Removals

Fandom: LotRips
Pairing: Craig Parker/Karl Urban
Rating: r
Summary: Moving furniture can be challenging.
Disclaimer.

The table is one of those beautiful old farmhouse tables, antique and battered. The wood is pale and the grain ridges reassuringly under thoughtful fingers.

Not that the fingers responsible for the treasured furniture take their time to appreciate it at this particular moment. They grip awkwardly and blunt nails dig small half-moon dents into the resin layer of protection sealed on the wood. It?s a well-used table, however, and the resin has long since given in to become a peculiar mix of kitchen-weathered gunk. The cracks run lengthwise, and it is no longer clear to what extent the pigmentation is a feature of the wood rather than simply decades' worth of accumulated grime.

The grime transfers gradually to the thick pads of the impatient fingers as they shift nervously, uncomfortable with the unhelpful shape of the table edge.

"Craig? Could you hurry it up a bit there? I really don't think it's going to go through this way."

Tendons flex. Arteries protrude and palms sweat. If there is a patron saint for all things cumbersome, then he probably would have been a furniture designer, and a martyred one at that. Part of Craig wishes he could have been there, on that final day, and maybe chucked a stone or two himself. He shuffles in discomfort from foot to foot, constrained within the narrow hallway that the table only just fits down.

Karl's watching him. Craig can tell, can feel Karl's eyes criticising. The table thuds uncooperatively against the doorframe, and even as Craig attempts one last shimmying adjustment to the angle he knows it is pointless.

He looks up at Karl, standing stock, unflinching, with his patiently annoyed gaze and his protesting knuckles. Craig licks his slightly dry lips at the sight, and tries to work out where to go from here.

"I don't think it's going to go through this way."

Karl seems obscurely calm and unperturbed. "Well, yes, we're going to have to turn it on its side."

There is a moment of considering silence as they separately regard what now so obviously was only ever going to be a complete spatial impossibility.

"Come on, let's get it shifted."

Craig shakes his head, watching the odd kick of light twisting over Karl's tensed forearm. "We should try it once more like this; it's almost through. It's just this corner." He shoves the table once more, as if to demonstrate, and Karl just stands there, faithless and immovable, as the table scrapes dully and the doorframe threatens to splinter.

Karl is annoying. He is also right, but mainly he's just annoying. The realisation seeps into Craig's mind slow like a surprising, forgotten post-it note; seeps in in an annoying way, and Karl seems to be neglecting to smirk just to be annoying. The table's annoying, the doorframe's annoying, whoever designed the house is annoying, and most of all, the idiot that decided to move into the stupid place is annoying. And Craig, himself, is annoying, because he's stupid enough to be friends with the latter.

"I'm putting it down," he tells Karl out of politeness. The table isn't particularly heavy, just awkward - annoying - and if Craig were to drop his end there wouldn't really be much harm done, which is annoying. So Craig dumps his end of the table unceremoniously before Karl's really had much of a chance to process the brief warning Craig so considerately provided him with.

He walks away, leaving Karl standing passively in the hall with the empty house around him and the pile of mismatched furniture waiting just out of sight, right by the front door. Craig walks across the kitchen to the sink beneath the window, and as he notes the practicality of the low-maintenance garden he turns the tap and cups his hands. The water builds, and he thinks he might just be able to pretend he doesn't notice the dusty parched feel his skin has been gathering all day. He cups his hands again and ignores the muffled bang that might possibly have come from Karl. Cups his hands, drinks deep, cups his hands, lets the water run down over his wrists. He turns the tap off and the bright vertical stream vanishes as the drain gurgles and he splashes the residual water clinging to his hands onto his face and neck.

He can't quite see the door from here, but he knows without doubt now that he recognises that latest sound as most definitely Karl slumping against a sturdy piece of furniture. Strangely enough it sounds like leg-of-Karl, and that doesn't really sound at all appropriate in the empty kitchen. Craig sighs and looks for a towel to dry his hands with before he considers whether to be worried or not.

There's no towel, of course, so Craig wipes his wet hands on his jeans, leaving two damp prints on either denim thigh.

When he works out exactly what Karl's managed to do with himself, with his muscled limbs and delightfully Karl-shaped frame, Craig tries not to laugh. He tries, and he tries very hard, and this is why he manages to achieve the appropriate lack of mirth. He considers this to be quite a feat. It's not really funny. It shouldn't be possible for a grown man to get himself into quite this much of a mess using only a table and doorframe, and it most certainly isn't funny. It should potentially be annoying, and if Craig could manage to dredge up any of the emotion he felt only five minutes ago, he might be annoyed.

