Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chris isn’t opposed to exhibitionism. He’s even thought about taking Adrian to a sex club out of town, somewhere people could watch them fuck. He thinks Adrian might agree if he gets to keep his mask on.

So, in a general sense, the idea of having an audience while he fucks his boyfriend is kind of interesting. But this is not what he has in mind.

“Christ, what’s wrong with you? You tryin’ to jackhammer the little fruitcake to death? Sloppy, no technique. No wonder none of those whores you stuck your dick in ever came back for seconds.” 

Chris grunts in frustration. He doesn’t realize he’s digging his nails into Adrian’s hips until his soft moans are punctuated by a sharp yelp.

“Sorry.” Chris rubs the spot with his hand, feeling the indent of his nails in Adrian’s skin. He looks down, trying to bore his gaze into Adrian’s back, instead of at the man drinking a beer in the corner of his bedroom.

“Why do you think he keeps letting you sodomize him? Has he not been fucked enough before to know how shitty a lay you are? Or is it just that you’re the only two fags left in this town?”

“Fuck off!” Chris grits out, not quiet enough. Adrian cranes his neck to look at him.

“What?”

“Nothing. I said, uh, ‘fuck, I’m getting off.’” Adrian doesn’t look like he buys it, but Chris angles a very targeted thrust, and it suitably distracts him. Adrian’s head falls forward, and he presses himself back onto Chris, seeking more.

Chris gives it to him. He never wants to stop giving it to him. His low groans match Adrian’s breathy ones, almost a harmony.

“Fucking glad I’m not alive to witness this. My seed created you, the son who was supposed to take up my mantle and lead an empire. And yours is going in another man’s ass.”

“Fuck!” Chris feels nauseous, the scent of his dad’s cigarettes and aftershave clogging the room. In the corner, Auggie smirks, knowing he hit a nerve.

Adrian stills again, and before he can ask, Chris taps him on the hip, determined to make this work. It’s been four days since they had real sex; Auggie’s looming presence has been killing the mood before it has a chance to start. Chris needs this.

“Hey, can you get on your back? Want to look at you.”

Adrian nods, and turns over, but before Chris can line up again, he pulls him down, wrapping Chris in a kiss that’s surprisingly soft and grounding. Chris leans onto him, lining up as many points of contact across their bodies as possible.

“Look, he knows you’re the girl, even if he’s the one taking it up the ass. Big old Peacemaker needs soft widdle kisses to blow his load.” August sing-songs in a mocking whine. Chris clenches his jaw, accidentally biting into Adrian’s lip.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry!” Chris reaches down, nudging Adrian’s legs apart. He gamely wraps them around Chris’s waist. Chris is getting moments at a time when Auggie’s presence fades to the background. It’s no small blessing that he can focus undistracted on Adrian’s face as Chris presses himself back inside.

“Fuck, oh my god. Is it getting bigger every time?” he whines, hands fisting in the sheets. This is better. He has more to look at, things to keep him in the moment—Adrian’s face, the way his chest heaves, his dick leaking precum against his stomach. He braces his arms on either side of Adrian’s ribs, and Adrian’s hands come up to his chest as he thrusts into him.

“God, your chest is incredible, man. I love the way it flexes when you hold yourself up.” His hands trace over Chris’s skin, rubbing a thumb against his nipple and dragging a moan out of Chris that’s about an octave higher than his other sex noises.

Chris can’t see him anymore, but ghost dad is overcompensating for that by growling right in Chris’s ear, the stench of liquor on his breath. “You gonna let him touch you under your bra, Nancy? What will the other girls say?”

“Shut up,” Chris growls, and Adrian blanches. His hands freeze, before he pulls them back quickly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Not you!” Chris barks, and Adrian recoils even more. Shit. He presses a hand against his cheek, brushing his cheekbone with his thumb. “Sorry. You didn’t do anything. I wasn’t talking to you, I was—” Chris cuts himself off. He can’t think of a lie fast enough, and he doesn’t want Adrian to know the truth. Chris should be getting him off, not burdening him with his bullshit.

Chris chose this position so he could see Adrian’s face. He forgot that meant Adrian could see him, too. His look of fear is replaced slowly by understanding, and then concern. “Your dad’s here.”

Chris buries his face in Adrian’s chest, thrusting into him harder, faster, trying to make the feeling enough to overpower the cackling laughter coming from the corner of the room. “Since when can you read me like that?” he mutters. “What happened to you not getting facial expressions?”

Adrian tries to pull his head back and look at him, but Chris doesn’t comply, keeping his face buried against the man’s collarbone. “Dude, you might be in my ass, but I’m in your mind. I know you, man. We can stop.”

Adrian might be throwing up the white flag, but Chris hasn’t given up. Adrian has got to be close. If Chris can just get him there, his dad won’t have won this round. “I don’t want to stop. Want you to come on my cock. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? You’ll be a good boy for me.” The attempted power play is ridiculous—August cackles. The choked sound in Chris’s voice isn’t exactly a dom fantasy.

Chris reaches a hand toward Adrian’s dick, but he catches it in its tracks, squeezing Chris’s palm instead. “Not today, I won’t. Please stop, Chris. It’s okay.” His voice is so soft, it makes Chris’s chest ache and burn.

Chris stops thrusting, but stays pressed against Adrian for another minute, his face buried against his collarbone. “Shit. Shit!” He growls against his chest like screaming into a pillow. Adrian seems to get this time that the anger isn’t directed at him. He presses a hand against Chris’s back, rubbing his shoulder blade.

“Look at that! My shithead son threw his lot in with the homo parade, and he can’t even get that right. Guess neither team wants you, huh?”

Chris grumbles, and sets his jaw, and once he’s pretty sure his face isn’t crying, finally rolls off of Adrian. He makes a soft noise as Chris pulls out of him, and Chris’s dick makes a final attempt to rise to attention before throwing in the towel.

He can feel two pairs of eyes on him. He watches the ceiling.

He scrubs his face in his hands. “I’m sorry, V.”

Adrian’s on him then, leaning over him, a hand wrapped vine-tight around his arm. “Don’t be! It’s not a problem.” Chris shoots him a particularly snide look, and he amends. “Well, it is, obviously, for you, but the sex part isn’t. We have great sex all the time. It’s okay if we have to press pause—for a little while.” And there it is, in the open. Chris hadn’t told Adrian why he hadn’t been initiating sex recently, or why he’d turned it down the last time Adrian came on to him (which Chris never does—as a rule, if Adrian wants to go to pound town, Chris is booking him a first class ticket). But Adrian must have put the pieces together. He is deceptively smart sometimes, especially when it came to Chris.

Adrian speaks tentatively. “I thought it was getting better, though?”

Chris rolls over on his side. He needs a minute.

It had been getting better. In the five months since Auggie’s death, he’d been showing up in fits and starts. It was at its worst right after the Butterfly incident, and in the weeks before Chris finally gave in, shoved Adrian his trailer wall, and shoved his tongue down his throat. After that was the first time it abated. For about a month, anytime Adrian was around, Auggie wasn’t.

He started appearing again right when Chris was working his way toward asking Adrian to be his boyfriend, before disappearing for a while once they sealed the deal. That was five weeks ago. Five weeks of mind-blowing sex and Chris making Adrian dinner and Adrian teaching Eagly how to start the coffee machine. All incredible, all ghost-dad free, until now.

Adrian rests a hand on Chris’s hip and lets him sulk, until he finally turns around to face him again. “Yeah, it was getting better,” he admits. “It was good when we started dating. I don’t know what changed.”

Chris watches as Adrian takes his hand, squeezing it, and begins massaging the individual fingers. He thinks Adrian might love him. He’s pretty certain he loves Adrian. He’s waiting to tell him until he can be sure that his dad won’t show up and ruin the moment. Which is seeming less and less possible to guarantee.

“You gonna buy him flowers too? Play him a little love song, let him fuck you on the piano like that faggy movie you used to watch?”

Chris does his best to ignore him. Whatever his dad says, Pretty Woman rules.

And that actually doesn’t sound like a half bad date. He’s been thinking about playing music for Adrian. And he kind of does want to get fucked on a piano.

Music. An idea starts to form. He might be able to drown August out.

And so far, his hallucination has obeyed the laws of physics. Optics. Whatever. Point is, Auggie doesn’t phase through walls or appear in the middle of objects. If he gets Adrian in a small enough space, they could be alone. 

Chris sits up. “Hey. Let’s take a shower.”

Adrian doesn’t move yet, looking a bit wary. “Together?”

There isn’t much room in Chris’s shower trailer. The last time they tried any funny business, he strained his hip trying to keep it at a useful angle. Even for just showering, it’s a tight fit.

