Title: Full Disclosure

Author: Cimmerians

Fandom/Pairing: Glee RPS, Chris Colfer/Darren Criss

Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex

Word Count: 7,184

Summary: CrissColfer AU: Darren doesn’t have a girlfriend—and hasn’t had one for a long, long time. Chris doesn’t have a boyfriend, on account of reasons.

Author’s notes: You know those stories that kind of nip at you and yap around your ankles until you write them? Well this one humped my leg and knocked me over and dumped a quart of slobber on me and snarled menacingly, threatening to disembowel me unless words appeared on the page, pronto. I have no idea why. Mine is not to ask, but simply to tell this story before it humps me to death.

Gratitudes: To AubreyLi, for being my Grail-Shaped Beacon.

***

He couldn’t say he hadn’t seen it coming. Because he had. The looks, the glances, the silent questions. The raised eyebrows. The long conversational pauses, waiting for him to say something.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to say anything. Not this time.

Not unless she left him no choice.

***

Lea let herself into his trailer after a quick knock. She closed the door and pressed her back against it, looking at him, giving him that worried look she got. He hated that look. “What’s wrong with him?”

Chris blinked, and flipped his laptop shut. “What’s wrong with who?”

“Darren.” She brushed her bangs away from her eyes. “Obviously, there’s something wrong with him.”

Chris frowned. “Well, he’s kind of dorky—”

“Not that—I mean, yes, he is, but—why don’t you like him?”

“What makes you think I—”

“Because I know you,” she said, leaving the doorway and settling down next to him at the table. “And the tour—the tour was crazy, okay, but we’re back here now, and the only one of us who’s really worked with him is you, and you’re… not being yourself. When you’re with him. Which means something’s wrong with him. So what is it?”

Chris took a breath. “There’s nothing wrong with him, Lea. He’s great. Once you get to know him, you’ll—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Christopher.” She leaned close, her wide brown eyes straight at him, relentless. “What. Is. Wrong with him?”

Chris sighed, and let himself slump back in his chair. He rubbed both hands over his face. Fine. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with him. There’s… it’s me, okay? There’s something wrong with me.”

When he dropped his hands she was there, right there, with the worried look again. “What… what’re you talking about, something wrong with you? You’re—”

“Prone to ill-advised crushes on straight guys, apparently.” Saying it was like heaving a massive rock off his chest. Except that he didn’t feel any better afterwards. “It’s a bad habit. I’m trying to stop.”

“Oh, honey—not again.” She had his hands, both of them, and he looked at her soft, pretty hands wrapped around his own, stared at them because he didn’t want to look at her eyes, which had grown too bright. “Chris. I’m so sorry.”

He squeezed her hands, then let go. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Really.” Her eyes were still threatening to spill over. “Stop it, Lea—it’s fine. I’ll get over it. I’ve done it before.”

There was really no way to tell which one of them he was trying to convince.

***

Three days later, Lea barged in again after they’d wrapped for the day. Chris sighed and closed his laptop.

“Are you sure he’s not gay?”

“Lea, I… yes. I’m sure. Darren is straight.”

“He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Lots of straight guys don’t—”

“And apparently he hasn’t had one since, like, high school—”

“Lea—”

“Nobody’s even been able to nail down a random hook-up—”

“Of course there’s been hook-ups.”

She whirled toward him, pouncing. “What do you know?”

He sighed. “Well, I know he’s not a monk, so I can safely assume—”

“Oh, you don’t know anything.”

“…thanks.”

“And there’s all this speculation—”

“I will forbid you from using the internet, you know. Just back away from the gossip columns, please.”

There was a moment. Not a comfortable one. A question occurred to him, and he absolutely, unequivocally wasn’t going to ask it.

“Why did you ask if I was sure?” Fuck. He asked it. The mental image of a cliff edge eroding under his toes came to mind.

Lea took a deep breath and sat up. “He flirts.”

“Yes.”

“With everybody.”

“Uh huh.”

“Regardless of gender.”

“I see.”

“He… talks about his feelings.”

“Um.”

“And… I like him.”

“Oh.”

“Not like that,” she smacked his hand, gently. “I mean I… really like him.”

Chris nodded, sagely. “That is actually a fairly profound indicator of gayness.”

“I know—”

“Darren’s not gay, Lea,” he cut her off. “You’re simply going to have to adjust to having another straight guy in your life who’s perplexingly awesome.” He reached out and patted her shoulder. “I want to do everything I can to help you through this difficult period of adjustment—”

“Oh, shut up, you dink.”

***

It might have been easier if he’d known he was gay in high school. Maybe. Maybe not. But he hadn’t, and so the realization, when it came, felt late and ridiculous and outrageous and unacceptable and why-now and oh-God and just in time for him to realize that he was desperately, passionately infatuated with the guy who’d become his first close male friend.

