Chapter Text
Something heavy, warm, and bristled with downy hair settles across Danny’s thigh, bringing him abruptly from sleep. The bed beside him dips and shifts. And the soft, gusty sigh beside his ear sends his heartbeat into a thunder.
Someone is in the sheets with him. Or some thing—an animal perhaps, having leapt to join him in bed and wormed beneath the covers. His disoriented mind could easily confuse it for a cat, Sam’s beloved Rosie perhaps. Hell, any wild beast could’ve approached undetected with how heavily he’d been sleeping.
But then the scents caress his senses. The smooth, aromatic musk of damp hair, clean skin. Jake’s skin. He’d know this scent anywhere, had lived alongside it for a decade, and now it heavily embellishes the air beside him.
Danny’s hand falls to warmly cup that downy weight, finding the curve of a knee. The calming heat of a pulse, beating there under Jake’s skin.
While he lies in the darkness, surrounded by Jake’s satin sheets, the hammering pace of his heart slows as the facts add together. It all returns, shifting back into his startled and confused mind, until all the visceral details of their filthy, amorous evening return in blushing detail.
He’d held him so close. Encircled him in his embrace from all sides while brutally pounding a primal rhythm inside him. His most carnal instinct had been released, along with his boiling ropes of ejaculate, bursting forth from him and deep into warm flesh.
He feels his smile grow in the darkness. Then his hand skims affectionately up the curves of that velvet thigh.
Jake shifts again, a quick inhale jetting inside him and his skin whispering as it drags across the sheets. His breath changes next, the sleepy sighs turning shorter. He is nearing wakefulness with every passing gasp as they rush past his teeth.
He’s getting restless. Danny had spent enough nights with him in cramped buses, overbooked hotels, and long flights to know his endearing habits. These movements in the night will intensify until he eventually emerges from sleep altogether, his rest ruined by an overactive body. Or perhaps by overactive dreams.
Danny scoots closer, drawing nearer under the soft warmth of that thigh across his lap. Then he winds an arm around the squirming shape beside him.
Jake twitches, sucking an abrupt breath. He holds it in silence, long enough that Danny worries if his attempts to soothe him had only resulted in a sudden awakening. But then it hisses back out in a slow, gentle whisper.
Danny smiles into the curve of his shoulder, whispering in low, barely audible tones, “I’m right here. Right here, My Darling.”
An arm aimlessly reaches through the darkness, circling posessively around Danny’s waist. That delicate ribcage inflates as he draws one more long gasp, then it slips from him in a balmy gust against Danny’s chest. His bones fall still. The shape of him falls to rest, tucked away neatly into Danny’s embrace.
He grins again, unable to contain the buzzing joy drenching the contents of his chest. It seems like he’d been able to intercept Jake’s restlessness simply with his touch and proximity. Calm him with his closeness.
And, in turn, Jake’s furnace-like warmth wafts from him and diffuses directly into Danny’s skin, leadening him down. It soothes his racing heart. Bathes him in peace, comfort, serenity as his consciousness blurs with the pressing blackness of the night.
Jake’s dainty nose nuzzles against his sternum in one last sign of fidgety turbulence.
Then the room is swallowed by silence, and Danny’s eyes droop shut.
It only seems like a moment has passed, but when Danny’s eyes drift open again, the room is golden around him. Marigold hues paint the ceiling and dapple the walls while the distant chirping of stirring songbirds proclaim a warm, sunny morning.
But, cutting through it all, wafts the intoxicating scent of cooking bacon and browning toast.
He grins, drawing a long, meditative inhale. The air fills every corner of his lungs, expanding him almost to the point of dull pain. His back arches instinctually, limbs splaying freely in the expansiveness of the bed. His every joint creaks and sings with the relief of this stretch, waking his bones from their long slumber.
Then he releases the breath, the tension in that whole-body flex slipping out with it. For a few moments he just lies there steeped in bliss, bright sparkles filling his vision in a psychedelic dance. Then he pulls up on one elbow.
The bed beside him is bare, save for an abandoned towel and rumpled sheets. But his scent still rises from the fabric as though Jake’s shape still lies with him, his softness right within reach. And as Danny’s palm slides in search of him, he finds the warmth of his body still imbued in the fibers of the mattress. Which means he isn’t very long gone.
Danny hauls himself upright. The room is even more beautiful in the yellow hues of the morning, the wood surfaces catching the warm glow. He wonders if Jake had chosen this house for that very reason—for the ornate, tall windows that face the rising sun and cast the bed in gold. He can feel the rays coat his back, sending his disheveled shadow arcing across the jewel tones of the blanket.
His curls spring outwards in a messy tangle, giving him a Muppet-like silhouette, and wispy spirals tickle down his back and forehead. He drags his fingers through the wild mess in an effort to tame it, combing it back and up into a somewhat controlled bundle. Then he leans to retrieve his prize: that same gilded clip that now carries so many memories.
