Chapter summary: Freshly grown out of the honeymoon phase of their relationship, Smoker and Drake flounder. Their interest in one another blossoms beyond sex, enamored by the other's drive and devotion to their work, and thus, bit by bit, it feels natural to start sharing pieces of their lives with one another. What it pity is it that Smoker is utterly abysmal at opening up. You've got to give it to the man for trying, though.
A/N: Still pre-canon and finally more shippy than just hints of previous events XD
Smoker Week 2025
Prompts: Partners + Hobby
For all Drake was good with numbers, he took no joy in blackjack or poker. For all he adored lizards and snakes, Smoker couldn't coax even an ounce of interest from the man in racehorses. Well, positive interest, anyhow.
"I've heard they go through all manner of mistreatment. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface on dog welfare or the health of the jockeys." Drake's frown hovered in a nebulous in-between state—the man clearly trying to steer away from judgment, but unable to join in Smoker's levity.
So gambling in general was out, it seemed.
Freshly grown out of the honeymoon phase of their relationship, the two floundered. Their interest in one another blossomed beyond sex, enamored by the other's drive and devotion to their work, and thus, bit by bit, felt it natural to start sharing pieces of their lives with one another.
For all his stone-faced seriousness, Drake kept a small collection of comic book memorabilia from some syndicated strip back in the North and could regurgitate most any obscure factoid about it on the spot. Smoker, far less titillated by the tales of heroic propaganda, learned quickly to avoid the subject entirely. The reptile fascination wasn't too terrible though. Smoker preferred mammals, namely dogs and cats, over Drake's rapt fixation of scales and shells. Still, there was something thrilling about a man who didn't balk at the sight of a gator lumbering up out of a retention pond for a chance to sunbathe. (Quietly, secretly, he wished himself petty enough to return home with himself on one of Drake's sturdy arms and a constrictor wound around the other, just to watch his parents recoil.)
But it was his introduction to Drake's passion for astrophysics that started the gears turning in Smoker's mind, facilitating a clench in his chest he couldn't entirely will away.
He couldn't follow the math of it all, of the churning swirl of distant heavenly bodies. What held his interest was the warm puff of breath behind his ear and strong arms that tugged the thick blanket tightly around them to warm off the winter chill. The stars meant nothing when pitted against the solid body behind him and the deep soothing rumble that poured from it like honeyed wine.
Smoker realized then how one-sided all their collective effort had really been. Drake, introverted and withdrawn, from infodumps to late-night whispers traded between the covers, he'd kept tearing himself open, trying to find some piece of himself that Smoker would grasp back and keep. Compared, it made any efforts of Smoker's feel cheap and superficial. It was that embrace, cloaked under the night sky that built an idea in his brain, coil by coil. There was something he could do, but…
By his nature, the last thing Smoker enjoyed was exposing himself—not literally, of course.Thatwas saucy and the scarlet Drake flushed never failed to satisfy. It was opening up figuratively that proved difficult. There were only a finite number of times a person could endure being labeled useless, marked as unworthy of effort before they locked down for good. He'd never tried to break that wall back down again. For Drake though… For Drake he could try.
.
Rightly anticipating a mess, Drake unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling them up once, then twice. "I never figured you a man of the arts."
"That's the thing. I'm not." Smoker grinned, the expression an awkward sort of cocksure, and he turned Drake's shirt sleeves over a third time. Just in case.
"And yet here we are," Drake gestured to the empty ceramics studio around them. Too cheap to book it for the afternoon, Smoker had merely chosen a day less frequented by other patrons. His bet landed lucky and granted use of the entire space to the pair and no one else.
"It's not about art."
"Of course." Condescension wasn't Drake's usual game, but on the rare occasion he decided to tease Smoker, it struck that much harder. For that, Smoker resolved to give him a hickey between his thighs that the man would feel for a whole goddamn week. "Then what is it about?" Drake asked. That much came genuinely—a real interest budding.
It made Smoker's stomach clench, less a case of being filled with butterflies, and more of being an insect pinned to a board. So for now, he ignored the question entirely.
"Stop dragging your heels and get over here. I'm the teacher today."
"I know the basics." As Drake readied to rattle off technique and tool, Smoker cut him off with a snort.
