grenegome

Title: Twist and Shout (1/2)

Fandom: The Dresden Files

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Harry/Marcone

Warnings: Swearing, sex.

Spoilers: Up to Small Favor.

Disclaimer: These aren't my characters, I'm only playing with them.

Summary: Harry's kind of bad at taking things slow. (Or: Flirt, flirt, flirt. Sex.)

Notes: This follows on from A Hard Day's Night, and With a Little Help From My Friends. It picks up about a minute after the end of the latter.

Huge thank yous to

beachkid for being a fantastic beta and being generally awesome. Remaining errors and oddities are my own.

Concrit: Welcomed. I'm off on my hols from Tuesday, so if you don't get a response for a week I'm not being rude!

Wordcount:10146

I leaned back against my door after I persuaded it to shut, and stared into the darkness of my apartment. Usually I'd exert a little of my will to illuminate the place, but instead I just stood there feeling uncharacteristically indecisive. Maybe I didn't want to light the place up. Maybe I just wanted to stand there in silence, pondering my newly acquired hobby of making out with mob bosses in the backs of their expensive cars.

"Ok," I said to the empty air.

I stumbled into the kitchen (the stumbling assisted by the snoring mountain of Mouse, helpfully sprawled in front of the couch), filled a glass with cold water, and knocked half of it back. "Right," I gasped.

I had promises to keep before I could retreat to my bed. I staggered over to my phone, leaned against the wall, and dialed Thomas' cell number. "Wow," I muttered into the receiver.

After a couple of rings he answered, sounding relieved. "Harry, you're alive. Good."

I snorted at his optimism. "He could just be holding me at gunpoint and forcing me to call you," I pointed out.

Mostly, I was joking, but it resulted in a tense hesitation from the other end of the line.

"...is he?" Thomas asked, eventually.

"No! Don't be stupid," I yawned, closing my eyes for a moment.

"That's not stupid. Getting abducted is practically a leisure activity for you," he complained in a long suffering tone.

"Huh. I thought I might take up something less risky. How about base jumping?"

He laughed. "Yeah. Like your life isn't exciting enough for the both of us already."

"That's me," I grinned, as always soothed by that little buzz of familiarity, that tug of family I'd discovered in Thomas. Not that I'd ever tell him, because then we'd have to spend a week being jerks to one another to redeem our masculinity. "The Fantastic Harry Dresden, Purveyor of Wonder and Excitement."

"Purveyor of Explosions and Mayhem, you lunatic."

"That too," I agreed. "If you've finished playing mother hen, I could do with some sleep now. Lots of it."

"Waitwaitwait!" he objected. "Marcone."

"What about him?" I asked, warily.

"How did your little chat go?" Thomas made the phrase 'little chat' practically ooze with innuendo, and I wondered vaguely if this was a previously unnoticed power of the White Court.

"It... went, uh, fine," I managed, thinking pure thoughts, in case Thomas also had the capacity to sense stuff like that over a phone line. Maybe he did, because his next words were positively scandalized.

"Harry! You didn't. With John Marcone?"

"No!" I said. "Maybe? No! I didn't what?"

"Empty Night," he muttered. "And they call him a gentleman. He hasn't even bought you dinner."

This conversation was rapidly getting away from me.

"Thomas," I said patiently. "I didn't sleep with him."

"Good. I won't have to castrate the bastard." His tone was flat.

Right. There was a slight possibility Thomas was over-invested in the protective older brother thing he had going. I was pretty sure he was joking, but he does take family a little seriously at times.

"Uh. No. You definitely won't have to do that," I confirmed. "He wants to... take things slow." I winced, anticipating the inevitable mockery. It didn't come.

"Slow? Slow makes sense. Gives you some time to do some research," he said, authoritatively.

"Research?" I repeated, puzzled.

"Yeah, you know? Tab A, Slot B? Because, frankly, you have no idea what you're letting yourself in for here, do you? He's probably a lot more experienced than you when it comes to -"

"We are NOT having this conversation!" I said, somewhere between embarrassed and annoyed. "Thomas, thank you for your continentally misplaced concern, but good night."

I hung up.

I was tired, but I wasn't sleeping. I was other things too. Worked up. Aching.

I curled my fingers into the sheets beneath me and conjured up soothing thoughts. There's more than one reason for the number of cold showers I take. I don't like empty pleasure. I don't enjoy scrambling after private gratification in an empty bed. Sex, for me, is about knowing somebody trusts you to make them feel good, it's about giving yourself, and feeding their pleasure with your own.

