fic: a sure type thing

[luninosity]

Title: A Sure Type Thing
Rating: NC-17 for sex, D/s dynamics, the usual with this series
Word Count: 7,133
Disclaimers: only doing this for fun, no disrespect intended! Title from Tegan and Sara’s “Love Type Thing” this time.
Summary: Nighttime contemplations, morning sex, moving-boxes, minor injuries, jellybeans, confessions of love.
Notes: the next part of the Like Sugar series.

Sebastian

Night. Hushed, though not silent; the susurration of the city resonates like a great tide, an ebb and flow of horns and sirens and café clatter and tipsy laughter at three am. Sebastian likes the murmur and rush; he always has.

He lies in place, cuddled against Chris’s body in the dark. He doesn’t especially want to move, and so doesn’t; Chris is warm and lazy in sleep and big and kind. Chris’s muscles are becoming familiar even among shadows; Sebastian suspects that he could pick his Dominant out by the taper of his waist, the line between neck and shoulder, the gull-wing of a shoulder-blade. He rather likes that idea.

His backside tingles, not badly. Chris had followed through on the promise of spankings with great enthusiasm. Had put Sebastian across his lap, ordered him to stay, and brought one large hand down over his cheeks, repeatedly, leaving them tender and hot. Sebastian’d started crying softly, not from the hurt but because the hurt felt so right; Chris had paused and touched his face and asked whether he was fine, whether he wanted to continue.

He’d not been able to talk. He’d nodded. No words.

The spanking’d been perfect. Intimate, the crack of Chris’s hands, skin on skin; hard and sweet, bringing down all his walls, burrowing deep along the roots of his soul and filling up empty crevices. He’s Chris’s, and every impact-present burn and future imaginings-makes that belonging more incontrovertible. Pleasure and pain intermingled, more more more, as Chris pushes him to new heights, places he’d never known existed.

He doesn’t mind his walls crumbling, falling, being overrun. Chris is a compassionate conqueror; surrender is safe and delicious. He’ll let the invasion come, on his knees, with willing hands behind his back. Or wherever Chris wants them.

He’d meant the words when he’d told Chris that learning positions, practicing, exploring, had been fun. He’d never known that. And if he’s being honest-and here, in the velvet crevices of night, he is-he’s willing to admit that it’s beyond fun.

That he’d laughed and followed orders when Scott had put him on his knees or tied his wrists to his ankles with easily escapable knots, and while he’d been cheerfully amused at the intricacies and terminology of submission-so much to learn, so many names-deep inside he’d felt a shuddering private thrill. Not about Scott, and that part’d been a bit hard to take seriously, but about learning this, knowing this, for Chris.

That he wants to learn this and know this and be good for Chris.

That he wants to behave, and to hear Chris tell him that he’s being good. With that heavy kind hand on his head, turning the noise of the world into profound white-hot bliss. With rewards if he’s done well, and punishment if he’s not. With Chris’s collar around his throat like the staking of a claim.

He shivers, not from cold but from the inexplicable humming of yes along his nerve-endings in the dark.

He wants that. To be claimed by Chris. Yes.

And he’s scared-anyone would be, he guesses, in his position. He examines that feeling for a while. His body’s warm where they’re pressed together; he can feel the scratch of Chris’s leg hair, rough and light, and that for no reason makes him want to smile.

He’s scared but not enough to stop. He’s not scared of Chris, not at all, not now. Only of the intensity of his own reactions. Wanting. So much wanting. And he’s already not the person he was.

But he likes the way this feels. That’s a truth. It’s a nighttime moonbeam peaceful sort of truth, and he thinks maybe it’ll hold up in daylight also. He thinks it will.

He thinks he wants to know more.

His right arm’s falling asleep where it’s bent between their bodies. He kind of wants to move it, but that might mean awakening his husband. Might not, of course. His husband sleeps like the proverbial log. Out like a metaphorical light. And other colorful sayings.

Chris does snore, albeit faintly. Sebastian’s gradually getting used to this. He’s not spent the night with many people, and certainly not on a long-term basis. He refuses to admit that the sound’s kept him up on one or two occasions. Chris can’t do anything about it, after all.

In any case there’s something unfairly adorable about Chris snoring. Tiny whuffles of masculine breath. Sleepy rumbles that say I’m here, you’re here, you’re hearing me, I’m in all your senses.

Good God. He’s absolutely in love, and pretty far gone. He’s finding nighttime rhythmic noises endearing.

He sighs. Noiselessly. Can’t disturb the snoring.

He attempts to wriggle his arm into a more tenable position. Chris lets out a drowsy unawake whine. Sebastian resigns himself to letting his arm become pins and needles, because Chris is wonderful.

