AN: You can see the first Harry and Ellis story for a detailed explanation of why, but as a reminder: these stories are written in dialect, trying to capture both vocabularies and accents, which might be annoying to read. If you’re trying to avoid slurs of a variety of kinds, mostly for Irish and Irish Traveller communities, it will definitely be offensive, as those are there. There is also intimate partner and sexual violence, consensual and non-consensual sexual acts and language.
It’s a tough go, nobody not of age should read it and please use your discretion if you are of age.
ALSO here’s a glossary, taken from the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
Arrah: actually 'Arrah Now', a unmeaning expletive, used by the vulgar Irish.
Backed: dead.
Balsom: money
Basting: a beating.
Bastonade: to cudgell, specifically with a stick.
Battered Bully: an old well cudgelled and bruised and huffing fellow.
Bene: good.
Bit: to bite is to rob, steal, fool, or trick.
Bob-tail: a light or whorish woman, a Eunuch or an impotant fellow.
Bounce: to brag, threaten, or bully
Bravo: a mercenary murderer, who will kill anybody.
Cater-Cousins: good friends
Chit: A dandy prat or durgen, a little trifling fellow.
Chop: a variable term, meaning in this case, making dispatch or hurrying over any business.
Colt: a boy newly initiated to roguery.
Cony: a silly fellow
Costard: head.
Cove: a man, fellow, or rogue
Crag: neck
Crackish: whorish
Crackmans: hedges
crony: a comerade or confederate in a plot
Cross: illegal or dishonest practices in general are 'cross' as opposed to 'square', so to live upon the cross is to get by via criminal enterprise.
Cull: a man, honest or otherwise.
Dag: a gun
Daggers: at dagger's drawing, that is, fighting.
Damme boy: a roaring, mad, blustering fellow, a scourer of the streets.
Dandy-prat: a little puny fellow.
Dear joye: nickname for Irishmen, due to its frequent use by the same
Ding: to knock down
Eriff: a rogue just initiated or beginning to practice.
Flash-Ken: a house that harbors thieves
Flute: penis.
Fumble: to go awkwardly about any work
Gan: mouth.
Ginger-pate: red-headed person
Gone snacks: to split evenly, partner together.
Gyp: a shortened form of 'gypsy', not necessarily complimentary
Harman: a constable.
Hearing-cheats: ears
Heavers: breasts.
Hector: a bully or swaggering coward, to hector is to threaten or bully.
Hob: a plain country fellow or clown.
Jackanape: an ape; a perty, ugly, little fellow.
Jack Sprat: a dwarf or diminutive fellow.
John Thomas: penis; though john thomas is reasonably well known now, the canting dictionary from 1811 has just 'thomas', with 'man thomas' being the extension.
Judge: a family man, whose talents have rendered a complete adept in his profession.
Kenned: not a cant word, but a Northern/Scottish Old English word, for knowing, perceiving, understanding.
Kin: a thief, to be called kin is to be recognized as a thief by another thief.
Low Toby: see 'Spice'
Madge Cull: sodomite.
Make a Rum Speak: to have carried off a productive robbery
Marrowbones: knees.
Merry-begot: bastard
Mill: to kill.
Molly/Miss Molly: a feminine man or a sodomite.
Nob: head
Nug: as in 'my nug', a term of endearment.
Pad: the highway, or a robber thereon
Paddy: nickname for Irishmen, not necessarily complimentary
Pike on the bene: to run as fast as one can.
Piking: running
Playing Booty: to play with the intent to lose
Plug Tail: penis.
Plump: Among other things, to be shot
Pop: a gun
Prigger: a prig is a thief, so priggers and thieves generally.
Prince Prig: King of the Gypsies.
Princock: a pert, forward fellow
Quarron: body.
Queer Game: Queer is bad, conterfeit, or false, so a queer game is a bad racket.
Rakehell: Rake, rakehell, and rakeshame all mean a lewd Spark or debauchee, spark being, as we say in modernity, a sharp dressed man.
Rapparee: Irish robbers or outlaws, dating to the time of Oliver Cromwell.
Rum: Good, clever, rich.
Rum Prig: a good thief
Spice: to rob on the highway on foot, robbing on horseback being called the toby, though the two can be distinguished by high-toby (robbing on horseback), or low-toby (robbing on foot).