So I didn't slide my hand down the length of my cock, to stroke it slowly into fullness. I didn't jack myself with swift, sure movements.

No, I lay there and I thought research, in the same way I occasionally toy with ideas for new evocations.

Research. I could... ask someone? But I didn't know any guys who liked guys. Except, apparently, Marcone. Maybe I did. Maybe I knew lots of guys who liked guys, and they just didn't think it was any of my business. Hell, from what I've read, this kind of research is the reason the Internet exists. Except I wasn't willing to ask Murphy to google it for me.

Research. It couldn't be that alien. I mean, hands and mouths and eager bodies, that all had to be the same. Elaine and I had worked it out, once upon a time, with some cryptic advice from our Health classes. Practice had made it perfect. Tab A/Slot B had been built up into some crazy grail quest for us by our peers, by the boasts of other idiot teenagers, but we'd taken our time getting there, because our bodies had amazed us. Our own, private magic.

These weren't soothing thoughts at all. The memory of Marcone lay over me, heavy and hot, spreading me out. His thigh, nudging my legs apart. I groaned and clenched my fists again.

Ok. Ok. My body was maybe kind of interested in being Slot B. I could have done with working that out earlier. Say, a decade earlier.

I thumped the back of my head against my pillow in frustration. Clearly, this wasn't going to result in sleep.

Cursing my impatient, inquisitive body, I scrambled out of bed and went to hit the shower.

I was woken up by incessant ringing. It's a pain in the ass trying to conduct any kind of social interaction with me over the phone. Most of the time my magic angers the god of telecommunications and the line's full of static. Often, when people do bother to call, it's important. So I didn't think twice about staggering into the living room in my boxer shorts, picking up the phone, and grunting a greeting. If I was being dragged into something cataclysmic, they wouldn't care that I started the call half asleep, as long as I caught up quickly.

As it turns out, it was a social call.

"...Harry?" asked Marcone, allowing me to hear surprise in his tone. "Were you still asleep?"

"Still? Whazzatime?" I yawned.

"Eleven," Marcone said, amused. "I dropped you off at a reasonable time. Did you not sleep well?"

"I... stayed up late... reading..." I lied, flustered, and then immediately felt like an idiot. He'd begun the conversation without his usual bullet-proof reserve, and I was responding with defensive fictions. "No, sorry, I didn't. I just... wasn't in the mood for sleep."

"Hmm. I found myself in a similar situation," he confessed thoughtfully. "Unfortunately, I lack the capacity to hex my alarm-clock."

A similar situation. I wondered if he had. I bet he hadn't bothered with the cold shower.

I must have made a weird noise into the phone (hopefully not in a heavy-breathing, creepy-stalker kind of way), because it elicited another "Harry?" from Marcone.

I closed my eyes, and reminded my idiot body that I wasn't a teenager. I didn't do this, I didn't get all worked up at the mercy of my hormones. It just wasn't wizardly, damn it.

"Are you unwell?" came the cautious query from the phone.

"I'm fine," I managed, with a dry throat. "When can I see you?" Yeah. Way to control those hormones, Harry.

"Well, I had planned to ask if you'd like to go for lunch, but perhaps I should amend that to breakfast?" Marcone inquired politely.

"Pancakes," I said, firmly.

He was silent for a moment.

"You're going to request a diner, aren't you?" he asked, carefully.

"Hell yes," I replied, grinning hard. I wasn't giving him a chance to negotiate.

There was a brief exhalation that I couldn't quite term a sigh. Having braced himself, he continued: "I suppose you're worth it. Do you have one in mind?"

"Yup, IHOP," I said, and tried to reign in my amusement so he couldn't hear it in my voice.

There was an ominous silence, and I burst out laughing. "Can't hack it, can you?" I challenged, gleefully.

"Careful, Dresden. I could demand a black tie dinner in compensation, but I'm feeling charitable." To anyone else, his tone would have sounded threatening. Now, I had an ear for the affection threaded through it.

"You aren't wearing a tux for the IHOP?" I did my best to sound injured. "Am I not worth the effort, John?"

He laughed, low and easy, and I grinned stupidly at being the cause of that sound. "I'll dress nice, just for you, Harry. Twelve o'clock, IHOP. Where's closest to you?"

I told him, and after a little bit of back and forth he finished the call. I had just under an hour to put some clothes on and drive over. What the hell do you wear to an IHOP date with John Marcone, anyway?

