fic: encircle me [1/2]
Title: Encircle Me [1/2]
Rating: NC-17 for D/s sex, discussion of a lot of kinks
Word Count: 12,324
Disclaimers: only doing this for fun, no disrespect! Title from Tegan & Sara’s “The Con,” this time.
Summary: Negotiation, checklists, sandwiches, and the first day of being married. Also, sex on a sofa.
Notes: the first Like Sugar sequel. More to come. This one's for ilovetakahana.
Chris
Sebastian’s place, while small, is not as small as Chris’d been expecting from the description. There’s still no room for him to move in, though. And his heart, overworked by the oscillating demands of the last forty-eight hours plus this last-straw comprehension, wants to run away and hide somewhere for a while.
He glances around while Sebastian locks the door behind them. The place is beautiful, really. Sebastian decorates like music-notes: clean crisp markings over a cool blank page, with unexpected quirks of scribbled-over personal notation. Passion glowing through. Unthinking carelessly lovely style.
The windows are wide, the apartment high enough to overlook the park and the city skyline beyond, and afternoon light floods the space with honeyed gold. The living room’s not large but friendly, sofa crooked in an inviting L-shape, cushions in shades of blue and black and cream and brown. Sebastian hadn’t been lying about getting dressed in a hurry, the day before; a forgotten black leather jacket’s flung across the back of one tolerant chair, left by a distracted hand.
Distracted. Sebastian had been, yes, that first morning. If that’s the right word.
This afternoon his submissive’s been very quiet. Quiet in the taxi, during the ride up the elevator, while unearthing keys.
Chris stops attempting to discover all the intricacies of Sebastian’s place and looks at the owner himself. Sebastian doesn’t look up, hands too occupied with a door-lock that should only require a flick of fingers; but then he does, as if feeling the weight of Chris’s gaze. There’re small tense lines around his eyes, but he’s smiling wryly. “So. Home.”
“Home,” Chris echoes, and drops both overnight bags and takes a step closer, one hand lifting. He can’t help wanting to touch. He’s always liked touching people, especially the people he cares about: physical underscoring of presence and connection. He’s aware that this may have something to do with loss, with anxiety, with coping mechanisms. He doesn’t care if it does, as long as other people don’t care, and Sebastian did say yes to being within arm’s reach. “Still okay?”
“Honestly?” One corner of that mobile mouth quirks up. One hand touches the line of the collar. Rueful fingers. “I don’t know. Can we…you said not at home…maybe someday, but not now…if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh, fuck,” Chris says, plus a few more profanities in his head for good measure, “yeah, yes, of course, come here-or you can, you don’t need me to, it doesn’t lock, or I can, whatever-”
“You can.” Sebastian’s fingers’re shaking. Almost unnoticeably. But Chris is noticing now. “You did put it on me, sir. Chris. I wouldn’t-it wouldn’t feel right if I-well. Mama dracului. That…I did not precisely expect that.”
“What? Can you tell me? Also, did you just call me Dracula’s mother?” He steps in as Sebastian turns; sets fingers over the buckle, tugs, tries to balance speed and tenderness. No stray hair caught in loops, but fast enough to hopefully let Sebastian know he’s both listening and taking care. “And thank you for asking. For telling me what you need.”
“General mother of a bloodsucking devil. Not directed at you specifically. You said you wanted me to be honest.” Collar off, Sebastian exhales, and the stiffness in his shoulders eases. Weight lifted. Chris understands why, and hurts with the understanding.
Sebastian doesn’t turn around, but does tilt his head enough to glance at Chris over his right shoulder. “I was…I am…surprised that it wouldn’t feel right. If I removed it after you put it on. The thought isn’t…comfortable. Surprised is not the word. Shocked, potentially. Hence the maternal bloodsucking devil.”
“I’m asking, please tell me, are you okay,” Chris says, collar loose and dangling in one hand, the other hovering a gasp above Sebastian’s shoulder, craving contact. He quite simply desperately needs to know.
“I am as okay as one might be, learning new aspects of oneself on the spot.” Sebastian sighs. The smile reappears, bittersweet and beckoning. “You realize I’ve not said no about touching me. I like it. I would like it now.”
Chris exhales, says, “Yeah,” and lets his hand fall onto slim strong muscles, lets himself almost unconsciously pull Sebastian closer, run fingers over his chest, fold him under an arm. He tosses the collar at the chair with the jacket on the back, where it lands in mocking safety; Sebastian leans against him, eyes closing, head on Chris’s shoulder in turn.
They stay that way for a while, under the indolent rays of westering sun, only breathing.
Eventually Sebastian inquires, not moving, “Would you like a tour? I know we won’t be here for…long…”
“Sorry. Again.”
“Opri asta. Stop that. Let me show you the place. Our place, I suppose it is now. Come on.”
Chris keeps hold of his hand as they walk. Sebastian’s said he can. And it’s grounding. He hopes it’s grounding for them equally.
Sebastian waves at the living room-kitchen-entertainment space with one hand-“we’ll come back-” and takes him down the single hallway to both bedrooms, which is practically speaking only one bedroom because the first one is undeniably the lair of a musician and songwriter. Sebastian blushes a little-“I didn’t expect company, sorry-” but Chris just pokes his head in and is awestruck. A computer with dual monitors and sound-system hookups he doesn’t recognize and wouldn’t begin to know how to name. Several awards, not that elusive Oscar but from recognizably prominent organizations, gathering dust on a back shelf. Scattered notebooks and sheet music and what seem to be script pages piled across the clean modern lines of the desk. Instruments, so many instruments, keyboard and guitars and a harp and possibly a ukulele all communing in happy anticipation.
He thinks he spots a recognizable sheet of thick paper propped up on the far side of the monitors. Blue and green and silver colored pencil, a quick sketch. Music notes curling into abstract shapes in a sapphire sky. He can’t see more than one corner of it around the computer, but he knows his own work.
Sebastian kept the sketch. Keeps it here, where he performs his acts of award-winning creation.
Sebastian blushes again. “I’m best with a piano but there’s no substitute for experience with any instrument’s actual voice-”
“You’re incredible,” Chris announces, meaning it. Sebastian glances at his face, seems to be about to speak, and then hesitates, nibbles at his bottom lip, and changes the reply to, “Thank you, Chris. Here, bathroom, bedroom-”
Chris would give a fortune, two fortunes, to know what that unspoken answer would’ve been. But he asked Sebastian to be honest, and Sebastian has spoken up about wants, at least as regards the collar; this might only genuinely be his husband thinking twice about initial reactions, the same way anyone might, and Chris is afraid to push. They don’t know each other, not that well. Not yet.
The bathroom’s essentially a box with a showerhead and a sink and a toilet. Sebastian makes an apologetic expression and observes that the architects had to save space somewhere, and anyway he doesn’t need much, he never has. Chris nods, and makes a mental note that whatever place they move into has to have a shower that’ll fit both of them at once, and if possible an ocean-sized bathtub and bubbling jets and dual showerheads. Sebastian deserves that experience.
And Chris, rather selfishly, wants to join him in a shower. Wants to look at his husband, his submissive, all steam-flushed and water-splashed and naked; sex might be an option, hopefully will be an option, but mostly Chris finds himself just wanting to hold Sebastian under the rainfall drops and massage shampoo through his hair and kiss the inviting spot at the nape of his neck.
So his fantasies’re kind of pathetically domestic. They’re his. No one else has to know. Except, ideally, Sebastian at some point.
He watches Sebastian out of the corner of his eye as one musician’s hand opens the door to the bedroom. Sebastian likes being warm. Likes being held. Chris can do that. Chris very decidedly would like to do that. For him.
Sebastian waves at the bedroom, presumably indicating the entire area in one sweep. It has the same wide windows and inviting light as the living room, and a few more bookshelves, but is otherwise occupied by the bed, which takes up ninety percent of the space and is color-coordinated with the sofa in shades of cream and black and deep blue, and Chris’s brain promptly shuts off at the vision of himself laying his submissive down over those sapphire sheets and kissing every inch of golden skin.
“…Chris? Sir?”
“Um. Yeah? Yes. No. I mean you can just use my name. I mean I like you saying my name. I mean-oh fuck me.”
Those glimmering turquoise eyes now look faintly amused. “Would you like that? Because I don’t have much experience in that area, but I’m not opposed to the concept if you order me to.”
“…holy fuck,” Chris manages weakly, after five seconds during which he’s certain he’s going to combust on the spot. “You-I-you-yes, oh God yes, sometime yes. Not, um, now. We can-talk about it. You-that was a joke. You’re joking. Oh God.”
“I am, but I also meant it.” Sebastian throws him a smile. Chris wants to beg for more smiles, every day, just like that one. “I like…being yours. But if that’s what you want, then…I could be happy to serve you, Chris.”
“I honestly don’t know,” Chris admits after a second, “whether I want you to never say that again or say that, like, forever.” He honestly doesn’t.
