So, it was, of course, pure coincidence when Sean pulled his rented Triumph into Karl's drive. Just because he passing through the neighborhood, and not for any other reason, mind. Honest. But hey, he was here, might as well stop in, say hi. Be polite. After all, he was a polite sort of bloke. The roar of the lawnmower alerted him that Karl must be out back, tackling the long grass that was thriving in the heat of the past couple weeks. Others might've made fun of Karl for tending to the yard on a rare afternoon off, but Sean did a fair amount of puttering about his own garden back home in England, so he understood the importance in it. And with the hours they'd all been spending the past months with filming, he was willing to bet the yard sorely needed some TLC. Sean turned off the engine, set aside his helmet and kicked down the stand. He ran a finger through his sweat-damp hair – just to get it off his neck, mind, not for any other reason. Karl wouldn't care how he looked. He made his way around the house in time to catch Karl pushing the mower on one of the passes away from him, in time to catch the sun beating down on tanned legs in a pair of low-slung cut-offs and a tanned back in a slightly dirty white tank top. In time to catch more than an eyeful of his favorite view in all of New Zealand. Karl's freckles. There were sixteen of them on his left shoulder, nineteen on the right. Not that Sean had ever counted them or anything while Karl was passed out on the sofa one night at one of Harry's infamous cookouts. (Sean didn't want to think too much about the reason they were infamous, because, honestly, he could have gone his entire life without ever seeing Dom's lily-white ass bouncing anywhere near Marton's more tanned ass...or seeing Marton's ass, if it came down to it. Not to mention Viggo's drunken poetry. Best not to think of the poetry.) But yes. Sean emphatically had not sat on the sofa next to Karl's passed out form and counted the freckles – all thirty-five of them – because, well. Because that would be...creepy. Obsessive. Sean wasn't obsessed. He could quit staring and counting whenever he wanted. Karl finally stopped the engine, faded cut-offs stretching around a truly superb ass (not that Sean had ever noticed that, either, because he wasn't a perv, no matter what it looked like, even though, if he was that sort, Karl's ass was well worth perving over) as Karl bent, dark hair a matted curtain around his face as he picked up his water bottle. Sean's own tongue went dry watching the play of Karl's throat, but that was probably because he was thirsty. It was a warm day, after all. The unnatural silence must have alerted Karl – or the pounding of Sean's heart; he wasn't sure which. But Karl paused in his drinking, listening, and he turned to look back, dark eyes suddenly pinning Sean where he stood. Sean stared into those eyes for a few breathless seconds, and a second too long for simple surprise. Oh fuck. Sean forced a little laugh. Forced a wave hello. "Hullo." Forced himself to try to sound normal. "Was out riding in the area, thought I'd stop by." Karl grinned, twin dimples appearing around the outline of his mouth. "Thought you'd drop by, huh? As hot as it is?" Hot, yes. Good word for it. Heat and muscled arms bunching and sweat-slick hair curling across Karl's neck, droplets of water clinging to full lips. Hot as fuck, alright. "Hot." It was the only word Sean could manage. "Well, come on inside, since you're here. I'll buy you a beer." A strong hand clapped Sean's back – the touch much too brief – as Karl walked past him into the house. The house was neat, simple, much like Karl himself. Sort of no-nonsense. Masculine. Sean looked at the stools at the kitchen counter, then the leather sofa in the living room. He opted for the sofa, sitting back under the soft breeze of a whirring ceiling fan above. Karl handed him a chilled bottle and sat down next to him. The leather groaned a little under his weight as he leaned back into the embrace of the cushions, stretching out his arms on either side and tilting his head back as he took a long draw on the bottle, adams apple moving with each swallow. Sean took a healthy swig himself, as much to mask the fact that he was staring at Karl's throat as to douse the sudden heat that seemed to be radiating from Karl sitting too close – for really, it was a hot day. And leather had a way of catching heat and transferring it. Perhaps he should have chosen one of the stools. "So...um..." Right then, small talk definitely out. Too hot for that and all. Best to just sit here and drink and, um, watch. That painting right there. The one that had sixteen freckles on one damp shoulder