The answer turned out to be "whatever's clean", which happened to be a pair of black jeans and a white t-shirt under my habitual duster. I'm not a fan of white; I get the kind of crap on my clothes that Stain-Be-Gone was never designed for. It was probably still clean only because I was never optimistic enough to wear it.

I tugged at it a little self-consciously as I strode through the doorway of the diner. A beaming waitress tried to intercept me, but I dodged her with a cheery, "Meeting someone!"

I knew I was being watched. That isn't a wizardly skill, it's a lizard brain thing. The old caveman parts of humanity like knowing when to fight, and when to run. I looked around the room, briefly, but I wasn't greeted with his sardonic smile or snappy suit. I frowned, a little tense. It was a couple of minutes after twelve, and I was willing to bet he was the chronically punctual type.

"Harry," called a man in the booth to my left.

I looked at him. I blinked. And then I laughed. "What, are you in disguise or something? Incognito?"

It was John Marcone, but dressed in a way I hadn't expected. He wore a pair of old jeans with a hole in the knee, scruffy sneakers, and a faded, well-washed t-shirt. He had a Cubs cap that covered his damaged ear, and he sprawled in the booth like any old working Joe, somehow managing to mask the aura of power and authority that clung to him.

"After a fashion, yes. Now sit down; you're making Mr Hendricks nervous."

I crossed my arms and held his gaze long enough to indicate that I'd sit down when I wanted to, damn it, not when I was told. He shook his head, and then smirked down at his menu as if it made no difference to him. I slipped into the seat opposite, unwilling to admit that wherever Hendricks was, he had also slipped under my radar.

"I was promised black tie," I pouted.

"You were promised nice," he corrected, "did I misjudge your definition?"

I looked him over quickly, and yeah, OK, he had a point. The t-shirt kept close company with his body, and it wasn't shy about revealing the obvious strength in his well-built frame. The short sleeves let me see more of his skin than was usually on show. And, OK, since when had arms been a turn on?

"Not really. I'm just surprised you own jeans that have reached the hole-in-the-knee stage."

"You usually see me during office hours," he pointed out. "Or one of your biannual Bacchanalias of destruction. That hardly covers the full repertoire of my wardrobes."

"I'm sorry, was that a plural?" I asked, incredulous. "How many suits do you need?"

"There's a certain pleasure in owning well-tailored clothes that can't be fathomed by a man kitted out in Goodwill's finest," he countered.

"Ohh, catty." I grinned, deciding I'd struck a nerve. I could sense there was more mileage in mocking his 'wardrobes' admission, but just then one of the servers stopped by, introduced herself as Sammy, and took our drinks order.

As she left, John started perusing the menu, looking as if he wished he'd brought a packed lunch. "This is really traumatic for you, isn't it?" I asked happily.

"New York Cheesecake Pancakes," he quoted. "At the very least, this is a trauma for my arteries. Ah, they do salads. Or do they put cheesecake in those as well?"

"Maybe if you asked nicely," I said. "Wait, cheesecake pancakes? Wow."

He shook his head in despair, and I resolved to order them.

This was so... easy. It felt date-like. And it felt like every conversation we'd ever had before, when I was still convinced he was an irredeemable bastard out to screw me over. I was confused.

Sammy arrived with a much needed infusion of coffee and took our food order. I let Marcone carry the conversation while I concentrated on mainlining caffeine, until I was finally faced with my breakfast. After a couple of bites of pancheesecakeywhippedcreamglory I squinted down at him. "What's your angle?"

"You'll have to be more specific," he said, neatly dissecting his chicken salad.

"This," I said, waving at the diner, "conceding the home field advantage. Taking things slow."

"Ah," he said, smiling at me. The fact that he was letting his pleasure show so openly, that he was letting himself react without locking down every emotion or polishing up every phrase was making me embarrassingly warm and mushy. So, so confused. "You react... badly to coercion. And we have a history, not recent, but certainly memorable, of encounters in which I've tried to pressure you into cooperating with me."

I remembered the Full Moon garage and nodded wryly.

"I refuse to fuck this up. So, whatever happens, it's going to be on your schedule, Harry. And it won't be because you were drunk, or experimenting, or manipulated." He looked me in the eye. "Fair warning. It's not going to be something you can blow up and walk away from."

"Oh," I said, quietly. There's power in naked honesty, when it comes from a man so well-versed in misdirection, discretion and reserve. It pulsed between us then, too potent for me to fully grasp. He'd meant what he'd said in the backseat of his car. Take your time. Be sure.