As he fastens it securely in his hair, the moments chase through his mind all over again. So much skin, sweat, starved breaths. Agonized cries of blinding pleasure.
He can’t help the smile, the heat that spreads throughout him, pinkening his chest and the tips of his ears. He’s not sure those memories will ever lose their magic.
Danny clambers loose from the bed, untangling his slender limbs from wadded sheets. Then he finds his discarded duffel bag, nearly forgotten after so much distraction. He retrieves a neatly folded set of slate gray sweatpants, originally intended to be used as pajamas, but they’d proven to be useless as made evident by Danny’s current state of utter nakedness.
Today, however, they serve to chase off the morning’s chill.
Danny pads softly down the hardwood stairs, lured by the promise of breakfast. After the activity from the night before, the tantalizing scents send his stomach into overdrive, as though it’s sudden need might force it to devour itself.
An abrupt scream of a small motor bursts from the kitchen as Danny rounds the corner. There, a small man stands, bundled in an openly drifting bathrobe and fidgeting with the buttons on a blender. His beauty is staggering, even in the throes of his unobserved domestic habits. Fine, silky hair rests in a clumsy knot at the nape of his neck, exposing the supple softness of his throat and leaving a few willowy tendrils to frame his face.
In his opposite hand, he holds a slice of plain toast aloft, sans a crescent shaped bite-mark. His jaw works distractedly as he studies whatever yellow mixture whizzes in the base of the blender.
Jake swallows, then bites down for another large mouthful.
Danny draws near enough to lean against the marble island, “What’re you making?”
He pauses mid-bite, eyes darting to find him. Then he smiles widely, “Hollandaise,” He manages, voice muffled through the bread, “Almost done.”
“Ooh fancy,” He gushes, now noticing the explosion of ingredients and cookware scattered across the countertops, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Jake offers a half-shrug, “I was starving. Couldn’t wait, though, obviously,” He gestures with the remnants of his toast before unceremoniously finishing it off.
“Do you often cook naked?” He laughs, taking note of Jake’s open robe and free, sun-browned skin.
“Oh, exclusively,” He grins and cuts the blender into silence, “You should try it sometime. How else would you get bacon burns on your stomach?” He gestures toward the offending pan of grease, still popping and sizzling on the stove, sending more tiny flecks of lava outward as the bacon cooks.
Danny’s face falls, “Did you really?”
“Yeah, look,” He turns to face him, pointing proudly to the angry marks across the sculpted shape of his lower abdomen. It looks wrong, there amid the bruises left by Danny’s amorous attention.
“Ow. That’s gotta be painful,” Danny remarks, continuing to memorize every hurt that scars Jake’s perfect skin. The purple marks from all the kisses as they descend down his inner thighs. The new, possessive hand print splayed across Jake’s hip bone. Those are all tattoos foretelling love. Passion. The evidence of Danny’s crushing devotion. And now, those raw speckles of wounded, broken skin abruptly interrupt it with unwelcome pain.
“Just for a second,” Jake assures him, then shuts his robe against Danny’s searching eyes, “But I learned my lesson.”
“Still—” He stands upright at his full, towering height, almost dwarfing the dainty stature of the beautiful man across from him. He circles the island, drawing nearer, “I’m sorry you got hurt.”
“Nah, it’s nothing,” He shrugs again, “My own damn fault.”
Danny dips to his knees, removing his height advantage, then reaches for the plush softness of Jake’s robe.
“What?” Jake’s face crosses into amused confusion.
“It’s not ‘nothing,’” He insists, “Come ‘ere.”
Jake obliges, his curiosity drawing him nearer, “Right now?” He giggles, referencing the position of Danny’s head, his mouth. How easily he could lean in and make it better, “Can we at least eat something before another round?”
Danny laughs at his insinuation, his own intentions being much more innocent, “Oh Darlin’,” His fingers tug the robe wider, revealing the details beneath. The speckled wounds directly at his eye-level. He leans close, placing a tender kiss against the satin curve of his stomach.
“Whoa. Jesus.” He laughs, then forcefully pulls his robe shut as though its plush fabric can become armor around him.
Danny frowns upward, betrayed. He’d only wanted to soothe him, perhaps reclaim those markings as his own. And instead Jake withdraws from his efforts.
“Ticklish.” He offers defensively. But he doesn’t relinquish his grip on that fabric, keeping it locked around him. And his face has fallen into that same strange expression—the subtle, secret one that had told Danny so much. He’d made this exact one on their very first night together, the first time Danny had tried to see him in all his glory.
The self-conscious one.
Danny doesn’t push. But he refuses to back away. He just watches upward, face mere inches from the fabric cage concealing Jake’s body.
