
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/8808838.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Eyewitness_(US_TV)
  Relationship:
      Philip_Shea/Lukas_Waldenbeck
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-12-10 Words: 2194
****** Delicate ******
by riyku
Summary
     Lukas slides his hands up to cover Philip's ears until all Philip can
     hear is the rush of blood through his body. It sounds like the ocean.
     Like running water.
Notes
     a little love letter for L, who gave me the coordinates for this
     little puddle, and has been right there with me while i drown in it.
     many thanks to dollylux for setting my mind at ease in more ways than
     are possible to count.
Philip is good at being invisible. He stays quiet, keeps his head down, hides
inside of his patchy, ratty leather jacket. It's Darwinism in realtime, the
best way to survive his mother's four-day benders, avoid the string of men
passing through their shitass house with their pockets full of pills, teeth so
rotten it's like they've never seen a toothbrush. Those guys who have no bones
about letting Philip know that his mouth looks like a hell of a fun ride.
So yeah. Head down. Feet on solid ground. Voice rarely above a whisper. Try not
to puke because their breath smells so fucking bad when they get a little too
close. Philip does okay, stays fed, slides by in school, locks his door when he
goes to bed at night, then does it all over again the next day. Same story,
morning glory.
After his mother's two hundred bucks a day hobby lands him in the empty,
pastoral no-man's land surrounding the tiny town of Tivoli, Philip expects much
of the same, only easier, quieter, more cows and less traffic. He expects
family breakfasts with the rent-a-parents, visits from DSS like clockwork,
maybe not having to lock his door.
What he doesn't expect is the hook in his chest the first time he walks up the
steps of his brand new high school and sees a tall boy with hair courtesy of a
clorox bottle, mouth full of skate-punk vocabulary. A boy with skinny arms and
skinny legs, who smells like gasoline and exhaust, and has a jaw so sharp
Philip might cut himself wide open on it if he's not careful.
"What's there to do around here, anyway?" Philip asks Lukas before class. He
tries to sound bored, keep his expression in the shape of big-city-don't-give-
a-fuck, while the lump in his throat and the liquid thing happening to his
heart erase any lingering illusions he might have about his own
heterosexuality.
"Are you into motocross?" Lukas leans in, grips the edge of his desk. His
wrists are bony-delicate and there's motor crud under his fingernails, black
half moons of the stuff. The helmet he's carrying around makes sense now. Lukas
looks expectant, wears a crooked, sideways grin and Philip wants to lick his
way into it. Something in the steady, pinned-down gaze Lukas gives him makes
Philip think he might let him.
"Yeah. Sure," Philip lies, and spends his lunch period at the bank of computers
in the library trying to figure out what motocross actually is.
For the first time in his life, Philip doesn't want to be careful, doesn't want
to be invisible anymore. He has so much to say.
 
~*~*~*~
 
Lukas has a girlfriend but kisses Philip like he doesn't. He moans into
Philip's mouth and can't keep his hands in one place, runs them up from
Philip's hips to his neck then back down again, like he's trying to get used to
the size of them together. Their almost-matched height, flat chests and wide
shoulders, slim hips that must have been designed specifically to fit into the
sprawl of Philip's legs.
He teaches Philip how to balance on the back of his bike, how to shift his
weight so they don't eat dirt on the jumps and the whips. Philip learns that
love and devotion aren't two things that need to be broadcasted or even talked
about out loud. They're somehow better that way.
 
~*~*~*~
 
"I'll see you after." Lukas pulls his helmet off, offers up a whipcrack smile,
tries to fingerbrush some of the einstein out of his hair. They're a few blocks
away from the school and Philip's still feeling the vibration from the bike
between his thighs, the ghost-press of Lukas's spine against his chest.
The littlest things snatch Philip's breath away nowadays, make him get lost for
a while. He's thinking about twenty minutes ago, under the old wooden bridge,
when he'd had his hands buried wrist deep in Lukas's hair and all of Lukas's
weight had been holding him down. The tingle in his lips hasn't faded, and
Philip keeps chewing on them, trying to extend the sweet ache a bit longer.
Lukas always kisses him so hard, like it can tide them over in some way, hold
them for the next ten hours until they're alone and allowed to touch again.
"Where?" Philip asks, then, "When?"
A one shouldered shrug is his answer. "I gotta do some stuff. I'll let you
know."
Philip shrugs back, acts like he won't be staring non-stop at his phone after
school, waiting for it to light up.
Lukas looks around to make sure they're alone, a fast flick of his tongue as he
licks his lips, edges in for another kiss. A quick graze of teeth before he
breaks it off and starts his bike up and now it's pins and needles all over
again. Philip watches him go, counting to the prescribed one-twenty. He plugs
his headphones into his ears, turns the music up loud and wonders when every
song he listens to started to be about Lukas in some way.
 
