#don't tell me to stop referencing V@nderpump R^les in my BoB shit bc I refuse

[bitch-butter]

...I really hope you're okay with me continuing to request things because unfortunately until you tell me to stop, I will. I love your writing, it's always a delight to read. If you'd like, could I please ask for "Stop, please" with Them? You're amazing, take care of yourself

Ooof this one got Away From Me lol I needed to get out of the 50's for a minute, so this is not only modern au but is also probably Way too long, and for that I apologize. I was just having fun writing this, I wanted to keep going and going, but I hope you find something to like in it! be well~

“Stop, please.”

He's still half dead when he wanders into the coffee shop on the corner, barely dressed and still rumpled from hardly sleeping the night before. Coffee shops aren't his usual scene, he doesn't appreciate the cheap sentiment, the overproduced Atmosphere of such places, but his coffee machine (lovingly named True Grit) had taken its last breaths just a few days prior, and he'd had to be resourceful ever since. Especially after last night, when he'd only managed to haphazardly grapple the guys into his car around midnight, systematically dropping them off at their respective domiciles all the while cursing his designated driver status. He truly cannot win with these assholes, sometimes.

So it's with a mixture of relief and resentment that he wanders into the shop, with its scattered tables, its fireplace, it's overstuffed chairs, and its dyed-haired barista that acts like Joe ordering a black coffee is somehow triggering to them. He can only shake his head as he takes his bounty to the coffee station, loading up on whatever raw sugar he can find, and only narrowly catching sight of the guy seated at the table by the fire.

He frowns, blinking closer at the wayward swoop of his curls from behind, the line of his neck, the familiar way he slouched to the side, head resting on a balled fist as he appeared to stare at the fire. Satisfied with his coffee, he steps towards the table at war with himself, unable to act like he didn't see him but hesitant to approach as well.

"Hey," he greeted, voice still morning-thin. "Web?"

Web turns to him with no small degree of surprise, eyes wide and catching the light like the sun glinting off of the surface of a planet. He blinks at Joe in curiosity, as though it isn't 9 a.m. on a Friday, a time that usually means Web has been at work for an hour and a half and Joe doesn't work for 24 more hours. Indeed, he looks like he's dressed for work, his black pants, his buttoned shirt, the smell of him still fresh from home and a shower mingling with smell of the coffee in the air and making Joe feel hot under the collar.

"Lieb," Web said incredulously, raising a brow. "You hate coffee shops."

"You're supposed to be at work," Joe countered, sitting himself in the chair across from him despite not having been given permission to join whatever this morning reverie was.

Still watching him curiously, Web seemed caught off guard by the mention of work, and blinked fast to right himself. "Yeah, I, uh, I called in today."

Frowning, Joe raised his coffee up to his mouth and sipped at it cautiously. "Taking a mental health day, or what?"

Shrugging, Web looked morosely down towards his own cup, looking to be long empty. "I'm not going to be much use to anybody today."

Joe watched him, and watched, and watched. Dejected isn't a look he's used to seeing on Web, who runs on piss and vinegar as easily as Joe himself runs on pure spite half the time, and it doesn't look good on him. Which is saying something, as in the five plus years he's known Web there are very few things that Joe knows don't look good on him, including anger, including disgust, including all manner of faces that look ugly on a normal person but fit on Web like a glove.

He's known Web five plus years, but this year marks the second where his feelings of casual friendship for him moved hard and fast into desire.

He tries not to think about it.

"You want to talk, Web?" he ventures, voice low even in the quiet of the shop around them.

Web looks back at him with tired eyes, and Joe can see the heavy bob of his throat as he swallows down whatever unease is crawling around inside him. "I'm fine," he assured, a smile stretching up the corners of his mouth briefly, before falling weakly down like a deflated balloon.

That's about the saddest thing he's seen in the last few months.

Nodding, Joe looked down toward his shitty cup of coffee. He and Web were once very close, close enough to talk to each other about things when they went sideways, and along the line that changed without his knowledge. One day he and Web had just taken a step backward, a pane of glass between them that ever since he hasn't been able to put a crack in. They still talk, they still see each other all the time, and yet. And yet.