Return fire condescension: "Oh, do you?" A dull but thunderous thud popped off, care of the mass of wet raw clay Smoker dropped onto a table.
Drake smiled, confident. "I do."
Smoker rolled his eyes. "You pick it all up from a library book last night?"
The jibe stole the wind from Drake's sails and he sputtered quietly as his lover dragged a pair of low stools over.
"There's no shame in wanting to come prepared. I didn't want to waste your time—"
"Less downer jabber, more sitting." Grabbing an overly large fistful of clay, Smoker slapped it down on the wheel and once Drake had seated himself, pulled himself snug to the man's back. "You know, soon enough and we're not going to be able to do this," he chuckled, hooking his chin over Drake's shoulder. "You're getting too goddamn big."
For whatever reason, Drake kept shooting up, despite being well into his twenties. It felt like only last week he'd been a shrimpy little recruit, small enough to hide within Smoker's shadow. Now nearly Smoker's equal in height, he could barely get his arms around Drake for this.
"Shouldn't you be at your own wheel?" Drake's words spoke of doubt, but the tension slipping from his shoulders sang of trust.
"Nope. Not about art. I'm here to show you what it does for me."
"What it does for you…?" Drake repeated quietly as Smoker's hands settled, the man's touch light against his forearms.
"Dip your hands," Smoker nodded to a nearby bowl of water, "Put 'em on the clay, then foot on the pedal and breathe."
The wrinkle of Drake's nose didn't surprise Smoker in the least, nor did his muted shudder as formerly dry hands pressed into sloppy sludgy clay.
"Yeah, yeah. I know. Texture issue. You can bellyache about it later. Bear with me." A chuckle slipped out as Smoker shuffled his cigars to the side, pointing them further from Drake's cheek. "So let's have it, genius," Smoker ribbed, playful. "What did you learn?"
Drake's thumbs dug into the ruddy lump, pressing as he struggled to find a proper speed to rotate. "It was about coil and slab mostly, so I'm flying a little blind here," he admitted, frowning as the wheel stopped. "Ah. I think the bottom's too thin."
"Here—" Smoker's easy-going grasp on Drake's forearms tightened and he led the other's motions through it, "Crush it back down, start over, and think less." It was a silly venture—Smoker knew the width of his fingers and how to measure by them, knew the difference between a thick wall versus a thin one by how it bowed and leaned, knew how to tighten or flare edges. Drake didn't. But as Smoker opened,Draketried. Once. Twice.
"I'm really not sure I'm grasping what's going on."
The height stood uneven, a single side sloped at an odd angle. The knowledge gap yawned between the two men, unbridgeable in a single session.
"Hm." Perhaps, Smoker reasoned, atop it all, he was a shitty teacher. Reaching for a cigar, he tapped the ashes out into the water bucket. "Okay, maybe a change of plans would work better…"
Guilt lingered around the corners of his mind—enough to sour his stomach, but not his drive. The memory of their night star-gazing, even when he couldn't wrap his mind around the fantastic concepts that poured so freely from Drake, the excitement in his voice and the tightness of his hold around Smoker's body had made the evening electric. If Smoker's brain couldn't store all that stupid information, at least being there, being present had been enough for him.
They changed positions.
It wasn't about the art that came from creating. It was about the act of creation itself. Reaching deep, Smoker had to find the fortitude to claw down inside of him and uproot the context, even if he came back, hands bloodied.
When Drake slotted behind him, mirroring the other's previous spot, Smoker craned back just enough to receive a kiss from the man, the contact sweet, but chaste. Soggy reddish hand prints left a trail up hairy forearms and while Drake apologized for both the stains and his ineptitude at ceramics, no effort came to remedy or even slow the spread of the former.
"Oh, so now you're just gonna plant your muddy hands all over me?"
Smiling, Drake pressed a second to Smoker's throat, lingering over the steady beat of the other's pulse. "Don't stop—Show me. If I can't pick up by doing, you know I need to see it."
Bolder than he's ever felt sharing, Smoker obliged.
He dipped his hands, shaking the excess water with a flick of his fingers, and with a deep breath, set his hands to the soft clay, pressed hard enough to collapse the half-formed shape into a solid lump. Then, foot to the pedal, the wheel began to turn. His eyes slipped shut.
