To Miles 59

Dear Alex,

I love you.

I cried even harder not able to read the rest.

Shore leave was gone after that, I couldn't do anything besides just keep existing and waiting from letter to letter from Jamie. I kept thinking about Matt, who I happened to miss dearly and the conversation seemed to be escaping my mind and memory from the sole fact that I couldn't bear it any longer. I expected myself to be living like this when I'd be back on the ship and I had even created a story to tell my parents that things wouldn't be fine with Lana somehow, that I would somehow spill who I was. That somehow all would be okay. But it never would be, so it would be best to leave us all estranged. I didn't speak much, even the story about Lana fled my mind when my mom asked me what was wrong. She was surprised to hear how much I had missed Matt, feeling myself go pale from all the words I was uttering out loud and letting her hear, but she only told me that this was the way I should be missing my dear Lana.

I probably believed her for a mere second. If I had, things would be normal and there would be no struggle. But by the end it wasn't me who would believe in such crap, it was something sold to parents. I wondered why couldn't I open up and what was the big deal. It would end up going in circles and circles in my head, letting me rewrite it every single time with more misery, specifically when I would be waiting for sleep to somehow reach me. There were days where I wouldn't hold and I would want even more acceptance, I didn't want hushed whispers or full on denial, I wanted them to be happy for me and Jamie-

The biggest torture of all was the train back. It was like a terrible, terrible itch which wouldn't go away. I ended up buying some translated Russian poetry and a cigarette case, because I couldn't think of anything else. I kept opening my wallet just to peak at the newspaper cut out I had of Jamie, from that day which I mocked him for. He looked far too serious and I probably should've thrown it out, but it was just a newspaper clipping. At least that's what I told myself. I knew that someone could find it and all hell could erupt and it wouldn't do much good with all the facts that I had been sleeping with so many men, even if I were catching them. Or would that be okay? The scandal broke out because they realized the men themselves were gay. Just because I had a fake girlfriend, that proved nothing unfortunately. Anyone could have one. All that thinking gave me a lump in my throat, pondering too much on what could've happened even if they had called me on shore to report how things were going. But then maybe Jamie had done all the paperwork and all had been done?

I told myself to remember to ask that when I would see him, but instead I just went onwards to board the ship, right on the port, looking at all the other scattered sailors, all still in their uniforms and whatnot, ready to woo whoever they decided to lay their eyes on tonight. It felt nostalgic to be back and back in the uniform, specifically when you can breathe the sea. I couldn't really focus on anything. I couldn't give him the gifts yet either, unless I dragged the sling bag with me. It seemed like a good idea, so I just went inside the bridge, missing my own bunk bed a bit and if it wasn't for the fact that I had a boyfriend in the Captain I would have most likely slept in my bed for a small while.

I was surely shaking and I had the thought whether I should have found Brian at first just to ask him if I could find Captain Hince, but instead I was left with the fact that all the other sailors were most likely on the shore. I wondered if we could make a move somewhere as well, that we could stroll like we usually would, just avoiding the bars which were specifically made for sailors and the gay bars just in case. There were days where I truly wondered what had gone right, that besides Carlos no one really had their suspicions and if we were to bump into someone they wouldn't bat an eyelash. I wondered if it was simply because things were complicated enough as they were.

We had discussed this, that Jamie would be in his room waiting and I paused a bit before knocking on his door. How would I find him? Would he be reading? What would he be doing? I ended up knocking even without realizing it, my heart beating very fast and not subtly at all. The door opened nearly right afterwards, revealing my lover in his flesh, all dressed up neatly in his usual Captain attire, which I couldn't wait to unwrap him from.

“Alex.” He said and just stared at me before we both just threw our arms around each other, kissing already on the lips and cheeks, terribly hungrily and grinning through all of it. I wondered if he was crying, because I had tasted something salty on my lips and I wondered how harsh had he decided to be to the rest of the sailors and how many of them had to mop the decks. I wondered how come he wasn't harsher to Miles, right after we had finished kissing, my body still shaking.

“Are you cold?” He asked, holding me in his arms and just wrapping them tighter around me, kicking the door closed. I just shook my head, kissing his neck and not believing his scent back in my own arms. I ruffled the back of his head, what was revealed under his hat and I didn't hold and took it off, exposing his neatly done new haircut which was frankly everything he had done before. Jamie followed and took my own hat off.

“So... we're stripping already?” I smirked, even if I had initiated by removing his hat. Jamie just smirked, his eyes locked on mine, never stopping from a smile which had appeared even before he had seen me properly in front of me. I now pictured him just sitting there and waiting, something I had teased him that it would be like that.

