World Traveller (Irwin/Dakin, R)
Title: World Traveller
Pairing: Irwin/Dakin
Rating: R
Word Count: 671
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Alan Bennett's.
Summary: Stuart invents a game.
Notes: A teenyfic gift for celandineb from westernredcedar with the prompt "equator". This corresponds (quite loosely, and many years later) with Saving (Irwin/Remus, G), but there's no need to have read that one to understand this one.

"Why do you have so many maps?"

Tom is shaken from his daydream by Stuart's question. He'd been enjoying the early-morning stillness, inhaling the steam from his English Breakfast while watching a pair of sparrows flirting on the windowsill. But now his solitude has been invaded by his rumple-headed boy (he'll always think of him as such, always remembering the first morning they awoke together, Stuart—still Dakin then—groggy and ungracious and demanding coffee, wrapped in Tom's shabby dressing gown).

"Have you been lying in bed wondering about my map collection?" Tom asks, and he sips his tea. Stuart slumps into a chair and flattens the hair sticking up on the back of his head. He lets it go and it springs up again.

"Was wondering that last night. You fell asleep and I was looking at your maps. You've got so many, and they're all jumbled together. Are you going somewhere? Planning to try to get away from me?" He smirks, but his eyes are tired, and Tom rises to make coffee for him. He doesn't mind this ritual—in fact, he hardly thinks about it anymore.

"No," he replies, and anything Stuart might have said in response is drowned out by the coffee grinder.

He sets the sugar bowl and the creamer on the table in front of Stuart, who makes appreciative noises, then returns to his own seat as the grumbling of the percolator begins its background music.

"No," he says again, and he means it. "I'm not going anywhere." He's done with leaving and with being left, done with men who are more than what they seem.

There is silence between them, then, until the coffeemaker beeps and Stuart gets up to fill his mug.

"I have an idea," Stuart says after a few restorative sips of cream and sugar and coffee.

"Mmm?" Tom glances back at him from the window. The sparrows have flown away, and he's been pondering the sky instead of their antics.

"Once we wake up—"

"I'm awake," Tom insists.

"Once I wake up, then," Stuart continues, "We'll play a game."

"A game?" Tom raises an eyebrow.

"Mmm," Stuart replies, downing the last of his coffee, "A game I've just invented. We'll call it World Traveller."

Tom ventures a guess. "Has this anything to do with Poland and Germany?"

Stuart shakes his head. "No. More like…Equatorial Guinea."

Tom laughs, then, as the nature of Stuart's game makes itself apparent. "You do know," he says, standing and crossing behind Stuart's chair, "that the equator doesn't actually go through Equatorial Guinea. If you want to cross any lines with me this morning, I'll have to be Kenya or Ecuador or—"

"As long as I get to be the traveller, I don't bloody care which country you choose," Stuart interrupts, and Tom runs a hand down Stuart's chest into his dressing gown, tweaking the nipple he finds, raking his fingers through the coarse curls.

Stuart practically purrs under Tom's ministrations, tipping his head back, his eyes closing.

"Don't fade on me, Mr World Traveller," Tom says, rounding Stuart's chair and tugging him to his feet. "Follow me. You've got some exploring to do."

And when Stuart is mapping out the plains and valleys of Tom's body a few minutes later in the bedroom, Tom tips his head back and breathes and wonders why it took them so long to finally discover each other again.

And when Stuart declares he's discovered an active volcano just south of the equator, licking the dribbling precome from Tom's cock, Tom shakes with laughter and wonders if he'll ever grow accustomed to laughing in bed.

And when they are both lying there, satiated, several minutes later, Tom spies the sparrows again, darting in and out of the eaves just outside the window.

"They're making a nest," he murmurs against Stuart's hair, but Stuart has drifted off into a sex-induced stupor, and he only mumbles and curls against Tom, and Tom doesn't see the harm in letting him stay right there.