I have an existential map: it has 'you are here' written all over it.
Stephen Wright (US actor and writer)
"It was easier with women."
Apollo stares.
Starbuck backpedals fast. " Just more familiar to navigate, I mean. They have hills and valleys—" He makes a gesture to his chest that should leave Apollo under no illusion about where the hills and valleys are located. His hands open as if he's holding melons. "And if you're really lucky, some have mountains. Big mountains."
Apollo's stare narrows. "You had better not be recalling my sister in this geographical survey of yours."
"I'm generalising. All I'm trying to say is that women are more rounded and there's hills and valleys to map out and explore. I like exploring."
Apollo snorts. Starbuck has to offer some appeasement, so he leans down and licks the little hollow at the base of Apollo's throat, tasting the salt and the slight tang that says Apollo to him, and kisses his way up the side of Apollo's neck to land a massive one on his full-lipped, curving-into-a-smile mouth. That seems to work, but just in case, Starbuck lets his hands delineate Apollo's chest, moving slowly over bare skin. He rubs over Apollo's nipples with his thumbs and gives each one a quick suck. Apollo's smile broadens so he mustn't mind being mapped out like a world of curves and planes, contoured with muscle and sinew and bone.
"Well, I do," persists Starbuck, when he's worked his way down to the bottom of Apollo's ribcage and licked along each long, hard bone. "You're more like a plain. It's a different geographical set-up, that's all."
"And the traditionalists say that sex education corrupts youthful minds. It's as well they don't know what you can do with geography."
"I can make anything be about sex."
Apollo indicates that he doesn't doubt it. Starbuck's astonished that he can love a man who snorts with so much derision. So often.
"You have an equator," says Starbuck, trailing a finger over Apollo at waist level and Apollo twitches. His skin is surprisingly soft there and Starbuck's finger returns to stroke again. "And although you have a very nice angle of repose at the moment, you're not equable. Your temper's too dicey for that. Isn't there a geographical region famous for storms?"
"Some of the tropical regions are subject to sudden squalls," says Apollo.
"Ah. The Tropics. They're above and below the equator, I believe."
"You're the cartographical expert. Allegedly."
"Well, I've already mapped the areas above the equator and certainly those two little tropics were fun. Exploring the topography below is likely to have the most immediate impact on the weather." Starbuck grins. "The landscape's not as flat there."
"No indeed," says Apollo, all innocence. "And how would you describe that? A peninsular? A promontory?"
"A rock spire, maybe."
"Doesn't that take us into the realms of geology?"
"The two sciences are related. It's about describing the landscape that I'm charting, here. Your rock spire has a very nice hinterland, by the way." Starbuck reins back a bit, considering the terrain. "I wonder how it'll deal with flooding?"
"I think that's what it was built for," says Apollo, dry as a bone, and Starbuck's surprised into a choke of laughter.
"I was thinking about from the outside, you idiot. Erosion, I mean. Water sculpts rock, of course."
"You're not sculpting that!"
Starbuck laughs again, swoops down and sweeps his tongue up the side of Apollo's very nice rock spire.
Apollo gasps. When Starbuck looks up, Apollo's eyes are very wide and dark, with barely a rim of green to be seen. Not in this dim light, anyway.
"Liked that, did you? All right then."
He does it again, a long, lazy sweep upwards. Apollo has a lovely cock, thick-based but with a flaring head that just demands he stops when he gets there so he can mouth it, working over it with lips and tongue and, when Apollo's least expecting it, grazing over it carefully with his teeth. Apollo does more than twitch, this time.
"Whoa! Earthquake!"
"It was barely a tremor," retorts Apollo, but he seems to be short of breath and his hands are fisting into the sheets, his hips lifting.
Piqued, Starbuck starts work in earnest. He likes to vary the technique. He wants Apollo's nerves on the stretch, not knowing if it's going to be a slow and languid lick from root to head, or a lightning-fast attack where he swirls his tongue over the swollen cock-head; his other hand smoothing down the skin of Apollo's thighs or rolling that nice hinterland in his hands like two large round dice. Apollo's breathing is all over the place now, coming in short little gasps and (once or twice) a genuine, certified moan, interspersed with nonsense words, and the word yes over and over and calls to Starbuck like Apollo's calling on God, and oh my Lord but was that Ancient Kobolian?
And then Apollo's yelling and shaking, and his hips thrust upward, almost costing Starbuck a tooth or two. Hot come spurts into Starbuck's willing mouth and he sucks and sucks Apollo through an earthquake that is off the scale. When it's over and Apollo's stopped writhing and is lying quiet and half-asleep, his eyes slitted with what Starbuck sincerely hopes is satiated pleasure, Starbuck licks his way back to the equator, and keeps heading north, kissing the entire length of Apollo's breastbone.
Apollo's mouth opens for him when he gets that far, and for a little while they trade lazy, sleepy kisses.
When Starbuck is tucked up nice and neat behind him, and Apollo is, despite anything he might say about being a hardened warrior, snuggling, Starbuck says, as one who is sharing a scientific discovery: "I found one or two more erogenous zones. I'll have to add them to the map."
Apollo snorts again. Starbuck loves that sound. Loves it.
He presses his lips to the back of Apollo's ear. "What I said, about it being easier with girls?"
"Mmmnn."
"So it is. But it isn't better."
~end~