Chapter Text
Sebastian
Chris is running late. Sebastian pokes at his martini glass. Watches layers wobble and cling and slide down: coffee liqueur and vanilla vodka and iced-chocolate sweetness. The bar’s playing casual classic rock, easy and unbothered. He doesn’t mind that; he likes Bon Jovi, mostly.
He considers his notebook, closed now and also unbothered, deep cool navy-blue leather that caresses his fingertips like velvet. A luxury; Chris’d bought this one for him.
He loves Chris Evans.
He ends up smiling at the notebook. It smirks: it knows precisely how besotted he is. How improbable this whole life is, the way he’s fallen head over clumsy heels for his husband, the stupefying beautiful fact that Chris Evans had made love to him that morning and made coffee for him and brought it to him in bed.
He touches his notebook again, lightly, with a fingertip.
He could try to write more, to fill lines with music-notes and experimental phrases, but he’s been thinking about melodies and tunes all afternoon. His brain’s emptied out and fuzzy from exertion; he wants Chris to come meet him and kiss him and share drinks and dinner, laughing. Secure as a home.
He’d actually arrived a bit early—he’d been writing in a Starbucks a couple blocks away, needing to get out of the apartment and wander the city. Chris had had a meeting, arranging an art exhibition, so they’d agreed to find each other at this bar, which is a new spot. Good reviews, good drinks—at least his martini has proved so—and an unpretentious space gradually filling up with bodies as the evening crowd trickles in. The bar-stool seems comfortable so far, and Sebastian’s idly watching the room. New York City. Treasure-trove of stories. Faces, clothing, shapes, packages, and buildings.
The thin blonde woman in the pink coat, ordering a cosmopolitan, is a song all by herself. Bright and quick and nervous and sharp, hurried but with delicate lines. A magenta sort of song, he decides. She brings the drink back to the table where a round and pretty dark-haired girl in a submissive’s collar is smiling; when their hands touch the room sheds invisible weight, and they share sips from the same glass.
Sebastian smiles to himself. Touches his own collar, quick and almost absentminded. Today’s version’s relatively new and more dramatic than previous purchases; they’re both getting used to him wearing one. Smoky grey, wide and supple, it fits like glove-leather, made for him. A single diamond dangles at the front, sitting precisely in the hollow of his throat. He’s unmistakably someone’s submissive, adorned and pampered and decorated. Anyone’ll see that at a glance.
His wedding ring catches the bar’s low light and spins it into gilded tales. Chris wears the matching one.
He takes a sip of his martini. Thinks about lives entwined, and futures, and a kind of radiant secret joy he’d never imagined.
Chris is running late because the meeting’d run late and New York traffic is hell on Friday nights—Sebastian’d nearly asked why not take the subway? but had remembered before pressing send on the text that his husband dislikes the subway, too crowded, too many people, too many anxiety-inducing factors beyond Chris’s control—and Chris has been sending him sad poop emojis along with updates. About ten minutes, probably.
They’ve not been married that long. He’s learning. They’re learning. He likes knowing that Chris Evans cries at Disney movies and possesses unnatural inhuman skill at miniature golf. He likes the way Chris rolls his eyes at Sebastian’s Starbucks addiction and then keeps adding money to his registered card anyway.
He loves Chris pouncing on him in the kitchen, kissing him breathless, and bending him over the counter on the spot. They’ve experimented a little more with the leash and command, at home. Sebastian’s mind absolutely shuts off when Chris snaps that slim line onto his collar. Blurry with rapture. White and gold as sunshine through clouds, floating.
Things he’d never imagined, he thinks again, and takes another sip. Chocolate and coffee and vanilla richness swirl over his tongue.
Letting his gaze travel across the room, he listens to Bon Jovi sing about being an outlaw. Being wanted, dead or alive.
The door opens; a knot of large middle-aged men spills in, obviously having already begun the evening’s partying elsewhere and extensively. They’re almost certainly very traditional Dominants; they’re taking up space as if they own the world, asserting their right to conquer, and bellowing with laughter as one of them tells the old joke about the submissive and the dog.
Sebastian’s heard it. It’s not really funny.
They collect beers and slosh into a table in the back. Sebastian seriously considers leaving—the atmosphere’s gotten far less convivial—but Chris’ll arrive in five minutes and the men aren’t paying anyone else any attention.
The bartender drops by to ask whether he wants another drink. Sullen eyes look at his collar sideways, as if wondering what a sub with an expensive piece of jewelry’s doing alone and unguarded. Sebastian stifles the urge to point out that he is allowed to go out in public, he’s allowed to do whatever his particular Dominant permits, and also the superhero film playing on one of the side televisions has been scored by him, thank you.