Around the bedroom, boxes loom in friendly shadowy towers. Books and clothing and random decorations, mostly packed up, partially not. He’s never been one for collecting excessive ornaments-some dim sepia-toned childhood instruction about never taking more than might be carried from country to country-but he has, in his years here, grown to fit the apartment, as it’s shaped itself around him. Notebooks and science-fiction novels, scarves wherever he absentmindedly sheds them, and a signed picture of himself with Stan Lee.

That last had been taken at a publicity event for the America’s Captain film. Stan Lee looks simply thrilled to be seeing his inventions come to life, taking photos with everyone who asked; Sebastian’s not sure who caught this particular snapshot, but the look on his own face is one of starstruck delight.

Another truth, of course. He’d not known how to explain. He’d never had comic books or superheroes as a boy. He’d come to America, and the world had erupted into dizzying color. Men and women who put on unabashed costumes and went forth clad in vibrant fearless hues to do the right thing.

He looks at the line of Chris’s cheekbone, through the indigo and silver of the night.

Chris Evans tries to do the right thing. Chris Evans has held him when he’s needed to cry, has known without being asked when he needs to be reassured, has quietly stood with him and not pushed further than Sebastian wants to go.

Chris gave him the freedom to help his family. Has listened to him babble about fairy-stories, and never laughs when Sebastian trips over his own coffee-table. Only offers to massage healing salve over bruises.

Chris isn’t perfect, of course. No one is, and Sebastian’s seen his husband panic and get angry and demand answers; has watched Chris’s jaw tighten with concealed frustration at the thought of hidden secrets. Chris is above all an open, honest, kindhearted man, and wants the world to be kindhearted too; Chris gets anxious at the thought that maybe it won’t be, that maybe eyes are judging him and finding him not good enough. But that’s because Chris hates the idea of letting anyone down. Because Chris can’t stand not trying to make the world turn out right.

Chris knows about the pain and the grief and the heartache when the world doesn’t turn out right. When there’s no remedy for an inevitable loss.

Sebastian, settled into his husband’s embrace, can’t see that tattoo. But he knows it’s there. Chris’s memorial, forever emblazoned on unforgetting skin.

He believes that Chris loved that boy. Matt. He believes that some part of Chris always will.

He believes that maybe, maybe, Chris can love someone else too. There’s room in that generous heart; Chris isn’t made to be lonely. Or if not love, if not quite that, at least as close as possible. That’s not beyond reaching. That’s written in every act of adoration, every gesture Chris offers his direction. A sketch of his living room. A gift of chocolate.

He says, not out loud, only tasting the words on his tongue: I love you. I love you, Chris. You and your sunshine laugh and your hands reaching out to embrace the world and your ridiculousness in a kitchen and the shape of your hip under a sheet in my bed. I love you.

Chris doesn’t wake, but plops a foot across Sebastian’s ankle as if in answer. Sebastian needs a second to recognize the emotion in his chest as wanting to laugh. It aches like rainbows do.

He tucks himself more closely against Chris’s heat, head on that chest. Chris lets out a half-awake inquisitive rumble. “Seb…”

“Shh,” Sebastian says, “it’s fine,” breathing, breathing, trembling a little with sudden clarity.

“ ’re you crying?” Chris nuzzles into his hair. “Don’t cry. Don’t want you to cry. Not ever.”

“I’m not.” He’s not. He’s hiding his face in the line of Chris’s neck, but he’s not crying. “I’m okay. Go back to sleep, iubit.”

“Don’t be sad.” Chris sounds mostly asleep and fuzzily concerned. One large hand settles over the back of Sebastian’s head, cradling him close. “ ’m sorry.”

“What on earth for?”

“You feel sad and I can’t fix it.” This time Chris sounds drowsily unhappy, bleary and forlorn. “Wish I could. Make you smile. Always wish I could. Pretty smile.”

“Oh…pretty? Really?...oh, Chris.” He squirms around so they’re nose to nose. Puts his free arm around his husband in turn, hand coming to rest on Chris’s broad back. The night shifts and spills like satin, like honesty, like confessions blanketed in cozy black.  “Christopher. Sir. Listen.”

Chris blinks at him.

“You do,” Sebastian tells him. “You make me smile. And I want you. I’m not sad. I’m…” He pauses, flicking through English words. One keeps suggesting itself, simple and an exact fit for the feeling that’s filling up his chest and stomach and soul. “I’m happy.”

Chris’s eyes get sleepily hopefully excited. “You are?”

“Very. Go back to sleep. I’ll hold you.”

“You will?”

“Yes,” Sebastian says, “I will,” and kisses Chris’s eyebrow, drawing his head down into better cuddling position, rubbing his back. “I will.”

Chris

Chris awakens in the morning with the sensation that something lifechanging’s transpired, though he has no clue what this might be. He’s got vague blurry memories of awakening in the night, of-Sebastian crying? God, he hopes not, or if that happened he hopes like hell he did or said the right thing-of Sebastian murmuring endearments in other languages and kissing him like the first breath of wonder and rubbing his back. He evidently fell asleep being held by Sebastian, who smiles at him like sunrise, so open and unguarded that Chris’s breath catches in his throat.