Which felt like a betrayal, and a threat, and nothing at all like what he’d expected.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. But it had. And Cory wasn’t supposed to find out. But he had. And then there was crying—not on Chris’ part—because Cory was kind and generous and really, really loved him only not-like-that, and the not-like-thatness broke Cory’s heart to bits, and while he cried and apologized over and over for something he just couldn’t help, Chris closed his eyes and promised himself: never again.

A promise he kept. Until he broke it.

***

At least Lea had learned from the first go-round—she kept her mouth shut this time, unless they were alone. It gave him someone to confide in, which actually turned out to be kind of necessary for his sanity, as things went on.

“You don’t understand—he laughs constantly, with his… his face, and he tells horrible, horrible jokes that are half-fratboy and half-philosopher and all-geek. He sings Disney songs like he believes in them. He hugs and he touches and he’s so terribly earnest about all of it, so… horribly… sweet.”

“Sweet,” Lea repeated carefully, watching him pace.

“I can’t do this.” He stopped and faced her, arms folded across his chest. “I can’t keep falling for these adorable, sweet, quirky, self-deprecating, sophisticated-but-juvenile, irresistible and hopelessly straight guys. This cannot be ‘my type’. No.”

She blinked. “Is this because of the script? The making out?”

“No!” He took a breath. Another one. Slumped. Shrugged. “Maybe.”

She came straight for him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, honey.”

***

“I asked him.” It was a whisper, breathed close to his shoulder as they stood side-by-side in the line for lunch. “I asked him why he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“You did not,” he squawked, scandalized, then remembered and lowered his voice. “Lea, I told you—I’m fine. You are not allowed to Yenta. There will be no Yenta-ing—”

“Don’t you even want to know what he said?”

“No.” It was purely by chance, he was sure, that the two of them ended up sitting off by themselves, away from the rest of the group. He speared a chunk of miso-grilled eggplant as if it had personally offended him. “What did he say?”

“That he hasn’t met the right girl.”

Chris chewed, swallowed, nodded. “That sounds… reasonable.”

Lea poked him gently with her fork. “No—it sounds like what you tell your grandma when she asks why you’re not married yet; not what you tell your friend when she asks why you’re not dating.”

He eyed her. “You’re reading too much into this.”

A toss of glossy-brown hair. “I don’t think so.”

“You are. And I meant it, about the no-Yenta-ing thing. Please. I’m serious.”

“Fine.”

“Darren is straight, Lea.”

“Of course he is.”

Chris sighed. “I’m never, ever sharing any personal information with you, ever again.”

Her cackle startled a nearby flock of birds. “Good luck with that barn door, my horseless friend.”

***

“Sorry about the, um. Verisimilitude.”

“What?” He was breathless. And trying not to be. Sweating. And trying not to. Straining, striving for professionalism. And really doing kind of a crap job of it. “The… what?”

Verisimilitude. Darren had said that. And even in the low light left them between takes, he could see Darren blushing. The whole reason for the blush and the reason for that word became kind of glaringly obvious when he shifted back—trying to give Darren some space, only instead he wound up grinding down onto Darren’s lap. And Darren’s hard-on. He froze. “Oh.”

Everything stopped. He was staring at the interior of the car door as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen, because—God help him, he didn’t know what else to do.

He heard Darren swallow. “Well, this is awkward.”

He tried to remember how to breathe. “Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? I’m the one with the unanticipated raging boner.”

It was absolutely the worst time he could think of to get the giggles. He covered his face and tried to stop, but there was no help for it. He was terribly, terribly ashamed of himself until Darren snorted and thumped his forehead into Chris’ chest, hanging onto him and laughing like a demented hyena.

“I’m so sorry,” Darren said when he calmed a bit, keeping his voice low, still broken up by chuckles. “I just—really wanted to, uh, go for it, you know?”

“I know,” oh God, did he know. He’d been groped and tongued and squeezed and nuzzled by a fucking Master, and between trying to keep his brain on the job at hand and trying to keep his body from betraying him, he was lucky he hadn’t passed out.

“So… are we cool?”

Darren’s brows were drawn up, the blush still high on his cheeks. So goddamn earnest and anxious and… sweet.

Chris shrugged. “Totally cool. It’s no big deal.”

Darren’s hands tightened on his waist, rubbing softly while he chuckled. “You’re the best boyfriend ever.”

Oh, God.

***

“Oh, God!”

“You can not tell anyone this, Lea—”

“Oh my God!”