But that’s the idea. “Yeah. I’ll get it warmed up.”

He crosses the trailer quickly before Adrian can argue. His dad watches from the living room now, and Chris flips him off as he digs through his CD stack. He selects Def Leppard’s Hysteria, which isn’t his most favorite, but he saw Adrian signing along and smiling to “Pour Some Sugar on Me” once, so he thinks his boyfriend will enjoy it.

Adrian gets to the bathroom as the first track starts, turned up to eleven, and looks confused. Chris just starts the water, climbs inside, and holds the curtain open for him.

Adrian climbs in, and it’s tight, but it’s good. His body slots up next to Chris, still smelling like sweat and sex.

Adebayo once told him that, when he was feeling overwhelmed, he should focus on his senses. Ground himself in what he could see, touch, hear. Chris had constructed a buffet of sensation. The music, the heat from the shower, Adrian’s body crowded into his own—it should be enough. On its own, it’s almost overpowering.

But, suddenly, his dad is here. Right outside the fucking curtain. Chris isn’t sure how he knows, or why he won’t leave, except that his brain fucking hates him.

He needs more. He reaches around Adrian, turns the water heat up. He massages Adrian’s girly shampoo into his hair, scraping his nails against his scalp and holding his face close to Adrian’s neck, trying to force the rosemary scent to overpower the smell of cigarettes and Old Spice seeping into his lungs from outside the curtain.

Adrian sighs against him, the noise of it soaking into Chris’s chest, before he lets out a small yelp as the ancient water heater finally responds. “Shit, too hot, man!”

It’s scalding. It’s not hot enough. Chris shoves Adrian against the shower wall, out from under the spray. It pours across Chris’s back, burning his skin. 

He pulls Adrian’s head back by the hair, rinsing it out quickly before moving to his real goal and sucking a chain of marks into the column of his neck. He thinks he can taste the blood rising to the surface of the skin underneath his mouth. He reaches Adrian’s collarbone and bites down, willing his brain to focus on the copper taste his tongue laves up. 

“Oh fuck, Chris…” Adrian keens. And he’s too distracted to get hard now, really, so the noise bypasses his dick and goes straight to stroking his ego instead. His bullshit Freudian drama doesn’t have to blue ball both of them. He can still be useful, can keep dragging noises like that out of his boyfriend.

One hand still tangled in Adrian’s hair, the other moves lower. Adrian catches it just as it reaches his abdomen. Leans back to meet Chris’s eye. “It’s really okay, you don’t have to—”

Chris shakes his head frantically. “I want to. Please let me. I need—” A million possible endings to the sentence branch out in his mind. I need to be useful. I need to prove I can still take care of you, even if I can’t sort myself out. I need to see your face when I make you come and know I can still do something right.

But Adrian touches his cheek, and nods, and arches into his touch, and Chris has a mission again. He reaches down and strokes Adrian firmly, fast, skipping past the languid buildup and moving straight to the pressure he know will have him shivering in his arms.

Adrian was already half-hard and rises quickly under his touch. The time Chris spent on foreplay in bed, before his shitty ghost dad cockblocked them, is clearly still paying dividends. Within seconds, Adrian’s chest is heaving.

And for those few seconds, it’s enough. It’s everything Chris can focus on. But the scent of Marlboro Reds comes seeping back in, a dry, sarcastic chuckle somehow piercing through the deafening refrains of “Love and Affection.”

“Not now,” Chris grits out, as quiet as he can manage. “For fucks sake, just let me have this…”

“You can have it,” Adrian sighs, sounding confused. Shit. He leans back to look at Chris, with an openness that makes his heart wrench. “Anything you want from me, Chris, I want to give it to you—Oh.” His mouth goes tight, eyes mapping over Chris’s face. “You weren’t talking to me.”

And before he can ask how Chris is feeling, or make him stop again, or look at him with any more sympathy, Chris captures his mouth in a desperate, hungry kiss. He swallows the moans he wrenches out of Adrian as he strokes him, digs his free hand into his hip, then his back, drawing him closer. Like this, it feels like Adrian is an extension of himself. He responds so perfect in sync with Chris, his stuttering cries matching the tempo of Chris’s hand on his cock.

And the cigarette smell won’t go away, but Chris needs to be here, needs to feel Adrian come apart and know he made it happen. He presses into Adrian’s back, drawing him as close as he can manage while still jerking him off, and feeling his lats flex as he struggles to hold himself upright.

“You gonna come for me, baby?” he asks. The answer is obvious. Chris can read the telltale stutter in Adrian’s hips. But he gets what he was looking for—Adrian’s voice in his ear.

“Fuck yeah, I’m so close, Chris. You take such good care of me, make me feel so good. I want—I want to come for you, please let me come—”

“Listen to the little fairy lying through his teeth for you—” growls the voice, right in Chris’s goddamn ear, overlapping Adrian’s soft words of praise. “Acting like you’re the boss of him when you’re clearly a pathetic soy boy who needs to be told how good he is or he’ll cry.” Chris grits his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut as they start to sting. Shutupshutupshutup!

Adrian’s gone still and silent. He starts to move, to lean back to look at Chris. Chris takes him by the hair, pushing his head into his shoulder as he presses Adrian further into the shower wall.

“Bite my shoulder.” He means it as a command, but it comes out desperate and needy. Adrian complies, and the heat and sharpness of his teeth is grounding enough for Chris to return to his body for a few more seconds. That’s all he needs.

He strokes Adrian mercilessly, hand squeezing a bruise into his hips, until he moans, and comes across Chris’s stomach. His teeth bite down harder into Chris’s shoulder, his scream vibrating against his skin, and Chris is only half-hard, is too distracted to get anywhere near an orgasm tonight, but part of him swears he can feel it too, the way Adrian shudders underneath him heating his body up right from the core. Chris made him feel like that. He did something right.

It should be Adrian slumping against the wall, exhausted and spent. Chris should be the one rubbing soothing circles into his back, whispering soft reassurances in his ear, not the other way around. It’s not right, Adrian taking care of him like this.

Adrian’s hand moves to his stomach, dragging through the mess starting to wash away there, before starting lower, tentative. “Do you want me to—?”

Chris shakes his head. He opens his mouth, but the explanation dies in his throat. Adrian nods, and moves the hand to the small of his back. He turns to lower the water temperature, before drawing Chris closer, pulling his head against his shoulder. Chris has to lean down a bit. The water on his face gives him deniability for any tears that make or may not escape his eyes.

After a minute, the water starts to go cold, and Adrian shuts it off. Chris feels his stomach dip suddenly, the presence outside the curtain looming. He looks at the shower curtain and sees a silhouette.

Adrian follows his gaze. “Is he out there?”

Chris nods, feeling too sick with dread to care how pathetic he must look.

Adrian sets his jaw, determined. “Gotcha. Stay here, gimme a second.”

Adrian climbs out of the shower, and there’s a sudden clattering noise. Through the curtain, Chris sees the shapes of Adrian flailing about, hears little noises of exertion like he’s fighting. “Take that! You scram, you dead racist bastard!”

The bathroom door opens, and the clattering becomes more distant, echoing from the hallway, until Chris hears the front door open, and Adrian shouts “And don’t let me catch you here again!” before it slams shut.

A moment later, Adrian’s head pops in from behind the curtain. “OK, I took care of him for you! Roughed him up but good. He ran out of here like a little bitch, it was hilarious.”

Chris can’t help laughing, a dry sound that chokes a bit at the end. Adrian pulls the curtain aside. Apparently, he was very committed to realism in his pantomime. The floor is scattered with bottles and Q-tips, which will be a bitch to clean up later. But Chris just steps out of the shower, presses him against the sink, and kisses him senseless.

His dad doesn’t return until 2 am, when Chris gets up to pee. He’d sprawled on the couch, manspreading like he owns the place, and chain smoking. He drives his lit cigarette into the couch cushion, and Chris can smell the acrid stench of burning polyester.

Chris swallows a few sleeping pills, and he feels a little guilty for waking Adrian up to draw him over his chest like a blanket. But Adrian doesn’t complain, instead resting his arm protectively against Chris’s ribs as Chris buries his nose in his hair, again desperately willing the scent of rosemary shampoo to drown out the cigarette stench. 

Chapter Text

Adrian works late the next night, so by the next time they see each other, it’ll be six days without proper sex. Chris is determined to fix that. 

He goes over to Adrian’s apartment while he’s at work, and uses the spare key to get inside, hauling groceries in with him. He’d planned to make dinner as a surprise, but he panics and forgets the new code to Adrian’s security system (he’d changed them all so they weren’t Chris’s birthday anymore, muttering about it no longer being secure), so he has to text Adrian that he’s here before hidden tripwires lazer his face off or something. 

