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oddeggI'll be posting to the same communities mentioned in the post below as well.
Also thought I'd mention that these are un-beta'd, so comments are welcome. Brickbats, roses - it's all good.
Title: The Mathematics of a Curveball
Fandom: Numb3rs
Pairing: Don/Charlie
Warnings: The obvious
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Pure smut. With some tattoos
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, CBS wouldn’t be able to broadcast what I’d make ‘em do.
Word Count: 3,481
Charlie knew something had happened the moment he got out of the elevator. He’d never been that good at reading people but the humming tension in the office told its own story.
He saw the fleeting look that Colby gave him before looking away and the knot in his stomach that was always there in the FBI office (because it’s Don’s office) evolved from a simple granny to something resembling a Gordian one. Something was wrong, something was wrong and they weren’t meeting his eyes. His knees trembled and his breathing got shallower – and then he saw Don, in the conference room with Megan.
A slightly battered and ruffled looking Don, a Don who was obviously being taken to task by Megan, but who was alive and well (and pissed looking) and not in a body bag or pale and motionless under bandages at hospital or any of the terrifying scenarios that just rushed through Charlie’s head.
Now that those possibilities were out he thought he could read the feeling in the office. It wasn’t ‘we lost an agent/one of our guys got hurt bad’ but the hyped-up feeling of either ‘the case has gone spectacularly down the pan’ or ‘shit, yeah! Nailed the bastard!’ Not x/y, but n or p – he didn’t have enough data to decide which yet.
As he made his way over to the office containing his brother he saw David at his desk. He was talking on the phone but he caught Charlie’s eye and his teeth flashed white in a broad, keyed up grin. So – p then.
He pushed the door of the conference room open and Don and Megan both look at him, and oh yeah, Don’s pissed about something but Megan’s glad to see him.
She say’s
“Charlie, great! You can take this stubborn-headed brother of yours home!” and she cuts Don off before he can protest “Don, we got the guy. You got the guy, and you got hurt doing it. There’s nothing that the rest of us can’t finish up while you go home and rest!”
”Don got hurt?”
He clutches the strap of his bag and he’s able to keep himself from touching Don, when all he wants to do is run analytic hands over his brother to find out where he’s harmed (or just to be able to run his hands over him)
Don’s got a scratch on his right cheek and a bruise forming on his chin; there are marks on his suit and he’s got the jacket buttoned. Don never buttons his jacket.
His brother scowls and bites out an “I’m fine. I just fell”
Megan snorts
“Right. Fine. You just fell avoiding being shot and then a tonne of rusty, junk-yard scrap falls on you and you have a wound in your stomach and you’re woozy from those painkillers the medic made you take and – will you just go home?”
Don and Megan glare at each other and Don would probably have done the patented Eppes thing and dug his heels in but Charlie’s hands had shot out without him thinking and grabbed his brother’s shoulders. His voice goes thin and high
“You got shot?!”
And Don may have usually have pulled rank on Megan and shrugged his brother off, but he can see Charlie’s skin is pale beneath the tan and his hands are shaking as he tries to undo Don’s jacket to assess the damage. Don bats his hands away but his voice is gentle as he replies
“Shot at, buddy, not shot. He missed me by a mile. A bit of spiky metal jabbed me when the junk fell on me, that’s all.”
He stands up, wincing slightly, and gives Megan a look like ‘this was my idea in the first place’ as he tells her
“You guys can finish up here. I’m gonna go home – take a shower, get this suit in the wash. I’ve got rust all over me”
She smirks but sensibly doesn’t say anything – that is until Don says to Charlie “Come on buddy, I’ll drive you back”
Then she just raises an eyebrow and murmurs
“Don… painkillers?”
Don’s beginning to look like thunder now, but after a moment he hunches his shoulders and just says
“Fine. Charlie has his license back now. He can drive” and he mutters under his breath as he moves for the elevator “Survive getting shot and get killed by my brother’s driving”
Megan shakes her finger at Charlie and tells him with a grin
“Don’t kill your brother with your driving Charlie; we’re expecting him in again on Monday” and Charlie smiles weakly back at her before following his brother.