"You know," he started, before clearing his throat, on the edge of changing his mind, before plowing on. "I'm off today, you want to get breakfast, or something?"

Web looked back at him, mouth opening, before pursing in confusion, closing his eyes as he shook his head perfunctorily. "I'll be ok, Joe, you don't need to babysit me."

"You might be the only person I know that actively needs a babysitter, Web."

Tilting his head, Web offered him a withering look. "Fuck you."

Snickering, Joe sat forward, elbows on the table and clocking the way Web's eyes widened at the diminished space between them. "Come on," he goaded, doing his best to sound easy and relaxed with the way the other man watched him, his gaze moving between his eyes, a flash down to his mouth, to his eyes. "This coffee is shit, let's get a Bloody and an omelet somewhere."

Web holds back his smile, still watching Joe's face carefully, as though trying to catch the edge of a joke. He lets his eyes drop from Joe's face after a moment, his mouth bunching up to the side like it was physically paining him to agree to a suggestion from Joe, but he nods.

"You know what, ok," he said, before meeting Joe's eyes again with a degree more surety, a glimmer of exhilaration. "Let's go."

Joe nodded back at him, his own small victory dancing in the veins along his wrists, the center of his chest. "Let's go," he repeated, and grinned at Web's answering huff of laughter.

***

"They want to call it Schwartz and Sandy's."

"Still better than Once Upon a Tom," Web parried, sipping at the dregs of his Bloody Mary.

Joe coughed out a disbelieving sound. "You're telling me you like the name?"

Head tilting back in aggravation, Web met him again with a look of aghast conviction. "I think the name blows, but what, these are my options?"

Shoving the final bit of his toast into his mouth, he chomped at it obnoxiously just to annoy the other man, who, true to form, averted his gaze with a grimace. "You're just wrong, that's what it is. You just are."

"You're being a real Katie Maloney apologist right now."

"You're being a real misogynist right now."

"Spell misogyny, Lieb."

Pushing back from the table, Joe brought what remained of his own drink up to his mouth, shaking his head. "This is fucking why I stopped watching the shit with you, you're always wrong."

Web released a disparaging laugh. "If you remember, I stopped watching with you because all you did was complain the entire time about how much you hated everybody on the show."

"I stopped watching with you because I was tired of eating your fucking vegan pizza every week -"

"I'm not a vegan any more," Web said, his voice going up an octave to hammer home the message.

Joe practically choked on his drink in his haste to fire back. "Yeah, I stopped coming over and literally the next week you started eating normal again, were you just doing it to be a fucking asshole, or what?"

"Didn't work with communal living as well as I'd hoped," Web said, his voice lower, as though disliking the fact that he was saying it at all.

Shutting his mouth, Joe grimaced down at his drink, feeling the urge to fidget but holding himself still. "Yeah," he rasped, before clearing his throat, feeling the mood dying a slow and painful death under their table. "How is that guy, anyway?"

Web rolled his eyes. "You know his name," he sighed.

Joe knows his name. But it gives him a little spike of satisfaction straight to the gut to refuse to say it. Just calling him That Guy, or That Other Guy, made it easier to abstract him into a glorified roommate rather than the guy Web had been with for a year and a half, and who, rumor has it, has been trying to propose to him for that half.

"Yeah, but tell me how it's going," Joe said, trying not to sound too horribly put-out by the subject even getting brought up. "You guys buying credenzas, or whatever happy people do?"

Sipping the last bits of his drink, Web frowned. "This tastes super bitter all of a sudden."

"I'm not fucking bitter, you utter chad."

"Well anyways, don't be bitter over my relationship, at the very least," Web continued, setting his glass down with a decided clack against the tabletop, crossing his arms over his chest.

Joe frowned. "Bad as that?"

Web shook his head, averting his eyes to look out the window beside them, the gray sky, the passing cars. "It's fine. It's all fine."

"'And life is a long line of fine'," Joe quotes sagely, voice melodramatic.

