fic: tempt me, tease me (leave me breathless) [3/4]
Belated birthday fic for 
euruaina!
Title: tempt me, tease me (leave me breathless) [3/4]
Rating: NC-17 for BDSM sex, restraints, mild breathplay
Word Count: 9k ish for this chapter--only cut in half for ease of LJ posting
Disclaimers: all fictional, only for fun! Title from The Corrs’ “Breathless.”
Warnings/Notes: contains super-brief Sebastian/other at the beginning, but very much Evanstan endgame. Contains one line of reference to Sebastian having somewhat self-abusive tendencies, e.g. looking for rough sex as a form of self-punishment.
Summary: Sebastian will always answer when Chris calls. Tonight, that means some revelations.
Chris follows him into the bedroom. Of course Chris does. Chris has been drinking and has lowered inhibitions and Sebastian’s forgotten to kick the door shut and practically bolted on the heels of a comfortable friendly shared moment.
Friendly. Yes. They’re friends. Sebastian dives into his dresser drawers. Not the ones on the left. Which are, thank God, closed completely. And there’re no wrist or ankle cuffs lying on the bed, or-okay, there’s his tie, the one that’d been a makeshift gag, but that’s innocuous to anyone who doesn’t know better, so- “Here, pajama pants-you don’t mind Iron Man-?”
“Feel like I ought to be insulted.” And, oh, Chris is right there, at his shoulder, warmth radiating along Sebastian’s back, soaking like sunshine into his skin. “But, Sebastian. We-just now, that was-”
“I wasn’t running away from you!”
“No, I didn’t think-I mean, should I have-oh, shit, did I scare you or something-”
“What? No!”
“Good, because, um, I never want you to-you know I would never-you don’t need that-”
“I grew up with Communism,” Sebastian snaps, frayed emotions giving way under last-straw pressure, “not abuse, I haven’t even had that nightmare since-”
“Nightmare?”
Well. Fuck. “Well,” he mutters, “fuck.”
“You have nightmares?”
“No.” He stares fiercely at the corner of his bed. At the messy blue terrain of his unmade sheets. “Not plural. Not-I told you. Not for years. I’m fine.”
“Sebastian,” Chris murmurs, a plea. “Please.”
“You don’t want to-”
“What if I do?”
Sebastian watches the closest sheet-hill. It remains immobile, because it’s only woven cotton. No input to give. “I used to be scared. About this life. About fitting in. About being-not good enough. Here. And-don’t laugh, I know it’s stupid, I always knew, even in the dream I know-sometimes he shows up and says I’m not. Good enough. That it was a mistake and they’re sending me back to Constanţa and I was never meant to have any of this. And I know he’s right. In that dream.”
“He…”
“I never see his face. Only the uniform.” He’s not going to cry in front of Chris. He’s not. “I know it doesn’t work like that. Immigration. Deportation. I’m not an idiot.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Chris’s voice shakes. “I don’t think you are. I think you don’t know how-how strong you are. How fuckin’ good enough you are.”
“You don’t need to make me feel better.”
Chris swears out loud, blasphemous and angry. “I’m not. I’m fuckin’ not. Listen to me. You came to get me tonight. When you thought I needed help. And you’re letting me stay here, and giving me your clothes-”
“I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do-”
“You want to be here,” Chris repeats.
“I said so!”
“You…came to get me. When I called.”
“Of course I did.”
“You did come,” Chris says again. Like a wish nearly granted, like a question that might have a yes waiting at the end. “I mean, I hoped you-but I didn’t think-Anthony said you would and I said I wasn’t sure and I told him not to and he called you to find out and he was right, because you did-”
“Wait.” Sebastian stands very still, arms full of freshly laundered pajama pants, because that’s what a person does upon getting stabbed through the heart. “You and Anthony had-some sort of bet? At the bar? On me?”
Chris’s mouth falls open. “No-that’s not what-oh fuck-”
“Oh,” Sebastian says, or thinks he says. He’s not sure he’s made any sound. Ice-spears in his lungs now. His throat. Everyplace going numb, and the scent of fabric softener’s cloying in his nose.
He sets the pajama pants on the foot of his bed. The pajama pants are stupid. And he’s stupid. And he feels twelve years old again, stumbling over hidden pitfalls in a second brand-new language in a second brand-new country, clumsy with the hurt of being alone.
“I’ll just,” he says, “leave these. Here. And you can have the bed.” His voice sounds wrong in his ears, though he’s trying hard to make it sound right. “I’ll be-” A step, a gesture. The other room. The door. A place where he can’t see the inevitable pity-or worse, mockery-on Chris’s face.
Of course Chris knows how he feels. Of course Anthony knows. They must’ve known all along. And they’d made some sort of joke out of how quickly he’d rush to Chris’s side.
Even walking hurts. He’d not expected that; and he nearly loses his balance, tripping over nothing at all.
“Sebastian-” Chris’s voice. Cracking. Horrified. “No, no, fuck, no, don’t leave, please don’t-”
“Were you ever even drunk, tonight? And I think I probably should.”
“No!” Chris lunges a step closer, narrowly avoiding the bedpost. “Listen, Seb, we didn’t-oh God I guess we did, but it wasn’t like that, we weren’t-we didn’t think-” More swearing, colorful and self-directed. “Anthony said he was sick of watching us pine after each other like, um, lovesick teenage idiots, his words, and he was gonna do something about it and he called you and I-I wanted you to come, didn’t you hear me? It wasn’t a bet, it never was, it was serious for me-”
“Stop.” Sebastian’s own voice breaks. He puts a hand on the doorframe. It supports his pain with wooden concern. “I don’t know what you want me to say, and-”
“I don’t want you to say what you think I want you to say!” Chris flings out a hand. Sebastian, caught by the honest anguish in that voice, turns back.
