FIC: tell me i belong
title: tell me i belong
rating: r
pairing: chris/dustin (background mark/eduardo)
word count: 7,400
disclaimer: i don’t own them, this is fiction, no harm intended, etc.
summary: for daisysusan. harvard-era fluff, sweetness, pining, and feelings. oh, & some gratuitous porn.
a/n: okay, so. i’ve been quiet lately because i’m working on a long fic which is slowly killing my soul, & daisysusan has been beyond fantastic in cheering me on. i can’t express my adoration for her in actual words, so i finally decided to finish this instead, as a tiny token of my enormous appreciation. maggie, this is fluffy like cupcakes, and it is entirely for you.
{ Friday. 7:45 PM. }
“I cannot believe Dustin is the only one of us with a date on Valentine’s Day,” Eduardo groans, flopping across the couch and cracking open a beer.
“Speak for yourself,” Mark retorts, without looking up from his laptop. “I have a date with the CS lab.”
“And I have a date with a bottle of wine and those cupcakes Mark’s mom sent,” Chris concludes from his desk, where he’s going over the draft of Dustin’s history paper with a red pen and no mercy. “Which is going to be both as pathetic and delicious as it sounds.”
“Count me in, I guess.” Eduardo sighs dramatically, and Chris actually looks around for something to throw at him, because it’s not like Eduardo of the bedroom eyes and Brazilian mystique couldn’t get a date tonight if he wanted one with anyone other than Mark Zuckerberg.
Not that Chris has a lot of room to talk when it comes to fascination with the unattainable, but that is not even slightly the point.
“Why don’t you have a date?” Mark echoes Chris’s thoughts, his gaze never wavering from his screen. “I mean, of all people, Wardo.”
Eduardo’s head appears abruptly over the back of the couch. “What does that mean? ‘Of all people’?”
“It means you’re the sort of person who has a date on Valentine’s Day.”
Chris raises his eyes to the ceiling. The combination of pining and oblivion makes him want to pelt both of them with empty beer cans.
“I-” Eduardo begins, but he’s interrupted by Dustin bounding out of the bathroom, where he’s been fussing in front of the mirror for the past twenty minutes.
“How do I look?” he asks breathlessly, stopping in the middle of the room and actually twirling on his heel.
“Great,” Chris tells him honestly, because Dustin always looks great. Really great, actually. He isn’t exactly classically handsome, but he is adorable, and he pulls it off with earnest aplomb. Truthfully, Chris doesn’t think it’s possible for Dustin to look anything less than really great-and also sort of sexy, although he keeps that thought firmly to himself.
“You look terrific,” Eduardo agrees, peering over the back of the couch. “Very dashing.”
Mark glances upward briefly. “You look exactly the same as you did half an hour ago, Dustin.”
“Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Wardo. Mark, your opinion is irrelevant as usual,” Dustin informs him cheerfully.
“When are you leaving?” Chris asks quickly, because Mark looks like he might be about to retort and there’s no point in letting him ruin Dustin’s good mood.
“Five minutes. If I’m lucky, I won’t see you all until tomorrow.”
“If we’re lucky, you mean,” Mark mutters, closing his laptop. “I’m going to the lab.”
“I’ll walk out with you.” Eduardo pops up so eagerly that Chris is actually embarrassed for him. “I just remembered I have some reading to do.”
The moment they’re out the door, Dustin turns to Chris with a wide grin. “What do you want to bet Wardo ends up ‘reading’ in the CS lab?”
“I’m not interested in losing money.” Chris smiles back at him, ignoring the way his own pulse hurries ever so slightly. His attraction to Dustin has become almost secondary at this point, a perpetual hum which he’s gotten very good at ignoring. Mostly.
“Your tie is crooked,” he tells Dustin, looking more closely.
“That’s because I didn’t know how to tie it,” Dustin admits promptly.
“You Googled it, didn’t you?” Chris eyes him. “That’s what took you so long in the bathroom.”
“I am not ashamed, Christopher. A little help, please?”
Chris shakes his head and steps closer, reaching for the tie. It’s blue, which isn’t what Chris would have chosen-not that he’s thought about it extensively or anything, but green is definitely Dustin’s color. Chris expertly re-works the knot, congratulating himself that his fingers are barely trembling at all.
“How are you good at everything?” Dustin inquires, his tone a mix of genuine curiosity and affection which shouldn’t make Chris’s stomach jump, but does anyway.
“I’m not,” he says quietly, pulling the knot tight and stepping back. “There you go.”
“Thanks.” Dustin wraps him in a quick hug and Chris freezes, nerves lighting up everywhere Dustin is touching him. It takes him a split second to collect himself before his arms automatically go up in return.
“Wish me luck,” Dustin is saying in his ear.
“Good luck.” Chris steadfastly ignores the tightness in his chest.
