesn't by principle, but if you don't just take it, you can't make anything better of it either. Looking at Vincent, at his down-cast gaze and his sharp profile, Claude likes to think himself smarter than that kind of pride. Even as Vincent shrugs, he doesn't let his arm drop.

Claude made that mistake once. Thinking himself raised above the politics and tendencies of general society, thinking a place in and by itself offered any sort of security. He thought the Opera really was as vast and all-embracing as the stories they tell there would lead you to believe and he was wrong. And much, much too late he realised that safety wasn't something any one place could guarantee you, it was something you'd have to claim for yourself and something you'd only find with another. Perhaps if he'd opened his eyes to that fact sooner, Pavel would still have been alive. Then again, if Pavel hadn't walked his own path, Vincent wouldn't have sat here now in this gentle April morning light and made Claude ponder the great mechanisms of it all, would he? He might not be religious, but you learn - maybe especially as an artist - than when one door closes, it's simply your cue to find the one that opened instead. Wherever it might be hidden.

[thecountofthree]

Claude doesn’t move away and that in itself is its own conclusion, isn’t it? To this thing, to whatever they have left now. After last night. Leaning closer, Vincent finally looks back at Claude, gaze grey. Feeling tired somehow despite his sleep-in, despite the night’s many releases.

“It’s far enough.” He doesn’t specify. When he leaves, he’ll make sure to scribble down his address for Claude, leave the initiative in this apartment because there’s nowhere in Rue de la Roquette that it would truly thrive. He’s been living his life pacing about in the same, ridiculous circle and whilst they’ve managed to break it together this time, it seems such a fragile thing compared to 25 years of holding back. An easy miracle to undo, to turn it all into a trick of the light. Blinking harshly, he manages not to let his frustration run away with him, gaze fixed on Claude’s face, on the contours of his cheekbones, of his jaw and nose. According to some, men aren’t beautiful, exactly, unless you’re talking about Gods or giants – they’re handsome or attractive at the most. But surely… surely, concerning Claude, anything less would be a vast understatement.

“Claude…” He shifts. Turns to face him more fully, staying within reach of his arm. “I wanted you to know…” Pause. Sigh. Brow furrowing, his chest feeling suddenly tight again, he simply leans in close, a slow, even motion. When he presses his lips against Claude’s, there’s a gentleness about it that has nothing to do with hesitation. Sometimes, words only serve to disrupt the conversation, to make interaction bland and fragmented. And if there’s one thing he doesn’t want to leave the other man with, it’s the feeling that… that he doesn’t care. Really, he probably cares more than he can stand. At length.

[waywardious]

He allows it all to take its natural course. How Vincent speaks first, but finds that words don't truly embody what he's trying to express, proceeding to lean in closer instead and press his lips against Claude's. Softly. The distinct feeling of morning is clinging to them, a chapped aftermath of last night and the hesitant knocking of the approaching day, but Claude likes it. The rawness of it. The complete lack of facade, masks and salvaging makeup. God knows, he gets enough of that at the theatre. Life is all the more beautiful for how it can't pretend. How it doesn't even try. Indeed, if the world is a stage, people are the actors, but any actor would know that the stage sees more than just the performances themselves, fully-fledged and finished. There's rehearsals, there's missed cues and mistakes, there's the breaks in between when roles fade into nothing. Just like now.

So, Claude follows the curve of Vincent's shoulder blade with his hand, up his back, to the nape of his neck where he takes hold. A gentle hold, more of a caress of warm palm and splayed out fingers. Cocking his head and shifting for a more comfortable position, a better angle, he leans in and deepens the kiss, pushing his tongue in between Vincent's lips without much of a prelude. Not beyond the wet slide itself, spreading over Vincent's bottom lip hotly. His mouth is heated and he tastes like himself, no feasts of wine and cheese, just him. Full and slightly harsh. Oh, Claude likes that as well. With a hum at the back of his throat in approval, he pushes the duvet aside with his other hand, fingers colliding only a bit clumsily with the flat expanses of the other man's chest.