Sebastian’s never looked at him quite that way before. Vulnerable, yes; surrendered and abandoned and gorgeous, yes; shocked amid family revelations and the aftermath, yes, Chris will permanently remember that day and that expression, like a scar across his heart.

This is new. Bright and serene and delighted and content simultaneously. Happiness in the winter-skies of Sebastian’s eyes, in the corners of his smile.

Chris wishes to God that he could figure out just what they did or said in the cracks of night, because he wants to do it again and again and again. For that smile.

Because he’s an inarticulate moron in the mornings, he stumbles through, “God, you’re fuckin’ gorgeous, come here,” and Sebastian laughs and leans in to be thoroughly kissed, Chris attempting to taste every inch of that delight, heedless of sleepy breath or pillow-creases on a cheek.

Sebastian kisses him readily. Nothing held back. That indefinable sense of a puzzle-piece snapping into place, landing home. Chris doesn’t know what changed or why, and he does want to know, he’s going a tiny bit crazy failing to remember, but right now he’s kissing his husband and he’s in love and that’s the whole damn world.

They make out like teenagers for a while, naked in bed but unhurried about it, rocking lazily into each other just to feel the friction and the thrill of bare flushed skin against skin. Chris gets a grip on Sebastian’s luscious ass-made for cupping with both hands-and pulls him closer; Sebastian purrs his name and nibbles at Chris’s ear. The mid-morning sun splashes frosty gold through cracks in the blinds, and paints improbable landscapes along sheet-hills and valleys.

Chris flips them over eventually so that he’s on top, hips grinding down against his submissive’s, cock sliding along the rigid length of Sebastian’s. They’re both hard and slick and dripping, ready but enjoying the drawn-out idyll; Sebastian gazes up at him, and Chris wraps his hands around both pianist’s wrists and pins them to the pillow above dark hair.

Sebastian moans softly, pupils expanding, eyes darker now, and his cock jumps. Chris says, “Mine,” and Sebastian whimpers blindly and shudders as if he’s going to come, just from that, just from the assertion.

“You want this,” Chris murmurs, “you want to come like this, don’t you, me holding you down, so you can feel it, so you know I could do anything I wanted to you, and you’d let me…”

Sebastian’s lips form a soundless please. There’s sunlight in his eyelashes, lying over one cheekbone, striping his chest with gold. He’s artwork, gilded and displayed.

“Like this,” Chris tells him, “if you can get yourself off, without me touching your cock, you can come. Do you want to come?”

“Yes,” Sebastian breathes. “Yes, please, sir…”

“Tell me what you want.”

“I-” A wave of pink washes through Sebastian’s face: he’s never had to say it before, perhaps. Chris puts a bit more effort into holding him down, rolls his hips leisurely against Sebastian’s, and orders, “Tell me.”

“…I want to come,” Sebastian whispers. “Like this. Under you. Being held down. And I-I want you to come, too, please, Chris. On me.”

Chris’s eyebrows shoot ceilingward. “On you.”

Sebastian shuts both eyes. “Please.”

“Hey,” Chris says, “look at me, that’s an order,” and when blue eyes open, he adds, “Fuck yes, completely yes, I want that too, I want you fuckin’ covered in me, and don’t ever be ashamed of asking for what you want, okay?”

And that mouth quirks into a wonderful wryly obedient smile. “Yes, Chris. It wasn’t about-I’m not ashamed of-nu face nimic, never mind. I want you to come all over me, sir, I want you in my mouth and on my face and on me, anywhere you decide, I want you to use me for that. Please.”

“Oh fuck,” Chris says, breathless.

Sebastian’s eyes sparkle. “That is what I’m asking for, yes.”

“Such a mouth on you,” Chris muses, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, laughter bubbling up from his gut and his heart anyway. Sebastian’s sarcastic in bed. Sarcastic and sweet and willingly submissive and fucking perfect. “Think you need somethin’ to do with it.” And he tugs Sebastian’s hands closer together, enough to pin them down one-handed, and then slips two fingers into Sebastian’s mouth, quieting him.

Sebastian’s eyes flutter shut, and his cock drips between them. He licks at Chris’s fingers, sucks at them, curls his tongue down around the base of each and back up, lavishing each joint with attention. Chris hears himself groan, and presses his thumb to the corner of that plush mouth, stretching it obscenely, messy with saliva and shining skin.

Sebastian’s moving beneath him, tiny tremulous inarticulate pleas; Chris grins. “I said you could. If you need to…” He lowers his voice, whispers, “Come,” and Sebastian does, stiffening against him, mouth suddenly open and slack around invading fingers, cock pulsing out wave after wave of hot stickiness between their stomachs.