Karl's sprawled on his back, one leg over the table, one disappearing beneath it. His head, with its Karl-thoughts housed safely yet destructively inside, flops over into the kitchen, mostly hanging off the table along with his right shoulder.

His hair looks unnatural, manic. Craig thinks absently that perhaps it should look more like a halo, but it doesn't, and he can't help but compare it to children's colouring time hair. Five-year-old scribble version of Karl, that's what Craig thinks he would see in front of him if it wasn't for that little bit of skin on the underside of Karl's chin. It's dusted with stubble, but special, and Craig's glad it's been brought to his attention.

"Karl?"

"I'm stuck."

Craig looks at Karl again, and it does indeed appear that he is most thoroughly stuck. In fact, this is what Craig assumed from the outset, and Karl's confirmation of the situation means little. He leans over the table for a closer inspection in an attempt to understand Karl's absurd predicament. The leg beneath the table is an unearthly combination of contorted and wedged. The angle looks all wrong, and the table leg interferes to complete the Dali-style lock-in. It looks painful. Craig has a momentary flash of concern for the Karl-leg, but it's gone as quickly, and he knows Karl would be complaining if he was in any pain.

"I'm in pain."

Craig looks down to talk to the underside of Karl's chin. "What. Were you trying to do?"

"I was attempting to climb over the table, to get some water, after you left me so rudely." Karl's brought his head up for this bit of the conversation, and Craig briefly mourns the loss of his view of the chin's underside. And now he can see Karl glaring up at him instead, and he's deciding more and more forcefully that he vastly prefers the chin-underside. "I was attempting to climb over the table, and I got my leg stuck, so I swung my other leg up, because I'm flexible like that, as you know, and I can do stuff like that. But now my leg's still stuck, and I'm upside-down and stuck, and when I tried to shift the leg that's still stuck it got caught on the doorframe, so now I have a splinter in my thigh, and I'm in pain."

Craig shakes his head. "But your leg that's stuck, other than the splinter, it's ok?"

"What do you mean, other than the splinter? It's a fucking painful splinter!"

"I mean... the... wedged bit of your leg. It looks... less than comfortable."

"Oh, no, that's fine." Karl's casual dismissal is strangely reassuring. "Well, I think I might get cramp in a bit, but other than that it's fine."

Craig kneels down, quickly passing Karl's head, neck, and in between the two the bit of chin-underside so that he can check on the leg closer up. In wonderment, he crawls under the table a little, ignoring the chiselled underside and the way the unworn wood contrasts so starkly with the over-exposed, everyday surface. The position of the leg certainly doesn't look very anatomically possible, but then Karl is, as he said, very flexible...

If Karl says there isn't anything wrong with it, then Craig is willing to accept that. Besides, if he fusses now he'll be taunted for years to come about this day, and quite frankly he intends for Karl to be the one being mocked. As he rightly deserves.

"I don't know how you manage these things, Karl," he complains as he crawls out from beneath the table, missing the view of the chin and getting a face full of hair instead. "It's a simple table, it's not the grand finale in some elaborate domestic obstacle course."

"I'm good at obstacle courses, anyway."

"Of course you are." Craig stands to his full height now, resisting the urge to cradle the bizarrely angled but deliciously positioned cranium before him. Karl seems to grin up at him, far too ignorantly pleased with himself to be considered fair play. "Look, I'll climb over and shift the table from the other side. Should create room enough for you to get your leg out."

Craig hops up, Craig steps over, Craig hops down. He looks at Karl incredulously. "It's really not that difficult, you know, I managed it, and that was with an additional body pinioned in the way."

"Could happen to anyone."

"Called Karl."

Somehow Craig thinks there's another comeback headed his way, but he never gets to hear it, as when he shifts the table into the non-existent space that isn't there to shift the table into, Karl makes this strange barking sound, undeniably protesting in nature.

"I don't think you're going to be able to move it that way."

"It hurts?"

"Yes. Quite a bit, actually."

"Oh." There's not really much else he can do from this side, so he jumps back over the table, and can't quite resist chucking Karl under the chin as he passes. "Sorry."

"Sorry? I'm stuck in a doorframe, and you're being entirely unhelpful!"

"It's your own fault."

"Harry's new house hates me."

"But it is your own fault."

"...And unsympathetic!"

"We could saw off the leg, but I think we should wait until Harry gets back before we do."

"You can't saw off my leg!"

"I meant the table leg."

