Chapter Text
It’s the gentle caress of soft morning light peeking through the curtains that rouses Mason from sleep.
When he turns his head to meet the still sleeping profile of his lover, the soft yellow catches against Brady’s week-old scruff, setting his sleep-mussed hair alight in the rays. He’s always been beautiful (to Mason, at least), but there’s something to be said about the way the lines of his face soften in sleep, the tranquility of his resting expression.
Honestly, even his dad snoring is endearing to Mason now.
Sitting up in bed just enough to glance at the clock on their bedside table - 9:30 a.m. - Mason sighs and flops back down against the mattress, begrudgingly making his peace with being awake before he wanted to be. Could be worse, he muses silently. Could be 7 o'clock instead.
Then he’s feeling a pair of strong arms wrapping around his middle and pulling him back into the soft line of a sleep-warm chest and he smiles, giggling quietly at the tickle of slightly rough lips and a bristly beard against the sensitive skin of his neck.
“Mmm, good morning t'you too, Sleeping Beauty,” Mason hums good-naturedly, melting back into the comfortable warmth of his lover’s drowsy embrace.
This was something he’d learned about quickly in the early days of their relationship, even before it had been established as fully romantic - Brady is a very insistent cuddler, preferring to hold him close in any manner, but especially in spooning.
It makes Mason’s head spin sometimes, the genuine happiness Brady obtains purely by holding him (and, if he’s being honest, there’s no worldly comfort that compares to being held by the one you love; he’s never felt safer than he does in Brady’s arms).
Mason can feel the imprint of Brady’s amused smile pressed into the side of his throat at the familiar nickname of ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ something he’s always called the author, regardless of whether or not they’d woken up in bed together. “You’re the only beauty here,” Brady murmurs, lips brushing over Mason’s pulse point. “And what a beauty you are.”
“Alright, babe,” Mason mutters, but he’s grinning so wide that his eyes are nearly forced shut. “’s too early for flattery.”
“Never too early,” his fiancé replies, kissing at his neck some more just because he can. “Besides, can you blame me? You’re gorgeous and I jus’ think you should know.”
Mason sighs and brings up a hand to curl loosely around one of Brady’s forearms, thumb swiping through the hair there. “Hush, you,” is all he can muster in response, heart flooding with glowing warmth all the same. “Is it your life’s work to make me blush or something?”
“Well, yeah,” Brady laughs sweetly, mouthing at the hinge of Mason’s jaw just to make him squirm a little. “But being serious here, it’s nice that your voice was the first thing I heard today, baby.” He pulls back enough to nuzzle into the nape of Mason’s neck with a deeply contented sigh. “I love you. I love waking up with you.”
“…I love you too. More than any words I could use to explain.”
Brady smiles, and Mason’s heart skips a beat.
God, he loves this man.
Chapter Text
They’ve been dancing around putting a name to this little agreement between them for a few weeks now, especially since it’s become very obvious that it isn’t just a stress relief kind of situation anymore. Not when Mason had fallen asleep on the couch with his head resting on Brady’s shoulder and woke up in his bed, arms wrapped around his waist and Brady’s dad-snoring right beside his ear, something he quickly realized he’d begun to rely on.
The point is that they hadn’t done anything that night. The only thing they did in that bed that night was sleep, and even then, Brady was holding him, pulled close to his chest in the way he’d only ever done after exhaustion finally took hold of them after a few rounds.
Honestly, Mason can’t pretend his feelings aren’t romantic anymore. Brady’s been doing better - a lot better, having just gotten his first year of sobriety under his belt and all the happier and healthier for it. If he were one to wax poetic, Mason would say he looks absolutely radiant, the difference between the two Bradys he’d known in his time spent with the man now miles and miles apart in the best of ways.
He’s proud of Brady. He can’t help it. He’s proud every time Brady walks past the liquor aisle when they go grocery shopping, every time he turns down an invitation to a party with alcohol (“Not this early,” he’d explained once, “I need to get my situation under control before putting myself around alcohol again.”), every time he grabs plain orange juice with breakfast in the morning.
And he loves him, a little bit. How can he not?
It happens that morning after breakfast, after they’ve cleaned up and taken care of their plates and silverware. The two of them are sat on the couch closer than they’d ever dared before, shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip, hardly focusing on whatever’s playing on TV in favour of talking about anything and everything.
Mason gets the feeling they both know what this is. This has nothing to do with their agreement anymore. This is something deeper, something infinitely more terrifying and yet more comforting than anything Mason’s ever known.
This is love, he thinks.
“Mason,” Brady says after a moment, waving a hand over the other man’s face with a playful smirk on his own, “hey, space cadet, where’d -”
“Can I hold your hand?” Mason blurts out, more than a little surprised at himself but deciding that the best thing to do is roll with the sudden confidence before it leaves him. “Is that okay?”