“Never. Nobody. Ever. You can’t—”

“Of course I’m not going to tell,” the words came out in a soft, hissed whisper, and Chris pressed the phone closer to his ear—an action he regretted deeply when her next words came in a high-pitched yelp. “He is so totally, totally gay!”

“No, Lea, he isn’t—he’s an actor. He was acting. It’s a thing we do. And we were very close and there was a lot going on and bodies are bodies, just bodies, and it’s just a thing that bodies do sometimes when there’s kissing and friction and trying to be a teenage drunken gay horndog and fondling the hell out of your boyfriend’s ass and sucking his neck and his tongue and… oh, God.”

“Oh, God!”

***

“Well?”

Chris unlocked his car and got in, but made no move to start it. He pressed the phone closer to his ear. “Well, what?”

“How did it go? You know, the, uh, bed scene. The rolling around.”

He closed his eyes. “It went fine.”

There was a pause. “And?”

“And? Nothing. It was fine.”

Lea tsk’ed. “Don’t you hold out on me, Christopher—”

“I can’t talk right now. I’m busy.”

“Busy—are you… are you doing something with Darren? Did he—”

“No, I’m not doing anything with Darren. I’m doing something with myself, in the sense that I am about to descend on West Hollywood and get myself righteously laid.”

The noise she made was similar to the one she used whenever she saw a poster for a lost pet. He was going to have to remember to be offended by that at some point. “Chris—no, you can’t. It’s not… it’s not what you want, it’s not going to—”

“He’s straight, Lea. I know you don’t want to believe it, but he is. I am not. And I am going to get over this goddamned crush, starting now—and one of the ways I’m going to do that is by having actual gay sex with other men. Who are gay. Buckets and boatloads of gay man-sex.”

“Don’t do this, Chris. You’re going to hate yourself in the morning.”

“As opposed to the paragon of self-esteem I am right now? Good night, Lea.”

“Chris—”

“Good night.”

He turned the phone off with one vicious jab of his thumb, and chucked it over his shoulder into the back seat.

***

“Chris?”

“I suck.”

“Oh my God—TMI, okay—”

“Not what I meant, Lea.”

“You went out and did it, didn’t you?”

He hesitated, then plunged. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

A pause. “So… let me get this straight: you suck because you did not go out and have sleazy, meaningless sex with a bunch of strange men?”

“No, I suck because I tried to, but I couldn’t.” He stopped, sniffed, and then the words just rushed out of him like someone had pulled a cork somewhere. “Because I felt like I was cheating, because even the thought of it made my chest seize up like I’d just eaten the world’s biggest, spiciest burrito; because I… I…”

“You… oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

“You’re… you’re not just crushing. You’re in love with him.”

He swallowed, hard. Twice. “Maybe.”

“Oh, honey.”

***

It was automatic at this point, keeping Darren at a metaphorical arm’s length (and a physical one, as often as the script let him get away with it). And it finally, finally seemed that they’d reached some sort of unspoken accord on the whole thing, because outside of their scenes together, Darren seemed to be staying away from him as well.

Which was why he was so hard-pressed not to go visibly rigid when Darren suddenly slid in next to him on the bench he was perched on—very close, too close—and leaned in towards his ear.

“Will you have dinner with me?”

“What? When? Why?” He bit his tongue before it could commit any more strident acts of idiocy.

“Dinner. Friday night. Because we’ve never done that—with just us.”

He was grateful for his ridiculous cardigan, because all the hair on his arms was standing straight up. “Oh. Sure.” He did not just say that. “I’d love to.” He would not. “Where?” Oh for fuck’s sake…

“I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“I… okay.”

***

“It’s not a date.”

“Quacks like a duck—”

“No, Lea—no. I don’t care what it quacks like. Darren could quack like Liberace and he’d still just be a flamboyantly straight duck—”

“…are you on drugs?”

“No, although I’m giving it some serious consideration.”

“Okay. So, what are you going to wear?”

“It’s not a date.”

“Right.”

He sighed. “Tie or no tie?”

***

The restaurant was small and weird, tables scattered around the ground floor of a converted Victorian in various tiny rooms. There was only one other table in the room with them, and there was nobody sitting at it. There was a fireplace between the two tables, and a chandelier. And not much else.

It was almost… normal, small talk about work, easy and natural and very much like what most of his life was already like most of the time—only it wasn’t normal at all, because it was the two of them, and just the two of them. Because it turned out to be very difficult to sneak glances at someone when they were the only other person in the room, and there was nobody else to pretend to be looking at. Because ‘small talk’ just sounded so incredibly… small when there was nobody else to talk to, no cacophony of jokes and complaints and teasing to hide behind and get lost in, no cover for any moments of awkward silence.

And there were kind of a lot of those.

Their waiter was calm and efficient, and mercifully didn’t seem to recognize either of them. “Drinks or wine to start?”