“Thanks.” Dustin lets him go and steps back. “I’m going to get out of here. Don’t miss me too much, okay?”
“I never do,” Chris assures him, which might be the biggest lie he’s told in recent memory.
*
{ Saturday. 12:08 AM. }
Chris’s eyes flicker open when the door thumps shut. It’s dark, and he blinks a few times, groggy and disoriented, not entirely awake and not at all certain he wants to be. He catches the silhouette of the wine bottle out of the corner of his eye, and his brain gradually puts together the fact that he must have passed out on the couch.
He’s also dimly conscious that someone’s in the room with him, and since Mark never comes back from the lab until morning and Eduardo doesn’t technically live here despite all evidence to the contrary, that leaves-
“Dustin?” Chris mumbles.
“Yeah, it’s me.” Dustin kneels next to the couch, leaning over him, and he looks-concerned? Chris can’t process that, not even slightly.
“What time is it?” he asks, beginning to register that his head is thrumming with a dull ache that’s going to get substantially worse before it gets better. God, he wants nothing more than to go back to sleep.
“Midnight, I think. How much did you-” Dustin glances in the direction of the empty wine bottle, and raises his eyebrows. “Oh. Okay.”
Chris is vaguely aware that now is the time for questions like how was it and did you have a good time and why didn’t you stay over, but he’s so fucking tired, and quite frankly none of those points seem particularly important at the moment, except possibly the last one.
“You came back,” he says instead, a little thickly.
“Yeah,” Dustin says softly, “I did.”
“Good.” Chris blinks slowly, eyelids getting heavy again, drunken exhaustion threatening to pull him under. He hears Dustin’s soft laugh, surprised and-pleased, maybe? Chris can’t parse that, or anything.
“Do you want to sleep out here?” Dustin is asking gently. His voice sounds faint, like it’s coming from further away than just a few inches, and Chris knows he’s drifting off. He manages the slightest nod before his eyes flutter closed, his shoulders sinking in acquiescence to sleep.
When Dustin’s thumb traces a slow line down his cheek, Chris knows he’s dreaming or drunk or both.
*
{ Saturday. 7:49 AM. }
Chris wakes up obscenely early, drags himself to the bathroom, and spends the better part of an hour becoming intimately acquainted with the inside of the toilet bowl. By the time the dry heaving subsides, he’s sweaty and exhausted and it feels like the percussion section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra has taken up residence in his skull. He eventually passes out again on the bathroom floor, curled in a miserable ball, the tile cool and comforting against his cheek.
When he comes to, someone is knocking lightly at the bathroom door. The sound reverberates through Chris’s head and he can’t hold back a groan.
“Chris?” It’s Dustin, sounding worried. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Chris croaks, still prone and fetal. “Go away.”
“Jesus, you sound like shit. I’m coming in there, I hope you’re decent.”
The door opens before Chris has a chance to reply. He groans again and buries his face in his hands, curling his knees to his chest. “Dustin. I said go. Away.”
“I heard you.” Dustin settles beside Chris with a soft thump. “What do you need? Pepto? Ginger ale?”
Chris’s stomach lurches at the thought. “God, no.”
“Do you want to try to sit up, at least? Maybe go back to the couch?’
“No,” Chris repeats through his hands. He can’t envision getting anywhere unless he’s going to be crawling there, and staying near the toilet seems like a safer bet anyway.
“Okay,” Dustin says easily, as if Chris weren’t being difficult in the least. “What do you want to do?”
“Right now?” Chris drops his hands long enough to glare up at Dustin. “I want to lie on the bathroom floor and contemplate death.”
Dustin is unfazed. “You sure? I can’t remember the last time we cleaned in here.”
“Dustin.”
“All right, all right.” Dustin ruffles his hair lightly and Chris winces, thinking wryly that he’s finally discovered the one and only circumstance under which he doesn’t enjoy being touched by Dustin. “I’ll leave you alone. Try not to die, though, okay?”
“I’m not promising anything,” Chris mutters, screwing his eyes shut again.
It’s another hour before he can stand up without feeling overwhelmingly sick, and even then he’s a little unsteady on his feet and only manages to make it as far as the couch. Dustin is settled at one end with his laptop, and Chris curls up on the opposite end and pulls an afghan over his head, hoping to block out the dizziness. It doesn’t work.
“Hey.” Dustin’s tone is tinged with concern, which is admittedly kind of sweet, but also confusing, because it’s not like Chris has never had a hangover before. “Are you feeling any better?”
Chris sighs and lets the blanket drop. “I’m no longer considering suicide as a viable option.”
Dustin laughs at that, though he keeps his voice low. “Good, that’s good.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Chris warns him. “My head is slowly killing me, so the final outcome may be the same.”
“That’s an easy fix,” Dustin points out. “Go take some Tylenol.”
“I don’t ever want to see the bathroom again, Dustin, and I’m pretty sure it’s mutual.”