and nineteen on the other smudged one. Wait, that wasn't the painting. Fuck. Staring again. "So," Karl shifted, the movement bringing a sweat-slick thigh alongside Sean's. "In the neighborhood, eh?" "Yeah." Brilliant conversationalists, they were. They could grow mold on the two of them. Sean scratched at his scalp, itchy with the heat, and out of the corner of his eye, caught Karl smiling at him. He stopped cold, and a shudder passed through him. Hand still frozen in mid-air, he cleared his throat. "What're you smiling at?" Karl reached over and placed Sean's hand back down – right back onto Sean's thigh, fingers brushing over the sensitive flesh of his inner leg. Sean felt his groin tighten. And still Karl was smiling. "You. Just you," Karl repeated. "Just...uh..." Whatever thought he might've had sort of, um, vanished. Evaporated under the heat, even. There was a thumb. Straying. Upwards. Karl's thumb was straying upwards. Up his thigh. Jesus. "Karl...?" "Yeah?" Another slight shift as Karl brushed a butterfly kiss across Sean's jaw (and who know Karl's lips were that soft, anyway?). From this close, the freckles on Karl's right shoulder – all nineteen of them – seemed to blur together into a seamless...something. "Your thumb...it's, um..." Karl murmured against Sean's lips, "Oh just give it a moment. It'll get there." With that, his thumb ran over the hard ridge in Sean's jeans, tracing the outline of his erection. Which only grew even more at the attention it was receiving. Sean bit off a low moan. His gaze was locked on those red lips of Karl's. And mentally picturing how they'd look wrapped around that same erection. He panted a little. Really this was not doing anything to combat the heat around here. "Oh." Since when had he lost all capability at speaking the English language? "Better?" Karl asked, then kissed him again. "No, not really." The words spilled out before Sean could recall them. Blame it on the heat. Or Karl's lips. Or his thumb, still tracing a lazy pattern up and down across Sean's inseam. "Oh?" And now that same thumb was tugging on Sean's zipper, but Sean couldn't hear it over the thundering in his ears. Fingers tugging, seeking, wrapping around him, encasing him in heat and stroking and...fuck. It would be bad form to come almost instantly when your mate – Karl, the man you'd wanted practically since the moment you first stepped foot on this island – started to stroke your cock, right? Oh Jesus...especially when they were pulling back to look at you, soft, dark eyes glowing with some indefinable emotion. Better not to ask. Something that melted bones. Yeah. And especially when Karl's hand was so skilled, fist moving the foreskin up over the head, then down, building up a rhythm... Sean found his hips moving to that rhythm, found his heart pounding to it. Bad form. Really bad... "Karl...wait. Stop." Karl stopped. Looked at him in slight concern, though one corner of his mouth was still turned up in a half-smile. "Yeah?" Alright, maybe not stop, exactly, but slow down. Slowing down was good. Slowing down meant that maybe Sean could think. Or maybe not, seeing as how Karl took Sean's silence as his cue to start nibbling on Sean's jaw. Seriously, the heat was going to absolutely incinerate him if he wasn't careful. "This is what you wanted, right?" Karl mumbled, and bit at the soft skin just under Sean's ear. What he wanted? "Huh?" "This." Karl's hand started moving again, slowly this time. His lips were millimeters away from Sean's. "Me." Oh. Well, when Karl put it like that... Sean murmured his assent – he wasn't a liar, after all, especially to himself, and he was hard a rock, which was sort of hard to hide, especially given what Karl's hand was doing to him – and sighed into the kiss. Sighed into the fist sliding over him in a slow, slick pattern that made thinking impossible, but who really needed it? Afterwards, when Sean's overheated body had finally started to cool, and the leather of the sofa wasn't sticking nearly as much to the backs of his now bare thighs, with Karl's breath still warm against his neck, and Karl's body plastered against his, Sean finally took a moment to dip his head. With his tongue, he traced over all sixteen of Karl's freckles on his left shoulder, and all nineteen on the right. "What're you doing?" Karl's voice was lazy with satisfaction. I did that, Sean thought, absurdly pleased with himself. I made him sound like that. "Counting freckles," he replied, and felt the reverberation of Karl's laughter hum through him as Karl tugged him up for another kiss. It really had turned into the perfect afternoon off, after all.
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