Chapter Text
The bath was big enough that, if he sat Arthur down between his legs, the two of them could squeeze inside of it together with a little bit of room to spare. Pressed up against him as he was now, emotions touching emotions in excess, he didn’t want to let go.
Still, needs must.
He set Arthur down to steep— like the world’s most handsome-looking tea leaves in a bathtub-sized mug— gently as he could, one hand on his body at all times, even as he stretched over to the rarely used heated water faucet and turned it to fill the basin.
He wasn’t kidding when he’d said to John he’d gotten a hell of a deal. A man like him having his own wash basin— connected to indoor plumbing, no less— it practically made him the ritziest man in the station. A shame he didn’t have the pay to show for it.
Meanwhile, as the water tumbled in, steam filled the space in warm puffs of white. Inside it’s shelter, he got to know John better than he could have hoped. The two of them yammered back and forth for what must’ve been ages. In so doing, John spoke through Arthur’s mouth, and proved himself to be a devil in his own right. They took turns saying risqué things to one another like two thrill-seekers playing chicken— waiting in anticipation for when the other would call it quits first.
This was how he learned that they were both mean little sons-of-bitches— which made Noel delighted to no end. They both liked to watch Arthur squirm. They both enjoyed each other’s company like a pair of fine men getting rowdy at a bar, talking dirty to one another underneath the bar while all the other boys thought they were fighting.
“You gonna make me be a good boy for you, Johnny?” He’d said at one point, leaning down over the rim of the bathtub as he went around grabbing his soaps, staring straight down into John’s gleaming yellow eyes.
“You need to be forced?”
Noel laughed, slow as smoke drifting up from a cigarette. “Maybe. But I betcha wouldn’t know how to do it even if I told you,” he said, smile gleaming.
John’s eyes turned to mean little slits. “You could always get down on your knees and find out.”
Noel leaned in close. Closer. Nose to nose. Breath to humid breath.
“Oh, yeah?” He murmured. Then he took Arthur in for a deep, heady, kiss.
It was teeth knocking against teeth, lips chasing sweet violence and embracing and violence again, and the whole time, he kept his eyes cracked open— staring into John’s simmering stare with a smug little twinkle. By the time he pulled back, Arthur was whining, and saliva was dangling between their lips like spider silk.
Noel licked the trail of spit away.
“Make me,” he dared. And as John’s hand reached up to try and grab him, he darted away.
“Noel!” John said.
Noel laughed. He danced out of John’s reach, whistling, and put some towels on the nearby shelf. Like finding himself in the back of the closet, he was leaning into the parts of himself he’d rather thought had been worn away, re-settling into his skin like an old suit.
He couldn’t avoid retribution forever, though.
As he stepped into the water behind Arthur, slotting the other man’s slender body nicely between his knees, John got a good go at him. He dug his nails into the meat of Noel’s thigh where it was sitting— easy prey— next to him. Noel winced, but leaned into it.
Such was the way of paying the piper.
He rolled his shoulders back, tension releasing, and sighed. Then and there, he decided to himself he wasn’t going to get out until he turned pink.
“This is the life,” he breathed.
Beneath the shadow of the bathwater, all of their skin appeared to be cleaner than it was. Smoother. Arthur’s scars all seemed softer, and Noel’s aches all felt not sore, but tender. Like he was one big tender spot, made even more tender by the way in which Arthur relied on him to stay by his side.
It made him feel young like he hadn’t in ages.
Noel laughed to himself— Marjorie was going to know as soon as she saw the look in his eyes. She’d probably be happy for him, too, that little so-and-so.
He tucked his chin over Arthur’s shoulder, reaching for shampoo and soap.
“How you doin’ down there, doll?” He asked.
Being this close to him, Noel could really see it now— Arthur was thin. Railroad thin. ‘Someone who’d just escaped from a war camp’ thin. Or from a prison pit.