“Fine, I’m on it.” Dustin pops up and vanishes into the bathroom, reappearing a moment later with two tablets in one hand and a glass of water in the other. “Take these, and drink all of this. Do you think you could eat?”
“Do we have anything? Other than cupcakes,” Chris adds with a grimace, “which have totally lost their appeal now that I’ve seen what they look like partially digested.”
“That’s disgusting,” Dustin informs him cheerfully. “I’ll go look.”
Chris is wary about his stomach’s ability to work any way except reverse, but the pills stay down, much to his relief. After a few minutes, the pounding in his head starts to recede slightly, and he takes a few long, slow sips of water, draining the glass quickly. Dustin, meanwhile, is banging around their room, presumably hunting for something edible that isn’t expired or Red Vines. When he emerges, it’s to present Chris with a box of Cheez-Its and a bottle of purple Gatorade.
“Really?” Chris eyes him incredulously. “Cheez-Its?”
“Carbs absorb alcohol. Gatorade has electrolytes, or something, and-you know what, Christopher, you are miserable and disgusting and I am trying to help you, so stop looking at me like that.”
Dustin folds his arms and glares down at Chris, who has to smile in spite of himself. He still has no idea where Dustin’s impetus to take care of him is coming from, but like everything else about Dustin, it’s sort of adorable.
“Thanks,” he says sincerely, meeting Dustin’s eyes. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.” Dustin’s still doing a passable job of glaring at him, but Chris catches the slight twitch the corner of his mouth. He raises an eyebrow, and Dustin gives in, his face breaking into a smile. “You’re an ass,” he informs Chris affectionately.
“I realize that. I also realize that I’m miserable and disgusting, but want to keep me company for a while anyway?”
“Always.” Dustin flops down beside him without hesitation. “You know I love you even when you’re miserable and disgusting. And bitchy,” he adds mischievously, elbowing Chris lightly in the ribs, except the teasing sort of goes right over Chris’s head because Dustin just said I love you.
And, okay, this is actually a pretty regular occurrence because it’s Dustin, but that fact doesn’t stop Chris from feeling as if his stomach has abruptly relocated to his throat every single time it happens, lately.
They spend the morning watching cartoons and passing the Cheez-Its back and forth, sharing the occasional fragment of conversation. Chris really wants to ask why Dustin got home so early last night, but Dustin hasn’t brought it up (which is weird, because Dustin has basically no filter and usually he tells Chris everything), so Chris thinks maybe he shouldn’t, either.
Really, it’s just as well they don’t talk about last night. If they do, there’s a definite chance that Dustin will ask what drove Chris to cheap wine and Friends re-runs, and Chris isn’t sure he wants to think about the answer.
*
{ Saturday. 1:30 PM. }
By early afternoon, Chris is ravenous but not particularly interested in getting up from the couch, which has everything to do with his hangover and is not related to Dustin in any way. It definitely has nothing to do with the fact that Dustin has migrated almost entirely into Chris’s corner of the couch over the past few hours, and is currently leaning against him ever so slightly.
They end up staying in and ordering a pizza, which they’re just finishing when they find a Star Wars marathon on SciFi, and Dustin tosses Chris a sideways grin. “I hope you didn’t have plans for the rest of the day.”
“I didn’t,” says Chris, as if it would have mattered if he had.
“Good.” Dustin sort of flops over then, kicking his feet up onto the couch, and lands with his head squarely in Chris’s lap, which is new. Chris abruptly does not know what to do with his hands.
It turns out that having a lapful of Dustin is not at all conducive to Chris paying the slightest bit of attention to the movie. He completely misses the Millennium Falcon’s escape from the Death Star because he’s busy studying the space where Dustin’s neck curves into his shoulder, and it doesn’t get much better after that. Dustin is, like, right there, and Chris is pretty sure he’s not going to be able to sit through two more movies without touching him.
Finally, as the end credits begin to roll, Chris drags his fingers lightly through Dustin’s hair, hoping it seems off-handed and easy and not like he’s just spent the past thirty minutes debating it with himself. He’s still sort of half expecting Dustin to pull away, but Dustin makes a noise in his throat that sounds like nothing so much as a purr, and he actually presses upward into Chris’s touch ever so slightly.
Mark, of course, chooses precisely that moment to come banging through the door, looking paler and more annoyed than usual. He’s got huge dark circles under his eyes, which widen in bafflement when he takes in the scene on the couch.
“Hi,” is honest to god the best Chris can manage.
“Hey, Mark,” Dustin says, not even making an effort to remove his head from Chris’s lap. “Chris has a hangover. I’m helping.”
Mark looks back and forth between them for a moment, then shrugs like he’s decided it’s not worth trying to decipher. “Okay. I’m going to study. I think Wardo’s coming over in a while.”
“Again?” Chris inquires pointedly, figuring he can at least do Eduardo the favor of jump-starting Mark’s thoughts in the right direction. “Don’t you two ever get sick of each other?”