“God, yes,” Chris said, at the same time that Darren said “Absolutely,” in a voice that verged on the gratitude of prayer—and then they were laughing, both of them, looking at each other and laughing—and then it wasn’t quite so bad.

Two glasses of wine and one appetizer later, he was feeling fairly mellow. Probably too mellow, because the next time things got quiet, his mouth went ahead and asked the question he’d promised himself he would avoid. “Why did you ask me to dinner? Really?”

Darren blinked as if surprised, then dropped his eyes to his plate, nudging arugula and bruleed figs around with his fork as if he were pondering their artistic merit. “Um… I guess it wasn’t really that subtle, the whole ulterior-motives-what-ulterior-motives thing?”

“No.” Although having it confirmed was doing weird things to his stomach. He poured himself another glass from the bottle on the table. A generous one. “So are you going to tell me, or what?”

Darren nodded, his face carefully set, and took the bottle out of his hand before emptying it into his own glass. “It’s… um. Lea. She, uh… told me some things—”

“Damn that woman—” he yelled without meaning to, and Darren jumped, staring at him wide-eyed while wine splashed on the tablecloth. Chris sighed, and rubbed his face with both hands. “Sorry—listen, no—it’s… it’s just a stupid crush, okay? Just forget about it, ignore it—”

Darren looked poleaxed. “Crush? What crush? Why… crush?”

Fuck. “She didn’t… say anything about. That?”

“No. What crush? You have a crush? On who?”

Scrambling. Frantic scrambling. “On, um, Danny.” Surely he knew a Danny. Everyone knew a Danny, right?

“Danny…”

“Yes.”

“You mean… Danny from makeup?”

“Yes!”

“The guy who’s in his fifties, and has pictures of his wife and daughters everywhere?”

He blinked. “Yes. I have a tragic history of having crushes on unavailable men,” he said quickly, with perfect honesty. “It’s very… tragic.”

“Oh.” Darren looked kind of like he’d been punched in the face by the whole conversation. “That… sucks.”

“Yeah.” He downed half his glass of wine. “Let’s not talk about it. What exactly did Lea tell you?”

Darren shook his head briefly, then shrugged. “She said that you… you didn’t actually realize you were gay until… until you were, um. Older.”

That was so random and unexpected that it seemed like a non-sequitur. “Yes. And?”

Darren looked at him—nervous, visibly nervous, licking his lips and blinking too rapidly. “Wasn’t that… weird? I mean, not… weird that you did that, I mean, weird… for you?”

“I… at the time, yes.” Weird didn’t quite cover it, but it would serve. “Why?”

“Because.” Darren cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “I’m pretty sure I’m going through something like that, and I thought you might be willing to… you know, talk about it. About what it was like. For you.”

Chris’ mouth dropped open, and the squeaking noise that came out of him would have been very embarrassing if it hadn’t been covered by their waiter bustling in with the entrees. Chris stared at his salmon. Hard.

“More wine?” the waiter asked, and Chris just nodded. He kept staring at his salmon until the wine had arrived and the waiter had left. He emptied his glass and filled it again.

He cleared his throat, and it seemed very loud. “You… think you might be gay.”

“Yes.”

“You.”

“I… yeah.”

“You think—”

“Yes.” Darren shifted in his chair. Chris risked a peek at his face, his flushed, half-amused, half-exasperated face. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve carried out scientific experiments to, uh, validate my conclusion, but the empirical evidence suggests—”

“Wait-wait-wait.” Wait. “This isn’t about the, um, the verisimilitude, is it? Because that was just a—”

“No…” Darren shifted again. Darren was practically squirming. “I mean—no. Because there’s… well, there was that, but then there’s, um… you know. Wet dreams. Fantasies. Stuff like… stuff.”

“Stuff.” There were a hundred questions to ask. And about three hundred that he absolutely was not going to ask, ever. “Did any of the, uh, stuff… involve me?”

That was one of the ones he wasn’t ever going to ask. Fuck.

No answer. And no answer. And when he finally looked up, Darren was smiling a little, ruefully, almost apologetically. He shrugged. “Yeah, um, I’ve really been meaning to branch out, sorry—”

“Darren.”

“I… yeah?”

“Is this… a date? Did you ask me on a date?”

“Um. No?”

“Okay.”

“Maybe?”

“What—”

“Fuck. Full disclosure: yes.” Darren leaned his elbows on the table with his fingers laced together, his chin propped on them. “Yes, I did.”

“Okay,” Chris said again, and Darren glanced up at the same moment he did and then they were stuck, staring, and Chris’ palms were sweaty and he clenched both his hands into his napkin in his lap. “Okay.”