Chris’s hand doesn’t so much grab for his as collide with it. His arm, in fact. Squarely over a rope-burn, a bruise.
He can’t hold back the flinch, the gasp in his inhale.
Chris freezes.
The whole world freezes as well, a flashpoint tableau of intimate pain.
Chris, as if in a dream, comes slowly closer. Takes Sebastian’s unresisting hand in his, and uses cautious fingers to coax up one concealing long sleeve.
And his face drains of color. Shocked.
“It isn’t-” Sebastian gives up. Futile. Even that sentence doesn’t know where it’s going.
Chris’s eyes widen, then narrow. The muscle along his jaw tenses: superheroic outrage over mistreatment of a friend. “How bad is it?”
Please don’t ask, Sebastian wants to say. Please let me be alone. He knows Chris won’t. Chris Evans is a good person and a kind man, and Chris will never in a million years walk away if a friend is wounded.
He wants to curl up small somewhere utterly forgettable and stay quiet and tiny until he remembers how to breathe. All that he manages is, “Please.”
Chris lets his wrist go, movement simultaneously tender and terrified, like he’s afraid one wrong motion’ll shatter Sebastian like glass. Their eyes meet, and then Chris is talking again, words spilling out like a flood from a broken dam, shaking his head. “I can’t. I-I can’t just-I’m sorry, I’ll leave you alone if you say you want that, but I have to know-you’re hurt, someone hurt you, someone did this to you, I have to know you’re okay-”
And then comprehension, abrupt as a bullet: “You said date-you had a-did he fuckin’ hurt you? Or she? Or whoever-tell me who it was, tell me what you want me to do, I’ll-”
So that Chris doesn’t sprint out to enact angry Boston-boy vengeance on the innocent, Sebastian hastily blurts out, “He didn’t-it was consensual!” and then slams his eyes shut in terrible mortification, but can’t resist peeking at the reaction out of a morbid desire to watch inevitable disgust unfold.
“It was…” Chris’s lips shape the oh with no sound. Chris’s fingers stretch out for his wrist, possibly unconsciously, as if drawn back to his skin by instinct, and touch his arm. Right over the closest rope-mark. A caress to burning skin.
Sebastian feels the inhale quiver on his lips. Sensation billowing through his body. Radiance flooding up his arm and down his spine. Every nerve ending alight, raw and open and laid bare. Chris gazes from his wrist, the spot where they’re touching, to his face. Takes a breath, releases it. “Did he hurt you?”
Sebastian opens his mouth.
Chris swiftly amends, “I know you said it was consensual. I’m trying to-to get that. I swear I’m trying. But that sounded like it hurt, just now, and I barely touched you, and-and if this guy’s really hurting you, I mean in ways you don’t, um, y’know, want-you did fuckin’ say unsatisfying, your date, and those bruises look-if you-”
“I’m all right, I swear-”
“If you were mine,” Chris finishes, “and you got hurt, even if we-even if we, um, did that together-I’d never fucking leave your side, after,” and then they stare at each other for a while while those words hover meaningfully in the night and bounce loudly off bedposts and dresser drawers.
Sebastian’s heartbeat pounds in his ears. In the pulsepoint of his wrist. Where Chris hasn’t stopped touching him.
He echoes, barely aware of it, “If I were yours…”
Chris swallows hard. “I…that came out…I don’t know why that came out like that. I’m not that-I’ve never wanted to be all possessive and-hell. I feel like I should be saying I’m sorry. Like I should feel like saying I’m sorry. But…”
“But…?”
“But you don’t want me to.” Chris wraps his hand around Sebastian’s naked wrist. Fingers folding close, biting down. Slow. Deliberate. Controlled. “Am I right?”
Sebastian’s knees threaten to give way. To spill him to the floor like molten honey. It’s more of a moan than a word, when it comes out. “Yes.”
Chris nods. “Thought so. And…the hell of it is…I don’t want to either. To apologize. Not for that.”
“I don’t understand,” Sebastian whispers. He doesn’t. Not any of the night. Not with the hurricane of emotions that’ve been knocking him off-balance the entire evening. He wants to cry, and to get on his knees and hide his face in Chris’s hip, and to come apart in Chris’s hands at Chris’s command, and to beg Chris to put both arms around him and never let go.
Chris swallows. Lifts the other hand-so slow, so tentative, telegraphing every move-and cups Sebastian’s face. The hand is big and broad and perfect. “I want you to listen. Okay? Can you do that? And, um. Believe me when I say this. I mean it, all right?”
Sebastian manages a tiny nod. He’d say yes to just about anything with Chris’s hand cradling his face, but this matters, he can feel it. And he wants to know whatever Chris wants to say.
Chris, very clearly, says, “I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since-hell, I don’t even know. Before I figured it out, anyway, when we came back for the second Cap movie and I saw you at the first table read, I walked in and you were talkin’ to Mackie and laughing at something, I don’t even know what, and I wanted to be the person making you laugh. Or just the person next to you, listening. I wanted to see you tonight. I fuckin’ love you.”
“But,” Sebastian says, bewildered, “you can’t-you don’t-but I love you!”
Chris blinks.
“I’ve always,” Sebastian says, “but you never-and you don’t know me, you wouldn’t want me, you’re too-if you knew what I-that tie was just in my mouth and I own a paddle and a hairbrush and you should leave now, you should-”
“I’m not leaving,” Chris says, “I’m holding you,” and puts both arms around him, carefully, not tight.