Clicking his tongue, Web gave him a rueful side-eye. "I never should have given you that book."

"Is that why you didn't go to work?" Joe questioned, casting aside any fear of seeming nosy in his desperate bid to be nosy. "You guys have a fight?"

Looking reluctant, almost cagey, Web chewed at the inside of his cheek, eyes down. "We might have had a tense discussion last night, sure."

"What about?" Joe asked, motioning to the waitress for two more drinks before Web could bolt. "He put your Olaplex back in the wrong spot?"

"Lieb, if you're going to be a dick -"

Joe huffed out a sigh, sitting forward. "I'm sorry, I won't be a dick," he said, jaw only slightly clenched. "Tell me."

Web looked at him strangely, guarded, the way he used to when he and Joe barely knew each other beyond their friend group, when Web was just another guy getting on his case about something or other. But it fades, like the way fog used to over the bay, and his eyes become more and more clear the longer he looks at Joe's face, into his eyes like he was anchoring himself in them, finding a still point as the world turned.

"He just..." Web began, swallowing before his mouth pinched with disappointment. "He wants to go back to New York so badly."

"Do you want to go back to New York?"

"Fuck no, the only people I know in New York anymore are my family and guys who have come on my face."

Joe laughed as the waitress set down their round with nary an expression on her face, sliding his in towards himself with a shake of the head. "You tell him that?"

Groaning, Web took his own up, taking a bracing sip. "I've told him. And he hears me, he'll stay here if he has to, but he resents me for it," he said, a spark of true anger in his eyes where he met Joe, and the warmth kindled him with possibility. "I know what he's thinking, he's thinking I either have to go back to New York with him, or stay here so he can marry me."

"Would you marry that guy?" Joe asked, uncaring of his own disbelieving tone.

"I..." Web began, before closing his mouth, thinking for a long moment. "I really like him. I - I like him."

Joe blinked back at him. "...You really like him? You really like your fiancé?"

Rolling his shoulders, Web gave his head a hard shake. "He's not my fiancé."

"Clearly, Web, it sounds like you fucking hate this guy," Joe said, at once amazed and pleased.

"I don't hate him," Web cut darkly, still meeting Joe's eyes readily. "I'm just...I'm not myself with him, you know?"

Joe frowned. "What do you mean?"

Shoulders gathering up, Web sighed out a long breath, eyes falling down to the table. "I just feel like I'm acting around him all the time. Like he fell in love with an old version of me and now I'm just dragging the corpse around to please him."

"Why don't you just be yourself?" Joe said, reluctant as he could be for doling out real advice.

“I don’t think the self I am now feels the same as I once did,” Web said lowly, eyes anchored down before meeting Joe once more with a peculiar sorrow. “He doesn’t really want me as I am, you know?”

Joe cleared his throat, holding his gaze even as a hot feeling swept over the back of his neck, the mark of urgency. “He’s crazy, then.”

Web scoffed, that same weightless, balloon smile floating up before falling away over his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Joe nodded seriously, bristling at the way Web rolled his eyes in doubt. “I’m serious. You’re fucking smart, and you’re gorgeous, and you make really mean jokes, and your hair -” he cut himself off, but not in time for Web, who raised a brow in curiosity, a half smile hanging off his lips.

“What about my hair?” he prompted, his voice light.

Joe gave in, shifting and twisting in his seat to cross one arm over his chest, the other bringing in his drink to take a big sip. “It smells really nice,” he muttered, licking the residual spice from his lips, unsure if Web’s focus was on his mouth or on his face generally as he did. “You need to let me do it next time though, it needs to be shaped.”

Web ducked his head, his cheeks going pink like a painting, and Joe immediately regretted saying anything. He’s nursed this crush for so long that it’s second nature by now, as normal as checking the time, but he thinks he’s done a good job this whole time of holding it back, keeping it a secret. None of the guys know (save for Toye, he thinks, but just because the fucker is observant as anything), and Web certainly doesn’t know.

Well, he might now.