Darren blinked, then licked his lips. “You… you don’t really have a crush on Danny from makeup, do you?”

Chris took a breath. “Full disclosure: no.”

“Okay.”

***

There were still silences. They were still awkward. But they weren’t the same at all. Not at all.

He stopped drinking wine. He did eat his salmon. It was probably delicious.

“I thought you didn’t like me.” Darren’s eyes were wide, full of light.

“And I thought you were straight.”

Darren grinned. “Pretty sure I’m not.”

Chris smiled back. “Empirical evidence, lacking proof?”

“For now.”

Another silence. Chris felt his face glow, his spine prickling with sudden heat. A glance at Darren showed him blushing with his eyes downcast, long lashes against his cheeks, and then Chris really, really needed to look somewhere else. The waiter materialized next to their table, and provided a convenient non-Darren target for looking at. “Coffee and dessert?”

“No,” they both said at the same time, and then they were staring at each other again.

He didn’t even notice when the waiter came back with the check.

***

The drive back to his place was quiet; no music, not much conversation other than minimalist agreement over a guy on the 101 who was obviously on a crusade to get elected Grand Marshal of Assholes in the asshole parade. The silence might have been oppressive if Chris hadn’t been so deeply engaged with his own inner landscape of turmoil and panic and oh-my-God-what-now?

A date, it had been a date. So. Kiss? No kiss? Invite Darren in for a nightcap? Or was that too forward? Wait for Darren to make the first move? Or was that too reserved? There were just… too many choices, and no way of knowing which one was right—not that that stopped his brain from going for Olympic gold on the interior hamster-wheel of what-if-what-if-what-if.

He was so lost in the murky depths of contemplation of all the ways in which he could fuck things up spectacularly that he didn’t realize where they were until Darren turned the car off—driveway, they were in his driveway, and he was home and absolutely out of time to make these critical decisions.

He cleared his throat. “Would you like to have sex?” FUCK. “Coffee? I meant to ask—coffee, or, whatever you… oh hell.”

If the world had been a kinder place, Darren would have laughed, would have made him laugh. Instead, Chris found himself mashed back into the passenger seat with Darren more-or-less in his lap, hot hands cupping his face and holding him just-so while Darren kissed him with soft, feverish urgency, going after his tongue and seducing it. He could feel his brain trying to think, trying to catch up—flashing quickly on another car, another night—but that was different, those kisses, totally different from… this. These kisses. Real. From Darren. To him. God.

Darren pulled back quickly but didn’t let go, his lips open and wet, his eyes wide and shocked. “I… don’t want any coffee.”

Chris swallowed. “I got that.”

“I want your mouth on me,” Darren said softly, breathily, and then flinched. “Fuck. I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

Chris took a deep breath and tried to keep his hips still. “Maybe we should… go inside. And talk.”

To his surprise, Darren actually snickered, leaning forward so their foreheads touched. “Yeah, because that’s going so well for us.”

“Exactly.”

***

There wasn’t much opportunity for talk. Chris hung up his own jacket and scarf in his entryway closet, then Darren’s coat, and closed the door just in time to get crowded gently up against it by Darren’s warm, solid body, strong hands holding him by the hips.

“Please tell me this is okay,” Darren gasped next to his ear. “Or if it isn’t. You have to—just tell me, and I’ll—”

“Shut up. Kiss me.” Darren did as ordered, and the hip-holding became kind of necessary when Chris’ knees went out from under him. Wet, succulent kisses, with moaning, and behind him the door creaked ominously when he shoved his shoulders back against it, rutting his hips forward.

It was only a little while—surely no more than a minute, but it was too good and it had been far too long and he realized only hazily that he was about to come in his pants if he didn’t stop. He stopped, dragging Darren away by the curls, rubbing his fingers through their silky softness.

“I don’t have a lot of experience,” he breathed—a poorly-timed confession, but he felt it had to be said.

“I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing,” Darren said softly, sliding both hands up from his hips to cup behind his neck. His hands were shaking.

“Just…” Chris closed his eyes as everything flashed red—danger, warning, his heart thudding heavily in his chest, trying to choke off the words that wanted to come out of his throat. Unsuccessfully. “Just take what you want, okay? You can… just do it.”

Another kiss, and he didn’t really register when Darren picked him up, but while he was melting and groaning and sucking on Darren’s tongue there were two strong hands anchored under his ass, keeping them pressed together—and they were moving. Slowly. He hooked his ankles together and put his arms around Darren’s neck to hold himself up.

“Left—to the left,” he managed between kisses. “Bedroom.”