Sebastian doesn’t cry. Not exactly. He’s shaky after, though, eyelashes wet, and he doesn’t remember when they sank onto the bed. Chris is rubbing his back, unhurried circles. “I’m not sayin’ I’m not kinda surprised. And I guess I-I don’t know why you would. Want this. But I want you. I love you. I’ll say it again if you want.”
“I love you,” Sebastian repeats, and hiccups, and then glares when Chris laughs. “I still don’t know how to-believe you. But if you’re saying it so am I.”
“So we are.” Chris is kneading the back of his neck now, fingers kind and firm. Sebastian lets his head rest against Chris’s shoulder. Exhausted, oddly buoyant, strangely triumphant. It’s out there now. Everything he is. And Chris is here.
Chris kisses the top of his head. “Anthony’s never going to let us live this down, you know. Anyplace on you that isn’t sore? I mean, for kissing purposes.”
“Ah. There? And maybe my nose?”
“Really?” Chris bends down. Brushes lips across the tip of his nose. “I like kissing you. I kind of hate the idea of you getting hurt. If you couldn’t tell.”
“It’s not about the hurt. Or not precisely.” He tips his head up; Chris’s lips find his mouth, landing at the corner, nibbling, curious. “It’s about intensity. About letting go, and being caught. About trust.”
“But you have bruises.”
“It’s…” He thinks for a minute. He’d never expected to be explaining this to Chris. But the night’s defied all his expectations so far. And it’s crazy and beautiful, a dream impossibly true. Because it is a dream, he says, “It’s about giving that much of myself to someone, and knowing that they can do anything to me, with me…but they’ll never hurt me more than I like. It’s like sparring. When we’re in fight training. Bruises, yes, but…good.”
“Adrenaline. Endorphins. Like the runner’s high, kinda.” Chris bites a lip. Considering. “But it’s a turn-on for you.”
“The sort of…heightened sensations, yes. It’s erotic, for me. And the belonging.” He looks down, unable to look at Chris while confessing this part. “Belonging to someone. Feeling like I’m…”
“Good enough,” Chris finishes, almost too softly to be heard. “Safe, and good enough.”
Sebastian, surprised-though he doesn’t know why he is; Chris of everyone understands precisely how difficult feeling that way can be-nods.
Chris strokes his hair. Puts a little pressure into the caress: keeping Sebastian’s head positioned on his shoulder. “I don’t know if I can ever hurt you.”
“I know.” Of course not. Chris is too wholesome, too full of sunshine, for those desires.
“The rest, though…” Chris pets his hair again. “I can feel your heartbeat, y’know. Shh. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“We’re not-”
“Sebastian, be quiet.”
That’s an order. Delivered mildly, but with authority under the affection.
Sebastian stops talking instantly. He can feel his eyes go wide: pupil dilation, arousal like a tidal wave, swamping him body and soul.
Chris’s eyebrows do the startled swooping-up again. “Huh. Okay. So that works. Good to know.”
“Only sometimes,” Sebastian mutters, leaning into Chris’s hold. “Not on set.” He doesn’t admit that it’d probably work then too, at least if Chris put enough loving force behind an order. He’d end up obeying, and he’d be annoyed about it.
“No,” Chris concurs, and starts playing with his hair, running it through deft fingers. “I wouldn’t ask you for that. Do you mind this? Okay, good, ’cause I like it. Touching you. And we both liked that, before. When I said…what I said…about you being mine.”
“Yes,” Sebastian murmurs. The petting’s making him-not sleepy, but distracted. Spacey. Right now he’s attempting to stay rational, and the internal argument’s wearying.
“I’m not sure I can hurt you.” Chris pauses to touch his arm again, eyes serious. “I won’t say never. If you like that, if you need it…I’d do a hell of a lot for you. But you gotta give me time to get used to it, okay?”
“Yes,” Sebastian whispers back. He can do that. He can wait. For Chris. “Yes, Chris.”
“Oh,” Chris breathes, “listen to you, so good for me,” and there’s wonder in his gaze. Wonder, and concern. “Can you tell me what happened tonight? And I love you. No matter what you say. I’m not leaving you.”
“Oh…thank you…and yes. It wasn’t bad.” He sits up a bit more, abruptly-not embarrassed, Chris knows his secrets now, but shy about voicing the words. It’s only half his story, and he knows he was unfair to the other side of it. “He was trying hard. He’s a friend-just a friend-and I did tell him I wanted to feel it after. It hurt, but I could’ve called it off. I thought, if we kept trying, if he did more…but it never quite…” He waves a hand. “Tipped over. Changed. I don’t know-transformed? When the pain stops being pain, and feels like flying.”
“But it didn’t.” Chris rolls up Sebastian’s left sleeve. Studies irritated red marks. “Not this time. He didn’t notice?”
“He did, but…it was my fault. I couldn’t stop thinking.” To make the awful look in Chris’s eyes ease-and because he wants to confess this-he adds, “Thinking about you.”
Chris’s expression brightens right up, not a hundred percent but on the way there. “Me?”
“Very much you.” He leans forward. It’s the first time he’s initiated the kiss; Chris, after a single startled heartbeat, dives in with gratifying enthusiasm.
They end up tipping backwards across the bed, Sebastian on top but held securely by Chris’s strong arms. The rain explodes into noisy life outside, cheering like mad; wind screeches gleefully past the windowpane, and Sebastian puts his head down on Chris’s chest and listens to that heartbeat under his ear and finds himself winding a hand into Chris’s cream-colored soft henley, clinging, holding on.