Sebastian looks dazed in the aftermath, eyes huge and hazy and blue as lilacs in rain, meadow-sweet and compliant and almost innocent except for how he’s covered in come and has Chris’s fingers shoved into his mouth. Chris moves the fingers, kisses him-rough and possessive and claiming, and Sebastian tries to kiss back, weakly-and kneels above him and trails a hand through the mess on that flat stomach, gathering up Sebastian’s come to slick his own hand.

Sebastian whimpers, a sound low in his throat, broken and wonderful and needy. Chris says, “Like you wanted, what you asked for, gonna come all over you, look at you wanting it, so eager for me, so fuckin- beautiful-” and he’s not expecting to come quite so soon but he realizes Sebastian’s watching his hand, watching every slip-slide of his cock through his fingers, and oh-

Jets land across Sebastian’s chest, throat, open mouth, chin. Sebastian moans again, a noise of sheer ecstasy, tongue swiping out to catch drops on his lips. Chris, given this encouragement, leans forward and smears a streak of white from his cheek to his mouth, fingers pushing inside again, watching as Sebastian licks the come from his skin.

Chris can’t think of any words. Not enough. Not in the universe.

Well. He can think of three. They tremble on his tongue.

But Sebastian won’t hear him, not this far under-and this is pretty damn far, especially considering how relatively little it’d taken; a long way from what Sebastian’s told him about needing pain and whips and extremes, and Chris takes some small pride in this-and aftercare’s going to be seriously necessary given the way he’d pushed his submissive to blush and admit to fantasies and ask to be used.

And there’s that odd earlier sensation to deal with too: the niggling sense of change, of shifting ground.

He finds warm water and a washcloth and cleans them both up and wraps arms and legs around Sebastian, back in bed. Sebastian lies limp at first, breathing soft but regular, eyes distant; he shivers after a while, and then blinks, and blinks again, and then makes a sound that’s not quite a sob and not quite a laugh and curls into Chris’s chest, shaking.

“It’s okay,” Chris whispers, tender and helpless, knowing he’s doing what he can-physical comfort, anchors, warmth, chocolate on the bedside table if Sebastian needs sugar-and knowing he’ll have to let the aftermath work itself out. It’s okay, and it’ll be okay; Sebastian’s regaining balance after the high, and they both feel good knowing that Chris can give him that. Worn out, cleansed and calm in a triumphant kind of way, together.

Some wistful part of him just wants to make it okay faster, though.

“You’re okay,” Chris promises, kissing his hair, rubbing his shoulders. “You’re good, I’m here, I’m good too, that was fantastic, um, good morning to us?”

This earns a tentative smile, inching outward like it’s resurfacing from blue depths, and a nod. “Okay,” Chris says, and pets him some more, long caresses that drift over his back and his hip, over sprawls of tired limbs. “You’re so good, you know that? Everything I asked, telling me what you wanted, I like that, okay? I know sometimes it’s hard, I’m not asking for that every time, but if there’s something you want, and you tell me, I’m always going to be glad you did.”

Sebastian whispers something inaudible into his shoulder. The morning quivers, hanging like an unsnapped thread.

“Hey.” Chris keeps his voice determinedly gentle. No critique. Not now, and especially not in a newfound icy flood of fear about the night before. “Didn’t quite hear that; want to say it again?”

“I like you telling me what to do,” Sebastian says more clearly, albeit still into his shoulder. “I like you…telling me when I’m allowed to, how I’m allowed to, come. I feel like I’m yours.” This admission’s punctuated by a tiny full-body shiver and a quick inhale; Chris flings arms around him in an effort to share as much warmth as possible.

“You are,” he agrees. “Mine.” He wants to say more-when did you decide that was a good thing, when did you want to be mine, when did you start smiling about these desires and did I maybe possibly conceivably offer some miniscule contribution to making you want to smile-but he doesn’t know how to frame that sentiment without being unbearably sentimental or cataclysmically awkward or potentially both. He loathes his brain, briefly, and also loathes the stripe of sunshine that dazzles his eyes when he shifts position.

But maybe he’s said something not entirely ridiculous, because Sebastian’s smiling more, cool blue of those eyes like the secret gladness of mountains, grey rocks and rushing streams. “I like that as well. When you say it.”

“You do? Mine. You. My submissive, getting on your knees for me, opening your mouth…” Hastily he amends, “If you want to,” caught between cautious dizzy delight and subsequent nervousness that this is too much like everything he’s dreamed about someday hearing from those lips.

Sebastian blinks at him a third time-this one more surprised-seeming than anything else-and then says, “I wouldn’t say so if I didn’t mean it. I want to,” like he’s comforting a skittish stray creature from one of his science-fiction paperbacks.