It broke Noel’s heart, the reminder that just because he’d gotten out, that didn’t mean that other people hadn’t still been trapped in there, desperate. Like he’d left his comrades behind. What sort of horrors did Arthur have to partake in to survive? How much of him was in the present, now, and how much of him was still back there, surviving?
“I’m… I’m alright,” Arthur said quietly. “Just tired. You’re very fuzzy, you know that?”
Noel curled an arm around Arthur’s chest, leaning him back. He washed at Arthur’s chest, ran his hands over it gently, reverently, fully aware of the privilege this was to experience.
“Am I?” He said.
“Like… like a big bear, or something. Or maybe a sheep.” Arthur made an affronted sound. He wiggled as Noel splashed some water to clean the soap away. “—shut up, John.”
“Johnny saying something hinky to you?”
“He’s just… saying that I sound cute…”
“Aw,” Noel said. “Poor thing.”
“—I am not cute. I’ve been… I’m very frightening when I need to be.”
“Oh, yeah?” Noel ran his fingers over the length of Arthur’s arm.
“Mhm. Like… like with that Aldrich Ward whatsit-fellow… smashed his head right into a mirror…”
Noel cursed softly. That image, Arthur full of righteous anger, snarling and holding another man’s head against the glass as he made him tell them exactly what they needed to know, it made Noel feel affected as anything.
“Is that what you did, sweetheart?” He reached down and interlaced his fingers with Arthur’s own. “Took a good poke at him?”
Arthur squeezed his hand back.
“There’s… there’s just something about it, you know?…once, once I get into that place, I just can’t stop myself… it makes me feel…” Arthur trailed off.
“Makes you feel what?”
“…hot. My stomach gets all fluttery.” Arthur sighed into the warm water of the tub, shifting lower into it. “I don’t know what it is, but it just… overcomes me.”
“Like a plague?” Noel asked.
“Like a passion,” Arthur said.
Lord, this man. Noel reached for the shampoo. “Feels good?”
Arthur lolled his head back, let Noel rake his fingers through his hair, let himself be taken care of by Noel’s soapy palms. “If it does, does that… does that make me… bad?”
Noel hummed, chewing on his lip and dragging his hands back and forth into the texture of Arthur’s locks.
“Nah,” he said at last. He massaged his fingers softly, gentle as the day he was born, like he was bathing an angel and not a man. It was so wonderful to see how Arthur melted. “Outta all the chumps in this rotten world, at least you’re get something outta it.”
“But I… the Butcher.... he—he said something.” Arthur sounded so sad. “Said we’re alike.”
“You’re like him, nothing!” Noel scoffed. He scooped some water up with his hands, drew it over Arthur’s scalp until all the bubbles washed away. “You’re as close to the Butcher as I am to the candlestick maker, doll. He makes a career outta people’s pain. You help people— or you’re tryin to. And anyway—“
Noel kissed the side of his neck.
“—I think it’s kinda attractive. Big, bad detective interrogating his suspects.” Noel bit the tip of Arthur’s ear. “Maybe you’ll have to interrogate me next.”
“…oh?”
“Mhmm.” He kissed his way down the side of Arthur’s neck. “Hold me up for stolen identity. Make me admit all my little dirty secrets about Charlie Dowd.”
“Like… like what?” Arthur sounded breathless.
“Like all the folks he slept around with, brazen little bastard. All the guys and gals he left behind, daddy’s getting their guns, making missus’ falling in love with him.”
Arthur’s voice did that thing it did when he was speaking for John. “Sounds like he was a real heartbreaker.”
“Mhm.”
“And are you going to break our heart, Detective Noel?”
“Yours?” Noel said. “Never.”
“…Good.” John sounded darkly pleased when he said it. It made Noel wonder what he would have sounded like if Noel had said anything otherwise.
He found he liked the idea a bit too much. His cock twitched eagerly.
Arthur’s voice went all breathy. “Is that… is that you, Noel?”
Holy hell. It wasn’t fair, him sounding like that.
“Is it alright if it is?”
Arthur moaned softly, pressed back against him a little. “God… yes.”