“I just... want to hold you.” He confessed, running his hands through my hair, not touching the front which I had nervously done before leaving the house and fixed in the train. In such moments I wondered how could anyone even fit in my mind, let alone my heart. Why wasn't Jamie enough? He seemed plenty.

I didn't need to hear it twice, so I just took off my shirt off along with the undershirt right after dropping the bag onto the floor, not caring, exposing myself as if for the first time. The first time had surely gone somehow that we both wished it hadn't, but in the end everyone has their terrible ghosts. I learned to look at it through fingers, just like anyone else would look at their past with any other memory, embarrassed and wishing it would be gone

I went for Jamie's jacket and then for his tie and the rest, so that we could at least have some skin on skin. We started kissing again, this time more viciously, all the innocence gone and replaced with sexual hunger, as if we haven't touched ourselves all this time without thinking of the other. I slid my hand down to the front of his pants, feeling him go hard already, causing me to smirk and stroke him. Jamie mirrored my move, pulling me back into a kiss from smirking and looking at him. I moan into his mouth, as he unzips my own pants.

“I really thought...” I lean back and Jamie is practically glaring at me softly. “We'd have a romantic reunion, Jamie.”

“Nothing is more romantic than fucking you on fours.” He smirks lightly back, before leaning in for another kiss and this time sticking his hand into my underwear, stroking the tip of my cock very teasingly.

“Oh, so you've even got the act planned out, Captain.” I bite my lip, so that I don't moan right between my own sentence. But instead he goes down on his knees, his cock escaping my grasp. Jamie takes out my own and strokes it up and down. I have nothing to hold onto besides digging into his hair and destroying it already while he takes me in his mouth. “F-full of surprises, I see.”

Fuck, I am chatty today. Jamie just looks up at me before closing his eyes again, giving me a rush. He slides a finger inside me when he pulls my pants a bit down, teasing me even more and because we've been so much apart, his sole touch would be enough to send me into an orgasm frenzy. I can feel my legs shaking, as I get very near.

“Fuck. Don't you want to fuck as well?” I say weakly and heavily turned on, as Jamie just continues sucking me off and I lean my head back, moaning even louder as he works on me. “Jamie, I'll fucking

cum.” And I lean a bit forwards, my fingers digging into him as I come. I hold him, thrusting into his mouth as I even hear him gag, but I know him far too well and that only keeps driving me over the edge. I let go of him once I'm done, nearly tumbling, as he wipes off the saliva from his lips and swallows a bit gingerly, but not looking away from me, as I glance down to his own pant situation.

“Who said we're not fucking?” He asks me, nodding towards the bed. I just stare at him, trying not to be surprised at all at his appetite. I just take off my pants, still breathing heavily from the orgasm. Jamie strips down from his own pants, exposing himself as I give myself time to lay on his bed on my back. I take myself in my hands and start stroking already, terribly turned on mentally and soon enough my body should catch up.

I go on my fours and Jamie goes behind me as I do so. He starts kissing my back slowly from my waist and up to my neck, so I turn around and we share a kiss. Jamie spreads my ass, stroking me with his cock before adjusting himself in.

“Fuck, I missed this.” I say as he slides in.

“I missed you, Turner.” He smirks, very turned on and I can feel it.

“That doesn't make me miss your cock any less.” I breathe out very heavily, as he keeps the rhythm, thrusting as I stroke my cock. Jamie keeps pounding me, but we both don't last very long and I'm the one who comes first, not holding from his thrusting and my stroking, thrusting backwards to reach him more. He himself comes soon afterwards, nails digging into my hips, moaning even louder than I had, dissolving entirely in me. Jamie leans forwards, kissing my back again before he slowly slides out and we are met with a mess of cum as we lay down.

“I love you.” He says, grasping for air and pulling me closer, not giving me enough time to reply. I see water in his eyes. “I missed you so much.”

I put my hand to his eyes.

“I love you too and I missed you too.” I kiss his forehead as he rolls closer to me and puts his head on my chest, curling up besides me. I feel guilty for being the one who went away and who was in in turmoil by his own thoughts. I regret thinking of Matt so much and wondering if I should've pushed even more by writing to him more, but that could have ended up weird. But then everyone who knew that I was catching queers knew that I had to report back to Jamie, so would it have been that weird that we ended up bonding as friends, then? Sometimes we all push our luck, just to make it easier. It becomes just a tactic of desperation, because what else is left?

I hold him, feeling him incredibly vulnerable and I can feel every single day he had taken without me slowly start slipping through my fingers, letting the misery somehow go away. I look down on him to see him slowly start drifting away into sleep, his body never tense. I wondered if he could even sleep tonight or if he just stayed away writing poetry with shaking hands or maybe he just stared outside or even smoked on the deck. I remember that one time where we had gone out and talked a bit. It seemed now, looking back, as if that would be something which would have somehow ended up being okay, that it wouldn't be the dystopic reality we are faced with now. I stroke his hair, as he shifts in his sleep, clutching me even more.