He sighs and declines the drink. Being sarcastic at silently judgmental bartenders would likely get him in trouble. Misbehaving. Insubordination from a submissive. There’s no technical legal rule about sarcasm, but he can be cited for public indecency, being a nuisance, and a few other distressingly archaic laws to keep subs in line. And it’d reflect badly on Chris, raising speculation about ability to dominate a submissive.
Those laws are changing, but slowly. Progress, especially in areas like divorce and personal property and the right to a career and an income. The more traditional camps aren’t happy about it.
They’re even less happy about Sebastian himself: extremely untraditional in many ways. Not least of those being the decades during which he’d managed to hide his orientation, avoid formal training, and never sign a contract. Some Dominants take this as a personal insult.
The equal rights groups adore him, of course.
The largest of the raucous group at the back table, a man who resembles every American football player of Sebastian’s college experience rolled into one disheveled business-suited package, looks over toward the bar. Possibly he wants more beer, possibly not, but his eyes land on Sebastian. They check out his collar, and then travel down, and back up.
Sebastian resists the urge to touch his collar again for reassurance. Turns further away, into the bar. Checks his phone. The latest text from Chris says two minutes, be right there, love you.
He sends back a heart plus we’ll probably want to head out, not sure this is our kind of place, tell you when you get here.
More loud drunken laughter happens from the Dominant table. He tries to ignore it. One of them says something mildly insulting about his movie; he’s not sure if they’ve recognized him—composers aren’t exactly famous, at least not by sight, but he’s done a lot of behind-the-scenes film-related interviews and equal-rights-related profiles—or if they’re just expressing beer-influenced opinions.
The linebacker in the expensive rumpled suit’s looking at him again, maybe checking to see if he’s heard. Sebastian pointedly glances down at his notebook. Scribbles a line of nothing: preoccupied, plainly busy, go away.
No such luck. A broad-shouldered bulk comes over and lounges on the bar-stool beside his. “Hey, I know you.”
“Sorry,” Sebastian tries politely, “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
“Nope.” With a grin, rather the way a shark might look while stalking wounded human prey. “Sebastian Stan. You’re famous.”
“If you’re congratulating me on the Academy Award nomination, you can send a note to my official mailing address.”
“Not what I had in mind.” The shark leans in. He smells of beer and peanuts and stale man. Sebastian wants to lean away. “I’ve seen you. At a…let’s say a club. Being polite. Three years ago, right?”
Oh no. Oh no no no. Fuck no. He can feel his fingers curl in. Nails biting into palm. “As far as I recall I never slept with a goat’s testicle, so no.”
“Didn’t say I fucked you, sub. As if I would.” One hand picks up Sebastian’s martini. Finishes it off: casual, proprietary, cruel. “A sub like that, unclaimed, running wild, bein’ the little uncontrolled whore you are…wouldn’t touch you with a toy on a three-foot pole. But I saw you. That was the night you let three Doms string you up and whip you and then fuck you all at once, right? You were begging for it.”
He’d been scared—terrified, really, of his own desires and urges. He’d needed to get out of his head, to be pushed, to be taken under. He had begged. He remembers that.
Those underground clubs are mildly illegal but tolerated, given money paid by the right people to the right people. Places where anyone—Dom or sub, collared or not—can go to indulge. To explore those urges. When skin shivers and sings and pleads for a lash—or to inflict one. To kneel—or to put a hand on a sub’s hair and shove him or her down. Sebastian Stan, hiding from the knowledge of his own status, knowing that to publicly declare himself would mean the end of his career and the independent life he’d built, had indeed begged, and desperately, for a night’s reprieve.
His last club night had been the night he’d been caught, of course. Turned in for money by one of the employees. Brilliant young composer, unregistered submissive, flouter of public laws.
That’d led to his very public outing, and the scandal, and his hasty marriage to Chris Evans. Of all the wondrously strange unforeseen pieces of the universe, that might be the strangest and most wonderful.
Chris knows in general terms about his past. Chris doesn’t know every sordid detail.
He says evenly, “Then why are you within three feet of me now?”
“God, you got a mouth on you.” The man rakes eyes over him: up and down, insolent, assessing. Sebastian’s skin crawls. “So pretty. Such a goddamn waste. Should show you what that mouth’s good for, sub.”
Sebastian reminds himself to breathe. Chris isn’t here. Chris is coming, but not here yet; he’s on his own. The bartender won’t save him, avoiding his eyes, doggedly scrubbing a glass; the other patrons gaze with mingled curiosity and pity and even some excitement in spots, egging the drunken Dominant on.
His collar’s a thick solid support. A reminder at his throat: he belongs to Chris now. Chris wanted him. Chris wants him. The diamond trembles when he exhales.
“And then you went and got married,” the man marvels, inebriated and lurching and large. “To some fucking artist, some nobody, no Dom who’s ever been around the scene—he lets you out on your own, too, lets you come in here alone—is that why you married him? You didn’t want a real Dom?”