“No.” The look Mark gives him is cool and unflinching. “Do you ever get sick of Dustin?”
Chris is opening his mouth to reply over Dustin’s indignant squawk (though it’s worth noting that Dustin still doesn’t bother to actually move), when the full weight of what Mark just said hits him, and he stops short, color staining his cheeks.
Mark is maybe not as oblivious as he thought.
“I’ll be in my room,” Mark concludes, and disappears, closing the door behind him.
Dustin cranes his neck around to look up at Chris, his expression quizzical. “What was that about?”
“I have no idea,” Chris lies.
Dustin eyes him skeptically. “I know the sound of subtext flying over my head when I hear it, Christopher, and I-”
Chris is spared the end of that sentence by Eduardo coming in the door, and he has never in his life been more grateful for the fact that Eduardo genuinely appears to enjoy following Mark around all the time. “Hey, Chris. Dustin.”
“Wardo,” Dustin says, popping up from Chris’s lap just long enough to get a look at Eduardo, “it is 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon. Seriously, is the suit thing some kind of fetish, or what?”
“Ignoring you for your own good, Dustin. Is Mark around?”
“He’s in his room,” Chris says, preemptively swatting at Dustin, who looks like he might be about to say something seriously inappropriate. “He just got back a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah?” Eduardo glances in the direction of Mark’s closed door. “He must have pulled an all-nighter, then. How is he?”
“More perceptive than he seems,” Chris mutters, and Dustin glances up at that, his expression searching again. Eduardo just looks confused.
“Uh, okay,” he says slowly, looking from Chris to Dustin and back again, and giving Chris a pointed look which Chris equally pointedly ignores. “I’m going to go see if I can drag him off the computer for a while.”
“I bet you are,” Dustin murmurs under his breath as Eduardo turns away, and Chris barely manages to bite back a laugh.
“What is it with them, do you think?” Dustin inquires once Mark’s door is soundly closed again.
“Well, it’s obvious what’s in it for Mark,” Chris begins, but Dustin cuts him off with a triumphant cackle.
“I knew it. You think Wardo’s totally hot.”
Chris blinks, startled. Objectively speaking, he supposes this is true. In actuality, his aesthetic appreciation for Eduardo has never really progressed beyond the academic, a sort of vague awareness that Eduardo is a lot of appealing things in all the right places. “I guess, if you’re into that whole thing, but I meant-”
“Whoa, wait.” Dustin holds up his hands, laughing. “Explain yourself. What ‘whole thing’?”
“You know.” Chris gestures vaguely. “The hair thing, the eye thing, the cursing in Portuguese thing.”
Dustin snorts with laughter. “Are you telling me that ‘smoldering Brazilian’ is not your type?”
“Not even slightly,” Chris says, with feeling.
“So what is? Your type, I mean?”
Adorable, oblivious geek, Chris thinks, letting his gaze linger on Dustin’s lips for half a second before mentally smacking himself upside the head.
“I don’t know, I don’t think I have one,” he says evasively, ignoring Dustin’s skeptical look. “Anyway, when I said it’s obvious, I was more referring to the fact that for some inexplicable reason, Wardo doesn’t seem to care that Mark is basically a pod person.”
“We don’t care that Mark is a pod person,” Dustin points out.
“Because he’s our pod person. But Wardo-”
“Wardo’s different,” Dustin agrees, nestling more comfortably against Chris, who is seriously considering sitting on his own hands because right now he wants nothing more than to bury his fingers in Dustin’s hair again, pick up where they left off when-
“Is this okay?” Dustin asks, smiling playfully up at Chris, who is abruptly grateful he’s already sitting down, because otherwise he’d have to explain why he’s suddenly gone weak in the knees. “I’m not, like, turning you on or anything, right?”
Chris freezes, because, no-well, maybe, but this line of teasing is not something they do, not since their first day at Harvard.
“Hi,” the red-headed guy says, setting down his suitcase and sticking out his hand. “I’m Dustin.”
“Chris.”
“I think honesty is the best policy,” Dustin informs him as they shake hands, “so I’m just going to be up front with you right now.”
“You’re a serial killer?” Chris inquires, deadpan, and Dustin laughs, open and easy, not missing a beat.
“I am not. However, I’m loud, I stay up late, I plan to spend the next year skipping a lot of classes while simultaneously bitching about how hard school is, and I’m a really obnoxious drunk.”
“I’m gay,” Chris says, too surprised to be anything other than honest in return.
“Okay,” Dustin agrees, unfazed. “Sometimes I don’t wear pants. Is that going to be a problem?”
Chris just stares at him for a minute, then laughs a little incredulously and shakes his head. “Definitely not.”
“So that’s settled." Dustin grins at him. “Come on, let’s go find someone to buy us beer.”