Then, slowly, Jake lets go. The robe falls open. His skin bristles with goosebumps and his lower lip tucks nervously between his teeth.
“Jake,” He begins quietly, restraining himself from satiating his hunger with this expansive, delicious flesh, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” His words are low, gentle, but firm, “Every. Fucking. Part of you.”
He nods tightly. But his eyes still hide a distant, constant pain. Perhaps an ancient one, renewing now to haunt him, like a festering wound turned into a gnarled, angry knot.
“Can I touch you?” He tries, respectfully keeping his distance.
A moment turns into an aching purgatory as Jake decides.
Something sharp punctures Danny’s chest, his own wound sharply stinging with the pain. He’d thought he’d won Jake’s trust completely, but it seems he still bears hidden scars.
“Yeah,” he finally answers, voice thin and tight, “I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
Danny shakes his head dismally, “No. Don’t apologize. I should’ve asked.”
He lets a long breath through pursed lips. And his eyes shimmer with the tiniest, almost imperceptible glisten of emotion, defeat. Perhaps of shame.
Danny recalls his old tactic of distraction, and takes Jake’s hand in his, interlacing his fingers through his own. He peppers soft kisses against his tendons, teasing that emotion away until the mist in his beautiful eyes retreats.
Then Danny closes his own eyes. He’d averted his gaze that night, preserving his privacy and allowing Jake to welcome him at his own pace.
And this time, as though emboldened by Danny’s blindness, Jake’s hands carefully cup his face. Then he steps to close the distance.
Danny can feel warm skin make contact with the very tip of his nose. Then his lips. He leans into it, inhaling its scents and catching the faintest hint of bacon grease imprinted into his skin. It dimples inward with the pressure of Danny’s lips, his kiss sinking into his softness. He hums softly into his tender sweetness, savoring this velvet texture against his sensitive nerves.
Danny almost reaches to envelop his waist in his muscular arms and pull him closer. But that would only make Jake feel trapped, surrounded. So instead he allows his hands to skim under the robe and up his sides, studying the gentle slope of his naked waistline as it widens into hips.
Jake’s fingers wander in his hair—an encouraging sign.
He keeps his eyes sealed, but his kisses migrate and roam, following his anatomy and covering every inch of his belly in the dewey prints of his affection. His body is so intoxicatingly soft, welcoming. Fragrant.
But he lets go, leaning his forehead against his navel. The kitchen tiles wear on his knees, but this closeness holds him spellbound. He lets out a tentative question, “Can I see you, Jake?”
There’s only silence. Then he feels Jake withdraw, distancing himself from Danny’s embrace.
He’d spooked him. Pushed him too hard and forced him to balk from his touch. The warmth of his skin becomes a distant sensation. A cruel loss, torn from his grasp. He regrets it all, wishes he could revert back to their moment with the blender screeching. Change the timeline of Jake’s shattered trust and begin anew.
But then Danny twitches at the surprise of a new sensation, grazing past his nose. A gust of breath. The warmth of a face looming close.
Then a nose brushes against Danny’s and a pair of lips meets his own with fierce, hungry pressure. Danny grins into the kiss, upsetting the connection as Jake’s lips meet teeth. But it completely overtakes his face as the relief soaks his chest in the heat of his boundless joy.
So Jake hadn’t pulled away. He’d only hinged at the hips to bow low over him, but now his knees give out and drop him abruptly at Danny’s eye level. Then he clutches the broad, muscular angles of his shoulders, fingers closing down with demanding force as he crawls atop Danny’s thighs.
And Danny finally allows his arms to encircle Jake’s form, pinning him close and deepening his kiss until he can even taste the desperation in his breath.
He smells like mint again, clean musk, fragrant shampoo. And the scent of bacon around them turns bitter. Acrid.
“Oh fuck.” Jake sharply breaks the kiss, head snapping toward the smoke billowing from the stovetop. The grease is now popping and hissing angrily, as if in protest for being forgotten.
Danny scoops under Jake’s thighs, maneuvers his position until he finds a foothold, then grunts with the effort of hauling Jake completely off the ground. Retrospectively, his choice to carry Jake with him may have been unnecessary, but it’s easier than letting him go.
Jake instinctively locks his ankles around him, the very same way he’d done so in the museum bathroom, “Shit. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” He smiles as he slides the angry cast-iron off its active burner, “I’m the one that distracted you, right?”
“Still—I don’t burn bacon,” He warmly tucks a few kisses in the curve of Danny’s neck, his tone indicating his distraction, his lack of concern. His need, “It’s sacred.”
Danny flicks the stove dial into the Off position, then turns to carefully deposit his beloved on the island, “You’re sacred, Jake.” He almost growls it, appetite whetted and dangerous, “Let me fucking worship you.”