Sebastian laughs. And tugs him back in the direction of the living room and kitchen. “I am not sure about you, but I could use sustenance. We didn’t have breakfast. And some of us haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday.”
“Oh-” Chris stops. This, because they’re still holding hands, makes Sebastian stop too, inquiring eyebrows wordlessly going up. Chris reels him back in, all that enticing wary-cheetah sweetness, and nudges, “Are you okay?”
Sebastian does that not-quite-smile again-Chris’s heart flutters-and then leans in to kiss him, swift as hummingbird wings. “Yes. Now. Come along and let me feed you. I’m entirely certain we talked about that.”
“Yeah, and we said you didn’t have to.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian purrs back, purposefully casual, holding his hand. “I want to.” Chris forgets words all over again. Pure amazement.
Well. Not entirely pure. Not with that amount of accompanying lust.
He holds onto that hand for as long as he can, until Sebastian takes it absentmindedly away to open the refrigerator. “Hmm.”
“Want help?”
“Jell-O related calamities, you said. No. Go sit down, Chris.”
Chris blinks, laughs, trips over his own amusement. This is Sebastian being himself, kind and competent and very good at remembering Chris’s embarrassing stories; this is Sebastian being himself in his own home, where Chris is the outsider. The intruder.
Sebastian had never wanted to be contracted. Not to anyone.
So he doesn’t want to cry, he goes back to glancing around.
Sebastian’s baby grand piano shimmers like dark serene melody in the left corner behind the couch. It’s no doubt the most expensive bit of furniture in the place, and it knows as much, though not in a smug way. It’s probably just proud to be played by those elegant fingers, Chris decides.
The bookshelves’re also dark wood, framing calm forests of titles and spines. Or they might be calm if they weren’t glaring protectively his direction; they know he doesn’t belong. Chris wouldn’t call himself not a reader; he does read, at least as much as the average person, maybe more than some. Tends to gravitate toward non-fiction, philosophy, wilderness survival stories, science magazines. Kerouac and Buddhism. London and Hawking.
Sebastian possesses some Stephen Hawking as well. Chris would feel hope about this convergence of interests, except Sebastian possesses a plethora of books, a multitude of books, vast and vibrant and joyously cacophonous in genre. Nineteen-fifties science-fiction paperbacks, optimistic shiny spaceship covers and men brandishing ray guns. Heinlein and Asimov and Carl Sagan side by side with Stanislaw Lem and Karel Čapek and Octavia Butler, plus a few others that Chris doesn’t know. Tennessee Williams and Tom Stoppard plays. A folklore and mythology section, and he wonders whether the story Sebastian’d told him had come from one of those volumes and if he could find it sometime. Bound opera scores on another shelf. A biography of Mozart sitting beside one of Gene Roddenberry.
The books and their shelves are giving him the benefit of the doubt because Sebastian brought him home, but they don’t trust him an inch. Chris has the momentary impulse to throw himself at their feet and beg for the chance to prove his worth.
“How do you feel about apple and cheddar?”
“Sorry? I mean-sorry, I was. Um.” Feeling guilty in the direction of your bookshelves. No. “You have a lot of books.” He resists the urge to smack himself in the face. Sebastian knows he has a lot of books. Sebastian bought the books. Good God, Chris. “Like sandwiches? Or, um, anything’s fine. Really.”
“Well-sorry, I don’t believe I’ve got anything more carnivorous…” Sebastian looks around the kitchen as if meat might unexpectedly materialize from empty air. “Is this all right? For now?”
“You don’t have to feed me.” Chris comes helplessly back into the kitchen. Language is failing him. No sounds for the hollowness under his skin, in his chest. It’s growing. Books and elegance and autumn-flavored sandwiches, while he’s got a lingering tower of pizza-boxes and beer-bottles at his place in Boston from the last party. The insidious vines of anguish hook themselves into his heart.
“But,” Sebastian starts, confusion evident in the mountain pools. Chris, aware that this is his fault too, catches one long-fingered hand mid-gesture. “This is your place, and you-you don’t have to. You’re already letting me stay.”
Sebastian looks at their hands. At Chris’s fingers, wrapped around his. “You and I both know that’s-that’s not true. Sir. But…as it happens…at the moment I am hungry. And it’s as easy to make two sandwiches as one. Either open the cheddar or hand it to me.”
Chris opens the cheddar. Tries to regain equilibrium. “Are you vegetarian?” He’s not, not at all, but they can work around that if need be. He is, however, startled; he’s never heard even a whisper of that in any of the fan communities and blogs he might on occasion happen to wander by.
“No. Not in the slightest. Buy me a burger sometime.” Sebastian’s capable fingers’re occupied with the transformation of round ripe apples into thin delicate slices. Chris gazes, mesmerized by the art. “I only haven’t been shopping. I do tend to forget things if I’m working. Like food. Or where I’ve put my phone. Is that enough?”
“What? Oh. Whatever you think. Whatever you’d make for you?”
Sebastian somehow manages to sigh, grin, and shake his head at once. Fondness, Chris thinks-hopes-and some exasperation. “I believe you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this particular dynamic, sir. And I thought I was the inexperienced one.”
“Hey,” Chris says, taking his cue from that tone, taking cautious steps ahead, “I have experience. I have a lot of experience. I can show you experience.”
Sebastian raises eyebrows, and murmurs to the cheddar, “And he asks me what I think we should do…”
“Yeah,” Chris says before the block of cheese can chime in, “because I want to know, because I want to make you happy,” and then his brain catches up and kicks him in the head but the words’re already spinning in the air.
Sebastian taps fingers over his kitchen knife. One-two-three. The sound’s not loud, but loud enough, in the pause.
Sebastian looks up. With a spare slice of cheddar held out in Chris’s direction. “I remain unconvinced that you in fact know how this relationship works, but I would hardly protest being made happy. Particularly if that involves chocolate cheesecake.”
“Noted.” When he takes the offering-and ends up breathless at the brush of their fingers-he gets another smile. The flavors burst across his taste-buds: sharp, firm, creamy. Dizzy with sensation and that smile, he adds, “Is that the reason you love New York? Cheesecake? It totally is, right?” and Sebastian’s fingers’re amused, handing him a completed plate. “Precisely. Not the museums, or the music scene…”
“Nope. Desserts.”
“Brownie tiramisu, blackberry truffle cake, chocolate egg creams…I do of course have a gym membership. Is yours all right, or does it need more of anything? I could find the appropriate mustard again.”
“There’s inappropriate mustard?” At which point Chris’s brain permanently gives up, because attempts at control of his mouth are futile. “Also this is brilliant. Don’t touch it. You’re a god. Of sandwiches.”
“Apparently deification has a low bar of entry.” Sebastian props elbows on the counter, taking bites. Chris nearly says something-he’s not exactly happy with that line of self-deprecating humor-but Sebastian adds, licking a fingertip, “and I imagine inappropriate mustard would make poorly phrased comments about the firmness of the apples,” and Chris falls in love all over again.
Head over heels. The sweet crispness of apples and sunlight on his back from the open window and Sebastian picking up and running with his terrible jokes. Just like that. Incontrovertible.
He puts half his sandwich in his mouth, because it’ll give him time to think of words that aren’t I want to lick the apple juice off your fingers and maybe other places if you’ll let me. Sebastian regards this maneuver with some astonishment, but evidently decides it’s not worth more than raised-eyebrow commentary and goes back to eating.
Chris chews away at his too-ambitious bite. Watches his submissive. His husband. The man he’s in love with. He’d begun a mental list, on the way over: blueberries, chocolate, music, folklore, the utterly incandescent sex they’d managed to have despite the circumstances. Those are things he’s pretty sure Sebastian likes. He can do those things.
Maybe Sebastian won’t fall in love with him in return-and why would he, why would all that extraordinary complicated brilliance want a paint-splattered fanboy artist who likes beer and pick-up basketball and hiking-but Chris has made him smile. Somehow. With stupid jokes about mustard.
He watches Sebastian here at home, here in the home he’s going to lose because of Chris, and the words that come out have to be, “I’m sorry.”
Sebastian sets down the last bite of his sandwich. “For what?”
For everything. For everything I have to ask of you. For asking it anyway. For not quite being able to regret that this happened even though I know you must, I know I’m so damn lucky you don’t hate me, I love you. “For…what I said. This morning. When we-when you were-about what you knew, what you didn’t know, and I told you not to talk, but I said you should tell me if you were confused, and you were trying to, and I’m sorry.”
“…oh.” Sebastian studies his plate, not Chris’s face. Taps at the sliver of bread with one finger, nudging it into a straight and tidy horizontal line. “That. Yes. I’m not angry at you.”
“You ought to be.” His stomach twists into a knot, hearing those words. Sebastian should be angry, and isn’t, and that…whatever that means, he’s scared it’s not healthy. “I was wrong. You can tell me when I’m wrong-wait, you know that, right? You can. I want you to.”