He pulls in a breath that wobbles at the center like an aspic, releasing it in a hard puff. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. We can head out, I don’t -”

“I don’t want to leave,” Web said, looking at him earnestly, his face open.

“I - You don’t?”

“No,” Web shook his head, and he sounded so caught off guard, so wanting, that Joe even believed him. “I’m having a good time, I don’t want to leave.”

Joe opened his mouth, evaluating whether he wanted to fish for a compliment or not, before taking the plunge. “Better than home?”

Web laughed a loud sound, his eyes wide as he cast them out around them, as though looking for someone who might notice, see the evidence of his happiness and report back to his boyfriend, to his boss, that it was Friday morning and he was having a great fucking time with Joe Liebgott.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, shaking his head into it as though it would add gravitas, and Joe grinned back with the knowledge that he was digging his own grave with this.

***

They didn’t stop at breakfast. They didn’t stop until they had wandered around the neighborhood, seen a movie, and caught sight of a gas station in the twilight, a bright advertisement for pizza by the slice in the window. The place was not up to code, as Web felt the need to point out, but they lowered themselves to the curb beside the ice machine outside and ate it anyway.

“I need you to say it,” Joe say, swiping at a bit of sauce at the corner of his mouth. “Just admit it.”

Web shook his head, smiling against his own bite. “No.”

“There is no way you like that vegan shit more than you like this, be honest.”

“You know, you talk a lot of shit about vegans for a vegetarian. Why are you so exercised by this?” Web asked, a quizzical smile gracing his face as he took a bit of his crust.

Joe rolled his eyes back at him. “Exercised.”

Web nudged him with his elbow. “This is why we stopped hanging out, Lieb.”

Sighing, Joe leaned back onto the ice machine, the crust that he refused to eat in his hand as he looked at Web, his profile framed in the dying blue of the sky, the harsh glint of streetlamps already on and highlighting the almost homey edges of the parking lot. It had been a long time since they had done something like this, something one on one, something…

“Why did we?” he asked suddenly.

Web looked aside to him, swallowing down the remains of his crust with a frown. “What?”

“Stop hanging out,” Joe clarified.

Looking briefly at odds, Web turned back to the front, his lip coming to port between his teeth as he thought it over. Joe had thought of it before, the sudden space between he and Web that, for anything, he never made sense of. Maybe they had started slow, but the second they were on common ground they had taken off running with each other, to the point where Joe had thought Web might be his best friend for a while.

But it had disappeared fast. It became a little flash fire in the center of Joe’s head, the place where he kept Web, running like a golden thread all the way down his body, tangled up in his ribs, poking through his skin, between his teeth, through his hair, under his nails, until he was a gnarled knot with nothing but thoughts of another person. Nauseating, and yet gorgeous.

He’s still tangled up. His heart is in the shape of a net caught in itself.

“I think…” Web began, quiet, his head ducking down and yet accomplishing nothing as Joe stayed locked on his profile. “I think I owe you an apology.”

Joe opened his mouth, a gentle gape as he grimaced out a frown towards him. “What do you mean?”

Web took in a heavy sigh, tilting his face towards the sky, the hard white points of light no better than stars above them. “I think I stepped away,” he admitted, voice a lilting rasp of a sound in the quiet. “I didn’t mean to, but I think I did it anyway.”

“Why?” Joe pressed, a flare of defensiveness running through him.

“He would say things. Just ask why I was one way with you and another with him, things like that,” Web said, shame eating at the corners of his words like anthrax, a poison in his mouth. “I guess it made me feel guilty.”

“Are…” Joe began, halting with sudden trepidation. “Do you act around me?”

Web looked to him again at last, brow creased with concern, already shaking his head. “No, no, of course not, it’s the opposite.”

Joe shook his head, blowing an uneasy breath out. “I mean…thank you for telling me, I guess.”

“Do you hate me?” Web asked, maddeningly calm, like if Joe turned around and said Yes he would not only understand but would thank him for it.

“No, I don’t fucking hate you,” Joe huffed, scrubbing a hand over the heated back of his neck, wishing the air was cooler. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. Didn’t really expect that.”