There was one bumped shoulder and one slightly bruised knee due to the combination of kissing and carrying, but Darren eventually backed into Chris’ bed, swaying a little and then letting go. Chris sank to his knees, and Darren kind of collapsed when Chris rubbed both hands up his thighs—but the bed was there, and Chris moved in, nudging Darren’s knees apart. He let Darren tackle his own belt while he went to work on Darren’s zipper—fast, this was way too fast, very little finesse and less control but he couldn’t stop, he was panting and shaking and just desperate, his mouth already flooding.

Darren’s cock was big and veiny and cut and wet at the red-flushed tip, gorgeous, and Chris couldn’t stop touching it, caressing it with both hands and grazing it with his lips and painting wet streaks over his cheek when he nuzzled it. Darren made some sound that was half-sob and half-growl and caught him by the back of the neck again, shifting smoothly from growl to groan when Chris opened his mouth and took him in.

Darren kept one hand wrapped around the base of his shaft, and Chris sank down to it as fast as he could, ignoring the twinge in his jaw and the excess spit running down his chin, squeezing Darren’s shaking thighs with both hands and pulling back only enough to press his neck into Darren’s palm until Darren tugged him forward again.

He was dizzy with hypoxia, with lust, with wanting and with having and with the chest-deep, plucked-string vibration caused by every sound from above. When his lips nudged hard against Darren’s fingers Darren let go, sliding that hand behind Chris’ head and fisting into his hair, cradling him. His own hips were rocking, Darren’s hips were rocking, and they were both moaning, surging a little when Chris sank the rest of the way down.

“Oh fuck,” Darren said, sounding very far away, and Chris looked up through his lashes to see Darren’s head thrown back, his throat sheened with sweat, adam’s apple prominent and straining, his biceps flexed. “Chris, that’s… oh God fucking take it, just—” whatever words came after that got lost in a series of deep, helpless-sounding groans, and Chris slid his knees further apart, tightening the fabric squeezing his cock and balls, his hips hitching and stuttering while the rest of him shuddered.

Darren worked into his throat and went almost quiet, tortured gasps for breath and low, glottal sounds all that there was—but Darren was shaking, hard, fucking into his mouth and holding there, rocking, stroking into him over and over. Chris’ vision went sparkly-black at the edges, and he could hear himself moaning faintly through his nose but that seemed so, so unimportant right now, far less important than the instinct to swallow, suck and swallow and keep swallowing and nevermind breathing anyway—

Darren held him tight and cried out and came down his throat, one jolt quickly followed by another when his own body tipped over the edge without even being touched and then it was fucking ecstasy, coming and sucking and swallowing and listening to Darren pant his name between moans. He fell into it, relaxed into it, and it was kind of a shock when Darren finally, finally let go of him and flopped back onto the bed, breathless, rubbing both hands over his face.

“Oh my God.”

Chris pulled off Darren’s cock gently, finally reaching down to ease himself through the last throbs and twinges. “Darren?”

One hand waved weakly from the bed. “Please—come up here? I want to… but I can’t. Move. Please?”

Darren caught him and pulled him into a kiss the moment he got within arm’s reach. There was some shifting, some legs and arms that needed sorting out, but eventually they were there, lying down and making out while Darren’s hands roamed restlessly, over his shoulders and down his spine and settling, finally, on his ass, rubbing and squeezing.

Darren pulled back after a few minutes, petting his hair back from his forehead and staring at him with dark, shining eyes. “I am so, so fucking gay.”

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. “Good. I needed a new toaster.”

***

Of course he was a mess, and Darren was kind of a sweaty wreck, so after some more soft, satisfying kisses, he pulled back. “Um, I need to… take a shower with me?”

Darren stretched, flushed and with his lips kiss-swollen, still fully clothed except for his cock—sizeable even when it was soft, quiescent against his open fly. “Hmm. How about… a bath?”

“A bath?”

“With you.” Another kiss. “Bubble bath.”

“A… bubble bath.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have any bubble bath.”

Darren shrugged. “Dish soap?”

“I am not bathing in dish soap, Darren!” Oh, the eyes. The eyes. “Oh, fine. I have some bath gel I’ve never used.”

The eyes went from mournful pleading to a happy twinkle in a flat second. “And candles.”

“God.”

***

The bath gel was supposed to be ‘woodsy’, but to him it had always smelled kind of like Pine-Sol—which was why he’d never used it. And he didn’t have any candles other than the citronella ones out on his patio he used to keep the bugs away when he ate or worked out there, so overall it was a disinfectant-and-bug-free ambiance in the bathroom. It was pretty much the exact opposite of romantic, except that once he was settled into the hot, sudsy water with Darren all wet and slippery up against his back, strong arms around him and tender kisses pressed to the side of his neck—okay, it was pretty romantic. Also ridiculous.