“You were attempting to learn what I knew.” Sebastian pokes at the crust again, even though from Chris’s perspective it seems perfectly aligned. “I know why you did it. If we’re in public, if it’s visible to everyone, I can’t stop and question you. You were testing whether I knew that. Whether I would obey you without difficulty, if we’re in that…atmosphere? That’s not the word. Mindset, maybe. That’s not right either. English, plimba ursu, such a terrible language… But you get the idea. You were testing my responses, and I know enough to know I should’ve waited for permission to speak, at least when we’re being formal, even if you’re not enforcing that at home. Sir. Chris. Sorry.”
This explanation sounds far more rational and articulate than Chris recalls being at that moment. He’s not sure whether Sebastian genuinely believes it or is being kind. Either version is more generous than he deserves.
“You should still be angry,” he settles on finally. “Because even if you thought…if we were being formal, I didn’t say so. We didn’t have an audience. And I did tell you to ask questions if you had them. So, yeah, be mad at me, I deserve it.”
Sebastian tips his head to one side, sparrow-like and considering. “Would it change anything if I were? I was…surprised, at the time. But I was also…and you know this, you were there…the edge of that feeling, like…clouds, like flying, like the flawless note that never ends…you did surprise me. But I trusted you. I trust you. I assumed you knew more about this than I did, and so if you said something was wrong I’d listen. Which makes me sound far too coherent. I did say flying.”
“You don’t like airplanes,” Chris says. The afternoon sunlight drops behind a cloud, hurting too.
“No,” Sebastian says, and catches his gaze, and holds it. “I’m not good at…take-offs and landings. But I don’t mind being in the air.”
“I said…if you want, I could hold your hand…?”
“Yes. You can. How much further are we planning to push this poor tormented metaphor today?”
“Maybe just a little more?” Chris lifts a hand, palm up, over the countertops. Sebastian takes it without any visible reluctance. The sunlight peeks out anew. “I’m still sort of figuring out the controls, no guarantees about turbulence, but I promise to try to get you down safe?”
“I am having tremendous difficulty refraining from the obvious joke about cockpits, you understand.” Sebastian’s thumb rubs gently across the back of his hand. “Also thank you. Mulţumesc.”
“Make the joke,” Chris begs. “Please. Please make all the jokes. Come on, I said the thing about the mustard, it’s your turn, you know you want to.”
“I am practicing restraint.” And mountain-lake eyes widen innocently at him on the last word. “Isn’t that what good submissives do? Practice…restraints? Or am I saying that incorrectly, in English?”
Chris stares, puts his free hand melodramatically on the countertop for support, and announces, “Dead. Spontaneous combustion. No recovery,” and inside is turning cartwheels and jumping up and down with amazed glee. Sebastian’s making jokes about this. About restraints.
He’d said brilliant, earlier. Sebastian is.
That is a reminder, though. He’d also said they needed to talk, and they do. He’s already been a less than responsible Dominant, not counting the wedding night-that operates under more archaic and distressingly aphrodisiac rules-but on the morning after, when he’d let Sebastian get on both knees and offer himself outside the shower. When he’d left Sebastian tied to the bed, when they’d jumped into said bed with little more than instinct as a guide.
If they’re doing this properly, then before they do anything else they need to go through more than just the hasty three rules he’d put in place the previous night. Those are important, and he’ll reinforce them-be honest, be present, be good when given direct orders-but other conversations need to be had. Hard and soft limits. Safewords if Sebastian wants anything other than standard red, yellow, green. Past experience.
Past experience. He hears that modern-day-enchantment voice admit again, in memory: I thought I needed it to hurt…
Sebastian’s looking at him curiously. “I assumed that was only teasing, about the instantaneous lack of vitality…”
“Yeah-no! I mean I’m fine. Sorry. I was thinking…I’m a fuckin’ moron, actually, is what I’m thinking. I told you we needed to go over things. Checklists. I don’t have them. On me. Here.”
“Checklists…ah. You need to know what I’ve done, and what I’ve not tried.”
“We,” Chris corrects, standing close to him in the sunlit world of the kitchen, hyperaware of every element of stone countertops and autumnal sweetness and the presence of those musician’s fingers in his. “You need to know too. About me. We don’t have to do this now if you don’t feel like it, but-but I’m sorry again, I forgot, I should’ve been prepared, so that we could-”
“Go over limits, before I ask you to tie me up a second time?” No censure in that voice, or if so only self-mocking, and gently. “Do you have them someplace online? Send me the link? I do own a printer.”
“Um,” Chris says, because Sebastian’s clearly capable of taking a potentially problematic hiccup and resolving it calmly while Chris’s idiot brain spins off into failure and anxiety. “Yeah, I emailed them to myself so I wouldn’t forget, and then I forgot-”
“If you apologize once more I shall never make godlike sandwiches for you in the future.” Sebastian hands over his own mobile phone. “Send them to me. And give me your number.”
Chris, rather bemused by the orders and the threat-an effective one even if he’s ninety percent sure his submissive doesn’t mean it-does as commanded. A few seconds later his own phone chirps; Sebastian says, “Now you have my number, too, and I’ll be right back,” and vanishes off to his office.
Chris, left alone with his phone and Sebastian’s number and the meaningful stares of the bookshelves, kind of wants to laugh. If he did it’d be a bittersweet kind of laugh. Sebastian can take care of himself. Sebastian can take care of him.
He’s pathetically grateful and surprised enough that the incipient anxiety’s cut off at the knees. He’s also partly turned on and partly afraid: the competence has kicked his heart-rate up a notch, but that same competence will get them into trouble if displayed too publicly.
Sebastian’s his. His submissive. Sebastian needs this marriage to work. Chris wants this marriage to work.
Sebastian put his number into Chris’s phone. Had no qualms about handing Chris his own.
Sebastian reemerges, brandishing paper and pens. “Here. Purple glitter ink?”
“…um.” Whatever Sebastian feels like handing him. Anything. “Sure?”
“Only joking. Navy blue. Appropriately serious. Shall we, then?”
Chris stares at the not-purple and non-glittery pen, and manages, “Yeah…”
“I’ll be quick.” Sebastian curls up on the sofa, unearthing a writing desk from a sheaf of notebooks, flipping his own pen absently through fingers. The sunshine plays indolently with the edges of his hair.
“Wait,” Chris says, and gets up. “You didn’t-did you want the end of your sandwich?”
“Oh…I forgot. I-oh, you’re bringing it over…”
Chris, leaning over the back of the couch, holds out the last bite of bread and cheese. In front of Sebastian’s lips. Somehow that feels natural. The right thing to do. “Finish your sandwich.”
Sebastian’s eyes get wider, and his lips part, and then he leans forward and nibbles the bite neatly out of Chris’s fingertips.
The sunbeam dances with giddiness.
“Right,” Chris says, barely audible, word just another piece of the moment. Sebastian kisses his fingers, more of a breath than a touch, exhale a murmur over Chris’s skin.
The pen slips free of Sebastian’s lax other hand and flops onto the floor, knocking into the coffee table along the way for good measure.
Sebastian blinks, blushes intensely, and dives for the security of paper. “You asked me to…checklists…sorry, Chris…”
“No,” Chris says, “I liked that,” and Sebastian, through the blush and not looking up, admits, “I think I might’ve liked it too, sir.”
“Yeah,” Chris agrees, “I kinda thought you maybe did, so go fill yours out and I’ll do mine and after we go over them maybe I can feed you another apple, if you’re good, or just ’cause it’s fun?” Sebastian, ears pink, nods.
And Chris has to smile. He’s still the interloper here, the never-wanted part of Sebastian’s life. But Sebastian does want him. And even the bookshelves thaw and unbend in his direction.
It’s a pretty standard checklist, detailed and thorough and businesslike; he knows his answers pretty well, and gets through it fast. He’s not done anything too exotic-he’s willing to try, of course, and he’s starting to suspect that he’d quite like to experiment with Sebastian, now that Sebastian’s his. But he’s mostly previously relied on big hands and strength and emotional connection with partners; he’s never played with anyone who wasn’t a friend first, and he thinks very briefly of Matt’s laughing eyes and a too-loose set of cheap handcuffs and cheerful improvisation, and then he stops thinking about that and checks off restraints as something he’s both experienced with using and likes on his sub.
No to blood and marks and permanent scars. No to inviting other people to play. He’s not sharing Sebastian. He wouldn’t, not ever, but he’s fairly sure Sebastian’s still a little nervous about the fact that it’s technically within Chris’s rights to pull him out as a party favor. Hopefully this’ll help; it’s not a legal document in the sense that their marriage contract is, but Chris plans to treat it as one.