Web shook his head, guilt over his face like an illusion veil. “I’m a bad person, I know it.”

“Jesus Christ...”

“I’m a pathetic, bad person who dates people that tell me not to be around people I like, and I listen,” Web continued, jaw clenched.

Groaning, Joe scooted closer to him along the curb, instinctively stretching his arm out to sweep around the other man’s shoulders. “Stop,” he said steadily, giving him a jostle and catching his eyes as Web’s head whipped around to look at him in surprise, the blue of his eyes ringing out at him with hope. “You’re not a bad person, you did what you thought you had to do.”

Lips pulling in, Web didn’t look like he fully believed him. “I shouldn’t have,” he said, sighing and giving one sure nod of his head. “You were a better friend to me than anyone.”

The words make him feel bizarrely light, like the first rush of nicotine, and he swallows around it like a pill. “I like being your friend most of the time.”

Web’s shoulders moved beneath him, a little wave of a laugh. “You deserve better than me.”

“Shut up,” Joe brushed off, his mouth moving before his head was ready for sense. “You’re what I want.”

His entire body clenches after the words leave his mouth, but beneath his arm Web still feels loose and alive, warm as a dream with his eyes going cool in the navy blue night that fell across the lot as they drew closer together. Web’s mouth parts gently, a familiar expression, and Joe’s own mouth waters embarrassingly at it, as though he could kiss Web, as though he could kiss Web and Web might kiss him back.

“You mean it?” Web asks, gentle.

Joe swallowed, pulling his eyes away from the sight of Web’s mouth, falling instead back into his eyes. “I always did,” he said lowly, heedless of the weight of his own voice, sinking deep like a stone into Web’s waters.

Web closed his mouth, an almost stricken expression crossing his face as he blinked hard and turned his gaze forward, away from the surveillance of Joe’s eyes.

“He knew that, too,” he said under his breath, a gentle shiver ghosting along the blades of his shoulders, moving along Joe’s arm and electrocuting through his own body in turn.

Giving his head a hard, clearing shake, Joe pulled his arm back just slightly, pressing his palm in the center of Web’s back and giving him a rough rub up and down. “Are you cold?”

Sighing, Web’s face remained out of Joe’s field of vision, the way he curved into Joe’s hand the only tell that he welcomed the touch. “I am, a little bit.”

“Do you want to come over?” he asks, again letting his mouth do the thinking for him, unwilling to let the night end after they finally broke this ground. “Have a drink?”

Web finally turned back to him, his face still creased with tension, with despondency. “Even after everything?” he questioned, mouth tilting in a self-deprecating half-smile, the light catching onto it like a crescent moon.

Joe’s chest burned for him. He hated that he burned for him, hated that he could have heard any reason for their invisible boundary and he would have forgiven Web instantly anyway. It makes him feel weak, it makes him feel as flimsy as a petal ready to fall off a dying flower. But he learned a long time ago this isn’t something he can just stop feeling overnight.

“Doesn’t have to bother us if we don’t let it,” he said, astonished at his own clarity, the way it popped up in his life at the strangest of times.

His half smile turned full, a beloved, soft thing that Joe had watched across rooms for a year, admired, and missed, and went hungry for.

“Ok,” Web nodded.

***

Web folds into his apartment as easily as he ever did, not even having to be told to take off his shoes before he comes in the way all the other guys have to, setting himself on the side of the gray couch that still bore the wine stain from when they had imbibed too much on a Saturday night two years ago. Even the cat seemed to remember how well he fit into Joe’s life, leaping up to briefly rub at him, accept a pet or three, and then fade away back to her hiding place. The sight of him here after so long, the lamplight over his skin as he rolled up his sleeves, makes Joe feel briefly disoriented, almost high.

But exhilarated most of all.

The TV is on, not that he watches it. The cushion of sound presses against the lilt of their conversation, gentle even in solitude as they sip at their beers, and Joe is aware more and more that it’s dark and getting darker outside, that Web has an apartment with another guy he’s supposed to go back to, and yet he doesn’t move. He stays right where he is, his shoulder pressed close to Joe’s, his warmth stationary, comforting, his eyes on Joe with curiosity, with humor, with flashes of something he’s too afraid (too hopeful) to act like he notices.