“Oh,” Chris breathes. His stomach’s flipping. Hordes of butterflies. Swarms. “I could-we could-try more? Orders? Um, actual toys? How would you feel about wearing wrist cuffs? Or a vibrating-oh, God, never mind, too much, rushing you, fuck, sorry-”

Sebastian props his chin on one hand on Chris’s chest, contemplative, not retreating. “You mean you’d want me in cuffs, and-and my collar-during the day? Not while we’re working, but-in the evenings, or weekends…”

Chris is thoroughly silenced by the visual. Sebastian waits for a response; when none’s forthcoming, that expressive smoke-tinted voice goes on. “We could try. At least once. Me on my knees at your feet, hands behind my back, your collar around my neck…it’s…not a bad idea. Would you feed me?”

“Oh God,” Chris manages. “Yes. I-by hand. You’d eat from my hand.”

Sebastian’s eyes go huge. Huge; and dark, flooded with what Chris can only think must be desire. He’s learning what desire looks like on Sebastian, and he’s very sure that this is real.

Real. Oh. Oh.

“I’m curious,” Sebastian says, “about-well, everything. With you.”

“You are…”

“Well. About most things. I did say no to a few.”

“Yeah…you did…”

“Hmm,” Sebastian muses, lying stretched out along Chris’s right side, half atop him, drenched in sunlight, hair twirling upward in improbable sex-assisted loops, “should I be asking whether you are okay, perhaps?”

Chris, lost among tidal waves of love and longing and hope and disbelief and awe and gratitude, scrapes out, “ ’m great…you’re so fucking perfect, God, look at you…”

“Me?”

“All…fluffy and happy and gorgeous…in sunlight…all mine…”

“You make me sound like a kitten.”

“I’ve said so before,” Chris says, “didn’t think you minded.”

Sebastian gets a wickedly considering look in those pale eyes, leans forward until they’re nose to nose, and announces, “Mew.”

Chris dissolves into a heap of laughter on the spot. Sebastian grins in the manner of someone totally self-satisfied, and rolls over onto his back, flopping into pillows, smiling at the ceiling.

The ceiling and the packing boxes and the sunny morning get even brighter. The whole world glows.

Chris, through the laughter, splutters, “You’re fucking amazing, you-oh God,” and then, “Meow?” which gets Sebastian to laugh too although it’s not even funny, and they end up lying in tangled sheets and sunbeams and exploding into laughter every time they so much as catch each other’s eye.

After a while they get up and shower, and touch each other more than strictly necessary along the way. Sebastian washes Chris’s back; Chris kneads shampoo through his submissive’s hair, and Sebastian tips his head back and smiles.

Scrambled eggs appear, along with coffee, conjured up out of the kitchen by deft hands; Chris is still looking for his last clean pair of jeans when Sebastian comes back into the bedroom and says, “Chris?”

“Yeah? Oh shit watch out for the-”

Sebastian trips over the half-full packing-box. Chris catches him, both hands on his shoulders, heart pounding even though Sebastian’s the one who’s nearly ended up on the floor. “Sorry, sorry, I kicked it earlier-”

“No, it’s fine, I’d’ve walked into it no matter where it was-”

“Are you okay?”

“Da. Embarrassed, but that’s nothing new.” Sebastian sighs. “Sometimes I wonder why you put up with me.”

“I don’t,” Chris says, hands continuing to rest on his husband’s shoulders, memorizing the shape of muscles and self-criticism. “I mean I don’t wonder, not that I don’t put up with you, but that’s not true either, I don’t put up with you, God, I want you, and-don’t fuckin’ think that again, that’s an order, clear?”

Sebastian laughs, quiet and skeptical and with just a hint of appreciation. “I don’t think we’re quite at the point at which you can order my thoughts around, sir. Breakfast? And then packing up the rest of the bookshelves? And also I have a present for you.”

“Maybe I can’t.” Chris skims a thumb over his husband’s cheek, following the line of a cheekbone, the invitation of head-tilt. “But I can ask. Please believe that I want you. Present?”

“Well…it’s nothing spectacular.” Before Chris can ask whether the pronoun refers to the gift or the person giving it, Sebastian produces an extremely recognizable bag from noplace at all and tosses it at him. “Here.”

“Is this a five-pound bag of Starburst jellybeans?”

“It is impressive, what one can buy on Amazon.” Sebastian glances down, though he’s grinning, half reticent and half proud of himself. “You said in an interview…a while ago, that piece about up-and-coming modern artists…you said you didn’t really like most desserts, but jellybeans…”

“I did say that,” Chris says, bewildered and thrilled-Sebastian bought jellybeans! Sebastian bought them for him!-and wondering precisely when his husband watched an interview from at least three years previously. “When did you…you didn’t have to…why did you…I mean, thank you, God, I should’ve said that first. You know you’re going to have to help me with these, because I will eat this entire bag in one fucking evening if you leave me alone with them, I swear.”

“I might be able to turn some of them into cookies,” Sebastian ventures. “I-oh, wait, we’ve packed up most of my kitchen equipment…”

“You can do that?”

“I’ve never tried, but it shouldn’t be too hard.”