For a moment Brady is silent, eyes roving every inch of Mason’s face as though he were searching for even the slightest hint of hesitation or teasing, and when he finds none, he lets out a little sigh (one that Mason thinks sounds just a bit rattled) and nods, even holding out his hand for Mason to take.
And he does, lacing his fingers through Brady’s with such ease it’s as if they’ve been doing this their whole lives, palms fitting together and Brady’s thumb coming to stroke over his knuckles carefully. Mason can feel the callus on the side of his right middle finger from writing, the heat radiating from his palm, the subtle tremour of nerves. God, Brady’s nervous. As if the man sitting next to him hasn’t been in love with him for the past three years.
“Are you okay?” Mason asks softly, squeezing Brady’s hand in the hopes that it comforts him a little. He’d planned on being the anxious one, as he has been in nearly every other aspect of his life, but strangely, he feels calm.
“Yeah,” Brady mumbles, but it’s clear that he’s thinking pretty hard. He’s found his slippers planted flat on the carpet very interesting all of a sudden.
“We’ve been doing this a lot longer than you think we have,” Mason murmurs simply after squeezing his hand once more, heart giving a fond pang when he feels Brady squeeze back weakly. “What’s on your mind?”
“…You,” he hums eventually, finally meeting Mason’s eyes - the pain there, the fear, could break Mason’s heart. “Just - you’ve seen me at my worst.”
“Yeah.”
“Right. And you’re still here.” Brady takes a short, sharp, stuttering inhale. “I just can’t - sometimes I don’t understand how. You of all people would have every single right to - to hate me, or be done with me, but you’re not. You’re still here.”
“Because I -” Mason falters a little bit, the words suddenly stuck in his throat at the worst possible moment. If I don’t tell him now, he thinks in a panic, who knows when I’ll find the nerve again?
“Because you…?”
“Because I love you,” he finally manages, and God, it’s like the sun shining through the clouds, the smile that starts to spread over Brady’s face then. It only widens further when he finds the resolve to complete that thought, nearly eclipsing his gaze: “Because I have been in love with you for a long fucking time, Brady Olinson.”
When Brady laughs, soft but so, so giddy and relieved, Mason can’t help but join in, his heart singing as nearly every trace of anxiety seeps from his body. Through it all, their hands remain intertwined, a tether, a promise.
“I love you too,” Brady eventually murmurs once the two of them have mostly gotten themselves back under control, eyes soft and grin having melted down into a smile even softer. “I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I didn’t love you.”
“Even after I got so mad I yelled at you for thirty minutes straight about the boxes of books you were supposed to sign?”
He winces, but he laughs, nodding. Mason is transfixed by the fact that this is the most peaceful he’s seen Brady while awake in a long, long time.
“Even then,” Brady confirms. “God, I deserved that, though. I’d been sitting on those for months.”
He sighs then, quiet but no less fond. “Where would I be without you to keep me in check?”
“You’ll never have to find out,” Mason murmurs immediately. “I’m in this for the long haul, Olinson. I love you.”
And he can only grin giddily when he receives an honest, earnest, “and I love you too, Mason Woods,” back.
Chapter 3: Prompt #7 - Ethan Belfrage/Forrest Hawthorne
Summary:
prompt from this list on my blog!
it's listed under "blood" and is prompt #7.
Chapter Text
“Why do you know how to get bloodstains out?”
Forrest blinks up at Ethan where the other man is standing at the threshold to the dining room, taking the opportunity to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear as he sits back on the balls of his feet to properly face his boyfriend. “Huh?”
Ethan repeats the question as he steps into the living room, gesturing at the small drops of blood trailing from the kitchen to the couch - damn nosebleeds, Forrest had forgotten how easily the cold air of autumn could get them flowing; thank God for detergent and cold water - in order to better explain himself. “Just curious, ’s all,” he continues as he crosses the room to stand beside the other man where he’s kneeling on the floor, “since you were right on it.”
The smaller man smirks up at him, resting his palms on his thighs as he glances up at his boyfriend through his lashes after batting them once or twice as if to say who, me?, though the gesture is somewhat ruined by the giggle he lets out when Ethan scrunches his face up back at him. “It’s pretty mundane, actually.”
“Yeah?”
“It was just something that my grandma taught me after I bled all over her living room floor,” Forrest continues with a soft sigh as he feels one of Ethan’s wide palms come to rest atop his head, fingers delicately working into his hair to card through it. “Just a particularly wicked nosebleed, so don’t worry.”
“How bad was it that you had to describe it as being all over, though?” Ethan only sounds mildly concerned, which is probably helped by the fact that he’s aware Forrest gets nosebleeds often once the weather shifts into colder patterns, but the smaller man can tell Ethan is feigning his shock. “What’d you do?”
