A/N: I will be fairly disappointed if people don't get the Diana Ross reference… but then again, maybe you just don't listen to bad [read: awesome] 80's pop music.

Again, sorry for the long time between updates – I've gone back to uni and life and work have been determined to hit me in the face but we're getting there, slowly… very slowly. I feel like a very bad writer because I know how annoying it is when you're waiting for that update and it's so slow it drives you crazy, so a major thank you to you if you haven't given up yet. I hope this chapter was worth waiting for.
Penultimate chapter. probably. To be honest, it felt like we'd never get here!

Also, the M rating comes into effect in this chapter. That I guess is another reason why this chapter took so long, I've never written anything like this before so I wanted it to be good. Let me know if it is (or isn't...)

Chapter 24

Schofield had made his way back to the base, highly anticipating that he would find there a very concerned group of marines wondering where in the world he had got to.
What he wasn't expecting was for a party to be well under way by the time he arrived.

As he walked through the door, the place veritably erupted. Schofield was only slightly surprised to see his own face was flickering on the television in the background but couldn't be heard over the music they were playing. A newspaper passed by him so fast that he didn't even see the headline and a mob of people descended on him in a group hug that was threatening to become a group smothering.
He also noticed that someone – he could guess who – had decided the situation warranted streamers.

So many streamers.

He had a sneaking suspicion that he might know the cause for celebration. Rebound, Astro and Skip dancing around him half-chanting, half- screaming –

"It passed, it passed, it passed"

- was perhaps a bit of a giveaway. His eyes tried to find one face in particular amidst the whirling crowd attempting to suffocate him but try as he might, Jack was nowhere to be seen.

That was, until a large burly figure seized his wrist and dragged him free of the mob.

"Come on," Mother said loudly, "give him some space, let me at him."

Shane smiled warmly at her.
At least, until her hand connected hard with his face.

"You," she roared as Schofield nursed the stark red handprint now covering half his face, "are the sneakiest, most conniving, most deceitful little shit I have ever known."

"And god I love you for it," she added, seizing his head and planting a large kiss right on his still stinging cheek. With her other hand clamped firmly around Jack's wrist, she dragged him forward so they were standing face to face. Shane couldn't help but smile sheepishly but he also couldn't think of a single thing to say. With every eye focussed on the pair of them, he could feel the mounting tension and the weight of their stares.

"For fucks sake, just kiss him," Mother said loudly and the crowd roared their approval.

Despite that, neither Schofield or Jack moved. Jack was chewing on his bottom lip and Shane rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly, their eyes were locked but not a muscle so much as twitched.

In the background, someone – Schofield thought probably the same someone who was responsible for the streamers – had begun to play Lady Gaga's 'Born this Way' loudly and thankfully the party, giving up, moved on around them.

Shunted into the corner and very much relieved to be out of the limelight, all Schofield managed to say was, "Hey."

To which Jack, with his hands in his pockets, very coolly replied, "Hi."

In that moment, despite the strong desire to celebrate, Schofield wanted nothing more than Jack's company and the cool night air to mull over the slightly crazy events of the last few days.
"Do you wanna go for a walk," he said quietly, "before somebody starts playing Diana Ross."

A smile quirked at the edges of Jack's lips and he nodded. They managed to slip out the door silently and subtly, watched only by Book II, who just smiled at their retreating backs.

"For the record," Jack said with a sly grin in Schofield's direction as the door closed behind them, blocking out the noise from the party, "from the man who warned me about outing us to high society, national TV might have been a bit rich."

Schofield, breathing in the crisp air deeply, playfully bumped their shoulders together in response prompting Jack to throw a casual arm around said shoulder, pulling their bodies close. Neither spoke for a long moment. Revelling in the quiet and in each other's presence with the knowledge that Schofield had achieved what he'd set out to do, even if it was too late for himself.
Better late than never, he thought as he brought up a hand to catch Jack's dangling across his chest, linking their fingers as they strolled along together, openly, in the marine barracks.