“You’re kind of a weird guy, you know that?” It didn’t come out as brassy or bitchy as he’d intended, because Darren’s hands were all over him, stroking and lightly squeezing and even scratching a little with his blunt nails, and really, it was hard to manage more than a breathy subvocalization.

“You are so fucking gorgeous—” Darren flipped him over then, as easily as if he weighed nothing, and kissed him like a starving man while stroking down his back to his ass, dragging them together while their cocks slid over each other, stirring and growing hard and making him moan before he choked himself off, burrowing his face into the curve of Darren’s slick-wet neck.

He let himself float, drift, let Darren touch him and move him and spread him open. He rested his head on Darren’s shoulder and turned his face to the side so that he could pant freely, no longer trying to stop any of the sounds that wanted to come out of him. There was a strong sense of being… explored, enjoyed, relished, and some part of him he hadn’t even known about soaked it up like a sponge. Like a sponge—waterlogged and heavy. He was drowsy, floaty, turned-on and open and just starting to need more than what he had, more than Darren’s hand lightly pressing their cocks together and stroking, slowly and indulgently while softly sucking on his neck, his shoulder, his tongue when he could bring himself to lift his heavy head up.

‘That feels good,’ was what sprang to mind, but when he nuzzled Darren’s shoulder and kissed there and took a deep breath, what came out of his mouth was, “I’ve never been fucked.” He bit his lip and closed his eyes, and cursed the mystery pheromone that Darren evidently gave off that made people—namely, him—say these terrible, awful, true things.

“Okay.” More stroking. Petting. Nuzzling. Kisses.

He took a breath. “Do you want to fuck me?”

Darren brought both hands up and took his face, tugging him firmly from where he was trying to hide without asphyxiating in bubbles. Darren was flushed red and trickling with sweat, his eyes dilated to near-black in the candlelight, cupping his face and right there and inescapable. “I want to do everything with you.”

Damn him, anyway. “Okay.”

***

Standing up was a challenge; he still felt heavy and wobbly and kind of elementally undone, but then Darren flipped the drain on the tub and turned the shower on and rinsed him off, turning him and stroking every inch of him, rinsing his hair and going over him with a soft washcloth until he felt like he was glowing.

He kept slipping under—not away from consciousness but somehow apart from it, away to a place where he was content to connect and hold and touch and kiss and be held, touched, kissed; with no clamor in his head at all, nothing in his heart but a desire to be closer, to have more. It made everything so much easier, made it okay when Darren stretched him out on the bed and stared down at him with dark, appreciative eyes—no need to curl up or cover himself or look away, because everything that drove those particular needs was just… somewhere else.

Darren worked him over until he quivered, wicked, talented mouth on his throat and his collarbones and his nipples, his navel and the tip of his cock and his balls, then both legs up and spread and holding onto his knees while Darren teased and licked his ass. He got terribly, terribly close to coming, squeezing his knees and moaning endlessly and bucking, his cock dripping wet onto his stomach, swivels of his hips as he shamelessly tried to screw himself on Darren’s tongue. Darren backed off every time he got close to the edge, sucking his balls softly or biting his thighs until his hips settled, but then more tongue and back to the edge he went, until he was sweaty and shaking and kind of continuously, quietly begging with whatever breath he could spare.

“Lube?” Darren kept his fingers there, right there, circling softly, slick with spit but not slick enough. Chris waved weakly in the direction of his bedside drawer, and took the opportunity when Darren leaned over him to arch up and kiss Darren’s neck, chest, shoulder—biting gently and swiping the tip of his tongue over one hard nipple. Darren collapsed a little and that was good—weight on him, warm-body-weight and muscle and deep, tongue-fucking kisses that made him throb everywhere.

Darren kept one hand fisted in his hair and used the other one to work him open—properly slippery now, inside and out, close and dizzyingly intimate. He was fucking himself on Darren’s fingers and moaning, and Darren was rocking with him and semi-humping his leg and also moaning, and both of them were shaking, hot and flushed and kissing messily between gasps for air.

“I want you to fuck me—”

“Going to—fuck… I’m… yeah—”

“—for a long time.”

“Oh. Sure. No pressure. Fucking hell, my balls are killing me—”

“Get in me, now.”

“Shut up, shut up, I love you but shut up—”

The words struck him dumb for a moment, and it was a terribly important moment and he really, really had something to say about that, but there was no saying it with Darren pushing him flat, pulling his knees up and apart and stopping his mouth with his tongue. Darren’s cock was definitely a few sizes up from any of the toys in his collection—it stretched him, one long, slow stretch-and-burn that made his toes and fingers curl, made him grab on and hang on while his hips pumped greedily for a few seconds, arching up for more. He got more—he got everything. It was a shock, being stretched and filled, penetrated, transfixed; something that went right to the center of him and exploded outwards with tingling awareness.

