Chapter Text
At first, it is not very good. At the last second one of them must have turned or tensed or both, because it’s more the clink of teeth against teeth and noses pressed uncomfortably against each other’s cheeks than a kiss. Tomas huffs out a frustrated breath and takes a step closer. Marcus is about to have a heart attack from knees knocking against his own, but then Tomas tilts his head. After that, he doesn’t have the space to think about anything but the soft inside of Tomas’ lower lip. Soon, he can’t think at all.
“Is it,” Tomas pants some interminable time later, “is this okay, are you-”
Marcus isn’t okay with want, isn’t used to letting it well up and spill over. He doesn’t have the language required to describe what it means to acknowledge it, let alone for someone to encourage it. Not brave enough to look, and not able to speak, all he can do is anchor a hand in Tomas’ shirt and cut off whatever terrible kind word will come next with his mouth.
For a minute, there is just the honest supplication of skin, the careful lift and press of his lips. Then Tomas is pulling away again with a sound he wants to bottle up and keep, tucking his face against Marcus’ scalding neck. He can feel Tomas’ stomach jump underneath his shirt, where his hand is now twisted, close and low.
He can also feel his back killing him from the ways he’s angled against the table, but he’s struck by the novel urge to not fuck this moment up.
“Marcus. We should talk.” It is very tempting to bite into that lovely junction between neck and shoulder. He can imagine how Tomas might twitch and hiss as he set his teeth there. Melt forward into Marcus, make him lean backwards to take the weight of him regardless of muscle pain.
Again, the urge to not fuck this up makes itself known, so he doesn’t try to give Tomas a wonderfully messy hickey. His self restraint? Beyond compare. “Makes sense. Probably not a great idea to sully the massage table.”
Tomas groans again, mashing his forehead painfully into Marcus’ collarbone. “Do not talk about any sullying right now. I have had far too many thoughts about sullying this table with you. That I would like to make a reality, but, talking.”
“Really?” Marcus says, stuck halfway between delight and disbelief.
“How could I not? You come in with your body tied in impossible knots, and then I touch you and-” he shakes his head. “This is not conducive to not sullying the table.”
“I don’t know, I’m kind of enjoying all this.” Tomas hits his head again, a repeating dull thunk. Marcus doesn’t know when he started running a hand up and down the planes of Tomas’ back, but it is very nice. The rasp of cotton under callus, warmth and fabric and muscle underneath.
“What do you want out of this relationship?” He stills. Tomas slowly raises his head, and takes a step back, leaving Marcus’ front cold. The caution that paints his face leaves him colder still, like Marcus is the delicate china that gets left in the cabinet because they’re never sure if it’ll explode during entertaining. “You were recently very upset that I assumed things. I want to respect that. But I’m not sure how to read this as anything but negative.” His tongue sits fat and useless against his teeth. Tomas waits long moments while he tries to force air into his lungs, force his stupid mouth to speak, before he moves to back away completely. The fist still clutching his shirt tight keeps him near. That, at least, gives Marcus another moment where he stays. So much for not fucking it up.
That moment becomes two, then three- enough moments for the hippie background music to tweedle on, and a couple of songs with rushing water and chiming bells begin and end, and Marcus forces himself to breathe, and breathe. He keeps looking at his hand in Tomas’ shirt, knuckles shining white. The skin there shows its age where it falls looser than in youth, the green-blue swathe of veins, scars fading white, red lines shot throughout because he never remembers his damn hand lotion. “Why do you want this?” Marcus says, quietly, as if that will hide that he is flayed.
“Why do you?” Tomas replies, and wraps his hands carefully around Marcus’ own.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to want.”
“They don’t tend to teach that at bible camp?”
Marcus laughs despite himself. “I am excellent at what they do teach, though. Won’t meet a better potato peeler. Coulda won a medal in Aramaic if we bothered with celebration.”
Tomas smiles, and Marcus realizes that he’s looking at him again, and that Tomas is looking at him, and it makes something warm and anxious burn furiously in his chest. “Wouldn’t you know, I’m very into Aramaic-speaking potato peelers.”
He smiles back, hurting and helpless and happy despite it. “You’re in luck.”
This is, of course, when Verity bursts in the door, Truck hot on her heels. “Don’t kil- oh. Ew. Congrats, I guess. Truck. You’re dead to me.”
“Oh my God.” Tomas says.
“Oh my God? You don’t get to say that, Tomas, fuck you! I get grounded when you’re already macking on Father Marcus?” She pauses, and realization seems to dawn painfully. “Oh my God , you’re macking on Father Marcus.”
“Help.” Truck says, strangled. “My brain.”
“Macking.” Marcus repeats dumbly.
Tomas makes a valiant effort to look authoritative while still, as the kids say, all up in Marcus’ business. “Verity, go home. Truck, go back to the front desk.”
“So you can fool around in our place of work? No way. You’re getting a permanent chaperone. Your thirst is too strong to be trusted.”
“Verity. ”
“Thirst?” Marcus warbles. Verity smiles worryingly, and Tomas is over there in a flash before she can open her mouth to say anything world-ending, pushing Verity and Truck bodily out of the room and repeating nope like a death knell, slamming the door behind them. Immediately, there’s banging on the door from furious teenage fists.
“Tomas!” Verity yells, muffled through the door. “Don’t put out ‘til you’ve got a promise ring!”
“Go home, Verity, I am not discussing this with you!” Embarrassment is making some fascinating tendons stand out starkly in Tomas’ neck.
“Respect his tender feelings, Marcus!”
“Verity-”
“He’s hot for your bod, Marcus!!”
Tomas slams a hand against the door, and she falls silent. “Go home now, or they will not find your body, and they will not weep,” drips from his mouth like a promise, if that promise comprised of a venomous snake. It’s kind of hot, not that Marcus is going to share that.
Through the door, he can hear her stomp away. Even from where Marcus is standing, he can see Tomas is flushed a dull brick red. “Demons have nothing on teenagers,” Marcus blurts, and feels the sudden and complete desire to fling himself off a cliff, even if Tomas is reportedly hot for his bod.
Tomas, a normal human being who of course assumes he’s joking, thunks his head against the door. “I’m beginning to think they’re one and the same.”
Marcus flings himself a proverbial life preserver, which, growth. “If only both weren’t real. Anyway. You don’t want to talk about that.”
Tomas turns against where’s he leaned on the door, and slides down ‘til he’s sitting, knees akimbo, looking up through his lashes devastatingly. “I don’t not want to talk about it. I think I could talk about anything with you.”
He smiles, and it feels a bit wobbly at the edges. “Even that?”
“Even that,” Tomas says, reflecting Marcus’ smile back as something beautiful. Someday, Marcus thinks, he might.