"Oh. Well, that might be ok. But you're right, we should probably wait for Harry."

The table is jammed, and the additional leg-of-Karl isn't helping. The extraction operation will need an agent on both sides of the table, and Craig settles himself sitting next to Karl up on the table, thigh just casually resting against his elbow. It doesn't feel casual, but Karl's attention seems to be elsewhere, and he knows he'll get away with it.

"We should be ok just shifting it, but I won't be able to get you out of there on my own. We will have to wait for Harry."

"Weakling."

"As someone trapped in a doorframe right now, I don't really think it's appropriate for you to be calling anyone names."

The elbow in his thigh suddenly turns sharp, jabbing, vindictive. Maybe Craig hasn't got away with it, but he doesn't edge away from the proximity, even if it does now seem to come with certain bony appendages. It's strange; it has never occurred to him before that anything about Karl was bony. Now that he thinks about it, Karl has ribs and hipbones that also jut forth firmly, but they never seem to have aggressive angles. They have firm flesh attached, hard broad surfaces that challenge before they give, complete with long toned lines that are mesmeric in their power. Overwhelmingly erotic in their motion.

"All the blood's gone to my head."

"Well sit up and stop hanging upside down then."

"I'm thirsty too." He does sit up then, and props himself up to give this pathetic smile, childish yet forceful. Craig swallows. "Can't you get me some water or something?"

"Using what?" Karl knows as well as Craig does that all the kitchenware will be arriving at the same time as Harry, when they finally finish the last run with the van.

"Can't you go buy a bottle of water or something?"

"And who's going to open the front door for Harry when he gets back?"

"Oh."

Craig sighs, and shifts the head that has managed to find its way to his lap off of his legs so that he can get up. Karl flops back down, vertically inverted, hair still crazy. As he walks to the sink, Craig wonders how this will work, whether he'll just make a mess of Harry's new floor as he attempts to pour water down Karl's throat. It could be a spluttering mess of Karl-embedded rivulets in which the body most soaked will inevitably be Craig's. He runs the water, cups his hands, and has to leave the tap running gently as he can't spare the thumbs to turn it off.

It could be a spluttering mess; it was never going to be anything but a spluttering mess. Craig's t-shirt clings lightly to his belly, but he only notices absently, focussed as he is on the chaotic patterns of harried droplets weaving in impossible detail across Karl's chin, his neck, and splattered even a little in the smooth V exposed at the top of his shirt.

Craig's up and away before Karl can even think to start whining, and he's back at the sink, filling his hands and then filling his mouth, but not swallowing, walking back to Karl. Kneeling, now, leaning forward, Craig dimly registers that Karl looks curious, and even though that wonderful head is still halfway upside down and perpendicular to his own, suddenly their lips are pressured, sliding into an easy lock. Craig spares a brief thought to be grateful that Karl has either understood or is just being gloriously accepting, before he chastely pushes the water into the warm hollow connected to his. It's an acquired technique, but eventually Karl swallows, and Craig can't help the last minute swipe of his tongue over Karl's bottom lip as he retreats.

There's more than a moment's pause between them now, and Karl just seems to look at him, big eyes open and assessing.

"You're normally a lot drunker when you kiss me," Karl finally comes out with, and it's not even funny.

"I can't be that drunk if I remember it every single time."

And if that wasn't a conversation killer, Craig's not sure he's ever heard one. There's nothing really to say to follow that, but Karl's still lying trapped in a doorframe, half upside-down, and Craig's now wearing a wet t-shirt. He wets his lips nervously.

"Are you still thirsty?" He feels almost shy, asking this with Karl's upside-down hand having attached itself to the nape of his neck.

Karl seems far surer of things than Craig does when he says yes. His hand's not asking questions, his hand's just there, and when Craig gets up to return to the sink he misses its unsubtle presence. He fills his mouth with water and turns the tap off this time, as he has the hands free to do so.

Craig kneels softly, waits for the hand to return to pull him forward before they're kissing again. The business with the water is dealt with quickly this time, and then it's lips, tongue tips and teeth. Slow kissing followed by faster kissing followed by soft kissing followed by fierce. Most of all it's never-ending kissing and thorough kissing, tingling, and the type that seems directly connected to right between Craig's toes, and right beneath his belly.

It's vaguely uncomfortable to be still upon his knees, but if he flicks at Karl's teeth - just like that - then he makes the hand that can't keep still on his neck clutch. Karl's other hand has joined its partner on Craig, and now he's confused. Because the kissing was nice, and Craig was busy enjoying the kissing, but now Karl's pushed him away, and, oh, well that might be ok after all.