He chews a couple gummy edibles as he cooks, which should kick in right at the end of dinner if he times it right. Before he started sleeping with Adrian, he’d found a reliable way to keep his dad at bay was getting really fucking high. 

“You think reefer is gonna make me turn tail, boy?” Auggie mocks, as Chris seasons a pair of steak filets. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

It is a bit worrying seeing him in Adrian’s apartment—he’s never shown up here before. Chris feels weirdly protective, not wanting his dad to see this intimately into Adrian’s life, until he remembers that he isn’t fucking real. 

He points at Auggie threateningly with a spatula. “You just wait. This shit’s gonna kick in, and you’re gonna leave me the fuck alone and I’m gonna do gay shit with my boyfriend.” Auggie groans in distaste, and Chris smirks. “And who says ‘reefer?’ Fucking Jimmy Carter?” 

And then there’s the noise of the key in the lock, and Chris feels a mix of anticipation and dread, looking forward to seeing Adrian, but worried about what Auggie’s gonna say about him. But his dad retreats to a corner, glaring silently. Maybe the edible is starting to work, or Adrian’s presence is staving him off again.

He’s still wearing the dorky hat. He comes up behind Chris and wraps an arm around his waist, looking down at the steaks he’s turning over. “Mmm, smells good.”

“ You smell like onions,” Chris retorts. Adrian gets his revenge by worming his way in closer. 

“Now you do too, asshole. Restaurant smell is contagious.”

“There’s red wine and strawberries in the bag. Want to get the table ready? These are almost done.” Chris inclines his head, and Adrian gives him a final, heimlich-like squeeze before pulling away.

“Wow, red meat, red fruits and wine. Is it a red theme? I guess my shirt matches.” Adrian glances at his tacky, polyester button up. Getting it off of him shoots to the top of Chris’s priority list. 

“I didn’t plan it like that. They were out of peaches.” Chris plates the steaks, and brings them toward Adrian’s small kitchen table. 

“Steak and peaches?” 

“Yeah, it’s a classic combo.”

“Not that I know of. Steak and asparagus, maybe?” Adrian sits at the table and pours them two glasses of wine. 

“Do you want your pee to smell weird? Peaches are a way better choice.” Chris crosses behind Adrian and snatches the hat off his head before he has to look at it any longer. Adrian looks a little affronted, so Chris drops a quick kiss against his lips to win some points back. And because he wants to. 

“Mmm.” Adrian smiles up at him. “What’s all this for? You don’t need a bunch of showboating to get my pants off. For you, I’m a cheap lay.” 

Chris shrugs. “Just felt like something new.” Mostly, he wanted to show Adrian how much he appreciates his patience with the whole ghost-dad, dead-bedroom situation. Chris is getting a little better at the whole feelings thing, but he’s not at a point where he can say something like that out loud. So, steak. And red wine. 

Adrian tells Chris about his day, and stories about his coworkers, whose names Chris is starting to remember. Chris updates him on an upcoming Task Force mission, and tries to downplay it when he can tell Adrian’s getting jealous he can’t come along on this one. Chris keeps stealing glances to the corner of the room, where Auggie fucking refuses to dissapear from his spot on the futon, and Adrian pretends not to notice. 

Eventually, the wine runs down, and Adrian’s sock foot is rubbing against Chris’s calf under the table, and Chris is starting to panic, because the edible should have kicked in a while ago and it hasn’t and his dad won’t fucking leave so he can get laid. 

Chris is sick of waiting. He stands up, crossing the room to dig through his jacket pocket. “Hey. I’m gonna smoke a bit, if you want to shower.” He’d hoped to build up to the next part a bit more subtly, but he remembers how serious Adrian gets about consent once Chris is high, so he decided to put clarity over seduction. “After that, I want you to top me.” 

“Oh! Yeah, I’d like that.” Adrian smiles a bit, before his eyes pass to the small pre-roll in Chris’s hand. “You brought weed to my house?”

Chris hadn’t considered that would piss him off. He starts pulling on his coat. “Yeah, uh, sorry? I’ll smoke it outside.” It’s unseasonably cold, but it seems like the right thing to do.

But Adrian shakes his head, and plasters a smile over the annoyed look on his face. “No, you don’t have to. Just, ah, open a window? And maybe light a candle when you’re done.”

And Chris knows Adrian is still treating him like he’s got a giant “Handle with Care” stamp across his forehead, cutting him too much slack out of pity for his fucked up personal demon issue. And it makes Chris happy and angry and too many things to handle when he’s still this goddamn sober. 

He sucks down the joint efficiently while Adrian showers, listening to the song he’s singing to himself and trying to place it. Some old pop track, maybe Hall and Oates. He keeps his eyes off the corner of the futon, and as his thoughts start to cloud in a familiar way, and the joint finally burns down, he looks back, and his dad is gone.

“Fuck yeah! Take that, you old bitch.” He hears the shower shut off, and uses the last of his rapidly failing coordination to get to the bedroom, and drag Adrian by the towel onto the bed before he even dries his hair. 

When he’s high, Chris could do foreplay for hours. He uses his hands and tongue to map every part of Adrian’s body like he’s discovering it for the first time. It all feels so different in this light, everything a bit softer and warmer, Adrian’s sighs echoing on a drawn out, sustained reverb in his ear. They’re so perfectly alone , finally the only two people in the room, and maybe the building or the whole town, even. It sort of feels like they are. 

When Adrian starts working him open, Chris feels it all over. It’s all still pretty new. Adrian’s the only man Chris has let top him. Though there’s a familiar ease now that they’ve done it this way a couple times, the feeling of it is still as all-encompassing and exciting as the first time, without all the awkward fumbling. Chris has been pleasantly surprised to learn that the novelty never quite wears off with Adrian, and that sex actually gets better when you have it with the same person more than once. Who’d have guessed?

The newness of it all, and the way bottoming takes over his senses, was another reason he’d wanted this tonight. Overwhelm his senses, and no unwelcome visitors can intrude. 

But as Adrian begins to guide himself inside, pressing a steadying hand against Chris’s stomach, Chris feels an odd tightness. At first he thinks Adrian hasn’t prepped him enough, but it’s not just there—it’s all over his body, like his skin is a size too small. A weird fog is sliding over his thoughts, and the feeling of Adrian stretching him open is suddenly a mix of good-weird and bad-weird. 

Adrian pauses at the hilt, and Chris turns his head, half-covering his face with his arm as he tries to get his shit together. 

“You good?” Adrian asks, breathy.

“Yeah. Move. I want you to move,” Chris insists, buying time. It feels good, but odd, and Chris feels his pulse hammering in his throat, almost synced with Adrian’s thrusts, muscles uncomfortably spasming in tempo. Something cold settles in his stomach.

He breaths through it, grasping for a thread of logic like a wet rope off a lifeboat. OK, so this is the edible. And he probably took too much, and shouldn’t have smoked and drank on top of that. 

But it’s fine. Nothing to do but ride it out. 

And Adrian is having fun, which is what matters. He can handle this. Chris could have sex in his sleep (and in fact, really wants to try that with Adrian sometime). He arches into him, pressing himself up into Adrian’s thrusts, and tries to ignore how all this motion is making him kind of seasick.

There’s something on his face. It’s hot and a little sweaty. Chris does some deductive reasoning, taking in his surroundings and the familiarity of the feeling against his skin, before figuring out that it’s Adrian’s hand against his cheek. 

Oh. That’s nice. 

Adrian’s face is less nice. It’s still pretty and cute. But worried-cute. 

“I am worried. You seem weird,” Adrian says. Chris does some more detective work, and concludes he was saying all that stuff before out loud. Which would explain why his mouth had been moving. “Are you okay?” 

Chris tries to nod, but given that Adrian’s expression doesn’t change, he doesn’t think he succeeds. He goes for a verbal reply instead. “I’m awesome. Was just thinking, uh, I wanna do it—do this the opposite way.” He thinks, if Adrian can’t see his face, he can stop worrying if Chris is ‘okay’ and get back to the task at hand, which is something important, though he can’t recall what. 

Sex! They’re having sex. OK, yeah, it’s really important that Adrian gets back to doing that. Even if the sex is kind of weird today and his skin is too tight. 

Adrian frowns, his forehead going all confused-scrunchy. “You want to top me?” 

Chris doesn’t think it’s a trick question. He tries to recall if that’s what he meant. “No, I mean you fuck me from the other way. Y’know, flip it. Turnways.” His hands do some vague gestures of their own accord, trying to indicate what he’s picturing. 

