Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was warm beneath the canopy of blankets overhead. A2 breathed in the humid air and squeezed his eyes shut trying to distract himself from the heat of the man beside him. It wouldn’t work, of course. It was an intoxicating feeling, like a drug he wouldn’t dare give up.

“Hey, you. Quit hiding,” A1’s knee nudged him gently beneath the covers. He could hear the smile in his voice. Low and playful.

“Not hiding,” he mumbled back. Obviously a lie and A1 would know it. Whatever.

“Fine,” he could feel A1 turning onto his back, the bed creaking softly beneath them. “Be that way.”

He knew he was being moody. It happens, they move on. He didn’t understand why it happened and he didn’t want to spend anymore time dwelling on it. It was stupid, anyway.

“Hm,” A2 pulled down the heavy blanket and tucked it under his chin. He grabbed a spare pillow from above him and wrapped his arms around it like a lifeline.

A1 was already watching him, his arms folded casually behind his neck. He had no right looking like that. His downy soft hair peppered across the flat plane of his chest like a field of golden wheat ready for harvest, his toned abdomen rising and falling with each breath.

“So. Are you gonna tell me what’s up?”

“Don’t know,” A2 said into the pillow. “Just… tired, I guess.”

He heard A1 sigh beside him, a rush of warmth tickling his ear like a whisper. He took an embarrassing amount of comfort in the bittersweet scent of tobacco lingering on A1’s breath. But underneath it there was something else, something foreign. A saccharine, fruity perfume.

“You smell like her,” A2 grumbled.

A1 huffed a silent laugh. “Figures.”

“It’s gross,”

“Need me to take a shower or something? I can go do that right now if you really want–” A1 made a show of sitting up, playfully threatening to leave their cozy little cocoon.

“Hmph,” A2 buried his head into the pillow again.

“I mean, if you think I smell that bad, then by all means–”

“No,” A2 reached out and grasped A1’s forearm, pointedly keeping his face pressed into the safety of the pillow.

A1 fell back onto the bed and laughed. Oh, how he loved that laugh. It was a gift to hear, like a thousand glinting stars scattered across the night sky, ringing like bells. A1 curled his fingers around A2’s ear and gently tugged, careful not to hurt.

“Sorry,” he said softly. The gentleness of his voice brought A2 to peek out of his makeshift barricade. He found A1’s piercing blue eyes looking back at him.

“You don’t need to say sorry. She had information we needed.”

“She did,” A1 agreed. “Still.”

He left his hand resting against A2’s freckled cheek, idly playing with his plump earlobe and stroking the soft, fuzzy hair which blanketed it. A2 swallowed.

“I didn’t mean to leave you out there alone. I just thought… if she knew anything about our guy, if I could just get her alone, then–”

“Don’t need to explain,” A2 interrupted. “You got what we needed. You made the right call. I’m just… you know.”

A1 knew. He always knew.

“But I didn’t need to sleep with her,”

“But you did, and it’s fine. You’re home now,” A2 cleared his throat abruptly, a clear tell he was trying to distract himself from saying something he’d only regret.

“Angel, look at me,”

A2 brought his lidded gaze back to A1’s. He looked remorseful, but it didn’t make sense. He shouldn’t have to feel remorse for this sort of thing. It’s not like A1 hasn’t slept with people before, with beautiful women who smell like strawberries and twirl their dirty-blonde hair whenever he buys them a drink. That was… normal, and fine. Good even. A2 cleared his throat again.

“Hey. I love you,”

“I know,” A2 whispered. “I love you, too.”

A1 smiled, his mouth forming a beautifully practiced shape, but his eyes looked sad. A2 had seen it before, of course, but he didn’t always know why the sadness was there. He furrowed his brow and didn’t ask questions.

A1 scooched a little closer, gently bumping their foreheads together. He closed his eyes and grabbed A2’s head, scritching softly at his scalp.

Despite everything, this is what mattered most. Being in A1’s arms, in his bed, in his heart. He could fuck every pretty girl until the end of time if it meant he’d come home to A2 at the end of the day. That was enough. It was. It had to be.

“Wanna watch a movie?” A1 asked, breaking the silence. “I can’t remember what it’s called but there’s this one with a big car chase so, you know, it’s an obvious choice.”

“Hm. Do we have popcorn?”

“We sure do,”

A2 thought for a moment.

“Do we have sour gummy worms?”

This time A1 buried his face against the pillow, hiding his smile. A real one. A2 called it a win.

“Let’s go check, okay?” A1 laughed and placed a kiss to A2's forehead. He blushed.

“Okay,”