Chris just manages to stifle a groan at the memory-because while the pants thing has turned out to be undeniably true, it’s not a mental image he particularly needs right this second.
“Dustin,” he says, trying to sound severe, only it comes out too softly and just this side of helpless.
“I knew it,” Dustin says mischievously, and he actually turns his head and sort of nuzzles Chris’s thigh. “All this snuggling is getting you hot and bothered.”
Chris can’t cope with any of this, not even a little bit.
“You wish,” he manages to tease back, weakly.
“Sometimes,” Dustin agrees, and that’s it, Chris officially has no idea what the fuck is going on.
“Dustin, what-”
“Shh,” Dustin interrupts, turning abruptly back to the TV. “We’re missing the movie.”
Chris wishes feelings were things that happened to other people.
*
{ Sunday. 12:13 AM. }
They don’t actually manage to leave the couch for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening.
Chris figures they’ll have to get up at some point, but Eduardo emerges from Mark’s room in the middle of Return of the Jedi, leaves for a while and comes back with Chinese food for everyone, so that negates the need to leave the room for dinner. Eduardo manages to lure Mark into the common room with the promise of chicken fried rice and beer, which sort of inevitably leads to a four-way Mario Kart battle royale after dinner.
Chris, for once, finds it incredibly difficult to concentrate on stars and turtle shells and ruining Eduardo’s life. For one thing, he can’t seem to stop replaying bits and pieces of his earlier conversation with Dustin, trying to parse them-and for another, not touching Dustin turns out to be nearly as distracting as touching him.
It’s after midnight when they finally turn the game off, Mark and Chris having grudgingly agreed to call it a draw.
They’re all tired and full, empty white cartons scattered around them, and no one really seems in a hurry to go anywhere. Chris has been observing Mark and Eduardo out of the corner of his eye all night, watching them shift nearer together, then further apart, but invariably winding up nearer again, like magnets. They seem to have settled, finally: Eduardo in the chair, and Mark on the floor with his back to the chair and his head resting lightly on Eduardo’s knee.
Eduardo’s hand drops to rest on Mark’s shoulder, and Chris actually catches his breath because Mark has never particularly liked being touched that anybody has heard about, but much to his amazement Mark just gives under the contact, visibly relaxing. Chris watches Eduardo close his fingers, squeeze gently.
“You want to-” he begins, and Mark nods abruptly and gets to his feet.
“I’m going to walk Wardo to his dorm,” he informs Chris and Dustin. “I’ll probably go to the lab after.”
Right, Chris thinks, but he just nods and Dustin does the same and adds, “See you later.”
Once Mark and Eduardo are gone, Dustin picks up the remote and flicks the TV back on, then glances sideways at Chris. “So,” he says, and his tone is maybe half a pitch lower and just the slightest bit softer than usual. The difference is so slight Chris is half certain he’s imagining it, and either way it definitely should not be enough to make him feel so suddenly on edge.
“C’mere,” he says, and Dustin sort of tumbles into his lap, much like earlier-only this time it feels less hesitant, more intentional. Dustin settles against him, head resting on Chris’s thigh, and since Dustin doesn’t appear to be bothering with pretense, Chris figures he doesn’t have to, either. He lets one hand drop to Dustin’s hip, and the other quickly finds its way into Dustin’s hair again, stroking and occasionally tangling gently.
They sit through half an episode of Law & Order because that’s what’s on at midnight on Saturday, not that Chris is actually paying even a fraction of attention. He’s too busy turning over the day in his head, replaying everything they’ve said to each other, trying to pinpoint the moment at which things shifted. Things < I>have shifted; that much is obvious, although Chris feels like he’s flying blind because neither of them has actually said or done anything definite enough to-
“Chris?” Dustin interrupts that train of thought, turning on his back to look Chris in the eye.
“Yeah?”
“Can I kiss you?” Dustin asks, and the words are measured, considered, like maybe it’s not entirely an impulse.
Chris just blinks at him, too surprised to speak. If the world has been weirdly tilted on its axis all day, this is the point at which it goes into freefall.
It would be a complete and abject lie to say he hasn’t thought about it. He thinks about it pretty often, actually if he’s being honest with himself-which he generally isn’t, because he’s always known full well that it’s never going to happen, and there’s absolutely no point in pining after something he’s never going to have.
The point is that Chris has definitely thought about it. He’s even allowed himself the occasional fantasy, although that tends to make it hard to look Dustin in the eye, because in his fantasies they get a hell of a lot further than kissing.
This is different, though. This is actual discussion of actual kissing-at least, Chris is pretty sure Dustin did just say can I kiss you, either that or Chris is hallucinating from lack of sleep, and either way he can’t do anything but sit there and stare.
Dustin apparently takes his silence for acquiescence, because he sort of shrugs like, okay, and sits up so that they’re face to face. He kisses Chris once, barely brushing their lips together, and then again, with a little more conviction.