He was still, now, and quiet. And Darren had gone still. On him. In him, looking into his eyes. Breathing shuddery breaths between open, softly-slack lips.

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Wow.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Chris—”

“Just… kiss me, okay?”

Darren’s lips brushed his, butterfly-light, along with a subtle, whole-body movement, a teasing, lithe twist—and then every muscle in Chris’ body gave and opened, his hard cock pulsing in time with his heart, in time with the thrusts inside him, in time with the flickering heat and wetness of Darren’s tongue stroking his own.

Someone was moaning—he was pretty sure it was him. He felt drugged and heavy and slow, toes and fingertips tingling from the excess of everything. It felt so good, so amazingly, incredibly good, resting in Darren’s arms and letting heat and pleasure fill him up, a circuit, a flow, from him to Darren and back again, feeding and filling and white-hot delicious shocks running through him.

Darren was slick with sweat and warm, all smooth skin and trembling muscles, fucking him so sweetly that it made his chest ache. When Darren reached between them Chris pushed into his hand immediately, turning his head and crying out and working himself between the tight-flush grip on his cock and the pounding, throbbing fullness in his ass.

“…I’m gonna come.”

“…yeah, okay, good.”

“You too?”

“Oh fuck yes.”

“Okay.” He closed his eyes and let his body do what it wanted, arching and twisting while his hands dropped to Darren’s ass and squeezed, pulling hard and riding, a deep cramp in his stretched thigh that was just one last pulse of intensity when he came, soft, helpless, high-pitched sounds coming from his throat until Darren cut him off with a liquid-hot kiss, moaning in his mouth and twitching inside him.

It was like freefall afterwards, like flying, endless kisses and rocking and closeness—Darren still had his cock in a gentle grip, touching so lightly and carefully, and was still inside him, not as hard now but still there, kissing him over and over until he slipped out, until he finally let go.

Chris opened his eyes. Darren was staring at him, soft-eyed, intense, vulnerable. Chris could feel the place where they weren’t connected anymore. It ached.

He took a deep breath. “Darren.”

“Yeah?” Darren’s voice was raw, raspy, quiet.

“Full disclosure, okay?”

“Okay.”

“It’s not a crush. Not… just a crush.”

“Yeah?”

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Darren closed his eyes and tangibly relaxed, burrowing into the curve of his neck, kissing there. “That’s good, because trying not to love you really wasn’t working out so hot for me.”

Chris closed his own eyes again, petting down Darren’s slippery back. “Dork.”

“Full disclosure: yes.”

***

“Oh my God—where the hell have you been? I called you all last night to find out how it went, and I was so worried—”

“It went fine, Lea,” he said calmly, sitting up in bed and crossing his legs. “I just turned my phone off and went to bed. I was tired. I… we talked, we ate food, it was fine.”

“Oh. So it… wasn’t a date?”

“No, I told you it wasn’t a date. It was just—wah—”

Darren had the phone out of his hand in a hot second, holding it up and out of reach, then rolling him face-down and sitting on him when he wouldn’t stop trying for it. “Hey, Lea—Darren here.”

“Fucker,” he managed, squirming, wincing at the high-pitched squeal he could hear coming from his phone.

“Yeah, it was totally a date. Then he asked me if I wanted to have sex, so—”

“Bastard!” He got one leg free, which Darren hooked around his own and immobilized. “Hate you.”

“He totally loves me,” Darren said happily, bouncing on him and making him grunt. “But I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend making him admit it over and over, so… yeah, we’ll see you on Monday, okay?” Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. “Okay, Sweetie. You too. Bye!”

Chris stayed where he was, limp and grumpy, until Darren tossed the phone away and rolled him over. “Was that completely necessary?”

Darren nodded, grinning. “Also hugely entertaining,” he said, eyeing him acquisitively. “So. Can I suck you off now?”

“No.” Unfortunately, it came out less like defiance, and more like an uncertain whine. “Maybe.” Darren’s eyes were half-shut, his long lashes fluttering. Chris was scandalized to feel himself blushing. “Oh, fine. Dork.”

Darren smiled brilliantly, licking his lips. “Yay!”

“Shut up.”

~End

Author’s Endnotes:

In case you, like other advance readers, were puzzled by the ‘toaster’ line: this is a queer community in-joke that started as a response to conservatives alleging that all queers are out to recruit your children—if you turn someone, the Homosexual Agenda Consortium will send you a free toaster!

This story was immensely, hugely fun to write. The original concept in my head was quite angsty, but I’m really pleased that I’m not in charge of this rodeo and that it went in a silly direction, because I love writing silliness. Thank you for reading!