“You want me to penetrate you from behind?” Adrian asks, still sounding wary. His worried expression is really starting to freak Chris out. The hand leaves his cheek, and the spot where it was suddenly feels cold and damp. 

Chris does some affirmative finger guns at Adrian, then briefly panics that the guns are loaded. Then remembers that they’re fingers. And Adrian doesn’t seem to have any bullet wounds, so it’s probably fine. 

But there’s a new expression on Adrian’s face now, kind of amused. He quirks an eyebrow. “Alright. Turn over for me.”

A clear instruction. Chris can handle that. “Okay.” He sends the signal out to his body to get on his knees. He waits a few seconds. “Did I do it?”

Adrian shakes his head. “You have not moved.” 

Now Chris feels the panic really set in. He tries to shift his body again, and finds it unresponsive. He hears a loud huffing noise, and figures out slowly that it’s the sound of his breath coming sharply through his nose. Adrian’s worried face is back, and Chris’s mind reels for a way to make it go away. “Oh. That’s, because, uh, I changed my mind. You can fuck me like this. I’m fine , make your face softer.” 

Adrian sighs, and moves backward, and suddenly he’s off the bed, and that’s a terrible development. 

“Don’t!” Chris’s arm finally obeys, stretching toward Adrian who’s about a mile away. “Fuck, don’t leave.”

And then there’s a hand in his, squeezing tight, and Chris thinks if he was a tube of toothpaste, he would be all squeezed out. “I’m just getting something from the other room. I’m coming right back. Thirty seconds.” 

Chris counts the seconds, feeling his heart hammering in his ears and his skin pulsing in time. He loses count, but it’s somewhere between twenty-four seconds and eight hours when Adrian returns. He’s got a towel, a washcloth, a water bottle, and his laptop, and he’s wearing boxers and Chris’s t-shirt.

“Why are you–” Chris gestures at him. “Clothes? I thought we were having sex.” He’s pretty certain that’s what they were doing. It feels like it was a while ago, but his dick is still hard and out, so it probably wasn’t that long ago.

“We were ,” Adrian confirms. “We’re not anymore.” 

“Ever again?” Chris asks in a panic. Adrian’s sliding the towel underneath him, and he laughs, which seems cruel. But then he’s putting a cold cloth on Chris’s head, which suddenly makes his skin not so much on fire anymore. 

“We’re not having sex tonight. We can do it again when you’re less high.” Chris is starting to think that might never happen. He thinks he might be stuck like this forever. 

“You won’t be,” Adrian assures him, and Chris guesses he was doing the think-talking thing again. “You just have to wait it out. I don’t know how long, exactly, but probably no more than a couple hours.” That sounds daunting, but Adrian sits back against the headboard, and drags Chris into a seated position next to him. Chris does his best to help, but his body is mostly dead weight.

It doesn’t seem like Adrian is leaving. So maybe he can manage a couple hours if he won’t be alone. 

Adrian presses the water bottle into his hand, and Chris gulps half of it down. He almost finishes it, but worries that if the bottle is empty Adrian will leave again to get a new one.

Adrian opens the laptop in front of them, and pretty soon there are a bunch of sweeping landscape shots on the screen. “It’s a show about rainforest animals. I watch it sometimes when I need to cool down after work or heroism.” Chris half-listens. There’s a tiny monkey on screen that’s taking up most of his attention. 

“You should get him.” He points. Adrian smiles, and it’s cuter than the monkey. 

“A golden lion tamarin?”

Chris nods. “Yeah. He could sit on your shoulder. And he could get in places we can’t reach and open doors and steal keys off security guards.” 

Adrian leans his head against his shoulder. “It’d be a pretty cute pet. Guess I’d have to be secure in my masculinity, especially since I’m gonna name him Sprinkles.” 

It turns out Sprinkles has a whole monkey family, and Chris gets pretty caught up in their storyline. Adrian fast-forwards through the part where a snake tries to eat them, and the show ends on a shot of them grooming bugs off each other in a tree. 

“I’d do that for you,” Chris tells Adrian through a yawn. He’s mellowed out, and though he’s still pretty high, his skin feels like it’s the right size again. “I know you hate bugs. I’d pick them all off of you.” 

Adrian looks at him kind of like Chris looks at Eagly when he brings him a present. “Thanks. Come here.”

And then they’re lying down, and Chris’s head is on Adrian’s chest and he can hear his heartbeat. And the rhythm captures all his attention, and his thoughts go slow.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep, because he wakes up to Adrian shaking his shoulder gently. He’s in his uniform again.

Chris squints. “Hey. You have an opening shift?”

“Midday. It’s almost noon. I wanted to make sure you’re okay before I leave.” 

“Oh.” Chris feels a pang of embarrassment. That’s twice now that he’s set out to fuck Adrian’s brains out, and ended up a useless mess needing cleaning up. Dead weight dragging them both down. 

He sits up, rolling a kink out of his neck in an attempt at nonchalance. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks. Have a good day at work.”

But Adrian sits on the edge of the bed, apparently in the mood to start a conversation, not finish it. His hand absently rubs the comforter. “What did you take? I don’t think I’ve see you that out-of-it before.”

Chris considers lying, and saying that that’s just something that happens every once in a while at random, like joint roulette. Adrian has been concerned about Chris overdoing it on THC lately, and Chris hates being proven wrong. 

But he also really wants to smoke Adrian out sometime, and he doesn’t want to add fuel to the guy’s fear of weed. He sighs, and reaches for the half-empty bottle of water on the nightstand. It tastes stale in his mouth.

“I had a couple edibles before you got in. Didn’t read the dose very closely. Then I smoked on top of that when I didn’t feel them kicking in.” 

“Oh.” Adrian’s face contorts into an expression that he clearly thinks is effectively masking his disappointment. “Why was it so important that you get high that fast? Couldn’t you have waited?” 

Embarrassment makes Chris want to throw his shields up, and he almost snaps back at Adrian. His brow furrows, his jaw tightens. But he sees the way Adrian’s whole body tenses in anticipation of Chris’s anger, and he leans back slightly, preparing for the blowback. And that makes Chris feel shittier than the shame does. 

He sighs. Tries to count to ten, and only makes it to three. Good enough. 

“Because you were hot to trot, and my dad was still there. And weed usually makes him leave, and I wanted us to screw each other’s brains out.” 

“Oh!” Adrian replies. “Is he here now?”

Chris looks around, suddenly worried. But they’re safe, for the moment. “No. But we can’t—I mean, you have work. And I’m still a little out of it.” He’s not high, but there’s a kind of pseudo-hangover he only gets after really overdoing it. Like the world’s just a few seconds off sync. 

Adrian nods, and summarizes Chris’s words back to him. It’s something he’s started doing lately whenever feelings come up, like he’s trying to make sure he understands. Chris thinks he read it online somewhere. “So you’ve been self medicating with weed to get your dad to leave you alone, because he wasn’t bothering you when we first started dating but now he is? And you want to get rid of him so we can have sex?” Chris nods. He feels exposed, like a frog splayed out on a dissection tray. 

“Cool. So, um, what do you think about going to therapy?” Adrian asks, in a sudden rush, like he’s been sitting on it for a while.

“Nope.” Chris replies just as quick. Which is shitty. Because he has thought about it. And the thought makes him sick. It’d be one thing if he thought there was a quick fix— if he was a sex addict or afraid of clowns or something, and just needed a professional to slap some sense into him.

But he knows how these things go. He’s haunted by his father , who made him into a killer, and who Chris shot in the head. There’s no psychological band-aid solution. Any therapist worth their license would want to dig, to break down into the bedrock. And that is more than Chris can handle. 

He’s heard that it has to get worse before it gets better. And when it comes to his dad, he can’t fathom surviving anything much worse than it is now. 

Adrian’s mouth flattens into a tight line. Chris’s hasn’t left any room for arguing, and he apparently doesn’t want to push it. But he doesn’t jump to placate Chris either. He just nods, and stands off the bed, and pats Chris’s hand once, his body language tight. “Alright. Stay as long as you want. Please rearm the security system when you leave.” He doesn’t ask when they’ll see each other next, which he always does. 

Adrian leaves for work, and Chris lies in bed for another hour or so. His mind still feels heavy, but sleep eludes him. 

Chris washes and puts away the dishes from the night before. He also runs a load of laundry— Adrian has an in-unit washer and dryer, and Chris has taken to doing his laundry here. He cleans the clothes in Adrian’s hamper as well, and the sheets, and folds and puts away Adrian’s stuff. He hopes Adrian notices when he gets home, and that the favor says some of the things he can’t say out loud. 

