Catch the Air

A/N: This 'oneshot' seems to have sprouted a few extra chapters. They are going to be random scenes with no particular order or plot, and I'm not sure how many there will be, but I hope you enjoy what you get. Warnings for this chapter: breathplay. That's like strangling, for those of you who don't know (like I really shouldn't. Why do I know?).

Julius pulls on the end of his belt, admiring the way it tightens and digs into the flesh, the way the buckle presses the skin white. He draws it as tight as he can, winds it round his hand and holds it, holds it, holds it, breathing slowly and deeply as arousal mounts inside him.

Alex taps twice on the floor, and Julius lets him breathe.

Alex gasps, air flooding into his lungs, and Julius gets up on his knees for a moment so that his diaphragm can rise. When Alex has taken a couple of deep breaths he sits back again, his weight settling on Alex's torso and pinning him to the ground. He can tell that Alex would like to massage his throat, but his arms are pinned to his sides by Julius's knees. Flat on his back on the living-room carpet, he can only lie still and pant.

'Alright?' Julius asks.

'That damned buckle…' Alex says thickly.

'Sorry.' Julius shrugs, insincere. 'Ready to go again?'

'Just a sec –' Alex tries, but Julius jerks the belt tight anyway, and his voice cuts off with a gagging sound. He can stop him speaking whenever he likes, with a twitch of the hand, and it's so damned hot. Julius reaches down with his right hand, keeping his left tight on the belt, and begins to jerk himself, doing it as slowly as he's choking Alex. It takes time to get a result; Alex is good at holding his breath – Julius remembers a story about him escaping from a locked, flooded room by swimming through a pipe – and a spark of pride keeps him lying still and impassive for as long as possible. He was already out of breath, though, and this time it isn't long before his body is betraying him by tiny signs, twitching at first and then arching ever so slightly off the floor, searching for the slack in the belt.

This time Julius lets him tap five times before he lets go.

'You're not…' Alex gasps and tries again. 'Not exactly getting…the concept…of safeword, are you? Safe-gesture; whatever.'

Julius laughs and lets go of the end of the belt, sliding his hand between the buckle and Alex's neck and tugging the leather loose. As he pulls the belt free and pushes it aside, Alex's every muscle slumps with relief.

They quickly tense up again when his fingers replace it.

With both hands around Alex's neck he can't touch himself and has to settle for grinding awkwardly against Alex's chest, but it's worth it to be able to feel what he's doing to him: the warm skin, the pulse of the blood, the straining cords in his neck trying to force his hands out far enough to admit a breath of air.

Alex struggles, but Julius squeezes with his knees, clamping his arms to his sides. Abruptly Alex seems to realise that movement will only waste oxygen and goes still. He closes his eyes, refusing to look Julius in the face, and his jaw is clenched.

You should relax, Julius thinks. Tense up and you'll run out of breath faster. He tightens his hands around Alex's neck until his muscles are locked and shaking and he is sure no air can possibly get through. The thrum of blood beneath his palms is so arousing it might as well be pumping straight into his cock. At that moment Alex jerks, hard, his body instinctively fighting against the squeezing hands.

'You're dying,' Julius whispers. Alex presses his head back into the carpet and arches his neck up; Julius forced him back down. 'You're alive when you first hold your breath, but then you're struggling, then you're fainting, then you're…' The word sticks in his throat. 'You're on the way now. You're dying, you're dying, you're dying…'

Alex's mouth moves in a wordless gasp. Julius moans and for a moment his eyes flutter shut, but he forces them open again so that he can watch everything; watch how Alex's back arches and his fingers curl, how his chest moves up and down as his lungs draw on nothing, how the pink of his lips is being slowly tinted with delicate violet. His eyes roll back into his head, and Julius gives a gasp and lets go.

Alex barely has time to drag in one huge, rasping breath before Julius is flipping him over, forcing him face-down on the floor, scrabbling with one hand to get his trousers down. He loops his arms under Alex's shoulders, drags them as close as they can get and presses his hard-on between the cheeks of Alex's ass, grinding hard and fast. He clamps his right hand over Alex's mouth and presses his own face into Alex's shoulder, so that both their voices are muffled. Alex's arms are free now; he props his torso up of the floor, spine bent like a curved bow, and his nails rake the carpet as his fingers curl inwards. Somewhere through the hot fog Julius becomes aware that Alex's hips are grinding into the carpet independently of his own thrusts; he lets go Alex's mouth and forces his hand down between him and the floor, groping until his fingers close around Alex's erection. It can't have felt good to rub against the rough carpet. Maybe the things Julius insists on doing don't leave him quite as cold as he maintains.

A few more hard thrusts and he explodes, coming messily over Alex's lower back and into the fabric of his shirt, his hand around Alex's cock curled tight against the throes of release, jerking him until he feels his body spasming too and oh, shit, they've got come all over the carpet.

For a few moments Julius rests on his elbows over Alex, panting. He pulls his hand up from between Alex's legs and places it in his hair, holding his head down. The hair gleams dull gold in the low electric light.

'I need to kill you,' Julius says. Alex doesn't stir; perhaps his breath caught a little, but he's breathing so raggedly anyway that's it's hard to tell. Julius says it again.

'I need to kill you. I don't need you dead, I need to kill you. I needed it so bad; I needed this…thank you.' And he's rolling Alex over so that he can kiss his face, his hair, his jawline, his fast-bruising neck, and further down beneath his shirt all the beautiful, beautiful scars that make them look different. 'Thank you, Alex, thank you, thank you…' Alex is almost still beneath him, shifting to receive the kisses but otherwise not reacting, the deep, heavy rhythm of his breathing still unchanged. After a moment Julius pulls back again to survey him.

Alex is looking up at him now, his dark eyes and once vacant and focussed. Julius knows he's easy to read: education, accomplishment and Alex; the balance of life and death. But what can he read in Alex? To Julius he is by sudden turns frustrating, beautiful, hateful, but the one thing he will always be is inscrutable. His thoughts are just as invisible as the molecules in the air, and you can't choke him into being self-explanatory.

'I could have killed you,' he says; the suggesting of an event beyond either of their control rather than an assertion of power. His tone makes Alex crack half a smile. 'Why do you let me do this?'

'Because I feel so safe when you stop,' Alex says simply.

His gaze has gone from absent to a little too direct, and Julius rolls hastily off him and heads to the kitchen, though for what? A dishcloth? He doesn't know.

Behind him Alex sprawls on the rough carpet like a satisfied cat, clasping his hands behind his head.

'What can I say?' he asks, shrugging. 'I'm so awesome even my enemies can't kill me.'

Julius feels like throwing the washcloth at his head.

A/N: Also FEEL THE COMPARISON BETWEEN ALEX AND THE AIR, GUYS!