Before I could string together a response, which may or may not have been sarcastic in nature, Sammy reappeared and refilled my coffee. She hovered next to us, directing the usual are you enjoying your meal? can I get you anything? questions to John, and I invested my attention in demolishing my breakfast.

John picked at his chicken salad while I wolfed down my pancakes, and I looked up from licking stray strawberry topping from my thumb to find him staring at me in fascination. "Where do you put it all?" he asked. "There isn't a spare scrap of flesh on you."

"Mmm. Not sure, but I think the magic burns a lot of it. And I'm not very energy efficient at the best of times. I've been busy, recently."

"Yes, I've noticed. Would you like any more?" he asked solicitously.

"Nah, I'm going for a run this afternoon. Probably shouldn't stuff myself."

He glanced at his wristwatch. Not digital, I noticed, and therefore more likely to withstand my presence.

"Then I suppose I should ask for the check. I have a meeting at two fifteen I need to prepare for."

I hid a pang of disappointment, and then nodded. "Yeah, good idea," I said lightly.

Ok, so as well as a physical fascination with him, I seemed to be have developed the symptoms of an adolescent crush. I wanted to spend time with him. I wanted him to like me. Oh god, I'm such a girl.

He waved down the perky Sammy, who brought the check over, and that heralded our first fight.

I dived for it at the same time John did, and Ok, maybe he is alarmingly fast, but I'm not exactly slothful. We each caught hold of an end, and John unleashed his best business like smile on me.

"Harry, as I invited you out-"

"Nuh-uh. Stop right there," I said, fishing my wallet out of my coat with my free hand. "I'm not taking your money."

He eyed me levelly, giving a sharp tug on the paper. "Surely you can make an exception for pancakes? I'm hardly likely to compromise your integrity with breakfast foods."

I tugged back. "We can go halves if you like, but if you decide you want to be a control freak about this, then I have a fork and I know how to use it." I glanced down at his hand meaningfully. "This isn't negotiable."

He raised an eyebrow. I imagine people don't usually try and out-maneuver him with cutlery.

"Well then. This courtship is going to be interesting," he said, releasing his grip gracefully.

"Courtship? Hi John, welcome to the 21st century."

In the end, he left a tip equal to my half of the bill anyway, but it made Sammy look so genuinely perky that I didn't have the heart to protest.

We were walking close together on our way out the door, and his shoulder brushed against mine in a way I'd have called accidental from anyone less careful than Marcone. He kept pace with me as we strolled across the concrete.

"Do I get a proper goodbye?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

I blinked, and looked around the sunlit parking lot. "When did you turn into an exhibitionist?"

"When I had something worth exhibiting, Harry." We drew to a halt in front of the Beetle, and, Ok, he'd walked me to my car. I wasn't going to laugh at how terribly... normal that was. If I thought about it too hard, some Lovecraftian terror would probably erupt from the sewers.

"Flatterer," I grinned, and because it was all so delightfully mundane, I ducked under the peak of his baseball cap to kiss him.

He slipped a hand inside my coat, strong and warm at the small of my back. "Mmm." I signalled my appreciation, and he tilted his head, deepening the kiss.

I broke away, breathing deeply. This wasn't appropriate for the public view. It was a private exploration worth taking our time over.

"Thank you for lunch," he said, voice low.

"Yeah, same to you. Have a nice... meeting." For all I knew, 'meeting' was Marcone for 'massively illegal undertaking'. I had no way of knowing.

"It's a quarterly budget review, Harry. There are very few things that could make it nice." On the word nice, his hand drifted down from the small of my back, taking a leisurely detour before surfacing from beneath my coat. "I'll call you later?"

He'd even made it a question, rather than a decree.

NORMAL, NORMAL, FREAKISHLY NORMAL my brain yammered, and I made a conscious effort not to tense against the tidal wave of weird that must have been building somewhere, ready to redress this lack of crazy in my life.

It was John Marcone that I was doing freakishly normal date type things with, I reminded myself. That might have been a tidal wave of weird all by itself.

"Sure," I said. "If I don't pick up, I'm being wizardly somewhere."

"Naturally." He nodded, and then stepped back to give me room to get in the Beetle. It didn't embarrass me by crapping out under John's watchful eyes. Small mercies.

I sat in my lab, toying with my shield bracelet as I pretended to see if I could make it more efficient. Mostly, I was pondering Marcone. And bickering companionably with Bob.

"I'm just saying," he pointed out, "that if it was a choice between dying and screwing one of the senior council, I'd go for Liberty."