“Then yeah, sweetheart, it is.”
“Mmn. Feels nice.”
Noel was going to go insane. “I’m… I’m glad, baby. Real glad.”
“Can… can I?”
“Can you what, baby?”
“I just…” Like a baby deer who’d just got it’s walking legs, Arthur shifted himself around, splashing water everywhere, and turned around so they were facing each other. He kneeled back down between Noel’s legs, relaxed, like he hadn’t just sent half their bathwater to the floor below them. One of his hands reached out, stopping just short of making contact. “We just…”
John’s voice came back into the fray. “Arthur and I want to touch you, Noel.”
“Mercy,” Noel groaned. “Please.”
John’s hand didn’t even bother to wait. It reached over against Noel’s chest and wrapped a hand through his hair, tugging a little. Twisting. Coveting. Punishing him for his little stunt earlier and then some.
Noel let out a long, low moan.
Arthur laughed, or maybe John laughed, or maybe it didn’t matter and it was the both of them laughing at the same time.
Either way, Arthur’s hand quickly followed suit.
They were like children, Noel thought, playing in bubbles, touching each other without fear, man and man as they were always meant to be — naked and unashamed and free. It made Noel intoxicated. He wanted to trap a moment in amber, make it so it never ended, make it so the real world never had to leak back in and take all this pleasure away.
Arthur’s hand touched at his cock like it was something new. Delicate. A new exhibit in a museum he had never seen before. He wanted to investigate it, make a discovery. Him and John seemed to be of one mind in this as they grabbed him and Arthur ducked his head under water.
“Hey, doll,” Noel said a bit cautiously. “What exactly are you—“ Noel’s legs locked, felt tight. “Jesus Christ!” He cursed, stealing one of Arthur’s classic sacrileges.
Arthur came back up again, laughing. “Yes?”
“You little sneak!” Noel accused. He reached out and tried to grab Arthur by the shoulders, but Arthur laughed again and ducked away. That was probably how he’d lived as long as he had— slippery little fella.
He put his mouth on Noel’s cock again— and Noel could honestly say that he didn’t mind Arthur being a slippery little animal if it meant he was allowed to enjoy this.
It was clear that Arthur had no idea what he was doing. It occurred to Noel, then, if perhaps he was the first man Arthur had ever been with. The first person— man or otherwise— John had been with, that was for certain (except maybe Arthur, of course).
That sort of made it even better— that he was willing to try. That they both found him worth trying for.
Alongside the sensations assaulting him— the heat of the water, the feeling of Arthur’s mouth, as warm and smooth as it had been around his fingers earlier today— it all combined to make Noel feel much more sensitive than he would usually have.
He pulled Arthur off and listened to the sad little while the other man made.
“Why’d you— Is everything alright—?”
“Oh, yeah,” Noel said. He chuckled a little, bashful. “I’m just… if you keep doing that, I’m afraid my little pal here ain’t gonna last very long.”
John’s yellow eyes gleamed at him. Arthur’s mouth smirked at him. They were working together to make Noel’s life a living hell.
“Good,” Arthur said. “That’s what we want.”
Noel tried to reach out and catch him again but Arthur tackled him against the wall of the tub.
“Oof!” Water rocked around them. Arthur cackled madly. Noel felt like his lungs were going to burst. It was completely ridiculous. They were grown men. But he was so, so deliriously happy.
“You gonna finish me, baby?”
“I don’t know,“ Arthur said. “Do you think he deserves it?”
He was clearly talking to John. Noel groaned.
“Throw a dog a bone here, please, fellas,” Noel said. “I’m dying.”
“Oh no,” Arthur said deadpan. “He’s dying. John, I guess that means we’ll have to find another man to fuck—“
Noel locked an arm around Arthur’s neck, held him between the crux of his inner elbow like a little brother he was about to give a thrashing to.
“Why I oughtta—“ he said, mock threateningly.
Arthur used the opportunity the squirm away and go under the water again.