Sebastian’s hands tense. Shoulders. Spine. Everything.
“Bet he can’t even satisfy you,” that drunken voice slurs. “Not with what I saw. Bet that’s why you’re out here alone, just lookin’ for a proper Dom, someone to fuck you like the little slut you are, show you your place, sub—”
The word twists in his mouth, ugly. Chris uses it sometimes as an endearment: mine, my sub, so sweet for me. Acceptance of their roles, of the role Sebastian’s learning to openly embrace at his Dominant’s side.
This is wrong. A perversion. Blasphemy. He says, keeping his voice calm, “I belong to Chris, and you’re insulting both of us.”
“Nothin’ that ain’t true about you,” the man retorts, and snaps a hand out quick as vicious lightning, grabbing Sebastian’s wrist, “and no way to insult a Dom who ain’t a Dom, either—”
“Please don’t touch me,” Sebastian manages around a gasp. The grip hurts. Pressing in toward bone. “I’m Chris’s property now—” Neither of them likes that phrasing, but it’s useful in certain situations, a deterrent. “—and this is fucking illegal, and I am warning you.”
“Or what?” A leer, so close he can feel smothering breath. “You gonna fight back, sub? Or are you gonna take it, take what he can’t give you with his artist’s hands—”
Sebastian twists his wrist, pushes against the weak point in the grip, and moves.
The movement ends with himself free and pinning a whimpering Dominant’s arm against the bar. In an exquisitely painful position. One that’ll end in one of two ways: Sebastian lets go or something important snaps.
The bartender drops the glass. It shatters.
“Let’s try this again,” Sebastian suggests. He’s mentally thanking every friend he’s ever made on a superhero film set, specifically the stunt crew and fight choreographers who’ve never minded a curious composer wandering around and asking questions and jumping into training for fun. “Apologize.”
“Fuck you—”
“Not to me. To Chris.”
Someone clears her throat from a side table. A step scuffs over the bar’s floor. Catching his attention.
Chris’s voice ventures, tentative as the soul of disbelief, “…Sebastian?”
Chris
Chris has been standing just inside the doorway for several seconds now. He’d arrived in time to hear vile drunken insults about Sebastian’s mouth, about Sebastian’s past. He’d felt himself swell up with protective fury, taking a step forward, towering with righteous rage, barely registering comments made about himself. Nobody gets to talk to Seb like that—nobody gets to put a hand on Sebastian—
And Sebastian had moved like a panther, like an unpracticed but angry cheetah, long-limbed and awkwardly graceful, a flash of swiftness that’s ended in this tableau. Sebastian’s collared and lovely and wearing Chris’s diamond at his throat and Chris’s ring on his finger, and he’s unquestionably in charge of this bar. Strongest person here.
Some distant traditionally-raised piece of Chris’s head yelps in shock at his submissive’s assertiveness. The rest of him is thrilled to the core, and a lot turned on. He’s not sure whether to step in and punch the horrible other Dom himself, or just beg his husband to come home and toss him onto the bed with that deliciously fluid display of strength.
Sebastian defended his honor. Is demanding now that the horrible Dom apologize to Chris.
Chris’s head and heart are spinning with astonishment and lust, and he can’t tell which is winning. Maybe both.
He manages to say Sebastian’s name, half delighted, half stunned.
Sebastian looks up. And then those familiar water-opal eyes get huge. “Chris—I—he was—I didn’t mean—” His captive squirms; Sebastian’s fingers tighten on his arm. “All right, I did mean to, you stay put—but, Chris…”
“I know. It’s okay, Seb, you’re fine, we got this.” He can breathe again, and is free to move; his brain’s trying to run in a dozen different directions, but the primary internal voice simply says: take care of him, your submissive, the man you love. “You’re allowed to defend yourself and my property, and he’s not allowed to fucking touch you. You’re good.”
His last words come out a growl. Possessive, infuriated, needing to pull Sebastian close and never let go. Sebastian could be in a hell of a lot of trouble for physically assaulting a Dom, but won’t be, because he’s legally protected by that defense clause. Also by Chris, who will fight the whole damn bar into agreement if he has to.
He puts a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. Seb’s trembling slightly now, probably the realization sinking in. “Also, that was fucking awesome.”
Sebastian smiles weakly. “Love you.”
“Love you. So damn much.”
“Still here,” says the Dominant trapped by Sebastian’s grip, plaintively.
Chris looks at him. Lets the smile drop. Lets every ounce of anger show. He’s a Dom and someone else put a hand on his sub—his sweet Sebastian, who’s been through so much and is so amazing and deserves none of this—and everyone in the bar’s suddenly very aware of his height and muscles and the hints of tattoo-ink showing at biceps and collar.
“He asked you to apologize,” Chris says. Mildly.