No to certain bodily-waste related kinks. That’s not an idea he can wrap his head around, and he seriously hopes Sebastian isn’t into those. Though…he stares at the paper for a second…Sebastian waiting to get up, until given permission…Sebastian giving over that much control of his own body, desperate and beautiful and squirming, begging Chris to let him find a toilet and relief….Sebastian on his knees, Sebastian letting Chris claim him, an act of marking territory, possessiveness…maybe only in the shower, where they can shower after…
Dammit. He changes that particular answer to ‘never tried but maybe interested in the future’. Crosses his legs and flips a glance at the other end of the sofa. Sebastian’s checking a box, fingers neat and tidy, eyes absorbed. Chris’s erection decides that Sebastian being serious and studious is the most erotic sight in the universe, and gets even more insistent.
A few of the items on the list he’s never heard of. He probably ought to. Being Sebastian’s Dominant and all. Being responsible.
Ha. Sebastian’s already saved him in more ways than he can count, and that’s just today.
He gives up and circles a few lines and scribbles next to those, I don’t even fucking know what these are, I’m sorry, I’ll learn if you want? and offers, “Done?”
“Ah…yes. More or less.” Sebastian looks up. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course!”
“This…the last three things…I don’t know what those are.”
“Oh thank God,” Chris says, and then has to explain his relieved laughter, but by the end Sebastian’s smiling too. “I feel far better about this, in that case, sir…Chris, sorry…here, do you want mine? I’ll just leave those blank.”
“I do like you using my name.”
“Chris.”
“Just like that. Okay, here…” They trade. Sebastian stretches one long leg out and drapes it over the arm of the couch, plainly unthinking, getting comfortable with his furniture. Chris openly stares. He’s allowed.
The room feels warmer. Not the fault of the sunshine. He crosses his legs again. Focuses. Reading. Right.
He looks at the checklist. And then looks again. Huh. Just-huh.
Sebastian has far more items checked than he’d’ve guessed. Granted, most of those’re in the ‘tried once’ category, with variations on ‘liked, didn’t like, would try again,’ but still. Experience with various toys, with hair-pulling, with bondage, with, God, canes, and his brain helpfully presents him with the image of red lines striping the pale gold of slim thighs, indelible reminders of belonging every time Sebastian sits or stands.
He glances over at his sub, across the paper. Sebastian appears to be occupied in reading Chris’s responses. Not glancing back.
Sebastian’s done more than Chris ever has, and more adventurously. This is becoming increasingly undeniable with every line, and new sparks of worry bloom in his gut, behind his heart, at the back of his mind. What if he’s not good enough? What if Sebastian’s expecting more? What if, what if.
To avoid the possible examination of that what if, he reads a bit further. And his brain goes from huh, interesting, we could try that to what the everloving fuck in record time. “You-you-this-knives-blood-”
Sebastian looks up. His expression’s unreadable, though Chris catches a flicker of-something-before those gates swing shut. “That was my third night out. Third club. Six years ago. Standard stipulations of no scars and no permanent injuries. Please note that I said I’m willing to try again.”
“What-” Chris can’t find oxygen. No air left in the world. “You-you let someone-cut you, and that’s not a no-” His gaze flicks back over the list. “You didn’t say no. Not to-not to anything-”
Sebastian looks off-balance for the first time in the current conversation. “I can’t-I don’t have the right to-if you want-”
“No,” Chris says, heart crumpling in his chest. “No. Listen. Please.” Because aquamarine eyes seem shaken, turbulence in the depths, he scoots over to that side of the couch and holds out both hands. After a second, Sebastian takes them.
“We’re going to throw this seriously out,” Chris tells him, jerking his head back at the paper he’s left crushed on his side, “and you’re going to do it again, okay? Be honest with me. Tell me what you like and don’t like and whatever your limits are, whatever you don’t want to do again or even try, please, please, I need to know. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. Do you understand that? Do you-I can say it in other languages, French at least, or you can teach me Romanian, if you want, and I’ll try?”
Sebastian looks at his face. At his eyes. Gradually starts to smile. “Yes, Chris.”
“Yes, you understand, or yes, you want me to try, or yes, you agree and you’re gonna tell me what you like and don’t like?”
“Yes to the first and last. Possibly to the second at some point.” Sebastian looks at their joined hands. “I thought…I don’t know what I thought. That you’d be different. I don’t know how to do this. How to be good for you.”
“I don’t want you to be good for me,” Chris pleads, and then stops, because that’s not one hundred percent true, not with the shameful secret quiver scampering along his veins with those words. Honesty. He’s promised that.
He says, “I want you to want to be good for me, but not because you think it’s what I want, I want you to be you, I want you to want to-oh, hell, this isn’t making any sense at all, is it. I’m sorry. I’m just-I’m not fuckin’ good at this. I’m sorry.”
“I think you’re not bad at this, in fact.” Sebastian’s smile’s crooked and hopeful. “I am not…good at this either. Obviously. If it helps, I did mean it about that one. I told you I like the hurt, the intensity, sometimes. I thought I needed that, I did tell you, to fall under. And that was so overwhelming, that one, putting so much trust in his hands…I was terrified and I knew I was tied down and completely at his mercy and I needed that so badly, and I did get off, I won’t say I didn’t. I would try again with you if you asked for that. But I was scared, and I don’t know whether I liked it. I honestly don’t.”
Chris’s heart splinters and reforms. All in the course of a single speech. He’s not sure which is more painful. He runs fingers over the backs of Sebastian’s hands, words clogged in his throat. He’s only capable of sensation. Of taking in every dip and sway of bone and tendon and articulate joint.
Sebastian turns one hand. Curls fingers around his. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m trying.”
“Don’t,” Chris whispers. “Don’t-be sorry, don’t be anything, just-I know you didn’t want this. You didn’t want me.”
And those expressive fingers tighten in astonishment. “But I do. Want you.”
“You…what?”
“I do want you.” Sebastian leans down and kisses Chris’s fingers where they’re entwined with his. Chris can’t see his eyes, but can in the next second, when his submissive sits back up and shakes nosy stray strands of hair away. “I picked you. I chose you. You were-you were the only one who seemed to want me. So many suitors wrote to my mother, sent cards, mentioned how fortunate they’d be to have such a talented submissive, even promised they’d let me continue to compose, as if that were a great favor… You wrote to me. You came to one of my performances. You made a piece of art for us. I wanted you.”
“Oh,” Chris says, but no sound comes out. Butterflies in his gut, swooping dizzily. Crashing into his newly-repaired heart. “Oh.”
“I’ll do it again,” Sebastian says. “But…it wasn’t all me answering the way I thought you’d like. Some, yes. But I’d trust you with the rest. Hot wax and ice cubes included.”
“You…would?”
“You care whether I eat.” As if that’s an answer. Maybe it is. The butterflies swoop some more, caught between exhilaration and terror. Sebastian adds, tone self-directedly dry, “I realize I’ve just said that to someone I’ve known for far too few hours…”
I love you, Chris doesn’t say. Not the time. Not with that reminder. I love you, you and your music and your pretending to hand me a purple glitter pen as you smile. No. He gets out, fumbling as newborn steps, “I wanted you, too…I like feeding you…I want you. I want you. I couldn’t believe you said yes.”
“Neither could I.” Sebastian sighs, squeezes Chris’s hands, shrugs as much as possible without moving. “I mean in general. The whole situation. Real, once I said it. Sometimes I thought it had to be a bad dream. But then there was you.”
“And…that…was still a bad dream?”
“Oh, hardly. I’m not certain what type of dream it is now. Confusing. Or that’s being awake. I never knew I could want to kneel at your feet in my own apartment.”
Chris sits bolt upright and asks, “What? And also, I’m gonna say it again, what?”
“I don’t even know.” Sebastian sounds disgruntled by this. “It is an inexplicable urge. And I am not going to attempt to explain. Certainly not in English.”
“But you want to.”
This earns a glare; Chris thinks of aggravated half-grown cheetah kittens, long legs and lashing tails. The aggravation’s not as much directed at him, he thinks, as it is at the inexplicability. “So,” he tries, cautious and curious, “if you wanted to do that, while you fill this out again…sitting at my feet…”
“My coffee table is in the way,” Sebastian says, though this comes out as less a protest and more a registration of continued annoyance. Chris considers this for a handful of seconds. “Sebastian?”
“Yes?”
“Go print a new version. I’ll move your furniture. And you’ll sit at my feet while you fill it out. Clear?”
He gets the satisfaction of actually seeing his submissive’s mouth fall open, at that.
He turns a hand. Taps fingers over Sebastian’s wrist. Mutters under his breath, knowing he’ll be heard, “Please say yes…”
And the sun comes up behind those blue eyes. Sunset approaching outside; dawn indoors, in pale blue. Open skies. “Yes, Chris.”
“Go on, then.” He lifts hands away. Makes a shooing gesture toward the office. Sebastian doesn’t snort out loud, possibly because it’s undignified or just because he’s unwilling to roll eyes at his Dominant, but instead unfurls a positively wicked smile and slides to his feet in a sinuous motion that makes Chris choke on nothing at all. His submissive’s apparently very good at revenge.