I don't dare to sleep, not even leaving much for Jamie. In the end I wake him up lightly by calling his name. The Captain responds by sitting up, pulling the discarded covers with him now. He looks at me, bewildered from sleep and pleasantly surprised that my shore leave is long gone now and will be for a good while. He leans down to kiss me as I respond, holding the kiss.

“You think we should go somewhere?” I ask him, right after he yawns and rubs his eyes like a child. Jamie ponders on the question a bit longer with the fact that he's still asleep in my arms according to him.

“I don't know...” He's far too sleepy. If I wasn't crippled by the fear that what if I am spending too long with him in the daylight, I would be sleeping calmly besides him as well. “We could. Where do you want to go?”

The gifts.

Well, it's a stretch to call them something too fascinating, but I had tried and I walked into the same tobacco store a few times, making the owner probably ponder what was wrong with me and why was I taking so fucking long to buy them.

“Hold on.” I say and I get out the bed, making my way to the bag which was right next to his suit and my shirt. Jamie watches me curiously, as I take out the book and the cigarette holder. I stretch both items to him. I start babbling in my head, before I even open my mouth to apologize, but he looks at me just as excited as if Christmas is coming. “I'm sorry, I couldn't think of anything better other than this. And I've never seen you read Russian poetry... so I figured that you might enjoy that.”

“Thank you.” He says shyly and grabs the gifts and instantly opens the book, going through the pages, interested.

-

First of all, I'm terribly sorry that I vanished off the earth's surface again. I ended up terribly behind on Nanowrimo and I spent all my energy on trying to catch up and I would be writing 2k-4k every day because of that. It was really draining me and doing a toll. But the good news is that I finished the first part of To Miles! So now I'm taking a brief break from it where I'm thinking slowly of the subplots in part two. I need to think how it will go further and where will I end and of course there's a massive epilogue ahead which will I think be around two chapters itself, because there's just so much to tell there as well. I also wrote a lot of Offside which is a Jack White/Jamie Hince football AU since I finished the first part of To Miles. So that's what I did during my Nanowrimo. 

I'm terribly proud of the ending of part one, because it was planned probably from the first few chapters and was a scene I had even roughly written not to forget and to make sure that it would've fit in the story. But I'll talk about it more when the time comes of course. 

It felt very symbolical that my first Nanowrimo phrase was about ending shore leave and it was going to cover all of Alex's time after shore leave until the end of part 1. 

I'm not sure there will be much backstory to To Miles because I was really on autopilot and not much was going on in my love life which is really what usually gives me the biggest inspiration, so it was really my mind just telling the story and I had to get it done fast. 

The gifts were such a terribly headache because I can never really decide what to give people and I try to avoid choosing myself as much as possible, so Alex got the bad quality I have. Usually I just ask what do people want. 

For some unholy reason I've been shaming myself for being polyamorous for a good while now and kind of going in circles of how come is one partner not enough and how many partners can you even be entangled with? So I kind of went to think about it through Alex, even if I know his ending and of course what happens to all his relationships. So I really ponder a lot on it, because I don't really feel too comfortable hiding who I am from a very unaccepting family. It's not like my polyamory is the biggest secret, there's being trans and whatnot. But my polyamory had been dormant for years and kind of feeling emotions again made me question myself and all. 

I also suffered a pretty bad heartbreak with someone else during Nano which influenced me later in my writing, I think. I really tried to drown my sorrows and my biggest cure to heartbreak is to put myself out there and nearly jump on someone else. So I feel better now, so maybe in the future I'll open up more about it, but for now I'm pretty still sad about it. But Callie and my friends were there for me and I'm terribly thankful to everyone who was there. I hadn't ever been turned down so it was a painful first. So that heartbreak made me ponder even more why am I even poly and why can't I just stick to one partner but that's not how I work really. 

So phrases like "he seemed plenty" are really more of my insecurities and making Al question his own polyamory which if there was a scale would be bigger than mine, but who knows now. 

Originally they weren't supposed to be fucking, but here we are with a sex scene because I figured that I hadn't written one between them in a good while. 

Big shout out to Sonic Youth and Muse's early records because without them I wouldn't have finished To Miles part 1. And extra big shoutout to Sonic Youth's amazing song Diamond Sea! I have no idea how many times I've listened to it on repeat. It kind of even became a To Miles song for me. 

I hope you enjoyed it and you can forgive me.

I'll be posting the other chapters as well as the other chapters of Offside very soon! Please let me know if you enjoyed it and thank you so much for your support!

<3

Jamie