Stash: to stop, put and end to something
Stow your gob: Shut your mouth
Sweet's your hand: said of one who had a knack for stealing by sleight-of-hand.
Tartar: a notorious rogue or sharper, who stick not to rob his brother rogue.
Toby: to rob on the highway
Tory: an Irish vagabond or raparee.
Wap up the breech: to have anal sex.
Wit: to know or understand
The smoke of the powder was just fading. The squealing of a pig up the lane, startled from its nap by the shot, was still urgent and panicked. The laugh of highwaymen – highway boys – could still be heard, full of youth, full of success, and sounding just like children at play in the street.
Harry leapt the hedge by the side of the road, catching his heels on it as he landed, laughing and coughing and laughing some more, while Ellis, tucking away his now-empty pistol, followed walking backwards. Harry was going to warn him about the hedge, then decided against it for a laugh. Even as he decided, a fondness rose in his chest and he felt like he should warn him again.
When his mouth opened, no warning came.
“Dear joye, judge, ye couldn' a made a rummer speak,” Ellis said, tearing his mask down to reveal his sharpened smile as he turned.
“Stash it there, gyp,” said the cove, taking the pistol pointed at Harry's ear from half-cock to full, just to solidify the threat – damn if Harry'd only seen it was at half he'd've dashed him to the ground. “Stay that side th' crackmans an' we're all cater-cousins. Livin' cousins, even.”
The smile on Ellis' face had disappeared, all at once so absent that it was as if his face hadn't ever had the capacity to smile. Harry gave him a hard glare, wishing eyes could apologize as well as mouths, but Ellis would look at nothing but the man with the gun to Harry's head. Quite reasonably, too, for there wasn't a damn thing they could do.
They'd had a chance, perhaps, before he'd fully cocked his pistol, but he'd come at Harry cross-wise from a hiding place in the bushes, keeping Harry from seeing the gun until it felt it at his ear. Ellis' other pistol had just been spent, his spare clutched uselessly in Harry's hand, crowded by the canvas bag holding their loot.
“You let 'im go,” Ellis growled, but the cove pushing his pistol into Harry's ear silenced him.
“Stow your gob, paddy, or your crony gets an new set of hearin'-cheats. Hand the balsom, there, ginger-pate,” the cove said, extending his free hand, “and mind the pop.”
Harry brought his hand around slowly. Estimating when his body blocked it from the cove's sight, he tangled his fingers in the cloth neck. When the cove grabbed the bag, the Ellis' pistol tumbled from Harry's hand to the ground.
He heard a grunt of a laugh from the cove. Once the bag was tucked into his belt, he shoved Harry around to face him, pressing the barrel of his pistol to his forehead until Harry stumbled into a tree.
“Hold, Irish,” the cove commanded, out of the corner of his eye seeing Ellis' half-mount on the hedge. Ellis froze, unmoving, unblinking eyes fixed on the cove. The cove kept the pistol pressing forward, until Harry could feel the circle of the barrel pushing into the skin of his forehead, pinning his head to the tree. Caught in his stumble, he half-knelt, needing a grip on the trunk to keep his legs from shaking.
“Sweet's your hand, ginger, to fumble your dag like that. Make a dive for it, blow me head off, is that the notion? You're a rum prig, aren't you?” He shook his head, nonetheless keeping his eyes fixed on Harry, and clicked his tongue. “For shame you pikin' with dear joye, there. Haven't you got better kin?”
“My kin's good enough not to cross his cousins, turn-coat,” Harry spat, letting the effort of holding himself so pinned sound in his voice.
“Oh, look at you bounce, kiddy,” the cove laughed. “But aren't you stuck in a bad way. I say it's a shame. Say what you will; it don' seem so now, but I don' usually take my toll of cross-coves. I usually don't mind lettin' a rogue take a turn or two on my little bit of pad. I usually just let 'em know where I stand and that they should be findin' themselves another road to spice. Damn me, didn't I even let you take a rum mark or two? And en't I a givin' soul, I was just gonna run ye off this time, but the lays you ran before, I'd only ever heard ginger here doin' the bouncing.”