When Chris doesn’t kiss back, mostly because he’s too stunned to react at all, Dustin murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like come on against his lips, wraps one hand around the back of Chris’s neck, and pulls him in. This kiss is different, deep and hard, less question and more decision, and it jolts Chris right out of his head. It’s electric-and totally inexplicable, but Chris decides that just this once, his need for explanations can go fuck itself.
He angles his body toward Dustin’s and Dustin mirrors his movements, twisting so that their chests press lightly together while Chris’s arms slip easily around Dustin, who buries his fingers in Chris’s hair. Chris feels lightheaded and sort of outside himself, like it’s someone else’s tongue working its way between Dustin’s lips, someone else’s hands sliding eagerly up under Dustin’s shirt-and definitely someone else making those soft, needy, wanting noises in his throat, although Dustin is making them right back at him.
Dustin pulls away to trail hungry, messy kisses down Chris’s throat and into his shoulder, and it’s still sort of unbelievable but also so much better than anything Chris’s admittedly vivid imagination could possibly have dreamed up. He squeezes his eyes shut for a couple of seconds, lets his head fall back and moans out loud when Dustin sucks gently at the base of his throat, teeth scraping sensitive skin. Then he tugs Dustin back up to press their mouths together again (Chris is pretty certain there can’t ever be enough of that), catching Dustin’s lower lip between his teeth in a way that makes Dustin exhale hard and fast, fingers digging hard into Chris’s hip.
A couple of seconds later, though, those same fingers skim inside of Chris’s thigh, and Chris’s eyes fly open. On the one hand, he really wants to know where Dustin’s going with that, but on the other-well, there is kissing, and that’s great, but before there is anything other than kissing there should probably be talking. Which is frankly the last thing Chris feels like doing when he’s this hard in his jeans, but this is Dustin.
He can’t quite hold back the little groan that escapes his throat right before he grabs Dustin by the wrist. It’s not like he doesn’t want this, okay, because he does-god, he really, really does, possibly more than he has wanted anything ever, but he needs to be sure that they can do this and wake up tomorrow morning and still be okay. He doesn’t need to know where it’s going, not right this second, but he does need to know that if they do this, Dustin will still drag himself bleary-eyed to breakfast with Chris every morning, they’ll still have eight-hour Halo marathons while drinking beer, eating pizza and mocking each other mercilessly, they’ll still do everything together.
He needs all the good things (and there are a lot of them) about ChrisandDustin to still be true, next week and next month and for the next three years and really just indefinitely, because that’s about how long Chris plans on keeping Dustin in his life.
Dustin, who is currently looking up at him, confused and a little unsure. “Chris?”
“I just,” Chris begins, wishing desperately that he had more blood flowing in the direction of his brain right now. “I don’t want this to be a mistake, and I-”
“Chris,” Dustin interrupts. “It’s not, okay? You could never be a mistake for me, I just never thought you’d want-I mean, I’m probably a mistake, you know, for you, but I’m kind of okay with that right this second so-”
It takes Chris a couple of seconds to figure that one out, but the second he does cuts Dustin off with a kiss, so sudden and hard that when he pulls back, Dustin looks dazed.
“What was that for?”
“Are you kidding me?” Chris stares at him because, just, really. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this?”
Dustin crinkles his nose, looking unconvinced. “With me?”
Yes, Chris thinks, god, yes, but he doesn’t say it, mostly because he’s not sure he’s capable of making words right now. Instead he leans in and kisses Dustin again, softer this time, slow and deep, trying to convey months of all the things he’s never really allowed himself to hope-of trying not to want what he never, ever thought he’d have.
“Okay?” he asks, when he pulls back.
“Okay,” Dustin agrees, a little breathlessly. “I’ve-me too. With you. Just so you know.”
“Since when?” Chris twines their fingers together and studies him, curious.
“I’m not really sure. A while, I just didn’t-and then last night, when I had that date?” Chris nods, and Dustin flushes and averts his eyes, biting his lip in a way that’s so stupidly adorable Chris has to -has to-kiss him again.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Dustin says, when Chris pulls back. “I realized I didn’t want to be doing that with anyone but you.”
For all that he’s great with putting words together, Chris is pretty sure he couldn’t form a sentence in response to that if he wanted to. He just leans in, pressing his forehead gently to Dustin’s, feels Dustin relax against him and exhale, warm and soft, and thinks, finally.
It feels a little like that when they kiss again, too.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way.” Dustin nips at Chris’s lower lip, making him laugh. “Why do you still have so many clothes on?”
Chris manages a playful grin, though the words make his heart hammer in his chest. “I could ask you the same question.”
Dustin shrugs, but there’s a mischievous glint in his eye. “Because you haven’t tried to take them off yet?”