"I'm really starting to think "Spirit of Air and Intellect" is a misnomer. How about "Spirit of Continual Obsession with Flesh"?"

"Come on, Harry, you've got to choose," he cajoled.

"No I don't. In your hypothetical situation of sex or death, I choose running away very fast. Before they kill me."

I glanced towards the open trap door up to my living room. The phone hadn't rung, and I felt... fidgety.

"Huh," Bob said.

"Huh?" I asked, because it paid to take note of Bob and his revelatory noises. Unless they resulted from some of his more adventurous reading material, in which case I had learned not to ask.

"You're kind of... shiny tonight, boss," he offered with a slight hesitation that caught my attention and made me abandon my work.

"No I'm not," I said, examining my hands.

"Metaphysically," he corrected, impatiently.

"My aura's freaky?" I asked, concerned.

"Nah. Just bright."

And then the phone rang. A little bolt of excitement ran through me.

"Ohh! Really shiny!" Bob yelled. "Do it again!"

"Stop perving on my aura!" I commanded, scrambling up the ladder. I reordered my thoughts before I touched the phone. No point in nuking it before I even got to say hi.

"Hi," I said as I picked it up.

"Good evening, Harry." John's tone was pleasant, but he sounded weary.

"Something wrong?" I asked carefully.

"The meeting got rather... heated," he said.

"The boring budget meeting?"

"Yes. There was some distinctly pointed shuffling of paperwork. I managed to placate everyone about half an hour ago."

"Half an hour..." I did the math, and boggled. "Were you in that meeting for five hours?"

"Yes," he said, and managed to convey the soul crushing weight of five hours of quarterly projection figures in a single syllable. I flinched.

"You need a beer," I diagnosed, and he let out a breath of amusement.

"I'm currently sublimating a desire to do bodily harm to members of the accounting profession. I think a trip to the gym might be more appropriate."

"What, at Executive Priority?" I asked, trying to picture Marcone on a treadmill in a room full of suits and prostitutes.

He snorted. "No. My apartment has a gym. I prefer the privacy."

I looked around at my idiosyncratic apartment and smiled. Hey, it didn't have a gym, or hot water, but it had a pretty kick ass lab, and the rent was low. "Apartment? You don't live in that crazy mansion?"

"I live in several places, depending on my schedule. And it pays not to be predictable."

"Must be a pain in the ass though, hauling your stuff around?" I considered that statement for a moment. I was thinking like a peasant, not a mob boss. "Wait, you probably just buy new stuff for each place, don't you? That's why you have wardrobes, plural."

"Harry, if you find the way I store my suits so fascinating, you can always come and look for yourself," he said.

"What, you trust me not to set them on fire?" I countered.

He went quiet for a moment, and I rewound the last few moments of the conversation. "Uh. You were inviting me over, weren't you?" I asked.

"I'll write that in my diary, shall I? Harry Dresden: Doesn't do subtle." His tone was light, but that didn't mean anything. Still, it was best to respond in kind. That's how we worked.

"Hey! I'm used to a more direct approach now. Want to know what I've got written down somewhere? Dear Diary, met John Marcone today, after he had some henchmen intimidate me into the back of his car."

"And aren't I lucky you decided to co-operate? The direct approach is hardly necessary any more."

I pictured Hendricks, forced to abduct me every time Marcone wanted to meet for lunch. I could see the look on his face. I snickered. "Nah. We can stick with subtle. Just... don't be afraid to give me a gentle nudge when I miss things. Because I will." That was very grown up of me, I thought. Very self-aware.

"Duly noted." And then, with great care to clearly enunciate each syllable, he slowly enquired: "Harry. Would. You. Like. To. Come. Over. Tonight?"

"Yeah," I said, a little too quickly, and then cursed myself. "Wait, am I supposed to play hard to get?"

"I'm not sure you could manage coy. But you're welcome to try; I could do with some entertainment."

"Ha ha, wiseguy. Where do you live?"

He gave me the address, and a few other pertinent details, and I committed them to memory. I could take the L most of the way, and then walk for about ten minutes. I wouldn't have to leave my car outside like a giant banner screaming "Warden of the White Council consorting with mortal Freeholding Lord" or, to a more mundane audience: "PI in bed with Mob". Not that I thought we'd necessarily be getting in bed, or I was planning to keep this a dirty little secret, but I do occasionally understand discretion-

"Harry? Are you still with me?"

"Sorry. I'll, uh, see you at nine?"

"I look forward to it. Good bye."

Part 2