He turned, taking his eyes off Harry, but pushing even harder with the pistol. “I know your kind, tory,” he said, lips pulling into a tooth-baring grin. “I know yer back-biting, hectoring, spunging way
“Do ye, den, ya princock,” Ellis growled. “Den ye wit th' Sheridans o' Rathkeale, an' ye wit what it's like ta cross dem, and -shoarly-,” he purred, letting the full Irish stretch of his accent bloat the word 'surely' into pure, threatening mockery, “yer playin' booty, an' don' suspect yer go'n' ta profit o' dis queer game.”
“I profit each one o' you rapparees is backed,” he snapped, and not to be distracted, he turned back to Harry, finger on the trigger, “or their crackish little mollies.”
He laughed when Harry's eyes went wide and, casting a mocking glance to each other them, grabbed at his crotch, jutting hips towards Harry. “Oh, I heard more than bouncin'. I say you're a shame to waste, an' I meant it, dandy prat, for I seen how you work. La, don't you make dear joye there sing. I en't above lettin' a madge cull play my flute, but if I ever was, ye'd've changed me ways. The way I figure it, only way to wap a trull is up the breech anyway, so what's the size of the heavers matter?”
Ellis shoved himself through the hedge, calm expression a mask for fury, and the highwayman kicked Harry's feet out from under him. “Come now, Miss Molly, does yer bob-tail really need another hole to plug?”
Ellis stopped, eyes never moving from the highwayman. There was no doubt he'd fire, and hit – the gun hadn't wavered, following Harry down.
The highwayman grinned. Pulling a knife from his belt, he half-squatted, taking turns between watching Ellis and grinning at Harry. “I suppose that's a problem with a mollies, after all. On'y one fundament, en't there? Come now, jack sprat,” he leveled his gaze at Harry, letting the knife hang loose, twisting as if blown by the wind, while the barrel of his pistol stared like a third eye, “how'd you like to be cunted?”
Harry glanced at Ellis, now through the hedge. He couldn't watch both knife and pistol, so he watched the highwayman's eyes instead. Letting his breathing become long, shaky pants, Harry shook his head.
“Too bad,” the highwayman said, but his knife – at the moment – stayed where it was. He waited, watching the way signs of Harry's panic spread, then slid a quick look to Ellis. His grin flashed out again. “How'd you like to live, poppet?” He waited for Harry's breath to stop, the shifting of his gaze, which Harry obligingly provided. “I got nothing against you; Jesus, I even see a use for you. No need to mill you both.”
He put his knife under Harry's chin – ignoring both of their immediate twitches – and stood from his crouch, pulling Harry up with the edge. “On your marrowbones, there, chit.”
“Back up, back up,” he added, emphasizing with the knife, until Harry knelt awkwardly pressed between knife and tree, his feet on either side of the thick trunk.
“Now,” he said, putting away the knife and pressing the gun into Harry's forehead again, bending him uncomfortably back until his head was pressed between weapon and tree again. He popped the buttons holding up the fall front of his trousers, shifted his shirt out of the way, and pulled out his half-flaccid cock. “You're gonna put that rum gan to use for the cause of England, an' make up for takin' down so much of that Irish hob. Do a good job, and we'll call it even, for all the balsom you took off my toby. An' if paddy can be believed when he says he loves you, he won't move, and make me blow that pretty ginger costard of yours all to pieces before you're done.” He grinned, prodding Harry with the barrel of the pistol after he loosened the pressure, to make sure he was looking. “And I don't put much stock in the word of Irishmen, so maybe you'd better be sharp about it.”
Harry swallowed and fell back, hands gripping the trunk, eyes flicking to Ellis. Ellis broke his furious glare for only a moment, looking down at Harry. Wetting his lips, Harry pushed himself forward, staring now at the gun trained on his forehead.
Harry let his mouth fall open. The highwayman laughed, and obligingly moved his pistol to the side.
Ellis started forward. The highwayman looked away. Harry, head already tucked down, launched himself into the highwayman's stomach.
The flash of powder as the trigger was pulled burned across the back of Harry's neck, spitting bits of searing powder into his skin.
With Harry's spring lamed by his awkward position, the highwayman stumbled but didn't fall under his slight weight. He seized Harry by the hair and yanked him back to give room to draw his knife. In drawing, the blade flashed not an inch from Harry's throat, his grip on the highwayman's waist released only just in time.