Sebastian grins, and goes.
Rating: NC-17 for D/s sex, discussion of a lot of kinks
Word Count: 12,324
Disclaimers: only doing this for fun, no disrespect! Title from Tegan & Sara’s “The Con,” this time.
Summary: Negotiation, checklists, sandwiches, and the first day of being married. Also, sex on a sofa.
Notes: the first Like Sugar sequel. More to come. This one's for ilovetakahana.
Chris
Sebastian’s place, while small, is not as small as Chris’d been expecting from the description. There’s still no room for him to move in, though. And his heart, overworked by the oscillating demands of the last forty-eight hours plus this last-straw comprehension, wants to run away and hide somewhere for a while.
He glances around while Sebastian locks the door behind them. The place is beautiful, really. Sebastian decorates like music-notes: clean crisp markings over a cool blank page, with unexpected quirks of scribbled-over personal notation. Passion glowing through. Unthinking carelessly lovely style.
The windows are wide, the apartment high enough to overlook the park and the city skyline beyond, and afternoon light floods the space with honeyed gold. The living room’s not large but friendly, sofa crooked in an inviting L-shape, cushions in shades of blue and black and cream and brown. Sebastian hadn’t been lying about getting dressed in a hurry, the day before; a forgotten black leather jacket’s flung across the back of one tolerant chair, left by a distracted hand.
Distracted. Sebastian had been, yes, that first morning. If that’s the right word.
This afternoon his submissive’s been very quiet. Quiet in the taxi, during the ride up the elevator, while unearthing keys.
Chris stops attempting to discover all the intricacies of Sebastian’s place and looks at the owner himself. Sebastian doesn’t look up, hands too occupied with a door-lock that should only require a flick of fingers; but then he does, as if feeling the weight of Chris’s gaze. There’re small tense lines around his eyes, but he’s smiling wryly. “So. Home.”
“Home,” Chris echoes, and drops both overnight bags and takes a step closer, one hand lifting. He can’t help wanting to touch. He’s always liked touching people, especially the people he cares about: physical underscoring of presence and connection. He’s aware that this may have something to do with loss, with anxiety, with coping mechanisms. He doesn’t care if it does, as long as other people don’t care, and Sebastian did say yes to being within arm’s reach. “Still okay?”
“Honestly?” One corner of that mobile mouth quirks up. One hand touches the line of the collar. Rueful fingers. “I don’t know. Can we…you said not at home…maybe someday, but not now…if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh, fuck,” Chris says, plus a few more profanities in his head for good measure, “yeah, yes, of course, come here-or you can, you don’t need me to, it doesn’t lock, or I can, whatever-”
“You can.” Sebastian’s fingers’re shaking. Almost unnoticeably. But Chris is noticing now. “You did put it on me, sir. Chris. I wouldn’t-it wouldn’t feel right if I-well. Mama dracului. That…I did not precisely expect that.”
“What? Can you tell me? Also, did you just call me Dracula’s mother?” He steps in as Sebastian turns; sets fingers over the buckle, tugs, tries to balance speed and tenderness. No stray hair caught in loops, but fast enough to hopefully let Sebastian know he’s both listening and taking care. “And thank you for asking. For telling me what you need.”
“General mother of a bloodsucking devil. Not directed at you specifically. You said you wanted me to be honest.” Collar off, Sebastian exhales, and the stiffness in his shoulders eases. Weight lifted. Chris understands why, and hurts with the understanding.
Sebastian doesn’t turn around, but does tilt his head enough to glance at Chris over his right shoulder. “I was…I am…surprised that it wouldn’t feel right. If I removed it after you put it on. The thought isn’t…comfortable. Surprised is not the word. Shocked, potentially. Hence the maternal bloodsucking devil.”
“I’m asking, please tell me, are you okay,” Chris says, collar loose and dangling in one hand, the other hovering a gasp above Sebastian’s shoulder, craving contact. He quite simply desperately needs to know.
“I am as okay as one might be, learning new aspects of oneself on the spot.” Sebastian sighs. The smile reappears, bittersweet and beckoning. “You realize I’ve not said no about touching me. I like it. I would like it now.”
Chris exhales, says, “Yeah,” and lets his hand fall onto slim strong muscles, lets himself almost unconsciously pull Sebastian closer, run fingers over his chest, fold him under an arm. He tosses the collar at the chair with the jacket on the back, where it lands in mocking safety; Sebastian leans against him, eyes closing, head on Chris’s shoulder in turn.
They stay that way for a while, under the indolent rays of westering sun, only breathing.
Eventually Sebastian inquires, not moving, “Would you like a tour? I know we won’t be here for…long…”
“Sorry. Again.”
“Opri asta. Stop that. Let me show you the place. Our place, I suppose it is now. Come on.”
Chris keeps hold of his hand as they walk. Sebastian’s said he can. And it’s grounding. He hopes it’s grounding for them equally.
Sebastian waves at the living room-kitchen-entertainment space with one hand-“we’ll come back-” and takes him down the single hallway to both bedrooms, which is practically speaking only one bedroom because the first one is undeniably the lair of a musician and songwriter. Sebastian blushes a little-“I didn’t expect company, sorry-” but Chris just pokes his head in and is awestruck. A computer with dual monitors and sound-system hookups he doesn’t recognize and wouldn’t begin to know how to name. Several awards, not that elusive Oscar but from recognizably prominent organizations, gathering dust on a back shelf. Scattered notebooks and sheet music and what seem to be script pages piled across the clean modern lines of the desk. Instruments, so many instruments, keyboard and guitars and a harp and possibly a ukulele all communing in happy anticipation.
He thinks he spots a recognizable sheet of thick paper propped up on the far side of the monitors. Blue and green and silver colored pencil, a quick sketch. Music notes curling into abstract shapes in a sapphire sky. He can’t see more than one corner of it around the computer, but he knows his own work.
Sebastian kept the sketch. Keeps it here, where he performs his acts of award-winning creation.
Sebastian blushes again. “I’m best with a piano but there’s no substitute for experience with any instrument’s actual voice-”
“You’re incredible,” Chris announces, meaning it. Sebastian glances at his face, seems to be about to speak, and then hesitates, nibbles at his bottom lip, and changes the reply to, “Thank you, Chris. Here, bathroom, bedroom-”
Chris would give a fortune, two fortunes, to know what that unspoken answer would’ve been. But he asked Sebastian to be honest, and Sebastian has spoken up about wants, at least as regards the collar; this might only genuinely be his husband thinking twice about initial reactions, the same way anyone might, and Chris is afraid to push. They don’t know each other, not that well. Not yet.
The bathroom’s essentially a box with a showerhead and a sink and a toilet. Sebastian makes an apologetic expression and observes that the architects had to save space somewhere, and anyway he doesn’t need much, he never has. Chris nods, and makes a mental note that whatever place they move into has to have a shower that’ll fit both of them at once, and if possible an ocean-sized bathtub and bubbling jets and dual showerheads. Sebastian deserves that experience.
And Chris, rather selfishly, wants to join him in a shower. Wants to look at his husband, his submissive, all steam-flushed and water-splashed and naked; sex might be an option, hopefully will be an option, but mostly Chris finds himself just wanting to hold Sebastian under the rainfall drops and massage shampoo through his hair and kiss the inviting spot at the nape of his neck.
So his fantasies’re kind of pathetically domestic. They’re his. No one else has to know. Except, ideally, Sebastian at some point.
He watches Sebastian out of the corner of his eye as one musician’s hand opens the door to the bedroom. Sebastian likes being warm. Likes being held. Chris can do that. Chris very decidedly would like to do that. For him.
Sebastian waves at the bedroom, presumably indicating the entire area in one sweep. It has the same wide windows and inviting light as the living room, and a few more bookshelves, but is otherwise occupied by the bed, which takes up ninety percent of the space and is color-coordinated with the sofa in shades of cream and black and deep blue, and Chris’s brain promptly shuts off at the vision of himself laying his submissive down over those sapphire sheets and kissing every inch of golden skin.
“…Chris? Sir?”
“Um. Yeah? Yes. No. I mean you can just use my name. I mean I like you saying my name. I mean-oh fuck me.”
Those glimmering turquoise eyes now look faintly amused. “Would you like that? Because I don’t have much experience in that area, but I’m not opposed to the concept if you order me to.”
“…holy fuck,” Chris manages weakly, after five seconds during which he’s certain he’s going to combust on the spot. “You-I-you-yes, oh God yes, sometime yes. Not, um, now. We can-talk about it. You-that was a joke. You’re joking. Oh God.”
“I am, but I also meant it.” Sebastian throws him a smile. Chris wants to beg for more smiles, every day, just like that one. “I like…being yours. But if that’s what you want, then…I could be happy to serve you, Chris.”
“I honestly don’t know,” Chris admits after a second, “whether I want you to never say that again or say that, like, forever.” He honestly doesn’t.