"So what now?" Jack asked, breaking the comfortable silence. "Are you finally done saving the world?"

"Dunno," Schofield laughed. "Maybe I'll go back to college and get that masters, buy a house and a dog, settle down."

"Open a model aeroplane store," he added jokingly.

"Design a range of sunglasses," Jack supplied with a smile as he snaked his other hand across the line of Shane's jaw, dragging him into what started off as a lazy kiss – full of the simple ease of the moment – but quickly escalated as Shane pushed back, twisting their bodies so they were flush. With tongues colliding and tangling, he brought his other arm up Schofield's torso, bracing against his biceps and skimming across his shoulders to encircle his neck. If there was an inch of space between them, it was squashed. Schofield's hands, meanwhile, were pressed into Jack's hips, holding them steadfast against the natural rock and flow of their bodies as they sought to become closer than was even possible.

A pressing need for oxygen however, forced them apart. They stood breathing raggedly with foreheads pressed together and fingers digging into skin as though they could hold on to the moment forever.

As the night deepened, they wandered the grounds aimlessly with intertwined fingers – because they could.
Talking, just talking.

"Tell me a secret," Jack whispered with his lips brushing against the soft point just below Shane's ear.

"In school, my best subject was math but my favourite was drama," he said slowly.

"Not a secret, anybody who knows you can tell you've got a flair for the melodramatic."

Jack expected Schofield to laugh, but he didn't.

"Sometimes, I wish my grandfather hadn't been a marine," Shane said to the inky blackness of the night sky as Jack nuzzled at his neck, lips grazing against the sensitive skin and he leaned into it.

Eventually, their meandering took them back to the front door of their barracks. As they stood in the half-shadows of the lights through the windows, Jack asked only slightly hesitantly if Shane wanted to come up to his room.

The impish smile on his face said yes but aloud Schofield said firmly, "No."

When Jack replied with a dumbfounded, "You're kidding right?" Shane shook his head, laughing only to himself, managed to screw his face into something resembling sensibility as he looked pointedly over Jack's shoulder at the party still going on inside.

"Do you really want to walk past them? Cause they'd all know what was going on," he pointed out quite correctly, "and the bastards would probably be listening. The marine in me cannot approve sneaking into your room for whatever purpose, innocuous or not, with all of them on the prowl."

"You're only a marine for all of about the next half an hour," Jack practically growled, sensing he was perhaps being teased, but Schofield was firm.

Still grumbling but nonetheless, Jack allowed himself to be steered back into the crowded party. He paused only when he realised Schofield wasn't following.
"Where you going?" he asked, confused.

"Thought I might stay out for a bit," Schofield replied with a shrewd grin, "it's not like I have anything to do tomorrow."

And with nothing more than a swift and chaste kiss against Jack's cheek, Schofield said "Goodnight."

He watched as Jack, clearly pissed off, barely lingered at the party and instead tried to negotiate his way through the crowd and stomped up the stairs. Funnily enough, the party of utterly straight marines celebrating the downfall of Don't Ask Don't Tell were almost entirely unaware of the absence of those who really ought to have been celebrating the hardest.

Almost entirely unaware that is, of course, all except for Mother who noticed the imminent storm on Jack's face and the surprising absence of the Scarecrow. Naturally, she cast her eye around quickly only to just catch sight of a dark figure slipping around the corner. In the fleeting glimpse she grabbed as he passed through the light of a nearby window, she saw clearly the flash of sunglasses and a wicked smile.

Jack meanwhile, was just plain confused. He didn't understand why, after they had fought so hard for the right to be together publicly, Shane would then not want to spend time with him, would even fend off his advances. He didn't like being played with and he certainly didn't like the sneaking suspicion growing in his mind that he had missed something. Jack Taylor was a straight talking sort of bloke and quite frankly, he didn't appreciate being screwed with, metaphorically, when what he actually wanted was to be screwed with literally.