“They only make you do it because you’re the best driver,” Web said with a smile, head back against the cushion.

Joe rolled his eyes, feeling pleased at the thought nonetheless. “I don’t know about that, but thanks.”

Web nudged him, his shoulder landing against Joe’s and staying there, his eyes challenging, teasing. “It’s true,” he insisted, and his breath was just a ghost over Joe’s face, and yet he was pulled by it. “I’ll never forget you driving in that blizzard.”

“That was not a blizzard.”

“There was almost two feet of snow on the freeway at 2 a.m., and you conducted yourself very professionally,” Web said surely, a brow raised.

Relaxing back into the contact, feeling like he was practically slumping against Web’s shoulder in his ease, Joe let himself walk backwards into the memory. “I remember staying the night at your apartment.”

Chucking, Web nodded. “You spent more than a night, it was a blizzard.”

“I remember that night,” Joe continued, finding himself smiling into the thought, like his head was a big picture window out over the memory, saturated with time. “It was so cold, and the heat in the car wasn’t doing a thing for it. And then we got to your place, and you put your feet right over the radiator in the dark.”

Web’s eyes drifted around his face, his smile falling into just a gentle thing, like a shadow over his face. “I miss that radiator.”

“And you told me…” Joe though, tilting his head softly, back into the sofa, he and Web’s faces close where they rested against each other. “You told me all about this book you were reading, and I put my feet up next to yours to get them warm.”

A sigh moved through Web’s mouth, his body seeming to sink in towards Joe even further, and he felt a thrum of fear in his gut. Fear because Web has a boyfriend, and an apartment, and he might go to New York, and he’s not going to give any of that up, he’s not -

“I loved that night,” Web murmured.

“Web…” Joe trailed, searching for words, before letting the fight die in his veins, a slow turn of his head brushing the tip of their noses.

Eyes closing momentarily, Web sighed at the ghost of the feeling, moving in towards it with his own cautious tilt of the head. “Lieb…”

He’s not going to. “Don’t do that,” Joe cautioned, voice a gentle rasp as their noses brushed.

“What?” Web asked, eyes heavy-lidded, hot and cold at once, duality and brilliance.

Joe couldn’t pull away if he wanted to, the swallow moving through his throat hot, his mouth parting so, so close to Web’s own. Close enough to feel in danger, close enough to have every dream of Web he’d ever had hammering up against his collarbone. “Don’t act like you’re going to do something when you know you’re not,” he choked, his words patting over Web’s mouth like rain drops.

Web’s mouth tilted in towards his own, and his voice was as rich as velvet. “What am I not going to do?”

He can’t hold himself back.

It’s like he falls, and Web catches him. Their mouths slot together as easy as breathing, and Web’s lips are plush, warm and softened with just the gentlest trace of moisture, the taste of beer at the corners that Joe chases after. He hums into it, mostly to keep himself from pulling away and crying out in victory, in joy, and melts in towards Web, who pushes against his pressure eagerly, kissing the corner of Joe’s mouth tenderly, the way he dreamed he might. Just as a test, he brought his hand up to curve bracingly around the side of Web’s neck, holding him in place so Joe could kiss him the slightest bit harder, their lips smacking over each other.

A soft, wanting sound escaped from between Web’s lips, and he opened his mouth to pull in a short gasp of air, welcoming Joe’s tongue with a moan, a hand sweeping up through his hair and grasping hard, then soft. Web’s mouth was hot, sweet, his tongue smooth where they slid against each other, and he groaned at the sensation, the burst of pleasure it sent all the way down his body.

It’s everything, it is everything.

Impulsively, Joe swung a leg over his hip to angle up above him, sweeping in to kiss him deep again, sitting down over the heat of the other man’s lap. He kisses across Web’s mouth, to his cheek, to his ear, biting impulsively at the lobe and relishing the hiss of sound that escaped beneath him before attaching his lips to the side of the other man’s neck.