Sebastian laughs. And tugs him back in the direction of the living room and kitchen. “I am not sure about you, but I could use sustenance. We didn’t have breakfast. And some of us haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday.”
“Oh-” Chris stops. This, because they’re still holding hands, makes Sebastian stop too, inquiring eyebrows wordlessly going up. Chris reels him back in, all that enticing wary-cheetah sweetness, and nudges, “Are you okay?”
Sebastian does that not-quite-smile again-Chris’s heart flutters-and then leans in to kiss him, swift as hummingbird wings. “Yes. Now. Come along and let me feed you. I’m entirely certain we talked about that.”
“Yeah, and we said you didn’t have to.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian purrs back, purposefully casual, holding his hand. “I want to.” Chris forgets words all over again. Pure amazement.
Well. Not entirely pure. Not with that amount of accompanying lust.
He holds onto that hand for as long as he can, until Sebastian takes it absentmindedly away to open the refrigerator. “Hmm.”
“Want help?”
“Jell-O related calamities, you said. No. Go sit down, Chris.”
Chris blinks, laughs, trips over his own amusement. This is Sebastian being himself, kind and competent and very good at remembering Chris’s embarrassing stories; this is Sebastian being himself in his own home, where Chris is the outsider. The intruder.
Sebastian had never wanted to be contracted. Not to anyone.
So he doesn’t want to cry, he goes back to glancing around.
Sebastian’s baby grand piano shimmers like dark serene melody in the left corner behind the couch. It’s no doubt the most expensive bit of furniture in the place, and it knows as much, though not in a smug way. It’s probably just proud to be played by those elegant fingers, Chris decides.
The bookshelves’re also dark wood, framing calm forests of titles and spines. Or they might be calm if they weren’t glaring protectively his direction; they know he doesn’t belong. Chris wouldn’t call himself not a reader; he does read, at least as much as the average person, maybe more than some. Tends to gravitate toward non-fiction, philosophy, wilderness survival stories, science magazines. Kerouac and Buddhism. London and Hawking.
Sebastian possesses some Stephen Hawking as well. Chris would feel hope about this convergence of interests, except Sebastian possesses a plethora of books, a multitude of books, vast and vibrant and joyously cacophonous in genre. Nineteen-fifties science-fiction paperbacks, optimistic shiny spaceship covers and men brandishing ray guns. Heinlein and Asimov and Carl Sagan side by side with Stanislaw Lem and Karel Čapek and Octavia Butler, plus a few others that Chris doesn’t know. Tennessee Williams and Tom Stoppard plays. A folklore and mythology section, and he wonders whether the story Sebastian’d told him had come from one of those volumes and if he could find it sometime. Bound opera scores on another shelf. A biography of Mozart sitting beside one of Gene Roddenberry.
The books and their shelves are giving him the benefit of the doubt because Sebastian brought him home, but they don’t trust him an inch. Chris has the momentary impulse to throw himself at their feet and beg for the chance to prove his worth.
“How do you feel about apple and cheddar?”
“Sorry? I mean-sorry, I was. Um.” Feeling guilty in the direction of your bookshelves. No. “You have a lot of books.” He resists the urge to smack himself in the face. Sebastian knows he has a lot of books. Sebastian bought the books. Good God, Chris. “Like sandwiches? Or, um, anything’s fine. Really.”
“Well-sorry, I don’t believe I’ve got anything more carnivorous…” Sebastian looks around the kitchen as if meat might unexpectedly materialize from empty air. “Is this all right? For now?”
“You don’t have to feed me.” Chris comes helplessly back into the kitchen. Language is failing him. No sounds for the hollowness under his skin, in his chest. It’s growing. Books and elegance and autumn-flavored sandwiches, while he’s got a lingering tower of pizza-boxes and beer-bottles at his place in Boston from the last party. The insidious vines of anguish hook themselves into his heart.
“But,” Sebastian starts, confusion evident in the mountain pools. Chris, aware that this is his fault too, catches one long-fingered hand mid-gesture. “This is your place, and you-you don’t have to. You’re already letting me stay.”
Sebastian looks at their hands. At Chris’s fingers, wrapped around his. “You and I both know that’s-that’s not true. Sir. But…as it happens…at the moment I am hungry. And it’s as easy to make two sandwiches as one. Either open the cheddar or hand it to me.”
Chris opens the cheddar. Tries to regain equilibrium. “Are you vegetarian?” He’s not, not at all, but they can work around that if need be. He is, however, startled; he’s never heard even a whisper of that in any of the fan communities and blogs he might on occasion happen to wander by.
“No. Not in the slightest. Buy me a burger sometime.” Sebastian’s capable fingers’re occupied with the transformation of round ripe apples into thin delicate slices. Chris gazes, mesmerized by the art. “I only haven’t been shopping. I do tend to forget things if I’m working. Like food. Or where I’ve put my phone. Is that enough?”
“What? Oh. Whatever you think. Whatever you’d make for you?”
Sebastian somehow manages to sigh, grin, and shake his head at once. Fondness, Chris thinks-hopes-and some exasperation. “I believe you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this particular dynamic, sir. And I thought I was the inexperienced one.”
“Hey,” Chris says, taking his cue from that tone, taking cautious steps ahead, “I have experience. I have a lot of experience. I can show you experience.”
Sebastian raises eyebrows, and murmurs to the cheddar, “And he asks me what I think we should do…”
“Yeah,” Chris says before the block of cheese can chime in, “because I want to know, because I want to make you happy,” and then his brain catches up and kicks him in the head but the words’re already spinning in the air.
Sebastian taps fingers over his kitchen knife. One-two-three. The sound’s not loud, but loud enough, in the pause.
Sebastian looks up. With a spare slice of cheddar held out in Chris’s direction. “I remain unconvinced that you in fact know how this relationship works, but I would hardly protest being made happy. Particularly if that involves chocolate cheesecake.”
“Noted.” When he takes the offering-and ends up breathless at the brush of their fingers-he gets another smile. The flavors burst across his taste-buds: sharp, firm, creamy. Dizzy with sensation and that smile, he adds, “Is that the reason you love New York? Cheesecake? It totally is, right?” and Sebastian’s fingers’re amused, handing him a completed plate. “Precisely. Not the museums, or the music scene…”
“Nope. Desserts.”
“Brownie tiramisu, blackberry truffle cake, chocolate egg creams…I do of course have a gym membership. Is yours all right, or does it need more of anything? I could find the appropriate mustard again.”
“There’s inappropriate mustard?” At which point Chris’s brain permanently gives up, because attempts at control of his mouth are futile. “Also this is brilliant. Don’t touch it. You’re a god. Of sandwiches.”
“Apparently deification has a low bar of entry.” Sebastian props elbows on the counter, taking bites. Chris nearly says something-he’s not exactly happy with that line of self-deprecating humor-but Sebastian adds, licking a fingertip, “and I imagine inappropriate mustard would make poorly phrased comments about the firmness of the apples,” and Chris falls in love all over again.
Head over heels. The sweet crispness of apples and sunlight on his back from the open window and Sebastian picking up and running with his terrible jokes. Just like that. Incontrovertible.
He puts half his sandwich in his mouth, because it’ll give him time to think of words that aren’t I want to lick the apple juice off your fingers and maybe other places if you’ll let me. Sebastian regards this maneuver with some astonishment, but evidently decides it’s not worth more than raised-eyebrow commentary and goes back to eating.
Chris chews away at his too-ambitious bite. Watches his submissive. His husband. The man he’s in love with. He’d begun a mental list, on the way over: blueberries, chocolate, music, folklore, the utterly incandescent sex they’d managed to have despite the circumstances. Those are things he’s pretty sure Sebastian likes. He can do those things.
Maybe Sebastian won’t fall in love with him in return-and why would he, why would all that extraordinary complicated brilliance want a paint-splattered fanboy artist who likes beer and pick-up basketball and hiking-but Chris has made him smile. Somehow. With stupid jokes about mustard.
He watches Sebastian here at home, here in the home he’s going to lose because of Chris, and the words that come out have to be, “I’m sorry.”
Sebastian sets down the last bite of his sandwich. “For what?”
For everything. For everything I have to ask of you. For asking it anyway. For not quite being able to regret that this happened even though I know you must, I know I’m so damn lucky you don’t hate me, I love you. “For…what I said. This morning. When we-when you were-about what you knew, what you didn’t know, and I told you not to talk, but I said you should tell me if you were confused, and you were trying to, and I’m sorry.”
“…oh.” Sebastian studies his plate, not Chris’s face. Taps at the sliver of bread with one finger, nudging it into a straight and tidy horizontal line. “That. Yes. I’m not angry at you.”
“You ought to be.” His stomach twists into a knot, hearing those words. Sebastian should be angry, and isn’t, and that…whatever that means, he’s scared it’s not healthy. “I was wrong. You can tell me when I’m wrong-wait, you know that, right? You can. I want you to.”