So all in all, by the time he let himself into his room – alone – and closed the door behind him with a satisfying bang, he was less than cheerful. Which was why when, as he went to tug his shirt over his head and a pair of arms slid under it to help, he leapt quite nearly a foot or two into the air. Or at least, he would have had Schofield not been holding onto him, his arms encircling him from behind and his teeth sunk into the side of Jack's neck.

Spinning around he hit Schofield in the chest but given the sheer sexiness of the slightly smaller man as he managed to laugh and smirk at the same time, Jack couldn't conceal a grin of his own as he hit him lightly in the chest with his closed fists.

Jack twisted his arms around Shane's shoulders, clasping them behind his neck and looking straight at him, he said deadpan, "Thought you didn't approve of this."

"Ah, well," Shane replied, deep in mock thought, "As a marine I can't really condone this sort of behaviour – but as your boyfriend, I have no qualms whatsoever about climbing in your window."

Holding Schofield's head gently in his broad hands, fingers tangling in the edges of unruly black hair and splayed along the curve of an ear, Jack kissed him deeply before gently, slowly pulling the sunglasses off to reveal dark blue eyes that shone with heady excitement but not an insignificant hint of shyness that betrayed his nerves.
"You know your eyes are beautiful."

"No seriously," Jack added earnestly when Schofield merely quirked an amused eyebrow at him in disbelief, "they're the exact same colour as the night sky in the moment after sunset, when the colour is at its richest."

"You're stupid sometimes," Shane replied teasingly, pressing his hands into Jack's chest and not quite meeting his eyes.

"You're still beautiful," Jack replied quickly as he ran his fingers along the line of Shane's jaw. Revelling in the contrast of the soft skin and stubble beneath his fingertips, he drew their mouths back together again before Shane could speak again. It always caught him by surprise that Schofield couldn't see how incredible he was. If he had to make it his life's mission to show him, he gladly would.

The kiss was leisurely and tender, lips and tongues slid and twisted against each other intimately without any hurry or the harsh clash of desperate teeth, as each man realised they had all the time in the world in which to simply enjoy each other. Jack felt his breath hitch in the back of his throat as Shane gently pushed his jacket off his shoulders before sliding his hands down the length of Jack's body, deliberately running his fingers against the very edge of his sensitive sides, fingers tripping over every ridge of muscle, to carefully tug at the shirt tucked into his cargo pants.

As the thin cotton t-shirt Jack was wearing joined his jacket on the floor, he pulled back, stilling Schofield with firm hands on his waist.
"You're sure?" was all he said.

With a wicked grin, his overgrown hair falling into his eyes, Schofield replied, "I'm sure;"
And with a slight push, the very willing Jack toppled backwards onto the regulation single bunk. When Schofield added his own weight to it, straddling Jack, the bed moaned its protest but neither of them were coherent enough to care.

"You know," Jack said in between kisses, "I freaking love you in that uniform -"
"-but getting it off you," he groaned as his fingers fumbled over the numerous ornate silver buttons on the front of Schofield's dress blues that he was still wearing, much to Jack's displeasure,
"Is a whole. freaking. different. matter."

Schofield brought his arms up from where they were roaming Jack's torso to gently remove Jack's arms from where they were struggling to remove the formal jacket and pinned them flat against the bed above his head. Smirking, he straightened over Jack's prone body and torturously slowly began to undo the buttons, one – at – a – time.

When the jacket finally joined the pile of clothes beginning to build up around the bed, Jack was already painfully aroused. They weren't even undressed yet and he was straining at the seams of his pants. All he really knew for sure was that he was being teased and it felt so damn good – and that if his pants didn't come off soon he was going to be in big trouble.

From his position Schofield could quite clearly see and feel Jack's predicament so without dropping his gaze from Jack's, he reached down for the zip of Jack's jeans, undoing it equally slowly and with only the enough pressure against the bulge of his erection beneath to tease.
Neither Jack nor Shane knew the sound of a zipper could be such a turn on.