**
He takes deep breathes in the elevator down, and having to concentrate on driving helps calm him down further, but he still sees the careful way Don gets into the SUV now that it’s just his baby brother to see him and he sees the little pinched frown between Don’s closed eyes at the corner of his vision and maybe that and the little sick feeling it puts in his gut distracts him a bit because when he pulls the car into the drive he’s said
“We’re here”
before he realises that this is the house not Donny’s apartment and he was meant to be taking Don home and, of course, Don doesn’t live here anymore does he? He just drops in, or leaves some stuff and that thought for some reason makes his hands start shaking again and he starts stammering “Sorry, sorry, wrong place, I got distracted. I…I’ll take you – “
But Don just grunts and opens the car door. He shoots Charlie a twisted smile and say’s “Always numbers with you, isn’t it Chuck?” and before Charlie can tell him that no, it wasn’t numbers this time (isn’t numbers a lot of the time he’s around Don) and anyway, not to call him Chuck, his brother’s making for the front door.
Don stops before going in to wait for Charlie and when he catches up say’s intensely
“Not a word to dad, okay Charlie? Help me run interference”
“Dad’s in Philly at that conference. He’d not back till Tuesday”
And that was the right thing to say because he could see one layer of tension lift off Don – or at least, it does momentarily and then something else replaced it, something he can’t read because Don’s looking away, moving away through the opened door and saying in a flat voice
“I’m grabbing a shower. I don’t suppose you’ve got any beers in?”
He’s gone up the stairs before Charlie can think to ask whether drinking on top of painkillers is a good idea.
**
And Charlie’s still dithering in front of the refrigerator (if Don’s system equals a and the painkillers equal b and beer equals c, then a+b+yet unknown quantity of c =…) when he hears a faint curse from upstairs and then Don’s calling
“Hey, buddy? You got a first aid kit anywhere? I’ve got this dressing wet”
When he gets up to the bathroom Don reaches for the kit whilst trying to keep the door mostly closed, but Charlie holds the box back
“Don, let me in. I want to see how bad it is and anyway, I’m better at first aid than you”
One angry eye joins the still out held arm as Don say’s
“Excuse me? Who is the FBI agent here? Who did all the sports in school?”
Charlie meets his gaze without flinching and replies calmly
“FBI does not equal medic. And I got beat up instead of doing sports – it makes you proficient with the band-aids and liniment. Now, you going to let me do this or do I need to call Megan to bully you?”
The arm goes down but the door doesn’t open and for a long minute Charlie thinks it’s going to be slammed in his face; and then it swings open to show a bare-chested Don moving toward the sink. He turns when he gets there and say’s aggressively
“Fine. Slap a dressing on it and give me my damn beer”
It’s a puncture wound; two inches down and to the left of the sternum, small but raw looking with blood welling up inside it. There are other minor scrapes and contusions as well, and a nasty-looking bruise developing just above his heart. Charlie sucks in his breath and his hand moves to this mark in particular but Don stiffens.
Charlie meets his brother’s eyes and there’s something emotion bubbling under there and the usual warm brown irises are flat and black under the harsh bathroom light, and his hand drops away.
He coughs and drags his eyes away from his older brother’s chest. They fall instead on Don’s shirt – abandoned and bloody on the floor and his stomach lurches again. He tries to aim for a detached, scientific tone (mathematician’s bedside manner, he thinks under a bubble of – panic? excitement?) and says
“Sit down on the toilet; it’ll be easier for me to work”
Don sits down on the lowered cover whilst Charlie turns away to open the kit on the lid of the laundry bin. When he turns back Don has an elbow on the sink and the other hand braced against the wall. Shoulders and chest form a perfect, thick t-shape mirrored inside by a smaller t of chest hair. Chest hair still dappled with drops of moisture from the shower.
Charlie decides to kneel down to apply the dressing. Purely because it made the job easier and nothing at all to do with the fact his knees were suddenly weak.
He puts the pads of his fingers around the puncture to palpitate the wound, then jerks his gaze up when Don hissed his breath in.
The words of apology for the pain died in Charlie’s throat when he sees the look in Don’s eyes. The muscles in his brother’s arms are tight, his fists clenched and his eyes – his eyes look almost frightened – almost. And almost… something else – but it’s not numbers, and Charlie can’t read it if its not numbers.
Whatever emotion it is that’s been bubbling under Don’s surface, it was boiling now and Charlie’s right hand shakes as it reached for a sterile wipe. He didn’t seem to be able to move his left – it stuck to Don’s breast bone like a magnet, gravitating back there constantly as he fixed the dressing.