"Slow," Smoker narrated. "Start slow and get a feel for it, where the lumps are, what needs more effort to smooth out… You can't focus on anything else than what's in front of you. Know the shape of your hands and learn the give of the clay. The more you push out around you, the harder it is to get mad at shit while you play around with this."
In Drake's eyes, watching a fully formed idea spring from nothing felt nothing short of supernatural. And yet as Smoker's rough fingers guided the clay—pushing it in narrow, coaxing the walls up higher—it looked as if he'd been born for it, the act a mere mundane triviality in his hands.
Wriggling, Drake shifted, trying to get a better vantage on his lover. "—Are you even looking at what you're—"
"Nope."
"You're amazing," softly spoken, Drake made himself comfortable, arms curling around Smoker's chest, grinding the slowly drying sediment everywhere it ought not to be.
Smoker groaned, his brows pinching together even as he smiled, "Gods, it's all over my shirt now, isn't it? I wear a real shirt for once and this is how you repay me?"
"Bellyache about it later," Drake clutched at the fabric, trying and failing to dismiss his grin. "Keep going."
Smoker did. And where he fought to place words to emotions, Drake gently plied for answers.
"How can you do that with your eyes shut?"
His words felt like an oiled key fitted into a stubborn lock. Something clicked and Smoker found the lead-in back to his path.
"Once I figured out the basics, going blind helps me settle down. Keeps me from being a perfectionist." Where a base formed—a few inches wide, Smoker carefully pinched into the rising walls and pulled out, ever so slightly. The form widened. "Playing with this slop puts my brain back in order. Resets shit." Behind him, with broad hands spread wide over his chest, over his heart, Smoker felt Drake pace their breaths together—a deep inhale, a slow exhale.
"It's meditative," —as much a statement as it was a revelation.
Perhaps a part of Drake never realized that someone as obstinate as Smoker needed a task he could wipe the proverbial slate clean with from time to time. It'd be by design, after all, to appear as unflinching as possible. His parents saw a boy who refused to buckle down and commit to a future he'd never agreed to. His superiors saw a soldier who chafed and strained under orders, ready to bite the hands that fed him. Told so many times how wrong he was for everything he genuinely tried to accomplish, was it really so much to hide the cracks within him from others?
"I guess. Hard to explain."
"Thank you," Drake murmured. "For sharing this."
For once, the clench in Smoker's gut felt anything but painful. "Up to my elbows in clay," he warned. "Make me too mushy and I'll put it in your hair."
"Is that any way to get me to come back another time?"
Though he'd hoped, Smoker hadn't planned that far. He froze, the wheel still spinning as his thumb caught the uppermost edge of the soon-to-be vase, nicking deep into the clay.
"—You'd do that?"
Drake shook his head, "On my own? No. For you? Well, so long as you warned me to dress a little more casually first. I…" He hesitated, fingers nervously picking at the wet material beneath them. "—I love you. Why wouldn't I?"
Smoker felt full of air bubbles—like a few more degrees might spell his doom, sending shrapnel everywhere, unable to process the increase of affection. No one had ever, ever—
"Damn," Smoker swiped the back of his hand over his forehead, the skin damp. "With a line like that, you're hot enough to kiln-fire this yourself. You know that?"
"Is that a complaint?" Drake tilted his head.
Humming in thought, Smoker's chest gave a tremor of swallowed laughter. "Nah."
.
Years later, little reminders of the world around him decorated Smoker's otherwise spartan office. On the wall hung a photograph of Smoker with Masterson's daughter—still a wee little babe bundled in a sling. Frozen in time, she peered out of it, wearing a pair of his sunglasses with her face smeared with icing—a plate of half-eaten cake in his hands, his face out of frame.
Nearby, a crayon drawing had been tacked up on a corkboard. From one of the kids in town, they'd presented Smoker with it after admiring him on his bike from afar as Smoker hauled in a fresh catch of pirates he'd arrested. On it, a grinning cloud with an impressively thick pair of eyebrows slanted deviously, lorded over an unfortunately lumpy-looking pirate (Smoker had never been able to discern if the pirate was bruised and battered or if the detail was merely the kid's best effort) begging for mercy.
And on Smoker's desk, a relic of the time spent with his lover—from a second visit to the same studio, marked with Drake's initials on the bottom, was the world's ugliest ashtray.