“Joe…” Web rasped, his hands scraping and scratching down Joe’s back before sweeping back up to grasp at his neck, his hair.

He kissed wetly at his neck, feeling hot as he moved over Web, testing the waters, feeling himself coming alive, the walls of his mind fogging up with heat. With a hard sound, he opened his mouth to run the edge of his teeth over the skin of Web’s neck.

Gasping, the hand in his hair clenched. “Joe -”

Joe shuddered over him, rocking down and teasing the skin beneath his teeth, warm from his mouth and pale, ready for him, ready for -

He bit down, hard enough for a tease to become a demand.

“Oh!” Web cried out, the hand in Joe’s hair leaving abruptly, clawing at the air. “Joe, st - Oh, fuck,” he gasped, Joe tonguing restlessly at his neck, the faintest touch of heat over his tongue as blood gathered to the point of his bite. “Oh, God, Lieb,” he choked, the hand against Joe’s neck suddenly pressing, pushing at him even as he licked over the bite. “Stop, please.”

It’s like ice flooding through his veins, the warmth of their bodies rendered cold by the words, and he pulls away from Web’s neck to look down into his flushed, dazed face. He looks up at Joe, his mouth parted, pink and puffed from their rough kissing, his eyes electric and charged with fear, fear, fear.

“Please,” he repeated, his voice a tight tremble.

It’s shame like he’s never felt before, embarrassment falling over his shoulders as heavy as a winter coat, and he moves off of the other man’s lap with stiff, horrible movements. He shoves himself to the corner of the couch, giving Web all the room he needs as he caught his breath, one hand coming up to press over the bite mark.

He ruined it. He hadn’t even known.

“I’m sorry,” he tried, voice weak.

“No, I -” Web started, before clearing his throat, pulling in a long, unsteady breath. “I’m going to go.”

Joe frowned at him, a crushing feeling collapsing through him like a sinkhole of pure darkness. “Web, come on,” he shook his head, feeling helpless as the other man got to his feet. “I’m sorry -”

He was gone from the room before Joe could truly start begging him.

It only takes him another few seconds of wallowing in self–loathing on the couch to launch to his feet and follow after him, never minding that he had kissed Web, who had a boyfriend, or that Web had asked him to stop. All he thought of was that he had just gotten Web back, after a year and a half, and a whole day of breaking down the wall between them, and he wasn’t going to lose him now after finally getting a taste of him. It wouldn’t happen in his world.

Web stood, shoes on, hand against the doorknob, and Joe speaks fast, voice rough.

“Don’t go to New York with him.”

The other man’s back stiffens, his shoulders rolling with anxiety, before he turns to face Joe with a dark, expectant expression on his face. God, he’s beautiful, he’s the fucking worst, he has no right and yet Joe has to fight for him anyway.

“Stay here,” he said, his voice thankfully strong, solid against the storm in his blood. “Be with me.”

Web raised a brow. “Are you being mean right now?”

“What the f- No, I’m not being fucking mean,” Joe coughed, feeling like a bobble-head as he stared back at Web. “I’m completely serious right now.”

Mouth parting, Web still looked doubtful, afraid. Swallowing heavily, he turned back to face the door, turning the lock out of its place, and Joe moved again without thinking, striding forward to put his hand against the door, pushing against it with only minimal force.

“Please just reject me,” he sighed, locked onto the side of Web’s face, his tight jaw, his downturned eyes. “I’m fucking begging you, ok? Tell me to fuck off, I will, but I can’t keep torturing myself like this, I can’t be alone like this anymore -”

“You haven’t been,” Web murmured.

Joe blinked, trying to parse out the meaning of his words. “What?”

Pulling in a sharp breath, Web finally met his eyes again, and in the half-light of the doorway they were dark, wanting. “You haven’t been alone in this.”

It’s incomprehensible. It’s laughable. But if it’s true then he could die in this moment the happiest motherfucker on the planet.