No talking. No sound but the whisper of soft cloth, the tiny tearing sound of the tape – and the sound of their breathing, his shallow, Don’s harsh. It seems to be coming to Charlie muted, like the mist left over from Don’s shower has thickened to fog; muffling any noise and making it impossible to see if disaster were looming up ahead of them. And the fog’s filling up Charlie’s head as well, putting a time delay on all thought and action, making it seem like he’s living through an extended déjà vu. (Because the feel of Don’s skin under his hands is so familiar, isn’t it? Felt this so many times in dreams it’s difficult to tell where reality ends in this moment)
And then he’s finished – even including several unnecessary seconds of smoothing down the tape, but before he has to orphan his hands from Don’s warm skin he notices something.
Don’s bare-chested (oh god, yes) and the old sweat pants that are all he’s wearing ride low on his hips; and there, where the transverse abdominals cut in from the stomach down to the (can’t think it, not this close to him, can’t think coc-) groin, there – above the soft grey waistband, an inch away from the hip bone is a mark.
It’s a tattoo.
A tiny stain on his brother’s smooth, tan skin. It looks like an elongated eight laid on its side, but Charlie knows that’s not what it is. He reaches out one long finger and hears, but doesn’t hear Don’s breathing speed up, sees his stomach muscles jolt as he leans in and traces the representation of infinity over and over (and does this mathematical character mean what he thinks it means? Is it sign as well as symbol?)
Then Don whispers “Christ, Charlie…”
And Charlie looks up.
Don’s chest is heaving with his breath, lips open and wet and he’s looking down at Charlie, knelt at feet, with burning eyes but they don’t scare Charlie this time because he can recognise the emotion there now, he knows what the tattoo means. In a burst of insight it all adds up.
Don wants him. His big brother wants him the way Charlie’s wanted Don for so long, the way he never thought he’d be wanted back. And someone has to do something, someone has to start this. So he lets himself do what he’s wanted to since he walked into the bathroom and lowers his head to the bandage he applied. He presses a kiss to it, and then trails his tongue up to the bruise near Don’s heart. His kiss here is soft, open-mouthed and wet, a tiny bit of suction. When he lifts his lips it’s only enough to speak, to ghost warm breath over the tightening areole and say
“…Kiss it better, Donny”
Then his mouth closes on the nipple, and his brother cries out above him.
And he’s letting his hands go where they want now, clasp the flesh they’ve wanted for so long, and he’s drinking in the sounds his brother’s makes as he lightly closes his teeth over that taut nub of flesh.
Then Don’s tugging at his shoulders and he’s swarming up his older brother to squirm and rear up in his lap, to clamp their mouths down together and tangle their tongues as Don’s hands are clenched in his hair and Charlie’s are roaming Don’s back.
And the fog in Charlie’s head’s changed – it’s a storm now and it’s raging and he can’t breathe and – a shift in their position brought their crotches together and Charlie has to throw back his head and gasp at the friction. All movement stops for a moment and then Don lays his head on Charlie’s chest and groans
“Sweet god…Fuck, Charlie, fu-uck”
The anguish in Don’s voice – the way it hitches on the second ‘fuck’ should make Charlie feel guilty, should make him feel bad. It should make him want to wash his mind out with soap for wanting to do these things with his big brother: but it doesn’t.
It makes him feel wild and so happy – because Don wants him back, and it makes him feel a little bit powerful – since Don doesn’t know what to do and he does and that doesn’t often happen. He pulls his brother’s head back and he can’t help it, he just grins at him and Don looks shocked and uncertain and then…
Charlie thinks that his brother notices the slight smug edge to his smile because all of a sudden Don’s grinning back at him. And his grin is pure evil incarnate.
Before he has time to gasp strong hands are clamping onto his thighs and he’s treated to a display of just how strong his older brother is as Don stands up, lifting Charlie as well and with a couple of strides has him pressed up against the open door frame, half in the hall. Don’s voice is a rumbling purr as he says
“Oh, you think this is amusing baby bro?”
And Charlie would answer him, would tell him that it’s not so much funny as satisfying, but Don’s latched onto his neck with teeth and lips and tongue and all he seems to be able to make are little whimpering sounds. Not that Donny minds, judging by the enthusiasm with which he’s grinding his hard-on into Charlie’s. And then there’s more touching and hungry, ravenous kisses and somehow, miraculously they’re there in Charlie’s room and he’s falling backwards onto the bed – to be jerked back up a second later by Don, who’s damn near ripping the shirt off him before hauling him further up the bed and crouching over him.