“It’s okay,” Chris tells him, Chris whispers, Chris vows, hand settling at the nape of his neck, playing with the short strands of hair as they curl over his fingers. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re mine and I’m here and I’m gonna take care of you when you need it, I love you, I’m here.”
“You love me.”
“And you love me. Which. That’s. I can’t even-you really don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you?” Chris wraps one leg around Sebastian’s: holding on that way too. “I tried bringing you coffee. I couldn’t tell whether you were happy about the caffeine or me. If you have nightmares I want to hold you, not because you need me, you don’t, just ’cause I want to. Better? You aren’t crying…”
“I’m not. I’m only…I don’t know.” He closes his eyes. The rain flings itself at the window and slides down, a fascinated audience. “I do need you, I think.”
“Then I’m here.” Chris’s accent comes out the way it does in moments of emotion, and makes the words incontrovertible. Etched in history-laden stone. “And, hey, I kinda need you too, if you didn’t notice. On the way here. You make everything easier somehow. Is that dumb? Even if it is I mean it.”
“I love you.”
“Love you.” Chris moves a hand, tips Sebastian’s chin up. “Can I see how bad it is? Um, do you want me to make that an order or something? Show me?”
It’s delivered as a question, but it’s Chris making an effort; Chris doesn’t have the same air of command that an experienced Dom would, but Chris means it. It’s that last part that lets Sebastian turn the question into an order in his own head. That works enough for this breakable soap-bubble moment, hovering and fragile in the night.
He slides to his feet. Strips, not as gracefully as he’s capable of but quickly. For Chris.
When he turns, letting Chris see the extent of the marks, he hears the abrupt inhale, the stiffening of posture; he doesn’t move, letting Chris get up and come to him. One hand skims his shoulders, his back, barely making contact; he knows Chris is seeing reddened lines, darker lines, skin never broken but wounded by cane and rope and spankings. The worst of the bruising’s on his ass and thighs; Christopher’d been more forceful there, trying to push him over the edge. His cock and balls hurt, not badly, from prior restraints and from present arousal, blood rushing into abused flesh. He turns his head-not proper protocol, but he needs to see Chris, and Chris won’t know or care-and Chris, standing behind him, leans over his shoulder and kisses him.
That kiss sends shivers all the way to his toes. Sparkles in his bones, along his spine. Chris can look at him like this, and nevertheless will kiss him like that. Like he’s wonderful.
Chris takes his elbow. Turns him so they’re face to face. Chris is still dressed, jeans and that creamy knit shirt, a hint of tantalizing tattoo-ink showing along his collarbone. Sebastian wants to lick that spot, and wonders if he’ll be allowed to.
“What’re you thinking?” Chris sounds amused. “Looking at the ink?”
“Wanting to taste you,” Sebastian says. “If you want to let me.”
Chris’s mouth makes a distressed shape. The rain gets a fraction harder. “I-God. I don’t know if I can do this. Okay. Okay. Can we try it like this? If you want something, especially if you want me, you can say so. I don’t get to tell you what to do.”
Sebastian, through pure determination, does not wince at this. “That’s…kind of the point. Me being yours.”
“I don’t fucking own you!”
“No. You don’t. And I’ll tell you to stop if I need to, and I can ask you for things, but-” He bites his lip. Fresh pain. Stinging. “Try this. If I asked you for something that you weren’t in the mood for, not anything close to your limits, but just that you perhaps had other plans, or perhaps you didn’t want me right at that second, what would you do?”
“Tell you to wait,” Chris says promptly, “and if you’re good, maybe-” And then looks rather shocked.
“Yes,” Sebastian agrees. Simply that.
“Oh.” Chris now looks thoroughly floored. “But-that’s-I didn’t mean-oh.”
“I enjoy being good for you,” Sebastian tells him. “I’ll listen to your orders because that feels good for me. You said I was yours. Let me be that. Yours.”
“Okay.” Chris takes a breath, lets it out. “Okay. I can kinda see that. But this…” A hand hovers over a hip: over cane-blows and mementos. “I don’t know how to feel about this. You like it…”
“Sometimes.” Sebastian’s trying not to lean into the touch too obviously. “If you did it. Making me feel it, making me know it, how much I can take, how far I belong to you…”
“Mine.” Chris sets the hand on his hip. Fingers pressing down over a bruise. Sebastian whimpers; Chris takes in the sound. “You do like that. But you said it never felt good, earlier. With him. Do you have something for this? For bruises? Can I take care of you?”
“Oh,” Sebastian breathes. Air leaving his body: those words, phrased that way. “Yes. Lotion, top drawer on the left…numbing, mostly, but it’ll help the skin heal…”
Chris’s fingers bite down harder. Sebastian gasps. “You’re telling me you had something to help and you didn’t use it?”
“I-”
“Not real pleased with you,” Chris muses, “about that,” and Sebastian’s knees buckle. Chris catches him effortlessly. “Go get it. Your lotion.”
“Oh God,” Sebastian says, in Romanian, worshipful and terrified and elated.
“Hmm,” Chris purrs, holding him up, holding him close; falling into the role, but with concern and love shining through assumed authority. Sebastian wants to stay right there, protected by that gaze, forever. “Okay, but if it’s important, say it in English. If you can’t talk to me, we’re not gonna do anything, clear?”
“Da?”
“Brat.” But Chris is laughing, reassured. “That was yes, right?”
“Yes, Chris.”
“Get me your lotion,” Chris demands, nudging him upright, “and then I’m going to take care of you, and you’re going to let me.”