And then Ellis was there, a blur of silent fury as he threw himself whole and bodily into a rain of blows to the highwayman's body. Harry, fallen to his knees a second time, threw himself clear just as Ellis crashed into them. The highwayman twisted, flinging Ellis off as his knife struck for Ellis' belly.
The horror of a belly wound struck Harry even as the knife turned short of its target. Flinging himself forward, he dove for the dropped pistol resting still on the ground, and prayed to a God he didn't believe in for good tamping a well-closed frizzen.
By the time Harry was up again, Ellis had an arm twined around the highwayman's knife-bearing arm, his other fist making scattering blows to the highwayman's face. The highwayman suffered little from these ill-leveraged, ill-directed punches, and had started to beat his own fist up into Ellis' stomach It was sheer bullish rage and good fighting wind keeping Ellis on his feet; the pain of the blows was already weakening his furious attack. Though beating on each other with their free hands, still the two staggered back and forth as the knife dipped for Ellis' side and Ellis twisted and fought to push it back. He shouldn't have been able to fight it off for that long, with the blows to his stomach, but Ellis' rage was something to behold.
So was Harry's.
Stealthy as a cat, Harry slid up to the two fighters, slipped an arm around Ellis' neck, shoved the pistol into the highwayman's throat and pulled the trigger. Misty blood and speckled ash pocked their faces like a fistful of dashed sand. A plume, mixed smoke and blood, covered their view as the highwayman fell, Harry's grip keeping Ellis from toppling with him. They heard him hit, heard him choke on the ground, then they could see: the bullet passed clean through the throat, the discharge creating a charred and blackened ring of flesh around the rapidly filling wound.
Harry let go of Ellis, dropped the pistol, stepped forward and kicked the highwayman in the head until they heard the wet and muffled crack of the bones of his neck twisting loose. That he'd been dead before it happened was certain.
But not certain enough.
Ellis seized Harry by the hand and dragged him away from the body. He squeezed Harry's hand, turning to look at him, hard gray eyes pitiless as stone. The smell of blood and gunpowder and the closer stink of their own personal terror closed like a wave sucking them into the sea.
With a fierce jerk, Ellis threw Harry against the tree, diving after to cover Harry's body with his own. Air ripe with sweat and smoke, they kissed.
The last wisps were still rising from the pistol shot. There was a commotion up the road, likely where they'd plucked their partridge. The second shot, so close after the first, had sent the – apparently sensitive – squealing pig into even higher-pitched paroxysms.
Ellis pushed so hard that both could barely breathe, the kiss they shared strong enough to be bruising. Furiously, desperately, Ellis seized parts of Harry – his arms, his sides, his neck – to hold them still, to check them, to kiss them and press them as if afraid they would dissolve – like a flower in a giant's fist, stirred by the wind, would be crushed to keep hold of it.
But it wasn't only checking and assuring – in the fierceness of his grip, the way he shifted his body as if to stop Harry moving, Harry could feel Ellis' shaking rage. This anger went past the worst of their fights, for here there was fear, deep and unacknowledged. Harry with a gun to his head.
And Ellis, who'd taught Harry the difference between desire and defilement, watching Harry be finally defiled.
However much Ellis' half-punishing affection hurt, Harry wasn't crying out – at least not for the sake of pain. Back to the tree that a moment ago had trapped him for terror, with Ellis pressing him to it, Harry felt something strong as terror yet diametrically opposed: an infinite elation, a hard arousal, a desire to consume that it was itself consuming, all rising above a deep and freezing cold buried at the pit of his stomach. That he'd acted out his fear to lull the highwayman didn't mean it had no reality.
He let Ellis bruise him, moved his body against Ellis' to drive him more firmly to it. Soon they were both gasping, the searching of Harry's body having turned openly to a corrective grip on it, the bark of tree grinding and scattering to the grass at their feet as Harry's back was driven against it. Harry moaned, and Ellis let out a low growl of equal parts rage and desire.
Two pistol shots and a carriage robbery – they had already been delayed too long and now it was certain they must go.
Ellis shoved himself away from the tree, stumbling to their loot. Harry gulped air as he fell forward from the tree, then quickly, with crouching steps, worked over the body of the highwayman for take. They both panted like dogs.