Don growls
“I’ll show you funny, bud”
and Charlie has a brief moment to wonder if this canine grin is the one fugitives saw when Donny caught them, but then his brother’s mouth is on him again, his hands are everywhere, nails scratching, thumbs flicking hard nipples and Don’s sucking and biting down his ribcage as Charlie writhes below him and then – he barely has time to register the change in pressure as his khaki’s are undone and yanked off and – he’s arching up with an inarticulate cry as Don swallows his cock down to the damn root.
It’s too good. It’s far, far too good, this molten, liquid heat that he’s encircled in and his head’s thrashing from side to side and his hands are fisting in the sheets and he can hear himself crying out, babbling something though he doesn’t know what – and it could be the solution to P vs NfuckingP, it doesn’t matter, just so long as Don doesn’t stop.
He’s stopped. Why has he stopped?
Don’s crouching above him again, peering into his face, that strange almost-frightened look in his eyes again. He asks
“Really, Charlie? Really? Are – are you sure?”
What? What had Charlie… ah, that’s right. In the gabble of ‘yes, oh god, yes, i, uh, there, I, more!’, there’d been ‘fuck me, pleasepleaseplease, fuck me’
He wets dry lips and gives the only logical answer
“Oh god, yes”
**
The break in movement seems to have snapped them into another mode; Don’s almost shy as he takes the lube Charlie grabs from his drawer and coats his fingers with it, and his touch is gentle, soothing as he presses Charlie back down and runs a hand over his little brother’s trembling thighs. A large, warm hand rests tenderly on Charlie’s stomach and their eyes lock as Don slips the first, slick finger inside him.
It’s difficult to keep his eyes on Don, to keep breathing despite the murmured reminders because this is almost too intimate. He’s wanted this for too long.
But he keeps his eyes on his brother as more fingers are added and moved in and out of him. Keeps his eyes steady even when Don hits that spot in him that makes him gasp and moan.
Then he lets his head fall back, but its ok because Don’s on top of him now, pushing into him until he’s all – the – way – there, and he’s still watching Charlie’s face as he starts moving and Charlie regrets not being better with words because there must be some way to describe this – this beautiful, tender movement that has his every nerve humming, his very blood singing. Even math isn’t lovely enough to encompass this heart-rending ecstasy as the feeling grows at the base of his spine like a star and Don wraps his hands behind Charlie’s shoulders to pull him closer, harder and as the star goes nova inside him – spilling his seed out between them and its shock waves wrenching Don shuddering along with him – he thinks that the only thing perfect enough to portray it is
‘=’
**
Afterwards, Charlie’s resting his head on Don’s chest and listening to the beat of his heart as he again traces the outline of Donny’s tattoo. He asks
“When did you get this done?”
Don strokes Charlie’s shoulder and his voice is a low rumble in his chest when he replies
“I had it done when I was 24. Just before I went into the FBI”
Charlie leans up on his elbow to look at his brother and he say’s tentatively
“You… you liked me – liked me like this – back then? That’s what it means, doesn’t it?”
and though he’s 99% sure he knows the answer he still experiences a moment of panic when Don just looks at him silent and serious – but then he says
“Yeah, that’s what it means. Every so often I was afraid you might work it out for yourself; I’ve not been too subtle sometimes”
“I’m not good with the whole social interaction thing, Don. You know that. If its not math you usually have to explain it to me. You could have explained it”
Don’s eyes crinkle up in that way that Charlie loves so much and he laughs
“I don’t know if you’d have appreciated knowing at 19 that your big brother wanted to nail you, bro!”
Charlie smirks back and rolls over in a fake stretch, saying
“Oh, I don’t know – I got mine done when I was 18”
“Got yours…? What do you - !?”
And Charlie starts giggling as strong hands grip his hips and his brother exclaims loudly
“Charlie!! You got a baseball tattooed on your butt?!”
(fin)
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-03 12:22 am (UTC)Not sure if I can quite manage a daily dose, but with writers such as your fine selves out there, we should be ok!
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Date: 2007-10-03 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-03 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-03 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-03 11:26 pm (UTC)There's definitely going to be more of these - and I might pick someone other than the boys to join in the fun.
