(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 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."