When Ellis stepped over, holding the bag open to receive Harry's take, he swept up the pistol Harry had dropped at the highwayman's side. As he brought himself to standing, he let the barrel run the back of Harry's leg, pressing the inside of his thigh, until, meeting the curve of his ass, he pressed it unsubtly up against the divide, as another hard length soon – too soon, if they weren't careful – would.
Breath catching in his throat, Harry visibly shuddered. Ellis stowed the pistol, spun shut the bag, and threw it over his shoulder. Seizing Harry protectively around the waist, Ellis brought him away from the corpse, then spat upon the turned head, now purpling and swelling with the heart’s last few beats of a dead man's blood.
Hand in hand they fled the roadside, crossed the stream in the ditch, peeked out of the foliage to check for witnesses, then fled into the fields. There was a stream ahead they planned to cross, this country being rife with hounds, but first they found a set of pigs, fixed on them their masks and extra clothing, and set them loose, harrying them away to split the trail if they could. Another highwayman on the pad likely meant that their recent depredations – and the murder, since who would know him for the highwayman but them – wouldn't pass without investigation. They'd planned their route of escape the moment they'd spied and measured the pad – mostly at Harry's nervous urging – using it early wasn't a trouble.
What was a trouble was their sudden and engulfing burn for one another. Every bend they took, every moment they stopped to further confuse their trail, it threatened to swallow them again and leave them rutting like deer, out in the open. The running, dodging, chase-throwing steps were all taken, even without the chase being currently underway, as a precaution for when it would be, but even that dogged exercise didn't diminish the urge.
Rather it grew worse with the running, the panting, the sheen of sweat and streams of blood and passing time livening the bruises like the flush of hot blood their skin...
Ellis pulled to a halt in a nameless place, shoving the bag of goods into Harry's hand. They were almost there, an abandoned woodsman's hut declared their flash-ken. There was a little hillock to mount, a bit of boggy land to wade through, to be finally and utterly sure of their scent. They were in a little clearing, not twelve feet across, bare ground strewn with early-fallen leaves.
Ellis looked at Harry, chest heaving. He forced the words out, as if he were dying, willing to waste his last breath to say them, “Ah, mo ghrá, mo chuisle...”
His voice was pained, his expression still hardened and moodless, but his eyes – reaching out to touch Harry, gently, like a man might try to touch a spirit, Ellis looked as if he could weep.
Harry didn't want him to weep. All Harry had to do was tilt up his chin.
Ellis turned and seized Harry like the men in the dirty Greek book Harry'd filched weeks back: one hand on Harry's crotch, the other under his chin, to hold his jaw in place for a kiss. Ellis' hand worked rough over the cloth, finally trying to slide in space at the top of the fall in his breeches. When it proved too small he simply yanked, likely taking buttons off with the flap, and slid unimpeded to take Harry in hand.
Had Harry not seized Ellis with his free hand the instant he stepped forward, Ellis would've knocked him over. As it was he was stumbling back at every new motion, feet practically dragging between Ellis' as Harry's rough, one-handed grip on the front of his shirt held him up. When Ellis' warm hand seized his cock, Harry's sagging weight cause the cloth to tear.
In retaliation, Ellis grabbed him by hips and lifted, easy as one would lift a child, and slammed Harry into a tree. Under a shower of nuts and leaves, Harry gasped, half for his breath knocked clean out, half for the rough hand regaining its hold of him. Wordless but gasping far more eloquently than words would've been, Ellis kicked Harry's knees apart and pressed hard against him with his body, fully intending to finish what he started.
Spots were still clearing from Harry's vision, but his body had no issue responding to Ellis' touch. He was hard and whimpering needfully before he'd even regained his wind. Likewise, his sight – the moment he saw that clothes-paled, scarred, nut-brown skin, that tearing Ellis' shirt had revealed, Harry reached for it like a drowning man would a plank of wood. The shirt had torn free from the collar, and Harry's rush to touch cause it to tear further, a shoulder entirely freed.
Feeling Harry's scrabbling grip against his skin, Ellis grunted, momentarily releasing his grip so he could seize Harry by the ass and haul him up further. Harry's hand closed around Ellis' neck, holding tight so he could kiss and taste his sweat sheened skin. With the full vista of Ellis' shoulder – and since the shirt was ruined anyway – Harry grabbed the sleeve and ripped off the dangling half. He grabbed the collar one-handed and tore it at the seam. Shoving Ellis' hand away from kneading his ass for a moment, he took hold of the other sleeve and ripped off the other half of Ellis' shirt.