Karl's now pulling him up on to the table with him, and the way his clever Karl-hands are peeling the cotton from his middle is more than ok. There's a sound that Karl's making, deep in his throat, and Craig can't really decide if it's groaning or growling, but it doesn't matter because whatever it is, it's going straight to his groin. He pulls the t-shirt swiftly over his head to appease an increasingly more demanding Karl, and he rejoins him on the horizontal plane to kiss, unbutton, and delve. As he tangles his legs with Karl's one free one he digs deep in Karl's mouth, wants more of that Karl-taste, and does unsubtle combat with a determined tongue.

His hands reach Karl's waistband. He unbuckles, unbuttons, and unzips with an expediency that shocks even himself, and it becomes evident that whilst his own interest is undeniably definite, solid against Karl's hip, Karl is considerably further along than himself. Craig pauses then, because that's a little strange, but a tug on his upper lip brings his attention back to where it's most wanted, and coincidentally where it most wants to be in any case.

Karl's trousers won't really push down very far, jammed as they are on one side against the doorframe. Craig leaves them scrunched somewhere above mid-thigh whilst he takes Karl in hand. Palms him hard, and echoes with his tongue in rhythmic pulses. Karl's coming undone now, and Craig doesn't need to watch, can feel it right beneath him in the tensing and the frantic, the loosing and the force.

The table never creaks, and Craig's intrigued.

Karl comes with a desperation that he's never seen before, and he breathes softly against that chin-underside he's been after all this time. He mouthes damply at the skin of Karl's neck, tasting him slightly sweat salted. He wants something, most assuredly wants something some time soon, but he's curious enough to wait with sticky hands until Karl's breathing returns to something resembling steady.

Karl looks a bit shell-shocked, actually. He flops back, boneless, and once more his head hangs loosely over the edge of the table.

"Do you have an upside-down kink that you want to tell me about?"

"What? No!" Karl's not doing indignant very well at this particular moment, understandably so, being somewhat flushed. Craig considers him carefully.

"It's not a kitchen thing, because I'd already know if that were the case."

"For God's sake, Craig, it's nothing, I don't know what you're talking about."

He thinks about dropping the issue then, but Karl's studiously ignoring him as much as it?s possible to ignore a full-grown man looming above him, erection indenting hip. Craig shifts, a little uncomfortable, and Karl breaks off his staring match with the unspecified patch of upside-down space that seemed so fascinating only moments ago. He kisses, relaxed tempered kisses, it's all very of a tempo, but Craig just has to know.

"Don't tell me it's a Harry's-kitchen-table kink, because I think he's really quite attached to this table."

Karl grimaces. "He won't be once he finds out what we just did on it."

"You mean it is a Harry's-kitchen-table kink, Karl?"

"Craig..."

"That's really dirty, you know, he probably coloured in kids' picture books on this thing."

There's a very violent kiss that leaves Craig more than a little breathless, and he'd be more than willing to let the topic drop if it wasn't for Karl's unusual reticence on the matter. He smoothes his hands around the solid curve of the shoulder sculpt exposed by the disarranged shirt.

"You can tell me," Craig enunciates softly into a just-licked earlobe. "You can."

Karl seems to withdraw a little, seems unsure, as he hasn't seemed since the first utilitarian meeting of lips.

"It might be a restricted movement thing."

"Might be?"

"Ok, is."

"You mean the doorframe had more to do with getting you off than I did?"

Ok, so he might have deserved that slap around the head just a little.

"Forget I said anything."

"No, no, I'm curious now. Did the splinter also have something to do with it?"

"Look, if you can't take a joke, then this relationship's just never going to work out."

"We have a relationship now?"

"Yes."

"Since when?"

"Since I just decided."

"My leg's cramping."

Craig's leg is indeed cramping but it really doesn't seem important as he grins down at Karl. He jumps down from the table anyway, though, to remove his trousers, and he knows Karl's watching. Time for a little fun.

"So the tied-down thing was just a joke?"

"Yes." Karl rolls his eyes, and suddenly he's annoying again.

"So turning the table upside-down and securing each of your arms and legs to corners would be of absolutely no interest to you?"

In a thick tangled bramble of hair, Karl hardens, and it's all the response Craig needs before he swings a leg over Karl's torso, and smugly straddles his face.

Quarter of an hour later, neither of them hear the doorbell when it finally rings.

Posted by Missiedith at March 3, 2004 5:22 PM | TrackBack