Whatever Vincent is telling him in this way, tasting like man and need and assertiveness, Claude wants to respond to. Honestly and openly. Certainly, he doesn't want Vincent to think he's required to define his future only in the light of last night, but neither does he want him to doubt whether he's allowed to, should he want... Rather, Claude would really prefer to convince him that good things could be awaiting them, without promises and guarantees.

[thecountofthree]

Claude follows up on his lead, takes the cue with a precision not just owing to his stage profession. No, it’s quite obvious that between the two of them, lead and follow become two naturally interchangeable concepts, a smooth flow of give and take. Thus, when Claude pushes past his lips, Vincent responds after only a second’s pause, meeting him with ease and something bordering on new-found confidence, a wet slide of tongue against tongue. From home, he’s become accustomed to thinking of himself as a passive man, someone too afraid to act, the way he’s been for so many years now whilst his dreams alone drove him past the edge.

With Claude like this – with their bodies so close once more, the other man’s hand drifting over his chest and the scent of him filling his nostrils – he can almost believe that it’s not a matter of fantasy versus reality. That in truth, it’s simply two sides of the same coin and as luck would have it, this time it may just have landed in his favour, however shortly. Claude’s hand feels warm and gentle against the back of his neck and he breathes out slowly, relaxing once more into the warmth of their shared proximity. Vincent may be cold in general but right now, he certainly can’t feel it. The tightness in his chest pushed beyond any conscious connection.

Eyes falling shut, he runs his hand down Claude’s upper arm, his muscles hard and lean beneath his palm. Gods, but he can’t not – he can’t be expected to hold himself back now, not when the next step on the road is through that still-locked front door! Fingers ghosting over his elbow, he reaches down blindly between them, flattening his palm over Claude’s breeches right below the navel. Passive? Not right now with time passing by around them and Paris waking up to yet another slap of monotonous grey.

[waywardious]

The kiss becomes just another point of contact. An engagement. Their only manner of relation. In its basic sense, they exist within it at this very moment, as they suck breath and life out of each other. Scraping his teeth rather harshly over the probe of Vincent's tongue, the softer framing of his bottom lip, Claude can feel his body waking up finally, after a long morning of fighting his own muscles and weeks before that of descending into gradual numbness. He slides his palm further up Vincent's chest, trough the thin trail of soft down outlining his pecs to one darker nipple, though not as dark as Claude's own. As seems to be a repetitive theme between them. Claude who is darker, heavier, perhaps older, definitely more experienced and Vincent the opposite, yet the one to plunge his hand down between their fronts now, pressing his palm flatly against Claude's abdomen, connecting the dip of his navel and the -- suddenly much more prominent rise of his cock as it hardens at the sheer proximity of the other man's long fingers, tall body, altogether fulfilling self... Drawing back with a gasp, he lets his one hand sink to a rest on Vincent's shoulder, the other following Vincent's lead and seeking down between them, finding its way to the waistband of his breeches and undoing it with fingers that constantly slip over the contours of Vincent's.

"Wait," he's saying, begging before he can stop himself. "Let me get these off, I just need..." Does he need to specify? With a wriggle and a strategic backwards motion into a reclining position, so kicking his legs is actually an option, Claude manages to crawl out of his underwear, his half-hard erection having grown full in the meantime and as he looks up at Vincent, reaching out for the other man and urging him by his upper arm to either lie down next to him or on top, whatever should suit his tastes, it is all but showing the way, yes?

At the back of his mind, in the non-lust-ridden part, mind you, he finds it oddly vulnerable. This. How he's so sexually responsive to Vincent who he hardly knows, whom he hardly knows anything about when he is aware that physical relations are of the least importance to him otherwise. Something to be had to keep the body sated and the mind at ease. Even someone like Sylvain, he wouldn't let this close this quickly and they've known each other for years, also sexually. Perhaps sexually more than anything else. With a deep, shaking breath, he shifts a bit uncomfortably. His entire pelvis feels overheated, burning. He remembers the feel of Vincent's mouth from the previous nights. Remembers it well. "You should flute me, love," he adds. Voice soft, only borderline teasing. The nickname doesn't register, at least not to him. "I'd really like to feel your mouth again."