Sebastian, smiling-lightness everyplace, like floating, like joy-goes.
euruaina!
Title: tempt me, tease me (leave me breathless) [3/4]
Rating: NC-17 for BDSM sex, restraints, mild breathplay
Word Count: 9k ish for this chapter--only cut in half for ease of LJ posting
Disclaimers: all fictional, only for fun! Title from The Corrs’ “Breathless.”
Warnings/Notes: contains super-brief Sebastian/other at the beginning, but very much Evanstan endgame. Contains one line of reference to Sebastian having somewhat self-abusive tendencies, e.g. looking for rough sex as a form of self-punishment.
Summary: Sebastian will always answer when Chris calls. Tonight, that means some revelations.
Chris follows him into the bedroom. Of course Chris does. Chris has been drinking and has lowered inhibitions and Sebastian’s forgotten to kick the door shut and practically bolted on the heels of a comfortable friendly shared moment.
Friendly. Yes. They’re friends. Sebastian dives into his dresser drawers. Not the ones on the left. Which are, thank God, closed completely. And there’re no wrist or ankle cuffs lying on the bed, or-okay, there’s his tie, the one that’d been a makeshift gag, but that’s innocuous to anyone who doesn’t know better, so- “Here, pajama pants-you don’t mind Iron Man-?”
“Feel like I ought to be insulted.” And, oh, Chris is right there, at his shoulder, warmth radiating along Sebastian’s back, soaking like sunshine into his skin. “But, Sebastian. We-just now, that was-”
“I wasn’t running away from you!”
“No, I didn’t think-I mean, should I have-oh, shit, did I scare you or something-”
“What? No!”
“Good, because, um, I never want you to-you know I would never-you don’t need that-”
“I grew up with Communism,” Sebastian snaps, frayed emotions giving way under last-straw pressure, “not abuse, I haven’t even had that nightmare since-”
“Nightmare?”
Well. Fuck. “Well,” he mutters, “fuck.”
“You have nightmares?”
“No.” He stares fiercely at the corner of his bed. At the messy blue terrain of his unmade sheets. “Not plural. Not-I told you. Not for years. I’m fine.”
“Sebastian,” Chris murmurs, a plea. “Please.”
“You don’t want to-”
“What if I do?”
Sebastian watches the closest sheet-hill. It remains immobile, because it’s only woven cotton. No input to give. “I used to be scared. About this life. About fitting in. About being-not good enough. Here. And-don’t laugh, I know it’s stupid, I always knew, even in the dream I know-sometimes he shows up and says I’m not. Good enough. That it was a mistake and they’re sending me back to Constanţa and I was never meant to have any of this. And I know he’s right. In that dream.”
“He…”
“I never see his face. Only the uniform.” He’s not going to cry in front of Chris. He’s not. “I know it doesn’t work like that. Immigration. Deportation. I’m not an idiot.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Chris’s voice shakes. “I don’t think you are. I think you don’t know how-how strong you are. How fuckin’ good enough you are.”
“You don’t need to make me feel better.”
Chris swears out loud, blasphemous and angry. “I’m not. I’m fuckin’ not. Listen to me. You came to get me tonight. When you thought I needed help. And you’re letting me stay here, and giving me your clothes-”
“I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do-”
“You want to be here,” Chris repeats.
“I said so!”
“You…came to get me. When I called.”
“Of course I did.”
“You did come,” Chris says again. Like a wish nearly granted, like a question that might have a yes waiting at the end. “I mean, I hoped you-but I didn’t think-Anthony said you would and I said I wasn’t sure and I told him not to and he called you to find out and he was right, because you did-”
“Wait.” Sebastian stands very still, arms full of freshly laundered pajama pants, because that’s what a person does upon getting stabbed through the heart. “You and Anthony had-some sort of bet? At the bar? On me?”
Chris’s mouth falls open. “No-that’s not what-oh fuck-”
“Oh,” Sebastian says, or thinks he says. He’s not sure he’s made any sound. Ice-spears in his lungs now. His throat. Everyplace going numb, and the scent of fabric softener’s cloying in his nose.
He sets the pajama pants on the foot of his bed. The pajama pants are stupid. And he’s stupid. And he feels twelve years old again, stumbling over hidden pitfalls in a second brand-new language in a second brand-new country, clumsy with the hurt of being alone.
“I’ll just,” he says, “leave these. Here. And you can have the bed.” His voice sounds wrong in his ears, though he’s trying hard to make it sound right. “I’ll be-” A step, a gesture. The other room. The door. A place where he can’t see the inevitable pity-or worse, mockery-on Chris’s face.
Of course Chris knows how he feels. Of course Anthony knows. They must’ve known all along. And they’d made some sort of joke out of how quickly he’d rush to Chris’s side.
Even walking hurts. He’d not expected that; and he nearly loses his balance, tripping over nothing at all.
“Sebastian-” Chris’s voice. Cracking. Horrified. “No, no, fuck, no, don’t leave, please don’t-”
“Were you ever even drunk, tonight? And I think I probably should.”
“No!” Chris lunges a step closer, narrowly avoiding the bedpost. “Listen, Seb, we didn’t-oh God I guess we did, but it wasn’t like that, we weren’t-we didn’t think-” More swearing, colorful and self-directed. “Anthony said he was sick of watching us pine after each other like, um, lovesick teenage idiots, his words, and he was gonna do something about it and he called you and I-I wanted you to come, didn’t you hear me? It wasn’t a bet, it never was, it was serious for me-”
“Stop.” Sebastian’s own voice breaks. He puts a hand on the doorframe. It supports his pain with wooden concern. “I don’t know what you want me to say, and-”
“I don’t want you to say what you think I want you to say!” Chris flings out a hand. Sebastian, caught by the honest anguish in that voice, turns back.