Obligingly, Jack lifted his hips so that Shane could push the pants over them. Sex, as Schofield well knew, was sticky and awkward and for some unfathomable reason, far more fun than it would appear to be. With their bodies pressed together, manoeuvring the stiff fabric of the jeans any further than the knees proved difficult. It involved a great deal of wriggling and rolling and by the time they were finally flung off Jack's feet and to the floor Jack had somehow managed to roll himself atop Shane. Looking down at him appreciatively, he assessed the situation quickly and decided there was a considerable discrepancy in their state of undress. Whilst he was comfortably down to his boxers, Schofield was still dressed in his admittedly dishevelled formal white button down shirt and blue trousers.

Too many buttons.

He dropped his head to start at Schofield's collarbone, nipping and sucking at it so that the man beneath his couldn't suppress a moan as his tongue flicked across the sensitive skin. As his fingers worked the buttons undone, exposing the bare skin of his chest, his lips followed, placing searing kisses down the length of Schofield's torso. He paused at the line of his pectorals, pushing the shirt fully open to reveal the dark flesh of his nipples. Jack rolled a thumb across one and was pleased to see that the bud was hard and raised to his touch. Covering it with his mouth and swiping his tongue across it, he was rewarded with Schofield arching up and into his mouth.

Jack continued to trace the line of the buttons down Schofield's chest with his mouth, dipping his tongue briefly into the indentation that was Shane's bellybutton before reaching the tantalising streak of dark hair that disappeared into the blue trousers. He looked up, locking their eyes, as he fiddled with the belt and buckle of Schofield's pants. Jack hardly even saw the scars – all he saw was eyes practically clouded black with desire. Pushing the pants apart, he scraped his teeth roughly down the hard line of Schofield's erection through dark blue boxers, his hands steadying his hips. "Ai, fuck," he swore and Jack could hear the arousal in his voice like gravel.
It went straight to his own dick.

Straightening up, Jack pulled the pants off roughly and they too joined the pile of clothes on the floor, exposing the lean lines of Schofield's legs to his approving view. Dragging his body back up against Shane's, they lay close in silence for a long moment, their legs tangled together and chests pressed slick against one another. There was heat emanating from their bodies in waves so that the air was thick with it and the bitter smell of arousal. Despite their anticipation for what was to come, they took the moment to simply relish being with each other and the excitement of each other's bodies and the freedom to do so.

But it passed quickly as hands flew hungrily down their bare skin to push beneath the elastic of boxers. As Jack's hands fumbled with both their underwear, hurriedly pushing them down so that they would be completely exposed before the other, Schofield flung out one arm to reach for his discarded jacket. When Jack's broad hand finally wrapped around his cock, callouses sliding roughly against the sensitive flesh, he almost dropped the small jar he had retrieved from his pocket. He swatted Jack's hands away from where they were touching him almost reverently, exploring the ridges and curves of his pelvis. He was too close already and he wanted this to last but he wasn't going to if Jack didn't stop. Instead, he seized the hands and held them close to his chest as he twisted their hips together involuntarily and buried his head into Jack's neck to moan his name. Into the hand he held within his own, Shane pressed the small jar of Vaseline, causing Jack to stop in surprise.

"Always prepared," he said cheekily in response to Jack's stunned silence.

"But-" Jack immediately began to protest but Shane silenced him by pressing their lips together.

"Shush," he replied, cradling Jack's head in his hands, their foreheads touching, as he rocked their bodies together, the slide of skin against skin doing funny things to his stomach. "I want this."

"I've never," Jack trailed off, blushing but Shane just smiled at him.

"I know," he replied softly.

It was more than that though. As reluctant as he was to hurt Jack in any way, as much as he wanted him to enjoy this more than was humanly possible, as much as he wanted this to be special for him, he also wanted to let Jack in – under his skin, so to speak – closer than he had ever allowed anyone before. He wanted to make himself vulnerable to Jack, put himself entirely in his hands, but he didn't know how to explain it.