The only thing that's troubling me is... I have this vague idea that I could watch series 1&2 (which are the only ones I've seen so far) again, note ALL the possible d&c refs and work them into one big, nay - huge magnum opus of a fic. It's an idea.
(Yeh, I know - I never said it was a :good: ideas)
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Date: 2007-10-04 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 09:02 am (UTC)But yeh, think that might have made the poor guy suffer - but then, we all love an angsty Don don't we? ;)
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Date: 2007-10-06 01:35 am (UTC)That was amazing...absolutely perfect, as a few other commenters said, just...GUH.
*the party you are trying to reach is currently preoccupied with the amazing PORN you've posted, if you'll leave a message...* ;)
Lovely job on this!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 02:17 am (UTC)I've just followed your tags through, and I don't mean to be offense - or HUGELY ignorant - but who are Harry and Bob?
Too much beer, too much wine - god, I'm suprised I can still type to be honest...
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Date: 2007-10-07 03:25 am (UTC)Harry and Bob *or Hrothbert* are characters in the urban fantasy novels by Jim Butcher (http://www.jim-butcher.com). Sci-Fi made a television show out of the novels early on this year, but it was canceled after 12 episodes, sadly. I adore the Bob/Harry pairing, because they are polar opposites in many ways, but they've known each other since Harry *who is a wizard* was 11 years old, according to the show. Book!canon and show!canon vary a bit (in the books, Bob is just a skull, in the show, he is the ghost of an executed necromancer who was banished to his own skull), but the thing that drew me in was the way the characters were portrayed by their respective actors.
I'll stop rambling now, no, you weren't being ignorant at all!! If you're not a fan of sci-fi/fantasy or familiar with the current popularity of urban fantasy, you've probably never heard of Jim Butcher, much less Harry and Bob. ;) Thanks for asking!!
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Date: 2007-10-08 11:57 am (UTC)I have heard of Jim Butcher - read one of the books and liked it - but hadnt connected the names. And didnt know they'd done tv of it, albeit briefly.
Think I may have to look at a couple of the Book!cannon fics now - 'cos I'm curious how you pull off Necro!talking-skull love. Only so much you can do with bone, you know?
If you're into the Butcher books, there's a guy called Mark Del Franco who's written one called Unshapely Things I can recommend. Crime thriller with Druid PI's and fairy-prostitue killers - fun!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 12:46 pm (UTC)And in reply to your comment about Bob, what they did in the TV show was to cast an actor to play Bob, instead of just having a talking skull, cause you can only get so much emotion out of a cranium :) They cast Terrence Mann, who I adore *I'm a big Broadway fan, and he's a Broadway staple*, and then what they did was to make him the ghost of an executed necromancer bound to his own skull...so he can come out and form a body, but he's a ghost, and he can only be so far from his skull at all times. Harry's kinda his caretaker, and he took possession of Bob *that sounds so wrong, oh well* after his uncle died, who had been Bob's former owner.
In the Bob/Harry world of slash, most of us fangirls who write fic and don't want to try to write ghost!porn either make Bob corporeal, usually by allowing him to be freed of his curse somehow, or we do what we call "corporeal Bob, no explanations". I tend to do the latter, because trying to come up with a reasonable way for Bob to become corporeal gets in the way of me writing smut ;) But I did write a skull!porn fic, and it was not right, not in the least sense of the word, but I enjoyed it, pervert that I am. *grins*
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 10:52 pm (UTC)Lovely to know you liked it.
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Date: 2007-10-13 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 01:15 pm (UTC)That was so, so, so incredibly good TT_TT. I loved everything about it. The tension I could feel when Charlie helped bandage Don was just breathtaking. This blew my mind. Soooo good *_*.
Favourite line: The muscles in his brother’s arms are tight, his fists clenched and his eyes – his eyes look almost frightened – almost. And almost… something else – but it’s not numbers, and Charlie can’t read it if its not numbers.
Thank you so much for writing it and letting us read. You're AMAZING!!!
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Date: 2007-10-23 08:29 pm (UTC)Glad that you think I got the tension right - and that you liked that line! (its actually my favourite as well!)
*does 'win, win, I am made of win' dance*
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Date: 2007-11-20 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 11:18 am (UTC)(and do read entangled_now's numb3rs stuff. Hot and really, really funny!)