Chris’s hand doesn’t so much grab for his as collide with it. His arm, in fact. Squarely over a rope-burn, a bruise.
He can’t hold back the flinch, the gasp in his inhale.
Chris freezes.
The whole world freezes as well, a flashpoint tableau of intimate pain.
Chris, as if in a dream, comes slowly closer. Takes Sebastian’s unresisting hand in his, and uses cautious fingers to coax up one concealing long sleeve.
And his face drains of color. Shocked.
“It isn’t-” Sebastian gives up. Futile. Even that sentence doesn’t know where it’s going.
Chris’s eyes widen, then narrow. The muscle along his jaw tenses: superheroic outrage over mistreatment of a friend. “How bad is it?”
Please don’t ask, Sebastian wants to say. Please let me be alone. He knows Chris won’t. Chris Evans is a good person and a kind man, and Chris will never in a million years walk away if a friend is wounded.
He wants to curl up small somewhere utterly forgettable and stay quiet and tiny until he remembers how to breathe. All that he manages is, “Please.”
Chris lets his wrist go, movement simultaneously tender and terrified, like he’s afraid one wrong motion’ll shatter Sebastian like glass. Their eyes meet, and then Chris is talking again, words spilling out like a flood from a broken dam, shaking his head. “I can’t. I-I can’t just-I’m sorry, I’ll leave you alone if you say you want that, but I have to know-you’re hurt, someone hurt you, someone did this to you, I have to know you’re okay-”
And then comprehension, abrupt as a bullet: “You said date-you had a-did he fuckin’ hurt you? Or she? Or whoever-tell me who it was, tell me what you want me to do, I’ll-”
So that Chris doesn’t sprint out to enact angry Boston-boy vengeance on the innocent, Sebastian hastily blurts out, “He didn’t-it was consensual!” and then slams his eyes shut in terrible mortification, but can’t resist peeking at the reaction out of a morbid desire to watch inevitable disgust unfold.
“It was…” Chris’s lips shape the oh with no sound. Chris’s fingers stretch out for his wrist, possibly unconsciously, as if drawn back to his skin by instinct, and touch his arm. Right over the closest rope-mark. A caress to burning skin.
Sebastian feels the inhale quiver on his lips. Sensation billowing through his body. Radiance flooding up his arm and down his spine. Every nerve ending alight, raw and open and laid bare. Chris gazes from his wrist, the spot where they’re touching, to his face. Takes a breath, releases it. “Did he hurt you?”
Sebastian opens his mouth.
Chris swiftly amends, “I know you said it was consensual. I’m trying to-to get that. I swear I’m trying. But that sounded like it hurt, just now, and I barely touched you, and-and if this guy’s really hurting you, I mean in ways you don’t, um, y’know, want-you did fuckin’ say unsatisfying, your date, and those bruises look-if you-”
“I’m all right, I swear-”
“If you were mine,” Chris finishes, “and you got hurt, even if we-even if we, um, did that together-I’d never fucking leave your side, after,” and then they stare at each other for a while while those words hover meaningfully in the night and bounce loudly off bedposts and dresser drawers.
Sebastian’s heartbeat pounds in his ears. In the pulsepoint of his wrist. Where Chris hasn’t stopped touching him.
He echoes, barely aware of it, “If I were yours…”
Chris swallows hard. “I…that came out…I don’t know why that came out like that. I’m not that-I’ve never wanted to be all possessive and-hell. I feel like I should be saying I’m sorry. Like I should feel like saying I’m sorry. But…”
“But…?”
“But you don’t want me to.” Chris wraps his hand around Sebastian’s naked wrist. Fingers folding close, biting down. Slow. Deliberate. Controlled. “Am I right?”
Sebastian’s knees threaten to give way. To spill him to the floor like molten honey. It’s more of a moan than a word, when it comes out. “Yes.”
Chris nods. “Thought so. And…the hell of it is…I don’t want to either. To apologize. Not for that.”
“I don’t understand,” Sebastian whispers. He doesn’t. Not any of the night. Not with the hurricane of emotions that’ve been knocking him off-balance the entire evening. He wants to cry, and to get on his knees and hide his face in Chris’s hip, and to come apart in Chris’s hands at Chris’s command, and to beg Chris to put both arms around him and never let go.
Chris swallows. Lifts the other hand-so slow, so tentative, telegraphing every move-and cups Sebastian’s face. The hand is big and broad and perfect. “I want you to listen. Okay? Can you do that? And, um. Believe me when I say this. I mean it, all right?”
Sebastian manages a tiny nod. He’d say yes to just about anything with Chris’s hand cradling his face, but this matters, he can feel it. And he wants to know whatever Chris wants to say.
Chris, very clearly, says, “I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since-hell, I don’t even know. Before I figured it out, anyway, when we came back for the second Cap movie and I saw you at the first table read, I walked in and you were talkin’ to Mackie and laughing at something, I don’t even know what, and I wanted to be the person making you laugh. Or just the person next to you, listening. I wanted to see you tonight. I fuckin’ love you.”
“But,” Sebastian says, bewildered, “you can’t-you don’t-but I love you!”
Chris blinks.
“I’ve always,” Sebastian says, “but you never-and you don’t know me, you wouldn’t want me, you’re too-if you knew what I-that tie was just in my mouth and I own a paddle and a hairbrush and you should leave now, you should-”
“I’m not leaving,” Chris says, “I’m holding you,” and puts both arms around him, carefully, not tight.