This time, he didn’t stop until Noel was throughly shaken, stirred, and poured out against the back of the bathtub.
“Sweet Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” Noel said. “—Shit—!”
His legs shook. For a fella who’d clearly never been with another fella before, Arthur was damned good with his mouth. Considering the way he heard Arthur using it, though, it made sense that a dog as fierce as him had at least half the same strength to his bite as his bark.
The tension in Noel’s muscles heightened to an eleven.
If Arthur was an ocean, than Noel felt like he was riding a tidal wave.
He let out a final, breaking howl. “A—Arthur!”
Lady Pleasure hit him like a cargo ship.
His bones went loose as a spilled puddle of soup.
“…goddamn,” he breathed.
His eyelids slipped down slightly, sitting heavy.
With lazy indulgence, he watched as Arthur came up from the water and made a sour face. The other man brought a cupped hand up to his mouth and gargled some of the thoroughly now un-clean water.
“Blegh,” he said, swishing water between his cheeks before spitting it out. “That tastes awful.”
Noel laughed, one eye slipping shut. “I woulda told you that if you’d let me get a word out before you boys decided to go on a one-man assault against me.’
“Well,” Arthur said primly. He was incredibly English sometimes, really. “Just goes to show that we were faster than you expected.”
No kidding. “And then some, doll.”
Arthur nodded. “Good.” Then he laughed, suddenly, like it’s been trapped inside his chest and burst out with wings to soar off into the air. It was ridiculous. Noel watched, smile blooming on his face, as Arthur looked so lit up with happiness and glee.
It melted years off his face. Noel imagined a world where Arthur had lived like this, loved like this, young as he was never allowed to be, and happy in a world without hatred or fear. No eldritch monsters or gods of madness making their nests inside his moments of peace. Then he felt guilty because, if none of those miserable occasions had ever happened, then Arthur would never have met him, here— and selfishly, for once, Noel wanted to keep him.
God, wasn’t he just a terrible sack of shit?
Cradling a damaged man in one arm, saying he wouldn’t change his past for there world in the other. Real fucked up.
Still, at the same time, if this was the one thing he was going to get out of the whole hellscape his life had been, he was going to clutch onto it like heaven and hell couldn’t pry it away.
Arthur’s laughter— John’s laughter— petered out slowly and then, looking a bit like a man who’d been riding a train with a midnight ticket, he stretched and collapsed himself against Noel’s chest. He let out an uproarious yawn.
Noel looked down him. He pet the back of Arthur’s neck.
“Tuckered out?” he asked knowingly.
“…maybe. A little.”
“Oh, no,” Noel said. “I wonder what could have ever caused that.”
“I’m not sure,” Arthur said, “Maybe it had to do with John and I doing all the hard work while you sat there like an old man?”
This just reminded of the fact that he was nearly a decade older than Arthur.
“Gee, I am an old man. Practically.”
Arthur swatted his chest. “You’re middle-aged, at best.”
Noel laughed. “What’s that make you then, jailbait?”
“Says you.”
His eyes slipped almost closed as he sighed, going boneless at the feel of Arthur’s amusement, and he looked out at the world through slitted eyes. The bathroom was a mess. Mainly just water everywhere. There was more of it on the floor than there was left in the tub.
“Ugh.” He was exhausted.
Then he remembered something.
“Do you need me to take care of you, sweetheart?’ He asked Arthur. He arched out and gently ran two fingers up the side of Arthur’s cock. Arthur shivered, but sighed, melting deeper.
“No,” he said. “This… this is perfect.” He yawned.
“Any more,” he continued, “and I think it might be a bit…” He flushed. “—overwhelming.”
Noel chuckled. “That’s alright, doll. Whatever you need.”
Arthur nuzzled against him peaceably. “Thank you.”
Noel hummed, kissing the top of Arthur’s head, and then brought John’s hand into his own, kissing it too for the sake of saying he could.
“Always.”
One more time, he repeated it to himself— he was doomed. But if this was doom was felt like, then maybe he didn’t mind it all that much anymore.