“He’s nothing but a—”
“If you want to leave with both balls, you’re not gonna finish that sentence.”
“Apologize to Chris,” Sebastian requests, and puts a bit more pressure into the grip. Chris gets briefly distracted by this display of muscle.
“Um,” the man says, voice gone small and pained. “ ’ry.”
“For what, precisely?”
“For…ow, fuck…sorry for saying shit about your Dom. Jesus, that hurts—”
“Now apologize to Seb,” Chris says, and they trade grins over the ensuing whimper.
“Okay, fuck, sorry.” The man glares at them both. “I’ll take it back. Whatever. Just don’t break my arm, come on, man, please.”
Chris leans in. “You might want to remember this moment. What happens when you touch someone’s sub without permission. When you insult another human being. And be glad I’m not reporting you for misconduct. This time.” He’d been inclined to, but he’d seen the flicker in Sebastian’s eyes: his husband’s the one who needs their marriage to be socially acceptable, and who has the most to lose from a scandal even when technically in the right. “Seb, anything else? Still want to break his arm? Fine by me.”
Sebastian puts his head on one side. Considers the idea, holding the man down with no apparent effort. Bon Jovi gives way to Journey, in the musical background. “Might get messy. But he’s paying for my drink, at least.”
“I think he’s paying for everyone’s drinks.” Off to the side, a few people applaud. The pretty dark-haired girl in the submissive’s collar, holding her Domme’s hand, is beaming and clapping; Chris thinks he might like her. A couple of people’re taking pictures, video, snapshots of the moment. They’ll be up on social media within seconds. Something else to deal with, but not right now. “Okay, then. Sebastian?”
Sebastian, catching the tone, lets go instantly. Steps closer and leans into Chris’s touch. Chris loops a finger around the diamond on his collar and tugs; there’s a reason it dangles, a small teardrop of a leash. Sebastian murmurs, “Yes, sir?” while gazing at him, public and trusting, strength that’s just been threatening flesh and bone now yielding to command.
Chris kisses him hard and deep and claiming: in front of everyone, a banner raised, an anthem. Sebastian’s his other half, and Sebastian makes soft sweet sounds of surrender, melting into possession. It’s a display and an assertion, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, and when Seb’s legs seem to be wobbly Chris pins him against the bar and kisses him more, teeth grazing over his throat above the collar. Sebastian’s panting and dazed by the time he’s finished, thoroughly cherished and not thinking about any pictures appearing on the internet.
“Come on,” Chris says, and scoops up Sebastian’s notebook and pen and leads his submissive out to the street, where he grabs the first available taxi. City lights twinkle at them. This is their home, and so neon and glitter cheer them on.
The taxi’s one of the luxury models, with floor pads and restraints for submissives, for the more traditionally-minded. Sebastian hasn’t said anything since the bar, but slides down and sits at Chris’s feet, not looking up. His head’s bent, and stray strands of shadow-brown hair attach themselves to Chris’s knee; after a second he leans against the closest leg.
“Seb,” Chris says, as gently as he can, and reaches out: fingers taking Sebastian’s chin, nudging it up. “Hey, you okay?”
“Not really.” Sebastian’s smiling, though, a wry quirk of that expressive mouth. “I was thinking—you know we’ll make the news again—”
“I know. I don’t care.” He rubs his thumb over his submissive’s cheek. “You still want to go out for dinner, or do you want to go home?”
“Home, I think.” Sebastian shrugs without moving, a gesture of eyebrows and valiant good humor. “I’ve just threatened to break a Dominant’s arm in a bar. I believe that’s enough for one night, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Chris muses, “bet we could come up with somethin’ worse if we tried,” and gives the taxi-driver their address. The man employs a level of tact for which Chris will give him an immense tip, and merely nods. “Also, you know how hot that was? I mean, wow. I mean, I never knew you could do that.” Just thinking about it is making his pants get tighter. Such fierce strength, the rippling muscles of Sebastian’s arms—oh, Sebastian’s arms pinning him down, Sebastian’s strength pressed up against him, atop him, inside him—
“I wasn’t sure it would work,” Sebastian admits. He’s looking happier, or at least less uncomfortable. “I’ve picked a few things up from stunt people on set, and I do go to the gym, but it’s not as if I run around practicing…”
“You were like a hero,” Chris says. His submissive’s blushing; Chris pets his hair as he sits on the cab’s floor, and squirms in his own seat. His body really, really wants to have sex with a hero. “Seriously. Comic-book superpowers. Defending the world.”
“My world,” Sebastian says, glancing up through long eyelashes. He’s brilliant. Chris adores him. “You. Us.”
“God, I love you,” Chris says. “Let’s go home. I can show you how much. You can show me those things you’ve picked up. All the things.”
And Sebastian tips his head into the petting, and answers, “Yes, Chris.”