Chris looks at him, the two of them standing close in the bedroom under the early sun. He’s got a five-pound bag of fruit-flavored sugar in one hand and Sebastian’s hair’s shower-ruffled and clean, and the packing-boxes crowd around their feet with complacent ease. The scents of coffee and breakfast wander in from the kitchen, and nestle companionably into the morning.

Sebastian blushes, unaccountably shy again, and glances down, though he peeks back up through dark eyelashes. Chris feels every heartbeat like it’s the first he’s ever fully comprehended. His heart, thumping away inside his chest.

Sebastian opens his mouth-and then suddenly turns his head back toward the kitchen, panics, “Oh, rahat, eggs, burning-” and bolts.

Chris looks at the jellybeans. They regard his boxer-clad confusion with unhelpful glee.

The eggs turn out resplendent. Sebastian tries to say they’re slightly burnt. Chris rolls his eyes and puts another forkful in his mouth. Sebastian sighs, but looks as if he wants to smile, and plops far too much raspberry jam onto a muffin-half. Chris openly stares at the subsequent finger-licking. Sebastian notices him staring and-despite the hint of pink creeping across ears and cheeks-does it again.

Chris does the dishes-they’ll be packing those up too, only a few more trips over to the new place-while his husband goes off to properly put on a sweater as instructed. He’d tried to say he wasn’t cold and anyway most of his clothing’d made it into boxes and he’d be fine; Chris had said, “I’m cold, and you’re wearing an undershirt, and we’ll re-pack whatever boxes we have to,” and raised eyebrows. Sebastian’d made an all right, sir, if you insist expression and gone.

The dishwater’s hot. Comforting around his hands. Domestic.

By the time he’s done, Sebastian’s returned, having thrown on a too-large black-and-white striped sweater over faded denim jeans, an outfit that by any reasonable standard shouldn’t work but somehow does. Sebastian’s magical, of course. So everything works.

Sebastian makes everything work right. Chris’s life. Chris’s heart.

They settle down in the living room and start on the DVD shelves. Chris watches his husband, hopefully covertly. Getting ready to move. Leaving Sebastian’s home. This home, where they’ve woken up together. Sebastian’s hands’re efficient and unconsciously graceful, making neat Tetris-stacks out of movies and games. Sebastian’s head’s bent, focused on the task.

Sebastian makes him breakfast and buys him jellybeans and likes too much jam on morning muffins. Sebastian makes him laugh and makes him smile and makes him want to engage in extremely kinky acts of affection and makes him want to scatter kisses over every inch of pale gold skin. Chris, glancing at him across packing-boxes, feels his heart do hopscotch-jumps. Helpless, foolish, giddy schoolboy joy.

Sebastian lunges over to grab packing tape in its handy sharp-toothed dispenser, seals up a box with dexterous fingers, nudges it to one side through sun-gilded dust-motes. Throws a glance and a grin at Chris: happy, then, with dust on a cheekbone and sweater-sleeves shoved up for ease of motion.

He’s so lovely that Chris’s heart breaks a little. Sebastian Stan, his husband.

He puts a stack of DVDs in his box without noticing any of the covers. That’s the end of that shelf.

Sebastian says contemplatively, “I believe we require more tape,” and hops up and returns before Chris can offer to get it. Pianist’s fingers flick the used-up roll out and the new one in, and then wince. “Ow, rahat, ouch-”

“What happened?” He’s already diving that way. Catching a wounded hand in his. Blood on beloved fingertips. Not bad, Sebastian’s scowling at his fingers in more annoyance than pain, but-that is blood. And Chris’s heart stutters at the sight. “Keep your hand up. Elevation. Can I see?”

“Oh, yes, of course-” Midwinter eyes make an irritated expression at the fragility of skin. “I did warn you, with regard to me and clumsiness. I caught my hand on the blade. It’s fine, I’m not hurt-”

“You’re bleeding!”

“Well, yes, there is that…ow-”

“Hold still!” That blade can’t be clean. The injuries aren’t deep-more like bad paper-cuts than slices, three slim lines of welling red across three fingers-but Sebastian needs working hands.

Sebastian should never be hurt. Never, not ever, not while Chris can try to prevent it.

“So,” Sebastian observes, more shakily than Chris would like but with valiant good humor, “this move demands a blood sacrifice…”

“Jesus. Stop. Where’s your first-aid kit?”

“Um…bathroom. Under the sink. I can-”

“You can stay put,” Chris commands, and runs.

He comes back with antibiotic gel and band-aids and a queer lurching sensation at the pit of his stomach. Sebastian’s making jokes about blood and sacrifice and moving in with Chris. God. No.

He squashes the sick feeling down. Focuses on his husband’s hand, offered for repair. Sebastian winces once or twice at the cleaning-out of raw nerve-endings, but doesn’t interrupt. Chris apologizes anyway, every time.