"I trust you," was what he said eventually.

Shane Schofield didn't think he'd ever been more turned on in his life as he watched Jack coat himself liberally in the Vaseline. Pressing his head against the curve of Jack's neck, he whispered instructions on how to prepare him, his lips ghosting against the skin with every word and gasp as Jack's fingers touched him from inside. He had paused when he circled one finger across Schofield's entrance and found the tight resistance of muscle but Shane had smiled at him and encouraged him, twining his own fingers into Jack's other hand, until he had pushed past it and Shane had cried aloud. Jack stroked him internally, fingers brushing against the ridges of the walls of muscle that felt like silk that was hot to the touch and when he finally pulled out, Shane bemoaned the loss of contact.

He surprised himself by how rational he was as Jack's hands curled around his thighs, supporting and lifting him slightly so that he could look Jack in the eyes as he fucked him without it hurting like hell. But when Jack finally began to push inside him all cohesive thought took a quick ride down a slippery slope. He stopped just long enough to look Shane in the eye and receive a nod of confirmation before pushing past the ring of muscle and into the tight heat. He slid himself in so slowly that by the time he was fully sheathed inside Schofield, his legs were shaking. He wasn't sure if he was going slow for Shane's sake - to give him time to adjust – or if it was because he didn't think he would last much longer if he didn't, but judging from the low moan coming from Schofield and the way his hips bucked involuntarily, the former seemed perfectly well adjusted. Jack pressed his hands against Shane's hips, stilling them as he pressed a kiss to Shane's temple, giving himself time to calm his ragged breathing and recover before he began to move.

"Damn, Jack, please…" he heard Schofield murmur into his damp skin. Carefully, gently, he began to roll their bodies, moving in and out of Shane but the friction and incredible pressure was overwhelming. As he built up speed he felt Schofield pushing back against him, drawing him deeper into him and tightening around him.

For Shane, as he pulled Jack in and twisted his hips up to meet each thrust, a slight change in angle meant Jack brushed against a small bundle of nerves deep inside him and he was suddenly seeing stars behind his closed eyes. He was vaguely aware that Jack's hand had returned to stroking and pulling at his cock, the touch now confident and sure. Raking his fingers down Jack's back, he gave himself over entirely to sensation and tried to hold on. Every touch, both internal and external, was sending him higher and higher, spiralling out of control. He clung to Jack, feeling the muscles of Jack's back and stomach and thighs moving underneath his hands, rolling with the rhythm of their bodies, twitching as Jack thrust into him with abandon now, each thrust bringing him closer to the edge. As Jack's hand continued to rub and touch and pump him, he was leaning into the touch. Keening aloud, he sunk his teeth into Jack's shoulder to muffle the sound as he repeatedly hit his prostate. He felt Jack beneath him tremble and he pushed into Schofield as far and as hard as he could, grazing over that spot continually, dragging him forward into oblivion. He knew Jack was close too, so close, so he surrendered to the powerful rush of orgasm that overtook his body and came hard into Jack's hand with a moan.

For Jack, the pressure inside him was building and when he felt Shane's walls clutching hard around him as he came, his hand covered in the thick, pearly liquid, and Shane himself beneath him with his eyes shut and his skin flushed, moaning softly, it was more than enough to elicit his own orgasm from him.

"God," he gasped shortly as he came into the tight heat that was Schofield enveloping him.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Shane added as he opened his eyes blearily. Still floating somewhere in the realm of the thoroughly fucked, he registered the sensation of Jack's release warm and wet inside of him. It was odd for sure but something he decided he could get used to.

He was running his hands up and down Jack's biceps, which were shaking a little from the effort of supporting his weight and post-coital exhaustion. Jack, brushing sweaty tendrils of hair off Shane's forehead, said "You know your hair gets curly when it's long."

Shane just nodded and laughed as Jack collapsed against him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pressing a kiss against his temple. His hand was still tangled in his hair.

The stroke of midnight had long since passed and Shane Schofield didn't even care.