One of Adrian’s shirts remains unwashed, and Chris leaves with it in his bag. He doesn’t think Adrian will notice— it’s got black and gray stripes, and he hasn’t seen Adrian wear it often. It smells like him, though. Back at the trailer, Chris catches a few more hours of fitful sleep with the shirt under his pillow.

Chapter Text

Chris texts Adrian a gif he ran across of a golden lion tamarin. OK, he didn’t run across it, exactly. He googled “gold monkey meme” and spent about ten minutes looking for one he thought Adrian would like.

Adrian texts back a string of emojis that Chris thinks mean laughter, so it seems like he isn’t that mad. He also lets Chris know he got asked to work a surprise double shift to cover a sick coworker, so they won’t be able to meet again that night. Chris is disappointed, but kind of glad Adrian had been assuming they’d meet in the evening. They’ve started being together more nights than they’re apart, which is strange and new and not unwelcome.

Then Chris is suddenly called into an emergency Task Force X mission out of town. and has just enough warning to text Adrian that he’ll be back soon and has to leave his phone behind, before he’s hustled onto a tiny crop duster plane and gritting his teeth as it flies into an undisclosed location that is pretty obviously Canada, given all the maple leaf flags and zombie mooses.

He returns two days later around three in the morning, to the expected backlog of messages from Adrian, though not as clingy or panicky as the last time— they mostly are just Adrian sending updates on Eagly (who he took care of, even though Chris forgot to ask), as well as sharing every mundane detail of his day and speculating about what exciting monsters Chris is facing and what sci-fi weapons he gets to use. There are also a few messages from Adebayo and John, who weren’t on this mission but are wishing him well (or in John’s case, wishing that a zombie moose will bite Chris and turn him fully Canadian, forcing him to go mad trying to reconcile his American jingoism with his newfound allegiance to the Great White North).

He texts Adrian that he’s alive and about to pass out and asks when they can meet up. He’s felt a kind of ache these last several hours, especially on the plane back. An unfamiliar need to be back with the little nerd. And it’s strange, because it’s not horniness, exactly. That’s mixed in there, but he mostly just wants to be in the same place as Adrian and tell him all the confidential details of his mission and hear his insane theories about radioactive maple syrup.

After giving Eagly a few head scratches, Chris passes out on his bed, a blessedly heavy and dreamless sleep. He wakes up clutching Adrian’s shirt near his face.

It’s just after ten in the morning, and Chris wakes up to a flurry of texts from Adrian excited that he’s back, and letting Chris know that he had work until four. Chris doesn’t feel like waiting that long, so he showers and shows up at noon for Adrian’s lunch break. He brings burritos—even though Chris could go for some zoodles, he knows Adrian is sick of the food at Fennel Fields.

Chris takes a cab. When he texts Adrian that he’s arrived, the man’s out the door of the restaurant less than a minute later, stuffing his hat in his pocket.

“Chris! And a bastardized Washington version of Mexican cuisine! Those are two of my favorite things.” He wraps Chris in a hug before kissing him, which is unexpected, but nice. Chris feels himself sighing against him, breathing in the scent of—OK, so it’s less the scent of Adrian than of garlic and disinfecting liquid. But he’s come to associate those smells with Adrian, and they’re a lot more comforting than they should be.

They eat in Adrian’s car, with the heater on and the radio turned low, playing some 80’s rock. As Chris expected, Adrian is a great audience for his frankly mundane tales of heroics. Stuff that was aggravating or embarrassing at the time, like getting punched out by a demon Mountie and having to grapple a zombie moose into an ice-cold river, suddenly feels exciting when he retells it to Adrian. He watches his eyes bug out, and they talk in circles about whether reanimation is magic or science, and if an army of zombie tamarins would be cute or creepy.

They’re both joking and laughing, and then Adrian is just looking at him, with an odd smile. “Dude, what? Do I have something on my face?” Chris flips down the mirror to check.

“No, it’s just—I missed you. And you seem happy. Relaxed. I was wondering if maybe your dad hasn’t been bothering you.”

The reminder is like a cold bucket of water sluicing down Chris’s spine. He wishes he could appreciate the time when Auggie isn’t around more. He never seems to notice the absence until Auggie shows back up again. But yeah, being busy the last few days on a mission, his dad hasn’t shown. And now that he’s actually noticing, all he can think about is the dread of when he’ll reappear.

“Shit. Now your face is scrunchy again. Sorry. Guess I shouldn’t have—”

 “Nah, it’s fine. Yeah, he hasn’t been on my ass the last few days. Been busy, I guess.”

Adrian nods, and then leans toward him, forward and down, and Chris thinks for a moment he’s about to get head at noon in the Fennel Fields parking lot, but then Adrian just opens the passenger seat instead glovebox. He pulls out a small, brown paper bag. “I was thinking about how you’ve been trying to shake him. I got you something.”

He hands the bag to Chris. Chris shakes the contents into his lap—a small, blue vape pen. And a cartridge with the label “Hello Mellow” in a swirly purple font.

“What the—dude, you got me weed? You bought weed?” 

Adrian shifts in his seat, looking a bit anxious, but nods. “You said it’s the only way you can make him leave you alone. But then you did too much and got all trippy. So I asked my friend Taylor at work, cause he smokes a lot, even after I warned him about gateway drugs—” Chris shakes his head, but bites his tongue. “—about if he could recommend stuff for calming down. And he said I could get a C-B-D blend—” Adrian enunciates the words slowly, like he’s thinking hard about getting them right. “—which shouldn’t get you as loopy but will maybe do the job of disappearing your dad.”

Chris is getting kind of choked up.

This isn’t the moment he’d been planning for. His legs are starting to cramp from the car, and everything smells like burritos and fryer oil. It’s not especially romantic. But they’re alone, and Chris can’t keep not saying it any longer. Especially given how many times he’s thought it over the last few days they’ve been apart.

“I love you, dude.” Chris blurts out, cringing at the phrasing as soon as he says it. Dude?  Seriously?

Adrian freezes in the middle of a bite of burrito. There’s a bit of lettuce hanging from his mouth. “What?”

“Adrian. I love you, Adrian.” There. That’s a bit better. It’s substantially easier to say the second time. Chris thinks he might keep saying it, like, hourly. It’s fun to say.

“Wow, really? Because I bought you weed?” Adrian bounces in his seat a little, still talking with his mouth full. His face lights up.

“No, not because— I mean, yeah, I guess, but not ‘cause of that, exactly. Because you did something you don’t like just to make me feel better. It’s, I don’t know, it’s really cool of you. You take care of me and shit. And I love that about you.” Chris pictures Adrian at the dispensary. It probably took him half an hour, minimum, to convince them he wasn’t an undercover cop.

Chris tries to think if he does that kind of thing for Adrian. Sometimes. But probably not enough.

“Oh, well, yeah, I like making you feel better, dude! Um, I really want to say it back, but can I say it later tonight? I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and there’s this specific shirt I want to wear when I tell you I love you, which I can’t find, but if you want to come over I can look for it again and then I can say—”

Chris snorts, and feels a relief wash over him that Adrian’s basically already admitted he loves him too. His brain catches up a few seconds behind to Adrian’s monologue, and he interrupts him. “Wait, is it a t-shirt? Gray and black stripes?”

Adrian nods. “Yeah! Have you seen it?”

Chris ducks his head. “Yeah. I, uh, I have it. If you want to come to my place.”

“Oh, sweet!” Adrian doesn’t even bother asking why Chris has his shirt, which is good, because it saves Chris having to lie. And he doesn’t want to lie to Adrian, but he’s also not quite ready to confess he stole it so he could smell Adrian’s scent on it for comfort, like a sad, horny bloodhound.

“Why that shirt? It seems pretty plain.” Chris asks.

“Because it’s what I was wearing when you kissed me the first time,” Adrian answers matter-of-factly. And, oh. Yeah. Chris remembers that now. The grey cotton fisted in his hands as he pressed Adrian against the wall of his trailer. Maybe the subconscious memory is why Chris fished it out of the laundry pile in the first place. “It seemed, I don’t know, poetic. Aren’t love confessions supposed to be like that? Like, call back to all the nice parts of your relationship. That’s how it is on TV.”

“Yeah. Guess I kind of fucked up mine.”

“No, it was great, dude! I liked the part where—” Adrian’s dorky electric watch beeps, and Chris checks the time on the dashboard.

“Shit, your break’s over. Do you want to come over after work?” Chris hates the idea of waiting another four hours, mentally replaying his confession alone in his trailer, or worse—with his dad adding color commentary.