He winds band-aids around long fingers. The color’s all wrong for Sebastian’s skin. Wrong for everyone’s skin, of course; no band-aid in existence’s ever been truly skin-colored. But this looks like blasphemy. Heresy in first-aid form, scrawled across Sebastian’s fingertips.

Sebastian’s chin trembles a fraction. Chris mentally swears at himself. “Too tight?”

“Maybe a little…” There’s blood on a paper towel under that hand. Sebastian must’ve borrowed one of their packing-cushion layers while Chris was in the bathroom. Not much in the way of drops, but a few. “I’m okay. It’s barely anything.”

“Tell me if it hurts more, or if you feel like getting it checked out.”

“If I what? Chris, it’s a cut. Three small cuts.” Sebastian wiggles the fingers in question at him. Bending, flexing, in and out. “Is this some sort of Dominant reaction to my being hurt? Because if so I’m not certain I can get used to this one. Scott says overprotectiveness can be a-”

“You were bleeding!” Sebastian’s not wrong. That’s the hell of it: Chris is being ludicrously overly solicitous, and he knows it. But it’s not merely a Dominant’s instinct to protect his injured sub. Some of that, yeah, he’s aware. But not only.

“I’m really all right.” Sebastian sounds tolerantly amused, but with a slight edge: surprise, perhaps, or annoyance that Chris won’t let him handle this himself, or something else altogether. “You don’t have to-”

“No.” He doesn’t mean that to come out so fast, so sharp. He means: no, I know, I don’t have to. But I want to. If I can’t ever be what you wanted, if I can’t give you your freedom, please at least let me help when you’re hurt. Please don’t say those words, the words that mean I can’t.

But Sebastian flinches, then. Flinches, and looks down, at the powerless expanse of the apartment’s now-bare floorboards.

“Oh no,” Chris says, horrified, “no, I’m not-I’m not mad at you, I swear-oh, fuck-”

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian whispers. The apology contains every unuttered heartbreak in existence. Of course Chris has the right, legally speaking, to order him to be quiet. To tell him no.

“No, don’t,” Chris chokes out again, unsure how he’s talking with a broken heart. Maybe his lungs and vocal cords just haven’t got the message. “Don’t-you don’t have to say that. Please.”

Sebastian’s voice sounds-different. Weary. Almost self-deprecating, almost like he’s laughing at some cosmic irony, though Chris can’t find the joke. “Don’t I? But I am. I wanted-I want to be-maybe it doesn’t matter. I told you I’d not be good at this.”

“You are,” Chris says over his final words. “You are, you’re so fuckin’-everything. You’re everything. And I was wrong. Or I said it wrong. I meant I want to help. I know you can-you don’t need me. I know. Believe me, I know, you had a life without me and-” His voice cracks, though he’s not crying. He finishes, emptily, “You don’t need me to take care of you and you’ll probably hate me for getting all traditional and shit about it but-I want to.”

Sebastian looks at his hand. Turns it over, examines bandages, leaves Chris’s heart shattering in silence.

And then looks up. With odd pensive clarity in those eyes, decision on a wintered-over lane. “That was why. The apology. I wanted to let you.”

“You…”

“I want to let you take care of me if I’m hurt. I want-I’m not used to that. I didn’t think about it, and then I did, and I thought that it sounded nice. Your hands on me. I attacked my hip with the kitchen counter this morning when I went out to make coffee, and I think it’s going to bruise, and the second it happened I wanted you to touch me.” Sebastian stretches the hand his direction, bandages and all. “I’m sorry. I’m scared of it sometimes.”

“I thought you seemed sore,” Chris murmurs, reaching out in turn, “when you came back…will you let me look at it later? If you want.”

Sebastian curls his fingers gingerly around Chris’s, and shifts weight, leaning closer. “I do. Want.”

“I do too.”

“Then…we both want this,” Sebastian breathes, gazing at all-at-once wonderful bandages over tanned skin; Chris’s heart magically knits itself together and throws itself into his throat, heedless of fragile stitches, and he blurts out, “Sebastian…”

Lakewater eyes come up to find his face, and Chris says without forethought or planning but only sheer conviction, “I love you.”

And as he’s saying the words he realizes Sebastian’s saying them too, a half-heartbeat behind but not waiting for him to finish, so their voices don’t quite mesh but overlap and mingle and meet halfway.

“Oh my God,” Chris says, and Sebastian’s laughing, sound born out of the same pure weightless amazement that’s suffusing Chris’s bones; Sebastian’s laughing and saying it again, saying I love you, Chris-

“I love you so fucking much,” Chris says, “oh shit sorry about the fucking, I mean I love you, I mean oh my God-”

“Don’t be sorry about the fucking,” Sebastian says, and then actually puts a hand over his mouth and keeps on laughing through fingers. “I enjoy the fucking, sir, and I love you-”

“You do?”

“And you do!”