~*~*~*~
 
The grass around the tree has been trampled down by Philip pacing in smaller
and smaller circles. Lukas is late and Philip has gnawed his thumbnail down to
the point of bleeding. Lukas is always late and Philip always worries. What
Philip has taken to thinking of as their first date ended in a triple homicide.
That sorta thing tends to leave an impression. It reverberates.
Relief hits him like a landslide when the wound up sound of a dirt bike rips
through the quiet. Lukas barely has his helmet off and Philip is already
crowding into his orbit, a litany of bitchass commentary stuck behind a thick
throat and a heart that's gone shuddery. In a moment of bellring clarity,
Philip knows this must be what addicts feel like when they wake up in the
morning and reach over for their first hit of the day.
Lukas palms Philip's cheeks, slides his hands up to cover his ears until all
Philip can hear is the rush of blood through his body. It sounds like the
ocean. Like running water. It calms him.
"Sorry, I had to--" Lukas doesn't get to finish, mouth too full of Philip's
tongue for any words to make it past. Philip pulls him down and hits the ground
hard, but it's okay. How to take a fall is another thing Lukas has taught him.
The breath shoves out of Lukas's lungs with a gentle whoosh, turns into a gasp
as Philip rolls his hips down. Relief is melting into desperation, a soul-deep
need to prove to Lukas how good he can be, how he doesn't need anyone else,
that he never needs to be late again.
Philip has thought about this more than he cares to admit. Dreamed up
candlelight dinners, soft, cool sheets and something emo on the radio, or
haylofts with bats fluttering in the rafters, hours spent inside the curve of
Lukas's arm. All these scenarios looping through his head at night, one hand on
his dick and three fingers shoved into his mouth, careful not to utter a sound
or make the bedsprings groan, shuttered behind his unlocked door. None of them
have looked like this, with Lukas laid out on thin grass made thinner by
Philip's knock-off converse, the breeze blowing through the tree branches above
their heads, clattering them together with a rattle like old, dry bones.
He kisses down Lukas's throat, shoves at his shirt and finds warm, slightly
sweaty skin to press his mouth against next, lets Lukas feel the slickness of
his teeth against his nipple and it makes Lukas arch up, hiss pretty through
his clenched jaw so Philip does it again. There's an encyclopedia of things
Philip needs to figure out about him. The three question game isn't gonna cut
it.
The hand Lukas has buried in Philip's hair is as restless as always as he tries
to pull him back up but Philip isn't gonna let him. His tongue has found a home
in the hollow of Lukas's stomach, his hand fumbling past Lukas's belt and
buttons.
He's had Lukas on top of him so many times, is intimately acquainted with the
feel of his hips bearing down on him, the shape of his dick through layers of
criminally baggy denim. The sight of it is new, long like the rest of him and
blood-thick. Finally, finally, bare skin on bare skin and the heat is something
new as well, the strain of it against Philip's palm as he runs his hand up and
down the length of it, watching the tip go damp, flush dark.
"Philip, are you...fuck. Fuck." Lukas is staring down at him like he's some
impossible miracle, like walking on water might be his next trick. Philip holds
his gaze as he flicks his tongue against the head of Lukas's dick, trembles at
the first little taste. He tries not to let it show, doesn't want Lukas to
think that he's shaking from fear. It's been ages since he was this unafraid.
There's nothing practiced about it when Philip takes Lukas down the first time.
Too much all at once and spit floods into his mouth, his stomach ties itself
into a knot. Tears are filling up his eyes and looking at Lukas is like looking
through water. Lukas's dick is huge in his mouth, and Philip can't breathe
right, his own dick pounding and pushing against the front of his jeans. It's
painful and heaven-adjacent, and Philip wouldn't change a thing. Fuck cool
sheets and haylofts. Maybe later.
The grip Lukas has on the back of his head turns into a vice and he's never
felt anything so real in his life. Nothing as heart-shatteringly good as the
pulse of Lukas's dick on his tongue, the mumbled apologies when Lukas lets his
body take over and bucks up into his mouth, his dick somehow harder than before
and Philip only manages to get a hand down his own pants before he's coming
like the strung out teenager he pretends not to be.
"Did you just?" Lukas asks, but Philip has his mouth full, can only hum and try
to open his throat up more, take whatever Lukas has to give him. Everything.
All of it. He fucks his mouth down again, skates his hands along Lukas's sides,
down to cover the knobby architecture of his hips. Lukas makes a sound, a loud
exhale, his body locked down tight as electrocution when he comes. He throws
his head back and covers his face with his arm, doesn't see it as Philip
sputters around his dick, desperate to not waste a drop of his spunk, to keep
it all inside of him.
"I lied." Lukas still has his arm crooked over his face, speech slurred in
muffled affection, accordion ribs expanding and contracting in his skinnyboy
chest.
Philip stares at him. Doesn't say anything. Silence used to be one of his
superpowers and anyway, he's busy sucking on his lips, trying to memorize the
taste Lukas's spunk. He's constructing a museum in his head. The salt-bitter on
his tongue, the shift of wiry thigh muscles under his palms, the fucked-out
sigh Lukas had breathed right before he came. All of it locked behind
plexiglass and perfectly lit. It's an old habit. When everything is
impermanent, it's important to curate.
"Every time I've pushed you back, or...or fucked you up." He reaches down,
smudges his thumb along Philip's mouth, curls his hand around his ear. Lukas
tells lies all the time and Philip has learned to find the truth in between
them, in the fixed flat tires, Star Wars polaroid cameras and the grasp of
long, shaky fingers.
"I know. I've been fucked up for a while. It's better when you do it." Philip
croaks around the new ache in his jaw, and there's gotta be something about the
tone of his voice, the scoured sound of it that makes Lukas drag him up,
pretzel them together, his bare, pale legs tangled around Philip's come-stained
denim.
The kiss is almost innocent, sweet for all of of the filth still coating
Philip's tongue, the come, sweat and sloppy spit, and if Lukas is squeamish
over sucking the taste of himself out of Philip's mouth, he doesn't let on
about it. This coming from the kid who used to wipe off the bottle after Philip
drank from it.
"I miss you," Lukas says, a fragile little whisper into Philip's mouth. It's
raw, Lukas at his most basic, stripped of his armor and teenaged bravado.
Scrubbed clean in a way that only Philip gets to see.
Philip could point out that he's right here. He could say a lot of stuff, but
he gets it. Instead he says, "Yeah, me too."
Lukas nuzzles into Philip's hair, hums happy against his throat and kisses
below his ear. The spot that always hits him like a surprise, makes Philip
shiver and sigh. It's another thing that Philip memorizes, plans to keep safe
under lock and key. Rewind. Pause. Replay.
 
--end.
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