Adrian shakes his head. “Oh, fuck no. I’m coming over now. I’ll just tell Mike I’ve got the runs or something.” He scowls as Chris quirks an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“Nothing! It’s just, you hate lying, and you practically never bail on work.” Chris had seen Adrian call out plenty of times for them to deal with last minute hero shit, but he was weirdly committed to his job once he started a shift. Something about “no man left behind” extending to waitstaff.

“Yeah, but I practically never find out my best friend slash boyfriend is in love with me! I’m not gonna go wipe down tables after that. I want to be with you right now. Like, really badly.”

Chris half-rolls his eyes, but nods, palming Adrian’s knee. “Shit. You that desperate to jump my bones?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah, maybe? Sex could definitely be fun. But mostly I just want to be around you. I was thinking we could watch a movie, or blow something up—I don’t really care what! Just, together stuff.” Adrian beams at him, and Chris can tell the man’s almost buzzing out of his skin. He feels the same.

“Yeah. Together stuff.”

They don’t end up having sex that night, which Chris is surprisingly OK with. Adrian tells some definitely unconvincing lie to his manager, before driving them back to the trailer. He runs inside before Chris to tell Eagly the good news that Chris loves him. Chris already told Eagly, but the bird gamely acts like he’s hearing it for the first time.  Chris finds Adrian’s gray shirt in his room, and hands it to him.

“Oh, thanks!” He yanks off his shitty Fennel Fields shirt and pulls it on and looks so cute that Chris can’t help stealing another kiss, hands fisting in the cotton at his back.

They kill most of the afternoon in the woods trying to recreate the booby traps from Predator. It’s oddly cozy, sitting on a log together, whittling punji sticks. Chris takes his shirt off while he lifts the massive log counterweight for their spike trap into a tree, and even though his back gets scratched to shit by the tree bark, it’s worth it for the way Adrian stares at him.

After they set all the traps, they realize they have nothing to use them on, and decide to take turns setting them off. Adrian gets really into it and is eerily good at making the predator clicking noise. He nimbly dodges the snares but fucks his ankle up a bit on the tripwire, and Chris carries him back to the trailer. Chris suspects Adrian’s exaggerating the extent of his injury but doesn’t call him out on it.

Adrian’s ankle is miraculously healed when they cross the threshold, and he beelines to Chris’s refrigerator to grab a few beers.

Chris fishes the weed cartridge and pen Adrian gave him out of his pocket, and assembles it on the coffee table. He inhales some of the cartridge, getting a feel for it, and finds it does make him relaxed but mostly lucid. He thinks it’s mild enough that Adrian might enjoy it, and to his surprise, Adrian agrees to give it a try. Apparently, buying weed for the first time broke some kind of moral seal, and he’s becoming tentatively cool about it.

Chris coaches him through a small inhale at first, planning to give him a few minutes to see how he feels before re-upping. It was a good call—Adrian’s tolerance is nonexistent, and though the blend has a low percent of THC, it’s enough to make him all doe-eyed and wobbly.

Chris worried Adrian would freak out at being high, but he’s refreshingly calm—the CBD probably helps. He takes up permanent residence in Chris’s personal space, tracing his fingertips up and down his skin and babbling only halfway coherently about how soft and warm and alive it is.

Chris enjoys the vicarious experience of getting to watch Adrian’s first high. He finds plenty of snacks for them in his cabinet, most of them unexpired, and even orders a deep-dish pizza, carbs be damned, because Adrian sees an ad for it on his phone and becomes obsessed with the idea of optimizing topping combinations.

He’s never seen Adrian as relaxed as this—the closest he’s gotten is right after he fucks Adrian’s brains out, or right when he’s waking up. But even then, there’s the undercurrent of his manic energy, like he’s got a motor running constantly that’s about to rev back up. It’s part of what drives Chris insane about him, and what he likes the most.

But this is a new kind of nice. Adrian is totally boneless, slumped against Chris as they watch a new nature show about penguins (some of whom are gay boyfriends, to Adrian’s delight). There’s no nervous twitch or tension in his limbs, and his breathing is slow and steady, softly tickling the skin at Chris’s neck. His eyes keep sinking shut before drifting back open again. Eventually, Chris slides his glasses off his nose, and Adrian doesn’t protest. 

He does look cute, and it’s been so long since Chris had good sex that a stiff breeze could give him a semi at the moment. But Chris doesn’t want to have sex like this until they can have a sober conversation about Adrian’s thoughts on fucking while he’s high, and Adrian gets a better sense of his comfort with weed.

Even if he was cool with it, though, Chris doesn’t think he’d want to disturb the quiet calm Adrian’s basking in. It might be the fourth hit of the pen kicking in, but Chris feels like they’re closer now, like a few of the layers between them have peeled away, and when they’re pressed together on the couch, they’re that much nearer to the cores of each other. 

“Love you,” he mutters against the top of Adrian’s head. He’s glad he got the love confession out of the way while they were both sober. Because it would have been a huge bombshell to drop when they were high, but now he finds he can’t help saying it the moment the thought enters his brain.

“Mmm… wait a second.” Adrian looks down, and plucks at the fabric of his shirt, staring at it for a moment to make sure it’s the right one. “OK. I love you too.”

Even though Adrian’s all but said it already, the words make Chris’s chest swell. He shuts off the penguin show, and pulls Adrian’s forearm, guiding him further up his chest. “Hey, come here.”

Adrian does as he’s asked, and happily leans in when Chris kisses him. It’s slow and lazy, and when his neck starts to hurt too much from the angle, he guides them both to the bed and shucks their jeans off. Chris has no greater designs on him tonight, but even still, Adrian gets a little excited, and Chris smirks, and moves his touches to a safer distance up Adrian’s back.

“Hmm. No sex tonight?” Adrian asks, kinda mumbled, since he never takes his mouth fully off Chris’s.

“Nah. This is good. Just touching you.”

Adrian hums in agreement. “Gentle touching. Nice. But don’t take it personal if I fall asleep on you. I think I might just be really high.”

Chris snorts. He holds Adrian and keeps kissing him until the touches he gets in response start to slow, and he sees Adrian’s eyes get heavier each time he pulls away. He presses a final kiss to Adrian’s forehead, before laying them both down, and holding Adrian’s head close to his chest.

He falls asleep almost instantly after that.

He wakes up to a sunbeam hitting his eye, and shuts the curtain quickly before it wakes Adrian. The man is presently dozing, twisted in his sheets like a burrito, a soft whistle coming from his nose.

They should wake up every morning like this, Chris thinks.  But that’s getting dangerously close to another big milestone, and he just admitted he loves Adrian last night, so he should probably put that thought on hold.

And… there’s work he needs to do before he brings Adrian that much further into his life.

He slips out of bed carefully and goes to greet Eagly, letting him out to fly and admiring how his wings look in the early morning sky.

He brushes his teeth and takes a shower. His thoughts drift back to Adrian, as they often do nowadays, but get a lot less chaste. He recalls Adrian’s heaving breath when he had him pressed against the shower wall. What if Adrian had pushed back? Hadn’t let Chris shove him around, but instead pinned him by the wrists, pressed Chris face first against the tile? He could press himself against him, nudging his legs apart, and he’d be so Adrian, so fierce but gentle, claiming him, but not taking anything Chris wasn’t already desperate to give.

Chris’s hands drift lower, and he gives himself a few gentle strokes before he surprises even himself and moves his touch backwards. He’s never fingered himself—so far, Adrian’s always been there, been more than eager to help. If he was here, Adrian would instruct Chris to keep his hands still, spread against the wall. He’d touch Chris’s chest, roll his nipple between his fingers just on the knife’s edge of too rough, and mouth against his shoulder blade as he pressed a second finger inside.

Chris sighs as he replicates his fantasy with his own touch as best he can. He can’t reach his prostate at this angle, which is probably for the best, because even this is almost too good, is threatening to push him over the edge. And he’s not planning to orgasm at just the thought of Adrian, not when the real deal is waiting one room over, wrapped in his bedsheets like a present.

He stops short before he comes, feeling a pang of embarrassment at the moan that escapes his lips, and a jolt of terror that his dad will show up to give him hell for it. But he waits, and Auggie doesn’t make an appearance. So far, so good.

He towels off quickly and returns to the bedroom. To his utter delight, Adrian is already awake when he gets there, still bundled in the sheets like a less creepy E.T., and scrolling on his phone.

“Morning.” Chris drops a kiss against Adrian’s forehead, and the man smiles, and sets his phone down. “How do you feel?”