Chris sort of can’t help kissing him for that one, but eventually, in between kisses, he does manage to work Dustin’s shirt up and over his head. He tugs his own off, too, and it vaguely registers that Mark might come back and this could potentially end badly, but then there’s skin on skin and Chris forgets about pretty much everything except the warmth of Dustin’s chest, bare against his own.
It’s good-it’s fantastic, actually, but it’s still not enough and Chris breaks their kiss to rearrange himself. Dustin’s noise of protest disintegrates into something that sounds suspiciously like a whimper when Chris straddles him, bracketing Dustin’s body with his knees, and sinks down at just the right angle. They’ve both still got jeans on, but it’s friction, and Dustin makes a sound like he’s dying when Chris grinds against him.
“Chris,” Dustin breathes, when Chris abandons his mouth to suck bright color to the surface of his throat, circling his hips relentlessly because making Dustin say his name in that tone of voice again just became basically the highest priority in his life. “Oh, fuck-yeah, just like that, Chris.”
Someone bangs on the door of the suite right then, which is admittedly not an uncommon occurrence at 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday, but Chris jerks back, startled into awareness. There’s laughter, too-loud voices, the thump of footsteps and an occasional crash coming from the hall, the telltale sounds of a party picking up a few doors down.
“Chris,” Dustin says, pressing a kiss to his chest, making him shiver, “should we-maybe-”
“Not have sex in the middle of the common room?” Chris finishes, and Dustin laughs, if a little shakily. “Probably not. Come on.”
His bed, Chris decides a few minutes later, is much better than the couch. Still too small, but at least there’s room for the two of them to lie side by side, pressed tightly against each other, Chris’s arms wound around Dustin, who’s clinging to him like he’s not totally convinced Chris is real. Or like he’s maybe just a little bit nervous, and that thought makes Chris pull Dustin a little closer, kiss him slow and soft.
“Dustin,” he says, and Dustin’s eyes flick open and find Chris’s in the dark.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted-we don’t have to, okay? Anything you don’t, I mean, if you’re not-” It figures, Chris thinks, that he is so good at saying the right thing every other time, and now that it actually matters, when he wants to say things like we can go slow and it’s okay and I want you to be sure, he appears to have lost his verbal skills entirely.
If the expression on Dustin’s face is any indication, though, he seems to get what Chris is miserably failing to articulate. “I know,” he says into the tiny space between them, and then, “Chris, I want this,” so earnest and sincere that Chris is pretty sure his heart is going to climb out through his throat.
He reaches for the button of Dustin’s jeans and still hesitates just for a second, looking up, needing to be sure it’s okay. Dustin’s eyes are wide and dark, he looks like he’s beginning to come unraveled in a way that makes Chris want to take him apart, and he nods ever so slightly. Chris undoes the button, works the zipper down with surprisingly little fumbling considering his fingers are actually shaking.
He wouldn’t ordinarily get this worked up about going down on someone, but it’s different, Chris thinks as he eases down Dustin’s body, tugging Dustin’s jeans and boxers down as he goes. This is different, and everything seems to matter so much more. It’s why he takes his time, kissing his way down Dustin’s chest and noting every noise, every shudder, committing every reaction and sound to memory for next time, and all the times after.
He nips the inside of Dustin’s thigh, making Dustin gasp and press his hips upward and say “Chris” in that voice again. Chris thinks he could tease him, could make him wait, could probably make him beg if it came down to it, but he’s feeling sort of overwhelmed with the desire to give Dustin everything he wants, ever, and so he doesn’t do any of those things. Instead he experiments, alternating long, slow strokes with little flicks of tongue, making Dustin shiver and groan and say his name again and again. Chris half wants to pull off and watch him, half thinks it might be too much because, god, he is unbelievably fucking turned on just by what he’s hearing and he’s not sure he can handle the look on Dustin's face right now.
It gets even better when he finally takes Dustin all the way into his mouth, flickering with his tongue as he does it. “Oh shit, shit,” Dustin says, a little strangled, jerking up so hard that Chris has to press his fingers into Dustin’s hips, holding him in place while Chris takes his time, drawing it out, making it a good as he knows how. Which is pretty damn good, if the noises Dustin’s making are anything to go by: broken moans now, mostly, raw and punctuated by the occasional gasp or curse.
“Chris,” Dustin chokes out finally, urgent, “Chris, I’m gonna come,” and Chris takes him as deep as he can, hears Dustin say oh god and then something incoherent, feels Dustin go tense and still and then loose, so loose all over, hips stuttering in tiny, sporadic jerks as Chris swallows him down.
Chris pulls off when he feels Dustin shudder, sensitive now. He crawls back up the bed and props himself on his elbow next to Dustin, who’s still got his eyes closed, skin is flushed and damp. He’s breathing hard, trembling slightly. Chris traces a slow line down his cheek with the tip of one finger, soothing, and Dustin opens his eyes.