Sebastian doesn’t cry. Not exactly. He’s shaky after, though, eyelashes wet, and he doesn’t remember when they sank onto the bed. Chris is rubbing his back, unhurried circles. “I’m not sayin’ I’m not kinda surprised. And I guess I-I don’t know why you would. Want this. But I want you. I love you. I’ll say it again if you want.”
“I love you,” Sebastian repeats, and hiccups, and then glares when Chris laughs. “I still don’t know how to-believe you. But if you’re saying it so am I.”
“So we are.” Chris is kneading the back of his neck now, fingers kind and firm. Sebastian lets his head rest against Chris’s shoulder. Exhausted, oddly buoyant, strangely triumphant. It’s out there now. Everything he is. And Chris is here.
Chris kisses the top of his head. “Anthony’s never going to let us live this down, you know. Anyplace on you that isn’t sore? I mean, for kissing purposes.”
“Ah. There? And maybe my nose?”
“Really?” Chris bends down. Brushes lips across the tip of his nose. “I like kissing you. I kind of hate the idea of you getting hurt. If you couldn’t tell.”
“It’s not about the hurt. Or not precisely.” He tips his head up; Chris’s lips find his mouth, landing at the corner, nibbling, curious. “It’s about intensity. About letting go, and being caught. About trust.”
“But you have bruises.”
“It’s…” He thinks for a minute. He’d never expected to be explaining this to Chris. But the night’s defied all his expectations so far. And it’s crazy and beautiful, a dream impossibly true. Because it is a dream, he says, “It’s about giving that much of myself to someone, and knowing that they can do anything to me, with me…but they’ll never hurt me more than I like. It’s like sparring. When we’re in fight training. Bruises, yes, but…good.”
“Adrenaline. Endorphins. Like the runner’s high, kinda.” Chris bites a lip. Considering. “But it’s a turn-on for you.”
“The sort of…heightened sensations, yes. It’s erotic, for me. And the belonging.” He looks down, unable to look at Chris while confessing this part. “Belonging to someone. Feeling like I’m…”
“Good enough,” Chris finishes, almost too softly to be heard. “Safe, and good enough.”
Sebastian, surprised-though he doesn’t know why he is; Chris of everyone understands precisely how difficult feeling that way can be-nods.
Chris strokes his hair. Puts a little pressure into the caress: keeping Sebastian’s head positioned on his shoulder. “I don’t know if I can ever hurt you.”
“I know.” Of course not. Chris is too wholesome, too full of sunshine, for those desires.
“The rest, though…” Chris pets his hair again. “I can feel your heartbeat, y’know. Shh. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“We’re not-”
“Sebastian, be quiet.”
That’s an order. Delivered mildly, but with authority under the affection.
Sebastian stops talking instantly. He can feel his eyes go wide: pupil dilation, arousal like a tidal wave, swamping him body and soul.
Chris’s eyebrows do the startled swooping-up again. “Huh. Okay. So that works. Good to know.”
“Only sometimes,” Sebastian mutters, leaning into Chris’s hold. “Not on set.” He doesn’t admit that it’d probably work then too, at least if Chris put enough loving force behind an order. He’d end up obeying, and he’d be annoyed about it.
“No,” Chris concurs, and starts playing with his hair, running it through deft fingers. “I wouldn’t ask you for that. Do you mind this? Okay, good, ’cause I like it. Touching you. And we both liked that, before. When I said…what I said…about you being mine.”
“Yes,” Sebastian murmurs. The petting’s making him-not sleepy, but distracted. Spacey. Right now he’s attempting to stay rational, and the internal argument’s wearying.
“I’m not sure I can hurt you.” Chris pauses to touch his arm again, eyes serious. “I won’t say never. If you like that, if you need it…I’d do a hell of a lot for you. But you gotta give me time to get used to it, okay?”
“Yes,” Sebastian whispers back. He can do that. He can wait. For Chris. “Yes, Chris.”
“Oh,” Chris breathes, “listen to you, so good for me,” and there’s wonder in his gaze. Wonder, and concern. “Can you tell me what happened tonight? And I love you. No matter what you say. I’m not leaving you.”
“Oh…thank you…and yes. It wasn’t bad.” He sits up a bit more, abruptly-not embarrassed, Chris knows his secrets now, but shy about voicing the words. It’s only half his story, and he knows he was unfair to the other side of it. “He was trying hard. He’s a friend-just a friend-and I did tell him I wanted to feel it after. It hurt, but I could’ve called it off. I thought, if we kept trying, if he did more…but it never quite…” He waves a hand. “Tipped over. Changed. I don’t know-transformed? When the pain stops being pain, and feels like flying.”
“But it didn’t.” Chris rolls up Sebastian’s left sleeve. Studies irritated red marks. “Not this time. He didn’t notice?”
“He did, but…it was my fault. I couldn’t stop thinking.” To make the awful look in Chris’s eyes ease-and because he wants to confess this-he adds, “Thinking about you.”
Chris’s expression brightens right up, not a hundred percent but on the way there. “Me?”
“Very much you.” He leans forward. It’s the first time he’s initiated the kiss; Chris, after a single startled heartbeat, dives in with gratifying enthusiasm.
They end up tipping backwards across the bed, Sebastian on top but held securely by Chris’s strong arms. The rain explodes into noisy life outside, cheering like mad; wind screeches gleefully past the windowpane, and Sebastian puts his head down on Chris’s chest and listens to that heartbeat under his ear and finds himself winding a hand into Chris’s cream-colored soft henley, clinging, holding on.