Adrian wriggles a bit and looks pensive, like he’s trying to check in with every limb on his body. “Mmm. Good! Not high any more, but a little groggy. I slept like a rock. Really weird dreams though! We wanted to have a baby, but we were arguing about which one of us should carry it based on who could get the time off work. Like, I have to be on my feet at work all the time, which would suck if I was pregnant, but you were saying you didn’t think Task Force X gave family and medical leave. The fact that neither of us can have a kid didn’t seem to matter—you were really worried about losing your figure, though.”

It’s not really his bag, but Chris is kind of desperate, and he’ll take any in he can get right now. He sets about untangling the sheets, getting closer to the Adrian in the middle of them. “Yeah? Bet you were so desperate to knock me up. And I was begging you to give it to me.”

Adrian frowns. “Not really? It wasn’t a sexy dream, it was mostly about the logistics—oh.” Chris frees Adrian from the blankets enough to grind his erection against the curve of his hip. “Whoa. That really got you going, huh?”

“I was going before. I’ve needed you for days man, please—” The words catch in his throat. It’s still new, asking for this.

Adrian meets him halfway. More than halfway. He straddles Chris, pressing him back into the bed, and takes his hands, guiding them up under his shirt and against his ribs. “You want me to fuck you, Chris?” Chris moans, and arches up into him, his breath coming short. “Aww, look at you. You’re so cute when you’re desperate for it, baby.” He runs a hand over Chris’s chest, touches his nipple just the way Chris imagined he would, and he feels himself honest-to-god shiver. Adrian leans down, his voice honey-sweet and dark pouring into Chris’s ear. “You’re even cuter when I fuck you. You want to lie back for me, let me take care of you?”

“No.” Adrian leans back, slightly surprised, and Chris quickly elaborates. “I want you to lie back, and I want to ride you, and fuck my brains out on your dick.”

Adrian’s eyes go wide. Suddenly he’s off Chris, trying to take his own shirt off and reach in the sidetable for lube at the same time. “Yes! Holy shit, Chris, fuck yes.”

“Alright, hang on, dude. Let me take care of that.” Chris extricates Adrian from his shirt, which he got himself tangled up in, and retrieves the lube. Adrian’s back on him again, all the fog of sleep apparently disappeared, and pressing searing kisses into Chris’s abdomen, before moving lower, and taking the head of his aching cock in his mouth.

It takes everything in Chris not to lose it then and there. It’s an even greater effort to gently push Adrian aside. “Fuck. you can’t—I mean, just focus on the task at hand. I’m never gonna make it otherwise.”

“Aww, is it too good?” Adrian applies lube to his first finger, and presses inside. He’s tentative at first, until Chris cants his hips, taking him further in. “Wow, you weren’t kidding. You’re really hot for this. You’re kind of…” he pauses, and shakes his head.

“What?” Chris leans into him again.

“Well, I don’t want to be rude, but you’re, um…”

“Loose?” Chris fills in, and Adrian sighs, and nods, working his finger in a lazy circle. “I touched myself in the shower. I was thinking of you. What I want us to do together.”

“Holy fuck, Chris. And you didn’t let me watch?” He sounds trashed already. He pulls a finger out and adds more lube to a second digit. “I mean, I know private time is important in a relationship, I read that in an article online. And it’s OK if you want to jerk off and stuff without me, but damn, if you ever want company for that, just holler, man.” He presses two fingers inside, tentative at first, then more insistently when Chris’s body offers almost no resistance. “What were you thinking about?”

Chris’s actual shower fantasy was pretty tame, verging on boring. He knows Adrian thrives on detail. So he digs through his mind and pulls up a half-finished scenario from his spank bank. “Was thinking, what if I got captured? And I was held hostage for days, chained to a wall, big dudes with guns, the works. And you busted in and mowed them all down and rescued me.”

“I would, Chris. I wouldn’t stop looking for you. I would save you, and I’d kill anyone who hurt you, or even looked at you funny or gave you an expired aspirin.” He begins thrusting his fingers inside, slow at first, then building steam.

“I know you would. And in real life, if I’m ever a damsel and you had to save me? Not gonna lie, I’m probably gonna be a real bitch about it. I’m gonna sulk for days afterwards cause I’ll be embarrassed I got caught.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

“Right, but this is a fantasy. One in which I’m more secure in my masculinity or capability or whatever. So you kill them all, and you come to me, only you don’t untie me yet. You yank my pants down and take me in your mouth and stick your fingers in me. You haven’t even said a word to me yet.”

Adrian stills, and Chris can almost see the argument forming in his head. He’d never be so callous in real life, they both know that. But when he speaks, Chris realizes he lost the man at another part of the scenario. “Right there, no lube? And it’s been days you’ve been a hostage? No way you washed your ass.”

“Dude.”

Adrian nods, and finally adds a third finger, stretching him easily as Chris practically melts under him. “Right. Fantasy. I’ll pretend you have a magical, self-cleaning, self-lubricating ass.”

Not exactly what Chris had in mind, but whatever moves things along. “Sure. And I’m exhausted, and I can barely stand, but you love that. You love how helpless I am.”

“Mmm. I’d have you trembling with just one finger. Maybe I’d turn you around, stick my tongue in you? Just to watch you squirm.”

Chris gasps. “Oh fuck yeah. I’m ready, man. Get on your back.”

Adrian’s grin is sharp and dangerous, and he shucks off his boxers quickly and does as he’s asked. Chris straddles him, swallowing that grin in a searing kiss and grinding his crotch against Adrian’s. He knows Adrian loves swordfighting. He says it makes him feel like their dicks are friends with each other.

He sits up on his knees, and Adrian lines himself up, pupils dilated to shit like he’s high on coke. Chris talks him through it, not pressing himself down just yet, letting Adrian nudge against him. “You’d make me put my hands on the wall. Spread my legs, tease me, really showing me who’s in control before you press inside, hard. No mercy.” Chris matches words to deeds then, and sinks down to the hilt. There’s a little pain, going fast like this, but not much. It’s worth it ten times over for the way Adrian’s head flies back against the pillows, tangled bedhead curls making a halo around him.

“Fuck. But I don’t—I don’t want to hurt you.” Adrian’s voice comes in short breaths, already overwhelmed. Chris isn’t sure if he’s talking about the fantasy or reality now, but either way they’ve apparently hit a line he won’t cross.

“You won’t. You aren’t. I’m begging you for more, baby. It feels so fucking good.” Here, in reality, Chris sinks back up and down slowly, searching. They haven’t done it like this before, and it’s tough to get the right angle to hit his prostate. Not that he’s in any rush—he could almost get off from the look on Adrian’s face alone.

Adrian’s hands find his hips. “You want it to feel better? Try leaning back. Kind of rock front to back—there, you’ve got it,” Chris does as he’s told, and oh, fuck—yeah, there it is. Adrian’s setting off sparks inside him, and Chris can’t stop moving, hitting the spot every time, and it’s so much, he can barely stand it. 

“So good, Chris. Fuck yourself for me, honey, nice and slow.” Adrian’s hands on his hips coax him into a more languid rhythm, and it’s so hard to slow down, Chris wants to keep chasing that buzzing feeling right over the goddamn moon. But yeah, he thinks as he relents to a slower rhythm, this is better. He moves more steadily, alternating between shallow rocking movements that burn him up to a fever pitch inside, and when that starts to feel too perfect, switches to bouncing up and down on Adrian’s dick, coaxing squeaky little moans out of him each time he presses down.

Chris loves when Adrian rides him, but the guys almost a hundred pounds lighter. And Adrian’s moans sound a little like the wind’s getting knocked out of him. “Fuck, man, is this too much? Feel like I’m crushing you.”

Adrian groans, punctuated by a huff like he’s gut-punched as Chris bounces down on him again. “You are, it’s perfect, don’t you dare stop or I’ll strangle you.” Chris laughs at that, and speeds up. “Ah, shit! Yeah, just like that. To be clear, I would never actually strangle you, unless you want me to. And even that it wouldn’t be strangling, just some light choking—”

Chris presses two fingers into Adrian’s mouth, partly to stop him from starting to ramble down the BDSM checklist, and so he can get a word in edgewise. Adrian’s lids flutter half closed as he sucks on Chris’s fingers happily, with an obscene sound. “What would you do to me? When you’ve got me pressed against the wall, and you’re buried in my ass.” He slides the fingers out with a wet pop.

Adrian’s back in the zone now. He looks at Chris intensely through his lashes. “I’d just stay buried there, not moving. Maybe work your balls and taint a little, get you nice and desperate, but not giving you what you want. I’d make you beg for it, just like a good slut.”