Ellis, meanwhile, had put his hand back on Harry's cock, stroking it to hardness, then moved to gently rub his balls. Using his grip on Harry's ass, he pushed their hips together, the rub of Harry's bare cock sadly distant from his own, buried under cloth.
The stream of Ellis' thoughts was frighteningly clear. When Harry knocked his hand away, he swiftly brought it back to the buttons on his trousers, pulling free what he could not fumble free. Though the feeling that he'd been hard since they started running was only an illusion, his cock sprang free and ready nonetheless as his trousers fell. Not letting moment waste, he spat into his palm. Swiftly rubbing it over both their cocks, he closed his grip. His other hand left off seizing whatever part of Harry it could to slide into the slight space between Harry's breeches and where he now steadily stroked them both.
With a knee, he shoved at Harry, and Harry obliging turned ape and scrambled as much up the trunk as he could, tightly clutched bag of ill-gotten gains thumping into the trunk, all but forgotten. Letting his shoulder fall heavily forward to pin Harry half up the tree, Ellis could reach a rough hand between Harry's legs and feel for the tightly-closed ring. Grunting all the warning Harry would get, he shifted his weight to knock Harry's breath out again. In the stunned moment before retaking it, Harry's body relaxed, and Ellis's fingers slid inside.
Harry's hard-won urchin instinct to hold onto what was his, finally collapsed. With a sharp and wanting cry, Harry dropped their bag of loot as he threw both his arms around Ellis' neck. It upended half over Ellis' shoulder. They ignored the heavy pistols knocking into them as they spilled amidst a modest shower of coins, pawnable strips of gold braid and ruffled lace, and plentiful buttons, fobs, and jewelry.
Harry's body wasn't his, not remotely. Even where he would move his hips to help please himself, he couldn't, for Ellis had him pinned flat, fingers within deciding where Harry's hips would move, and hand without holding all varieties of pleasure he could have. By his moaning, it was all the pleasure he could want. It stung, the fingers working in him, and still he cried out, still he bruised his own body trying to fight Ellis' hold only to make Ellis fuck him harder.
Bending, ignoring Harry's piteous moaning, Ellis kissed up his neck, rooting his fingers fully inside Harry to finally stroke him off. Now Harry fought, knowing Ellis would finish him, bucking to try to prolong the pleasure even as his he felt his release building to inexorability. He begged – he groaned Ellis' name, the failing of his strength causing his weight to fall more heavily, drive Ellis' fingers harder inside him, until what had been strokes mimicking those of Ellis' hand on him became a deep rocking of his hips. Harry dug his fingernails into Ellis' neck to try to pull his weight up, but Ellis ignored their blood-letting bite and quickened his pace. Ellis let his own cock out of his grip and beat Harry to release with a swiftness Harry hadn't achieved since losing his virginity to Ellis in the first place.
And he cursed him as he came. “Ye fucking merry-got, teaguelander, shite-eating, skulking, sorry, mouthy, Irish son of a bitch...”
Harry's seed gathered in his hand, Ellis found it hard to be offended. Harry's grip slipped, And Ellis stepped away. The release of the pressure holding him up, combined with his other release, sapped all the strength of Harry's limbs.
He sank straight to the ground – on his knees, in a pile of ill-got gold, goods and pistols, and Ellis standing before him with a handful of his come and a raging erection.
Kneeling before a tree, disarmed, wealthy, and facing something loaded. Ellis saw it to, and felt the unwelcome, wanting throb of tension pass through every part of his body.
-'If paddy can be believed when he says he loves you, he won't move, and make me blow that pretty ginger head of yours all to pieces before you're done. And I don't put much stock in the word of Irishmen, so maybe you'd better be sharp about it.'-
“Don' wit who's mouthy, here, boyo,” Ellis muttered, but before he could finish, Harry had crawled forward on his knees, spilled Ellis' handful on Ellis' standing cock and put his mouth over it. It was all Ellis could do to stay standing himself – the boy had a mouth like a dwarf's bathhouse, hot, close and wet, and lips sealed tight as a teetotaler's jug. If he meant vengeance for his quick coming, he'd get it.