“You were attempting to learn what I knew.” Sebastian pokes at the crust again, even though from Chris’s perspective it seems perfectly aligned. “I know why you did it. If we’re in public, if it’s visible to everyone, I can’t stop and question you. You were testing whether I knew that. Whether I would obey you without difficulty, if we’re in that…atmosphere? That’s not the word. Mindset, maybe. That’s not right either. English, plimba ursu, such a terrible language… But you get the idea. You were testing my responses, and I know enough to know I should’ve waited for permission to speak, at least when we’re being formal, even if you’re not enforcing that at home. Sir. Chris. Sorry.”
This explanation sounds far more rational and articulate than Chris recalls being at that moment. He’s not sure whether Sebastian genuinely believes it or is being kind. Either version is more generous than he deserves.
“You should still be angry,” he settles on finally. “Because even if you thought…if we were being formal, I didn’t say so. We didn’t have an audience. And I did tell you to ask questions if you had them. So, yeah, be mad at me, I deserve it.”
Sebastian tips his head to one side, sparrow-like and considering. “Would it change anything if I were? I was…surprised, at the time. But I was also…and you know this, you were there…the edge of that feeling, like…clouds, like flying, like the flawless note that never ends…you did surprise me. But I trusted you. I trust you. I assumed you knew more about this than I did, and so if you said something was wrong I’d listen. Which makes me sound far too coherent. I did say flying.”
“You don’t like airplanes,” Chris says. The afternoon sunlight drops behind a cloud, hurting too.
“No,” Sebastian says, and catches his gaze, and holds it. “I’m not good at…take-offs and landings. But I don’t mind being in the air.”
“I said…if you want, I could hold your hand…?”
“Yes. You can. How much further are we planning to push this poor tormented metaphor today?”
“Maybe just a little more?” Chris lifts a hand, palm up, over the countertops. Sebastian takes it without any visible reluctance. The sunlight peeks out anew. “I’m still sort of figuring out the controls, no guarantees about turbulence, but I promise to try to get you down safe?”
“I am having tremendous difficulty refraining from the obvious joke about cockpits, you understand.” Sebastian’s thumb rubs gently across the back of his hand. “Also thank you. Mulţumesc.”
“Make the joke,” Chris begs. “Please. Please make all the jokes. Come on, I said the thing about the mustard, it’s your turn, you know you want to.”
“I am practicing restraint.” And mountain-lake eyes widen innocently at him on the last word. “Isn’t that what good submissives do? Practice…restraints? Or am I saying that incorrectly, in English?”
Chris stares, puts his free hand melodramatically on the countertop for support, and announces, “Dead. Spontaneous combustion. No recovery,” and inside is turning cartwheels and jumping up and down with amazed glee. Sebastian’s making jokes about this. About restraints.
He’d said brilliant, earlier. Sebastian is.
That is a reminder, though. He’d also said they needed to talk, and they do. He’s already been a less than responsible Dominant, not counting the wedding night-that operates under more archaic and distressingly aphrodisiac rules-but on the morning after, when he’d let Sebastian get on both knees and offer himself outside the shower. When he’d left Sebastian tied to the bed, when they’d jumped into said bed with little more than instinct as a guide.
If they’re doing this properly, then before they do anything else they need to go through more than just the hasty three rules he’d put in place the previous night. Those are important, and he’ll reinforce them-be honest, be present, be good when given direct orders-but other conversations need to be had. Hard and soft limits. Safewords if Sebastian wants anything other than standard red, yellow, green. Past experience.
Past experience. He hears that modern-day-enchantment voice admit again, in memory: I thought I needed it to hurt…
Sebastian’s looking at him curiously. “I assumed that was only teasing, about the instantaneous lack of vitality…”
“Yeah-no! I mean I’m fine. Sorry. I was thinking…I’m a fuckin’ moron, actually, is what I’m thinking. I told you we needed to go over things. Checklists. I don’t have them. On me. Here.”
“Checklists…ah. You need to know what I’ve done, and what I’ve not tried.”
“We,” Chris corrects, standing close to him in the sunlit world of the kitchen, hyperaware of every element of stone countertops and autumnal sweetness and the presence of those musician’s fingers in his. “You need to know too. About me. We don’t have to do this now if you don’t feel like it, but-but I’m sorry again, I forgot, I should’ve been prepared, so that we could-”
“Go over limits, before I ask you to tie me up a second time?” No censure in that voice, or if so only self-mocking, and gently. “Do you have them someplace online? Send me the link? I do own a printer.”
“Um,” Chris says, because Sebastian’s clearly capable of taking a potentially problematic hiccup and resolving it calmly while Chris’s idiot brain spins off into failure and anxiety. “Yeah, I emailed them to myself so I wouldn’t forget, and then I forgot-”
“If you apologize once more I shall never make godlike sandwiches for you in the future.” Sebastian hands over his own mobile phone. “Send them to me. And give me your number.”
Chris, rather bemused by the orders and the threat-an effective one even if he’s ninety percent sure his submissive doesn’t mean it-does as commanded. A few seconds later his own phone chirps; Sebastian says, “Now you have my number, too, and I’ll be right back,” and vanishes off to his office.
Chris, left alone with his phone and Sebastian’s number and the meaningful stares of the bookshelves, kind of wants to laugh. If he did it’d be a bittersweet kind of laugh. Sebastian can take care of himself. Sebastian can take care of him.
He’s pathetically grateful and surprised enough that the incipient anxiety’s cut off at the knees. He’s also partly turned on and partly afraid: the competence has kicked his heart-rate up a notch, but that same competence will get them into trouble if displayed too publicly.
Sebastian’s his. His submissive. Sebastian needs this marriage to work. Chris wants this marriage to work.
Sebastian put his number into Chris’s phone. Had no qualms about handing Chris his own.
Sebastian reemerges, brandishing paper and pens. “Here. Purple glitter ink?”
“…um.” Whatever Sebastian feels like handing him. Anything. “Sure?”
“Only joking. Navy blue. Appropriately serious. Shall we, then?”
Chris stares at the not-purple and non-glittery pen, and manages, “Yeah…”
“I’ll be quick.” Sebastian curls up on the sofa, unearthing a writing desk from a sheaf of notebooks, flipping his own pen absently through fingers. The sunshine plays indolently with the edges of his hair.
“Wait,” Chris says, and gets up. “You didn’t-did you want the end of your sandwich?”
“Oh…I forgot. I-oh, you’re bringing it over…”
Chris, leaning over the back of the couch, holds out the last bite of bread and cheese. In front of Sebastian’s lips. Somehow that feels natural. The right thing to do. “Finish your sandwich.”
Sebastian’s eyes get wider, and his lips part, and then he leans forward and nibbles the bite neatly out of Chris’s fingertips.
The sunbeam dances with giddiness.
“Right,” Chris says, barely audible, word just another piece of the moment. Sebastian kisses his fingers, more of a breath than a touch, exhale a murmur over Chris’s skin.
The pen slips free of Sebastian’s lax other hand and flops onto the floor, knocking into the coffee table along the way for good measure.
Sebastian blinks, blushes intensely, and dives for the security of paper. “You asked me to…checklists…sorry, Chris…”
“No,” Chris says, “I liked that,” and Sebastian, through the blush and not looking up, admits, “I think I might’ve liked it too, sir.”
“Yeah,” Chris agrees, “I kinda thought you maybe did, so go fill yours out and I’ll do mine and after we go over them maybe I can feed you another apple, if you’re good, or just ’cause it’s fun?” Sebastian, ears pink, nods.
And Chris has to smile. He’s still the interloper here, the never-wanted part of Sebastian’s life. But Sebastian does want him. And even the bookshelves thaw and unbend in his direction.
It’s a pretty standard checklist, detailed and thorough and businesslike; he knows his answers pretty well, and gets through it fast. He’s not done anything too exotic-he’s willing to try, of course, and he’s starting to suspect that he’d quite like to experiment with Sebastian, now that Sebastian’s his. But he’s mostly previously relied on big hands and strength and emotional connection with partners; he’s never played with anyone who wasn’t a friend first, and he thinks very briefly of Matt’s laughing eyes and a too-loose set of cheap handcuffs and cheerful improvisation, and then he stops thinking about that and checks off restraints as something he’s both experienced with using and likes on his sub.
No to blood and marks and permanent scars. No to inviting other people to play. He’s not sharing Sebastian. He wouldn’t, not ever, but he’s fairly sure Sebastian’s still a little nervous about the fact that it’s technically within Chris’s rights to pull him out as a party favor. Hopefully this’ll help; it’s not a legal document in the sense that their marriage contract is, but Chris plans to treat it as one.