“It’s okay,” Chris tells him, Chris whispers, Chris vows, hand settling at the nape of his neck, playing with the short strands of hair as they curl over his fingers. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re mine and I’m here and I’m gonna take care of you when you need it, I love you, I’m here.”
“You love me.”
“And you love me. Which. That’s. I can’t even-you really don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you?” Chris wraps one leg around Sebastian’s: holding on that way too. “I tried bringing you coffee. I couldn’t tell whether you were happy about the caffeine or me. If you have nightmares I want to hold you, not because you need me, you don’t, just ’cause I want to. Better? You aren’t crying…”
“I’m not. I’m only…I don’t know.” He closes his eyes. The rain flings itself at the window and slides down, a fascinated audience. “I do need you, I think.”
“Then I’m here.” Chris’s accent comes out the way it does in moments of emotion, and makes the words incontrovertible. Etched in history-laden stone. “And, hey, I kinda need you too, if you didn’t notice. On the way here. You make everything easier somehow. Is that dumb? Even if it is I mean it.”
“I love you.”
“Love you.” Chris moves a hand, tips Sebastian’s chin up. “Can I see how bad it is? Um, do you want me to make that an order or something? Show me?”
It’s delivered as a question, but it’s Chris making an effort; Chris doesn’t have the same air of command that an experienced Dom would, but Chris means it. It’s that last part that lets Sebastian turn the question into an order in his own head. That works enough for this breakable soap-bubble moment, hovering and fragile in the night.
He slides to his feet. Strips, not as gracefully as he’s capable of but quickly. For Chris.
When he turns, letting Chris see the extent of the marks, he hears the abrupt inhale, the stiffening of posture; he doesn’t move, letting Chris get up and come to him. One hand skims his shoulders, his back, barely making contact; he knows Chris is seeing reddened lines, darker lines, skin never broken but wounded by cane and rope and spankings. The worst of the bruising’s on his ass and thighs; Christopher’d been more forceful there, trying to push him over the edge. His cock and balls hurt, not badly, from prior restraints and from present arousal, blood rushing into abused flesh. He turns his head-not proper protocol, but he needs to see Chris, and Chris won’t know or care-and Chris, standing behind him, leans over his shoulder and kisses him.
That kiss sends shivers all the way to his toes. Sparkles in his bones, along his spine. Chris can look at him like this, and nevertheless will kiss him like that. Like he’s wonderful.
Chris takes his elbow. Turns him so they’re face to face. Chris is still dressed, jeans and that creamy knit shirt, a hint of tantalizing tattoo-ink showing along his collarbone. Sebastian wants to lick that spot, and wonders if he’ll be allowed to.
“What’re you thinking?” Chris sounds amused. “Looking at the ink?”
“Wanting to taste you,” Sebastian says. “If you want to let me.”
Chris’s mouth makes a distressed shape. The rain gets a fraction harder. “I-God. I don’t know if I can do this. Okay. Okay. Can we try it like this? If you want something, especially if you want me, you can say so. I don’t get to tell you what to do.”
Sebastian, through pure determination, does not wince at this. “That’s…kind of the point. Me being yours.”
“I don’t fucking own you!”
“No. You don’t. And I’ll tell you to stop if I need to, and I can ask you for things, but-” He bites his lip. Fresh pain. Stinging. “Try this. If I asked you for something that you weren’t in the mood for, not anything close to your limits, but just that you perhaps had other plans, or perhaps you didn’t want me right at that second, what would you do?”
“Tell you to wait,” Chris says promptly, “and if you’re good, maybe-” And then looks rather shocked.
“Yes,” Sebastian agrees. Simply that.
“Oh.” Chris now looks thoroughly floored. “But-that’s-I didn’t mean-oh.”
“I enjoy being good for you,” Sebastian tells him. “I’ll listen to your orders because that feels good for me. You said I was yours. Let me be that. Yours.”
“Okay.” Chris takes a breath, lets it out. “Okay. I can kinda see that. But this…” A hand hovers over a hip: over cane-blows and mementos. “I don’t know how to feel about this. You like it…”
“Sometimes.” Sebastian’s trying not to lean into the touch too obviously. “If you did it. Making me feel it, making me know it, how much I can take, how far I belong to you…”
“Mine.” Chris sets the hand on his hip. Fingers pressing down over a bruise. Sebastian whimpers; Chris takes in the sound. “You do like that. But you said it never felt good, earlier. With him. Do you have something for this? For bruises? Can I take care of you?”
“Oh,” Sebastian breathes. Air leaving his body: those words, phrased that way. “Yes. Lotion, top drawer on the left…numbing, mostly, but it’ll help the skin heal…”
Chris’s fingers bite down harder. Sebastian gasps. “You’re telling me you had something to help and you didn’t use it?”
“I-”
“Not real pleased with you,” Chris muses, “about that,” and Sebastian’s knees buckle. Chris catches him effortlessly. “Go get it. Your lotion.”
“Oh God,” Sebastian says, in Romanian, worshipful and terrified and elated.
“Hmm,” Chris purrs, holding him up, holding him close; falling into the role, but with concern and love shining through assumed authority. Sebastian wants to stay right there, protected by that gaze, forever. “Okay, but if it’s important, say it in English. If you can’t talk to me, we’re not gonna do anything, clear?”
“Da?”
“Brat.” But Chris is laughing, reassured. “That was yes, right?”
“Yes, Chris.”
“Get me your lotion,” Chris demands, nudging him upright, “and then I’m going to take care of you, and you’re going to let me.”
Sebastian, smiling-lightness everyplace, like floating, like joy-goes.