This time they hesitate towards one another, Web licking at his lips with an unknown anxiety, Joe feeling half a step away from bolting at the first sign of his displeasure. Where they meet it’s almost painfully soft, and he shakes into it like a tree in the wind, braced against Web’s warmth, the pillar of his tenderness. It’s chaste, gently wet as he kisses over Web’s lips once, twice, over and over as he doesn’t pull away, making gentle, pleased noises between their mouths.

He nuzzles at Web’s cheek, wanting nothing more than to kiss his neck, but holding back. In its place he puts his face in Web’s hair, breathing him in with deep lungful's, sighing them out at the touch of the other man’s hand on his neck.

“I can’t sleep with you,” Web said quietly, a strange sadness soaked through his voice. “It would make me feel bad to sleep with you, Joe.”

Joe swallowed down his mild disappointment, brushing it aside with a kiss to Web’s hair. “I understand,” he said, feeling the way the other man shuddered at his breath along the shell of his ear. “But will you stay?”

The hand on his neck guided his head back forward, and Web looked at him searchingly, a man in uncharted waters, the sky growing dark above him. With a heavy breath he let his head fall to rest over Joe’s shoulder, and Joe wrapped his arms around him thankfully, holding him closer than close, close enough to beat to each other’s hearts. He breathed him in, held him in his chest, unwilling to release him but doing so gratefully just to take in more, and he couldn’t fathom how lucky he was in this moment, as though every star in the sky aligned, spelled their names out like eternal skywriting.

“I have to go now,” Web said, voice soft as he lifted his head to look reluctantly into Joe’s eyes. “I just do.”

Biting at his lip, that same sinking feeling fell through his chest, shallow and yet sharp. “Alright,” he nodded, a little jerking motion.

Web stepped back, out of the circle of Joe’s arms, his hand withdrawing back from his skin slowly, a lingering trail of torment across his neck. They held each other’s eyes as Web reached for the lock again, turned it, and opened the door.

“It was good to see you, Joe,” Web said, earnest, his eyes alight with awful want.

Joe wanted to say it all, wanted to let the past few years of watching him, wanting him, hoping for him fall out of his mouth like rose-colored bile, but he can’t let himself. Not here, with Web standing in his doorway looking at him like one word from Joe could shatter his whole universe.

“You too, David,” he managed, trying for gentleness.

It looks like the words shatter Web’s universe anyway, and he stares at Joe with wide blue eyes, head nodding, and his mouth parted to pull at the air. He turns with a fast motion, pulling his face away, and Joe watches him walk away until he can’t any longer, until Web is nothing but sounds going down his stairs, a series of creaks and slams.

And then he shuts the door.

Shuts the door, goes back inside, and lays down on the couch, his face pressed down beside the wine stain that Web had left all those years ago, the mark of his hands over Joe’s life a bruised red, a bloody kiss.

***

He’s awoken before his alarm, and the disorientation briefly throws him off the realization that he has to go in to work today. Quickly he realizes that he had passed out on the couch, the cat snuggled up against his stomach where he laid on his side, and his phone was buzzing insistently on the coffee table beside him.

“Christ,” he croaked, reaching for it with numb, heavy hands.

He notes the time before he notes anything, and spits a harsh sound at the cruel display of 8 a.m. he finds. But then he clocks the name of the incoming caller, and his stomach drops out from his ass like he’d jumped from a plane.

Swiping into the call, he brought the phone to his ear so fast he practically smacked himself with it. “Web?”

“Joe,” he answered, and even across their distance he sounded rich, warm. “Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” Joe shook his head, sitting up on the couch and jostling the cat to aggrieved wakefulness. “What’s up?”

A brief pause, before the sound of a sigh. “I know this is asking a lot of you,” he began, slow and intentional, but with the distinct markings of a smile. “But do you want to go for coffee right now?”

A dumbstruck smile spread over his face, and Joe would have agreed to anything, gone anywhere he asked him to, including and especially coffee shops. “Give me 30 minutes,” he said, the happiness of his voice radiating through his chest, his head, and down the line of the phone. “I’ll be there.”