No to certain bodily-waste related kinks. That’s not an idea he can wrap his head around, and he seriously hopes Sebastian isn’t into those. Though…he stares at the paper for a second…Sebastian waiting to get up, until given permission…Sebastian giving over that much control of his own body, desperate and beautiful and squirming, begging Chris to let him find a toilet and relief….Sebastian on his knees, Sebastian letting Chris claim him, an act of marking territory, possessiveness…maybe only in the shower, where they can shower after…
Dammit. He changes that particular answer to ‘never tried but maybe interested in the future’. Crosses his legs and flips a glance at the other end of the sofa. Sebastian’s checking a box, fingers neat and tidy, eyes absorbed. Chris’s erection decides that Sebastian being serious and studious is the most erotic sight in the universe, and gets even more insistent.
A few of the items on the list he’s never heard of. He probably ought to. Being Sebastian’s Dominant and all. Being responsible.
Ha. Sebastian’s already saved him in more ways than he can count, and that’s just today.
He gives up and circles a few lines and scribbles next to those, I don’t even fucking know what these are, I’m sorry, I’ll learn if you want? and offers, “Done?”
“Ah…yes. More or less.” Sebastian looks up. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course!”
“This…the last three things…I don’t know what those are.”
“Oh thank God,” Chris says, and then has to explain his relieved laughter, but by the end Sebastian’s smiling too. “I feel far better about this, in that case, sir…Chris, sorry…here, do you want mine? I’ll just leave those blank.”
“I do like you using my name.”
“Chris.”
“Just like that. Okay, here…” They trade. Sebastian stretches one long leg out and drapes it over the arm of the couch, plainly unthinking, getting comfortable with his furniture. Chris openly stares. He’s allowed.
The room feels warmer. Not the fault of the sunshine. He crosses his legs again. Focuses. Reading. Right.
He looks at the checklist. And then looks again. Huh. Just-huh.
Sebastian has far more items checked than he’d’ve guessed. Granted, most of those’re in the ‘tried once’ category, with variations on ‘liked, didn’t like, would try again,’ but still. Experience with various toys, with hair-pulling, with bondage, with, God, canes, and his brain helpfully presents him with the image of red lines striping the pale gold of slim thighs, indelible reminders of belonging every time Sebastian sits or stands.
He glances over at his sub, across the paper. Sebastian appears to be occupied in reading Chris’s responses. Not glancing back.
Sebastian’s done more than Chris ever has, and more adventurously. This is becoming increasingly undeniable with every line, and new sparks of worry bloom in his gut, behind his heart, at the back of his mind. What if he’s not good enough? What if Sebastian’s expecting more? What if, what if.
To avoid the possible examination of that what if, he reads a bit further. And his brain goes from huh, interesting, we could try that to what the everloving fuck in record time. “You-you-this-knives-blood-”
Sebastian looks up. His expression’s unreadable, though Chris catches a flicker of-something-before those gates swing shut. “That was my third night out. Third club. Six years ago. Standard stipulations of no scars and no permanent injuries. Please note that I said I’m willing to try again.”
“What-” Chris can’t find oxygen. No air left in the world. “You-you let someone-cut you, and that’s not a no-” His gaze flicks back over the list. “You didn’t say no. Not to-not to anything-”
Sebastian looks off-balance for the first time in the current conversation. “I can’t-I don’t have the right to-if you want-”
“No,” Chris says, heart crumpling in his chest. “No. Listen. Please.” Because aquamarine eyes seem shaken, turbulence in the depths, he scoots over to that side of the couch and holds out both hands. After a second, Sebastian takes them.
“We’re going to throw this seriously out,” Chris tells him, jerking his head back at the paper he’s left crushed on his side, “and you’re going to do it again, okay? Be honest with me. Tell me what you like and don’t like and whatever your limits are, whatever you don’t want to do again or even try, please, please, I need to know. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. Do you understand that? Do you-I can say it in other languages, French at least, or you can teach me Romanian, if you want, and I’ll try?”
Sebastian looks at his face. At his eyes. Gradually starts to smile. “Yes, Chris.”
“Yes, you understand, or yes, you want me to try, or yes, you agree and you’re gonna tell me what you like and don’t like?”
“Yes to the first and last. Possibly to the second at some point.” Sebastian looks at their joined hands. “I thought…I don’t know what I thought. That you’d be different. I don’t know how to do this. How to be good for you.”
“I don’t want you to be good for me,” Chris pleads, and then stops, because that’s not one hundred percent true, not with the shameful secret quiver scampering along his veins with those words. Honesty. He’s promised that.
He says, “I want you to want to be good for me, but not because you think it’s what I want, I want you to be you, I want you to want to-oh, hell, this isn’t making any sense at all, is it. I’m sorry. I’m just-I’m not fuckin’ good at this. I’m sorry.”
“I think you’re not bad at this, in fact.” Sebastian’s smile’s crooked and hopeful. “I am not…good at this either. Obviously. If it helps, I did mean it about that one. I told you I like the hurt, the intensity, sometimes. I thought I needed that, I did tell you, to fall under. And that was so overwhelming, that one, putting so much trust in his hands…I was terrified and I knew I was tied down and completely at his mercy and I needed that so badly, and I did get off, I won’t say I didn’t. I would try again with you if you asked for that. But I was scared, and I don’t know whether I liked it. I honestly don’t.”
Chris’s heart splinters and reforms. All in the course of a single speech. He’s not sure which is more painful. He runs fingers over the backs of Sebastian’s hands, words clogged in his throat. He’s only capable of sensation. Of taking in every dip and sway of bone and tendon and articulate joint.
Sebastian turns one hand. Curls fingers around his. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m trying.”
“Don’t,” Chris whispers. “Don’t-be sorry, don’t be anything, just-I know you didn’t want this. You didn’t want me.”
And those expressive fingers tighten in astonishment. “But I do. Want you.”
“You…what?”
“I do want you.” Sebastian leans down and kisses Chris’s fingers where they’re entwined with his. Chris can’t see his eyes, but can in the next second, when his submissive sits back up and shakes nosy stray strands of hair away. “I picked you. I chose you. You were-you were the only one who seemed to want me. So many suitors wrote to my mother, sent cards, mentioned how fortunate they’d be to have such a talented submissive, even promised they’d let me continue to compose, as if that were a great favor… You wrote to me. You came to one of my performances. You made a piece of art for us. I wanted you.”
“Oh,” Chris says, but no sound comes out. Butterflies in his gut, swooping dizzily. Crashing into his newly-repaired heart. “Oh.”
“I’ll do it again,” Sebastian says. “But…it wasn’t all me answering the way I thought you’d like. Some, yes. But I’d trust you with the rest. Hot wax and ice cubes included.”
“You…would?”
“You care whether I eat.” As if that’s an answer. Maybe it is. The butterflies swoop some more, caught between exhilaration and terror. Sebastian adds, tone self-directedly dry, “I realize I’ve just said that to someone I’ve known for far too few hours…”
I love you, Chris doesn’t say. Not the time. Not with that reminder. I love you, you and your music and your pretending to hand me a purple glitter pen as you smile. No. He gets out, fumbling as newborn steps, “I wanted you, too…I like feeding you…I want you. I want you. I couldn’t believe you said yes.”
“Neither could I.” Sebastian sighs, squeezes Chris’s hands, shrugs as much as possible without moving. “I mean in general. The whole situation. Real, once I said it. Sometimes I thought it had to be a bad dream. But then there was you.”
“And…that…was still a bad dream?”
“Oh, hardly. I’m not certain what type of dream it is now. Confusing. Or that’s being awake. I never knew I could want to kneel at your feet in my own apartment.”
Chris sits bolt upright and asks, “What? And also, I’m gonna say it again, what?”
“I don’t even know.” Sebastian sounds disgruntled by this. “It is an inexplicable urge. And I am not going to attempt to explain. Certainly not in English.”
“But you want to.”
This earns a glare; Chris thinks of aggravated half-grown cheetah kittens, long legs and lashing tails. The aggravation’s not as much directed at him, he thinks, as it is at the inexplicability. “So,” he tries, cautious and curious, “if you wanted to do that, while you fill this out again…sitting at my feet…”
“My coffee table is in the way,” Sebastian says, though this comes out as less a protest and more a registration of continued annoyance. Chris considers this for a handful of seconds. “Sebastian?”
“Yes?”
“Go print a new version. I’ll move your furniture. And you’ll sit at my feet while you fill it out. Clear?”
He gets the satisfaction of actually seeing his submissive’s mouth fall open, at that.
He turns a hand. Taps fingers over Sebastian’s wrist. Mutters under his breath, knowing he’ll be heard, “Please say yes…”
And the sun comes up behind those blue eyes. Sunset approaching outside; dawn indoors, in pale blue. Open skies. “Yes, Chris.”
“Go on, then.” He lifts hands away. Makes a shooing gesture toward the office. Sebastian doesn’t snort out loud, possibly because it’s undignified or just because he’s unwilling to roll eyes at his Dominant, but instead unfurls a positively wicked smile and slides to his feet in a sinuous motion that makes Chris choke on nothing at all. His submissive’s apparently very good at revenge.
Sebastian grins, and goes.