“…That one was actually ‘cause my cousin elbowed me,” Forrest mumbles lowly, the corners of his lips tugging up into a grin the minute Ethan lets out a snort and ruffles his hair a little bit. It’s the truth, after all - he’s never really let Elisabeth live that one down (though he keeps his teasing light, as she had felt really bad about it when it happened and still does).
“Figures,” Ethan declares a moment later, grinning down at his boyfriend who has resumed dabbing at this particular stain with his white washcloth, the colour already having lightened to a soft pink. “You do like to roughhouse.”
Forrest pauses again and clicks his tongue, eyes casting up toward the ceiling in mock thought before his shoulders roll with a casual shrug and he hums, “Only with you, babe.”
The way Ethan laughs, loud and bright, makes cleaning up the remnants of his nosebleed a little easier.
Chapter 4: Prompt #20 - Lawrence Gordon/Dakota Blackmer
Summary:
prompt from this list on my blog!
it's listed under "general" and is prompt #20. (also, fun fact, dakota tripping off of the porch? I did that lmao)
Chapter Text
Truthfully, Dakota’s been bumping into things all day - it’s just a clumsy kind of Saturday, he supposes, and it’s just his luck that it has to happen when he’s trying to get some housework done so neither he nor Lawrence will have to do so during the week.
It’s just one less thing for them to worry about when they both get home from their respective jobs (Lawrence working full time as an oncologist and Dakota working in the back of a flower shop, where he cleans the flowers up for display); even if that weren’t a factor, who doesn’t like coming home to a clean house?
Of course this comes back to bite him when he’s trying to take the trash out to the outside waste bin - the fact that he’s got a hand on the railing doesn’t seem to matter when he misses a step and, consequentially, trips the rest of the way before coming to a heavy, winded halt on the pavement of their driveway.
For a minute, Dakota can’t breathe, can’t really see despite the way he feels his eyes roving his surroundings in a dizzy panic, but he can sure register the fact that his palms and knees are stinging - he knows without looking that it’s in the broken skin kind of way. He just lies there for a moment as his sight returns to him and his stilted breathing slowly evens out, thankful that when he’s finally able to glance both across and down the street, he finds no neighbours have witnessed his (likely comical) fall.
Lawrence sure did, though.
“Kody? Sweetheart, what happened? Are you okay?”
Dakota can feel his familiar palms fluttering all around him in nervous concern, flitting along the arched line of his spine and ghosting across the slope of his shoulders. He keeps his touch light, gentle, but he can’t help hissing quietly when the doctor attempts to get a better look at one of his ankles.
“Tripped,” he offers in a quiet wheeze, taking a stuttering deep breath before gritting his teeth and moving to lift himself up on his scraped palms. It hurts, but not as bad as he was expecting, which likely (hopefully) means that the damage done isn’t too bad. “Missed a step - shit, Larry, that hurts.”
Lawrence helps him up further until he’s at least sitting upright, his palms finding Dakota’s cheeks once he’s sure the smaller man won’t topple over and cradling him there for a moment. “Okay, baby, what hurts?”
Dakota nuzzles his cheek into his boyfriend’s warm palms appreciatively, blinking as his equilibrium finally finds him once again. “Knees,” he begins, “hands. I scraped them. Are they bleeding?”
“Not too bad,” Lawrence reassures him, and Dakota can feel the way some of the nerves leave the doctor’s hands where he’s holding his face. “How about your chest? Ankles?”
The smaller man shrugs before he attempts to roll one of his ankles, the one Lawrence had touched earlier - a touch which he had flinched away from - and immediately hisses in pain. “Shit.”
When he takes a better look, he finds his ankle is already starting to swell just a little bit, the shadowed imprint of bruises to come curling around the scraped and bloodied skin - it’s definitely not pretty. If turning it slightly to get a better look at it hurts like that, then…
“That doesn’t look good,” Lawrence murmurs, moving a hand to Dakota’s shoulder and squeezing softly. “But it looks like a mild sprain. We just need to get you inside and resting.” He presses a kiss to Dakota’s temple and smiles, which causes Dakota himself to smile back, most of the embarrassment for having fallen like that in front of his boyfriend melting away in the wash of the other man’s concern sweeping over him. “Can you stand?”
They find out moments later that he can, in fact, stand, but he nearly stumbles forward again - at least Lawrence is there to stabilize him before he falls. “Careful, angel,” he murmurs.
Well, at least if he does have a sore ankle for the rest of the night, at least he’s got Lawrence by his side to make him feel better, and really, that takes care of the rest of his embarrassment.
Sunny (Guest) on Chapter 4 Sun 24 Oct 2021 07:18PM UTC
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10pintsofsacrifice on Chapter 4 Wed 27 Oct 2021 12:50PM UTC
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