“I do.” He reaches out. Gathers both of Sebastian’s hands into his. “I think I fell in love with you-I don’t even know. Always. When you said yes to me at the altar. When I first heard your music. When you tell me fairytales. Every time you look at me. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I’m fucking amazed that you want to wake up next to me, that you trust me-I love you.”

“But, Chris,” Sebastian whispers back, holding his hands in turn, “you make me want to trust you. To do this with you. And I love you.”

“And I-oh, hang on!” He squeezes those hands-one bandaged, one not, both warm and sure-and jumps up. “One sec. Wait right here.”

“Seriously? Now?”

Chris dives back in to land a hasty kiss on that upturned mouth. “Yep. On your knees. Hands in your lap.”

Sebastian narrows eyes at him.

“Orders?”

“Oh…yes, sir, then.”

“I love you being sarcastic,” Chris says cheerfully, “I love you on your knees, and I love you being mine, and I love you,” and sprints for the bedroom and a box within a box, a small sleek expensive secret he’s been holding onto without ever quite knowing the right time. He’s had it since before the marriage ceremony. He’s carried it to Sebastian’s apartment and around in his pocket sometimes and hidden in his overnight bag other times. Wavering, waiting.

The right time’s now. He wants to dance on rooftops and sing serenades to the sky. The box leaps promptly to his hand when he fishes around for it under disguising sock-layers.

Sebastian’s sitting neatly in place, hands folded obediently over evident arousal tenting his jeans, when Chris gets back. His submissive’s being inarguably good, not touching himself because Chris hasn’t said he can, plainly turned on by the command and the position and the anticipation but also distracted by curiosity. “May I ask a question?”

“Nope. I know what you’re going to ask, anyway, and you’re about to find out.”

“And what if I were planning to inquire about the ratio of green apple versus strawberry jellybeans?-all right, then. Surprise me.”

“You bought me a present,” Chris says, “earlier. I sort of, um, bought you something. Us. They’re for both of us. Because, um, I never really did this, and I should’ve, but also I didn’t want you to feel like you had to, and I know you never wanted to get married, and I didn’t want to ask you to wear, um, you hate your collar and I-”

“I do not,” Sebastian interjects.

“You don’t?”

“I offered to wear it more, Chris.”

“Oh…wow…um, okay, so I never wanted to ask you to wear anything else, because-but you deserve a real proposal, not, like, me writing to your mom and signing a contract, and I-”

“Dumnezeule-oh God-are you actually-”

“I’m proposing to you.” Chris gets down on one knee. On the floor. Amid all the half-full boxes. And holds out the one smaller box. The important one. “I love you, Sebastian Stan. I love living with you. I want to live with you and be here for you and try to make you smile forever. Marry me?”

Sebastian’s lips shape an inaudible word or two, awestruck but looking a lot like another oh my GOD, and then, very audibly, “Yes!”

“Yes,” Chris echoes, hearing and not quite believing, letting the word sink like sunlight through his heart and his whole body. Head to toes.

“Yes,” Sebastian says, “yes always, I-oh yes, always. May I?” and at Chris’s nod opens the box.

The ring catches every last drop of happiness in the universe and spins it into shining gold and flings it right back a thousandfold. Simple, one clean-cut unfussy band, sitting eagerly in place.

“Oh, Chris,” Sebastian breathes, gazing at it.

“Can I,” Chris says, and Sebastian holds out his left hand, so Chris slips the ring out of its box and slides it on. Home.

They both end up staring, for a while.

Sebastian says, hushed like they’re back in the temple, like the living-room and the moving-related paraphernalia and the piles of boxes are another temple, one made for and by the two of them, “Yours.”

“My husband.”

“You bought me a wedding ring.”

“I sort of bought a matching one for me,” Chris admits. “I kinda had to. It was a set.”

Sebastian stops communing with the ring and instead raises eyebrows at him. “You’re telling me you have one as well, and you didn’t bring it out here? Go and find it.”

“Clearly I’m not giving the orders in this relationship,” Chris sighs, melodramatic and radiantly happy, and returns with the second box. “I just…I didn’t want to…what if you didn’t say yes?”

“But I did,” Sebastian points out, taking his hand, quelling belated anxiety with three sincere words and a touch. “Then, and now. I enjoy you giving me orders, by the way. In case you’d not noticed. Here.”

The ring’s a flawless fit. Sebastian’s is as well; that information’d been part of the marriage contract, one more section to fill out. Chris studies his own hand and its new gleaming decoration.

Married. To his husband. To the man he loves; the man who loves him in return.

“I love you,” he says, looking up. He wants to say it forever. “Can I kiss you? I mean. You said orders. I want to kiss you. You’re going to stay put, on your knees, and…let me kiss you?”

Sebastian’s laughing when he does, laughing into the kiss, laughing with Chris’s hand twining into his hair and matching rings on their fingers and healing cuts under peaceful bandages. And Chris starts laughing too, because Sebastian is, because the world’s so damn beautiful, because they’re married.