But the mimicking of their earlier encounter had reawakened Ellis' anger, and it mixed poorly with his delayed desire. That Harry'd done exactly as he wanted him to do only made it worse.
“Ye should have waited,” he growled, taking hold of Harry's hair as his head bobbed.
For the moment, Harry ignored him. While Harry's mouth worked, his hands did to, snapping loose the buttons on the side of Ellis' trousers and pulling them down all the way. Ellis stepped forward to step out of them. And kept stepping forward – until he'd successfully forced Harry to either stop or shift back on his knees.
“Waited for you to get shot tryin' somethin' daft?” Harry spat, knees between Ellis' feet – staring up at a glorious vista or Ellis' naked body and standing cock unfortunately capped by Ellis' angry expression.
Ellis yanked on his hair, and Harry seized him around the thighs to stay upright. He ran light fingers down the backs of Ellis' thighs and watched his anger dissolve into a shudder for only a second, a hard pulse shaking his cock. But prodding his desire made his anger return ten-fold
“Why th' hell d'you try an' ding 'im wit' a damn dag t'yer nob, ye blasted cony!”
“Because you were going to get yerself plumped charging at him like that!”
“Look at ye!” He shouted, gesturing down at Harry on his knees. “How're ye gonna get a jump on a man like dat? Any damn fool woulda known ta wait, an' I on'y charged 'cause ye'd been like ta get plumped yourself. I kenned what I was doin',” Ellis said. He touched the wound at Harry's neck. “Look at yer crag.”
Hissing at the sting of the touch, Harry growled back. “I got a jump on ye, I'd say. An' I only did it because you were so damned-all eager to get shot tryin' to stop him from twenty feet away.”
“Weren' more dan five,” Ellis said. “An' I coulda crossed it while–”
“While what?” Harry demanded. “While I sucked some gobshite jackanape's john thomas?”
Ellis' mouth had gone dry. Unconscious of the gesture, his hand tightened its grip on Harry's hair, causing stinging pain. It was suddenly hard to get a breath. His stomach was pulled so tight by... was pulled so tight – and he wouldn't let himself account for why what a moment ago had felt all made of horror and rage had suddenly made him go hard as iron.
Harry's hand brushed over Ellis' cock, and he whispered with the soft roundedness of his low accents, “I on'y take one so, ye wit? Dag or no dag.”
Hands working softly, he began to lick and caress' Ellis' cock, starting with the underside, and playing the tip with his tongue, toying as if it were a delicate sweet.
Ellis sucked in a breath through his teeth. He fell forward, bracing himself against the tree, and Harry obligingly worked himself back, coming closer to the tree, closer to where he had been when both their pulses raced with fear.
“Ye coulda been killed,” Ellis muttered, between panted breaths. “'E woulda killed ye...”
“And did nearly you,” Harry returned. “An if I let 'im, I woulda died wit' a stranger's pipe in my mouth.”
He could feel Ellis stiffen this time in his hand, his bruised stomach drawing tight. The desperate and regretful noise Ellis made when the moment of tension passed sounded as if it were whispered right in his ear. Harry wrapped his hand around Ellis' cock, bringing his mouth closer to – but not quite – taking him in.
“I woulda stopped 'im mesel',” Ellis said, when he gathered the breath for it. “Ye shoulda waited.”
“He would've had me twice over against that tree before you got to stoppin' him. I'd've no need for dinner by then.”
Ellis' grunt was as reluctantly given as it was needy, his whole body shifting forward in response to the quickening of his desire. Harry pumped faster, hoping to draw Ellis to completion before he even got to enjoy Harry's body – a perverse sort of victory, for Harry was certain if it wasn't this erection that would have the pleasure, it was the one Ellis would no doubt conjure as soon after as he could. Oh, surely, he could see it – see it in the way Ellis looked at him, the way he'd taken Harry earlier, as if the body were his. Ellis wasn't done yet, neither with anger nor desire nor fear.
Nor was Harry. That sickening coldness in the pit of his stomach remained, wakened, like a door inside him had been beaten open in a blizzard. It was always there, he knew, in the city, in front of strangers, when they ran out before the carriages and forced them to stop and be robbed. It was never there in the moments when he and Ellis were alone, when they were flush, when they laughed as they had laughed their way over the hedge.
Harry needed it warmed.