A year ago—hell, probably even two months ago—Chris would have knocked the teeth out of anyone who spoke to him like that. Now, here, with Adrian, he can feel his cock leaking against his stomach. “Fuck, please fuck me, Adrian, god, I fucking need it—”

Adrian scratches down his thighs, leaving red marks like a panther’s claws, and Chris feels the heat in his stomach start to burn in earnest. “You’re a big boy. Take what you want. Bounce on my cock, Chris, show me what a good whore you are.” Chris is fucking flying toward his orgasm now, and feels a bit dizzy. Opening himself up like this, letting Adrian talk to him like that and loving it, and not trying to hide that he loves it, is terrifying. Like soaring off the trapeze with no net underneath.

But Adrian’s there. He’s got him. He won’t let Chris fall. He catches him just as Chris starts to plummet, a hand on his cock coaxing his orgasm out of him, and his soft words of praise just barely audible over the roaring in his ears.

Chris is mentally spinning, only half-aware as Adrian angles him downward, and he comes across his partner’s face and chin. And eyes. Shit. Adrian slams them shut at the last minute.

“Fuck! You blinded me, Chris! I can’t see.” Adrian whines with a laugh. His tongue darts out to catch what he can.

Chris tries to catch his breath enough to speak. “You blinded you, man. I was barely even conscious. Hold still.” He grabs the edge of the sheet and wipes Adrian’s eyelids clear. “Better?”

Adrian blinks experimentally. “Whew. Yep, I can still see. Imagine if I had gone blind? What a way to go. I’d be honored.” Chris can’t even think of a response to that. He still feels kind of drunk. Adrian smooths his hands over the red marks on top of his thighs. “How you feeling? You need a minute, or want me to take over, or—"

Chris shakes his head hastily. He’s actually feeling a little out-of-it, still. He hadn’t come for like a week, which had been verging on a health hazard, and he feels like half his brain is still offline. But he said he’d ride Adrian, and in his book, that’s a commitment to both completions. He’s never given up on a mission before.

He starts moving again, quick and steady, and finds that it thankfully doesn’t need much brain power to do. Adrian gasps underneath him, still a fucking mess, and Chris presses his hands into his ribs, adding a bit of pressure to the downward stroke and pressing Adrian down into the mattress.

“Oh fuck, dude, I really love that. That’s it. That’s my man.” Adrian keens. Chris pauses at that, just for a moment.

“I’m your man?”

Adrian half-laughs, breathy, and gives him an affectionate smile. “Yeah, no shit. I love you, Chris.”

Chris kind of grins like a idiot and ducks his head at that. He hopes that if he’s blushing, Adrian’s too far gone to notice, because that’d be a little too much, even for all this vulnerability shit he’s trying out. “Cool. You’re mine, too.”

For some reason, that’s what sends Adrian over the edge.  It could also be the way Chris grinds down on him. Either way, he’s arching back against the pillow and digging his nails into Chris’s thighs, and shouting some words that are either French, or his best attempt to say “Chris,” “fuck,” and “baby” all at the same time.

It’s well timed, because Chris’s legs were starting to get tired. He tries to be subtle about stretching them out as he climbs off of Adrian, and grabs a towel by the sidetable to clean off quickly.

He wipes off Adrian with the clean part of the towel. Adrian makes a faint noise of protest when Chris uses a bit of saliva on the corner of the towel to get a stubborn stain. “Chris! Gross!”

“Dude, you have cum on your face. Spit’s way cleaner.”

“Not even. It has practically a trillion bacteria in it.”

“Didn’t know you were a such germaphobe. I’ll keep my mouth far away from you, promise.” Chris starts to lean back, and Adrian grabs his forearm.

“I didn’t say that.” His smile is way too warm and innocent for someone who still has a little cum on his chin. Chris kisses him, and licks it off, and covers Adrian’s mouth with his before he he can hear about what kind of bacteria the human tongue houses.

It doesn’t go far, because they’re both pretty wiped, and after a few soft moments Chris collapses next to Adrian, running his hands across the sweat on his chest. “That was awesome. I really fucking needed that.”

Adrian hums in agreement. “Yeah. I’m glad your head’s back in the game. Is it like, better, overall? Your, um, issues?” That’s about as subtle as Adrian’s ever going to be. At least he’s trying not to bring up Chris’s ghost dad while they’re naked in bed.

And… yeah. Auggie hasn’t been around, not since… “He hasn’t been back since I told you I loved you. I think… I think it’s worst when I’m nervous about something. Like when we were building up to labeling things… and then, when I was thinking about how to drop the ‘L’ word.”

“Oh!” Adrian sits up on his elbows. “That’s good. I was worried he came back because I wasn’t being a good enough boyfriend. But I was being a good boyfriend. And you love me for it!” He grins proudly. But the first part freaks Chris out a bit.

“What? Dude, no, it wasn’t your fault, I can’t believe you thought that.”

Adrian shrugs. “I don’t anymore. And now we’re in love, and so there’s nothing left to be nervous about. So problem solved!” He moves to get up, and Chris puts a stilling hand on his shoulder. Adrian looks at him, and when Chris doesn’t speak immediately, he leans back against the headboard, waiting.

There’s plenty left to be nervous about. Arguments. Milestones. They might move in together. Hell, marriage isn’t out of the question someday, though the thought makes Chris’s head spin. And that’s just the Adrian stuff. Lord knows he’ll have plenty more stress in his life. 

“Dude, there’s stuff about our relationship that’s gonna freak me out. That’s just the way it goes. And you definitely make my life better, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to be a good enough boyfriend to solve all my mental bullshit. That’s not realistic, or fair to you. To either of us.”

“Okay…” Adrian says slowly. “But your head is still scrunched like there’s more thoughts in it you want to say.”

“Yeah, give me a minute, man. This isn’t easy.”

“I can tell. You look constipated.”

Chris sighs, and scrubs his face in his hands. Which gives him an excuse to let his expression fall a bit. God, if this is hard, imagine how difficult—no, he’s not gonna back out now. He meets Adrian’s eye again. “I was thinking about what you said, about therapy. And that maybe I could give it a try.”

“Oh!” Adrian looks like he wants to leap on him, but can tell Chris is kind of prickly right now, and settles for squeezing his hand tightly. “That’s great, Chris! I’m so proud of you.”

The way Adrian says that makes him feel about ten feet tall. He sits up with Adrian, leaning into him, and Adrian wraps an arm around his shoulder. “I mean, don’t get too proud, I haven’t actually done anything yet. And it’s definitely gonna suck. For me, mostly, but—I mean, I’ll probably be pretty crabby about it. Dredging up that shit—I’m basically committing myself to being in a shit mood for the next couple months, at least. And I’ll try not to take it out on you, I really will, but…I might not be that fun to be around.”

Adrian squeezes him. “That’s OK. I can be fun enough for the both of us. Maybe I’ll wear a funny hat.”

“Hey, why’d you suggest therapy in the first place? What happened to the den of scorpions?” Chris asks.

“Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell you—I was talking to my mom on the phone, and I brought up my old friend Doctor Mel from elementary school. And she told me Doctor Mel wasn’t my friend, she was my therapist, which makes sense in retrospect, because ‘doctor’ was right there in her name. But we used to hang out and draw pictures and talk in her office when my parents were getting divorced. And everyone used to tell me I was having the wrong reaction to stuff or I didn’t have enough feelings, but she helped me think about my feelings and realize that they were just fine and that all those other people were assholes.”

Chris wonders if that’s the exact phrasing Adrian’s therapist used. He also pictures little Adrian drawing his feelings in crayon. It’s pretty cute to think about. Probably a lot of red and black manic scribbles. With some teal in there too. “She sounds cool.”

“She was! And so I figured, if I was apparently in therapy and it made me feel better, then maybe introspection isn’t all bad, and it could help you too. I don’t think your therapist is going to draw pictures with you, but I guess you could ask.”

Chris grins at that, and wraps an arm around Adrian’s waist, pulling him closer. “Thanks, Adrian.”

“What for?”

“For being patient, I guess. Putting up with me.”

“Dude, thanks for putting up with me. I know I’m a lot to handle. You haven’t even seen what I left in your refrigerator yet.”

Chris feels some dread coil in his stomach. “Is it alive?”

Adrian grins, and his teeth seem sharper. “Not anymore.”

“Dude.” Chris leans back against the headboard. “We’re pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Adrian agrees, and squeezes his hand again. “Guess it’s good we match. Or like, have complementary fucked-up-ed-ness. I think we’re a good pair.”

“Me too.” They go to kiss each other at the same time, then, sharing the same goddamn wavelength, and they’re finally, really alone together, and Chris thinks they might get to stay that way.