“Holy shit,” he manages, weakly, turning his face up to kiss Chris on the mouth. Chris presses his lips together because he’s not sure it’s really okay given what he’s just been doing, but Dustin makes an impatient noise and works his tongue back into Chris’s mouth, and it’s messy and wet and perfect. Chris is no longer distracted and still so, so hard, and he really can’t stop himself from grinding against Dustin’s hip, can’t hold back a soft moan when Dustin pulls away from his mouth to suck hard at his throat.
“How do you still have pants on,” Dustin says in Chris’s ear, reaching for his belt, and Chris doesn’t make him say it again, wriggling out of his jeans and boxers all at once and kicking them to the end of the bed. Dustin walks his fingers down Chris’s chest and closes a fist around him, tentative at first but still so good and Chris just wants, more, now, everything.
“That’s good,” he manages, “that’s-oh god, so good, don’t stop,” because right then Dustin finds a rhythm, figures out the motion, and all of a sudden it’s like climbing too high, too fast and Chris can’t catch his breath. It’s all heat pooling and an ache in his thighs and he needs it, can feel it, can feel himself tensing all over, fingers digging into Dustin’s skin anywhere he can reach, holding on so tight.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Dustin’s saying in his ear, his voice growing husky as he jerks Chris hard and fast. “Come on,” he breathes, and that really is it, Chris comes hard, spilling hot and fast between them, hips shaking wildly as Dustin strokes him through it.
Things sort of fade in and out for a couple of seconds after Chris collapses to the bed, the tension beginning to drain from his body. Dustin inches down a little and settles against his chest, and Chris drags his fingertips lightly up and down Dustin’s back, circling, waiting for his own pulse to slow. Dustin’s breath is warm on his skin, and Chris thinks he should probably say something, but right then Dustin turns his head to drop a featherweight kiss on Chris’s shoulder and just like that, the words get stuck in his throat.
Dustin looks up, smiling when he sees Chris watching him. “Hey,” he says, and as much as Chris has wanted this, having it is so much better than he imagined.
“Hey,” he says back, soft. “You okay?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Dustin teases, then cuts Chris off when he opens his mouth to explain himself. “I know what you meant. And yeah. I’m good.”
“Okay.” Chris blinks delicately, eyelids suddenly beginning to feel heavy.
“Falling asleep on me,” Dustin says through a yawn, and Chris grins at him. “Look who’s talking.”
“Yeah,” Dustin agrees, starting to sit up. “I should-”
“Stay,” Chris says, reaching up to pull him back down. “Sleep here.”
“Okay.” Dustin starts to settle back down, then hesitates. “Do you want to, I don’t know, shower? Or something?”
It’s a fair point, Chris supposes. They’re sweaty and sticky and kind of a mess-okay, a lot of a mess, but what Chris wants, actually, is not to get out of bed. Not to break the spell. Not to let this end any time in the near future, possibly not ever.
“Shh,” he says firmly, nuzzling into Dustin’s hair and breathing in sweat and warmth and the faintest hint of shampoo but mostly Dustin and, yeah, there is no way Chris is letting go of him for the rest of the night. “We’re going to sleep. We can shower when we get up, and then I’m taking you out for dinner.”
Dustin pulls back a little, looking amused. “Yeah? Are we going on a date?”
“Shut up,” Chris suggests, tugging him in again. “Also, yeah. We are.”
“Okay.” Dustin nestles into the crook of Chris’s arm and tips his chin up to kiss him, lazy and slow. “Does that mean we get to have sex at the end of it?”
“We just had sex,” Chris points out, smiling against his lips.
“Not technically.” Dustin raises a suggestive eyebrow. “Not yet, anyway,” and Chris is pretty sure his heart actually stops for a second or two.
“There’s no rush,” he says, because that’s what you’re supposed to say, although the thought causes a little pool of heat to coil low in his stomach, and his brain to unhelpfully conjure some seriously explicit mental imagery.
“Maybe not for you.” Dustin flashes Chris a mischievous grin. “I, on the other hand, plan to take full advantage of the circumstances before you snap out of it and realize could do way, way better.”
“Hey.” Chris squeezes Dustin’s hip sharply to emphasize his disagreement. “No, I couldn’t. You’re-just, no.”
You’re perfect, is what he’s thinking, but Chris is pretty sure that’s one of those things you’re supposed to wait until after the first date to say. Along with I love you, although Dustin’s already said that to him so many times, he’s said it back more than a few, and Chris isn’t really sure what the rules are when it’s already true, when just maybe it’s been true for quite a while.
“I just-I want you,” he says instead, which probably isn’t much better, but it makes Dustin’s face light up in a way that is so, so worth it. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Dustin agrees.
His smile is softer but his eyes are warm and bright, and Chris looks into them for half a second and then he really has to kiss Dustin again to distract himself, because there are things you shouldn’t even think until after the first date.
Big things. Future things.
Things like forever.