#mildly spicy - like PG 13/mild R spice

[ashintheairlikesnow]

For the ask thing! 💉 For Kauri?

CW: Recreational drug use and consensual, if not sober, spice

When he asks for a hit, they pass it over. They laugh when Kauri can't hold it and coughs the smoke out too soon, but it's not mean laughter, and he settles into it soon enough.

He doesn't know their names. Just new people, met in dark spaces. Boys in bars that bring him to a house and give him dinner and pour him drinks.

He's going home with the one with blue hair, he decided that already. Blue Hair doesn't know it yet, but Kauri starts to smile and tilt his head and focus increasingly hazy blue eyes on him, and Blue Hair picks the hint up fast enough.

He doesn't feel anxious any longer, the knot in his chest undoes itself. Not scared, nothing to be scared of. When Blue Hair pulls him upstairs he realizes this was Blue Hair's house all along and goes with him, giggling.

Blue Hair pushes him up against a wall, hands up his shirt and down his pants and Kauri knows just how to be perfect, can tell Blue Hair wants to be in charge, to be in control.

He pushes himself into Blue Hair's grip and the warm skin and smell of the smoke has him dizzy and drifting, moaning out loud.

He gives himself over in a haze and pretty smoke inside his head, in his lungs as Blue Hair gives him more hits between kisses.

His phone is still off, he hasn't turned it on in days. Nat can call Jack and Dustin and tell them why Kauri disappeared, why he can't be a risk to anyone else any longer.

Nobody but himself.

He rolls into Blue Hair's bed and they laugh together, stupid stoned laughter, and Blue Hair has him out of his clothes, everything but the bracelet on his arm, that covers his wrist.

Fuck me until I don't care anymore, Kauri whispers, but Blue Hair can't hear him and maybe he never said the words at all.

Warm body on his, chest against his back, Kauri on his stomach in a messy bed with his hips up and Blue Hair breathing against his neck, his ear, burying his face in Kauri's black curls.

The world spins, and he feels so good, and it doesn't fucking matter.

He's not hurting anyone but himself anymore.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

BTHB: Tearful Smile

You anons wanted the dubcon drabble? I give you de dubcon drabble. CW: Dubcon (on both sides). Also contains drugging, mentions of torture, violence, and abuse, as well as threatened noncon (not depicted). And more than a fair dash of spice.

@spiffythespook​ asked for tearful smile for @badthingshappenbingo​

Blood spot: requested Puppy sticker: fulfilled​

This isn’t really my “Merry Christmas” piece - that’s going up next week. But it takes place just before the first Christmas (Handcuffs Year) Danny is in captivity, after just about a full year with Bram in the woods in Alberta. 

Tagging: @bleeding-demon-teeth, @spiffythespook, @finder-of-rings, @whumpywhumper, @special-spicy-chicken​

“Wh-what did you give him?”

“Does it matter?” Bram sits back on the couch, one arm up, sipping his beer, with the air of a man watching a really fascinating show on TV. “Look at him, Nate. Doesn’t he shine?”

Danny lay on his back with part of his head underneath the Christmas tree, blue eyes sparkling and hazy, running fingers along the lines of red and blue and green lights, whispering “pretty, pretty, pretty” to himself in a tone of hushed awe and wonder.

God, he’s beautiful. Even with the bruises.

Nate swallows back revulsion at the thought, the self-loathing that had become a second skin he wears over the first. The only protection he had left - hating himself for things he hasn’t even done yet, with the understanding that sooner or later, he will.

He can’t hold out forever, and it’s a miracle Bram has even gone this long without forcing him to take a more active role, to do more than clean up the blood, bandage wounds, maybe hold one knife while Bram uses another.

But he can’t argue with Bram’s question, standing next to the couch and looking across the room… because Danny did shine.

He’s high as a fucking kite, and he glows with it, all the daily miseries smoothed out and away by whatever was in his system. His jaw is a little slack, and the wavy red hair is spread out behind and beneath him against the Christmas tree skirt, a perfect circle of dark hunter green that sets off Danny’s pale skin, even in the yellowed light from the lamps and the crackling fireplace. 

It etches the pale, thin scars on his face - he’s worn the muzzle three times in one year - into shadows, like a line drawing rather than a man.

Danny doesn’t even seem to notice him yet. He’s lost in the curved oval of the lights, twisting the cord that connected them, the wires a bright green mockery of the colors of the pine needles themselves, wrapped around fingers that were beginning to roughen from cleaning. Danny's hands were losing the way they’d once seemed so oddly sensitive for someone who lived as hard as Danny did.

“Bram, is h-he going to be… oh-okay, in the morning?” Nate had never really done drugs besides pot, it had never been his thing. He’s pretty sure he’s the only person he knows his own age who hasn’t tried something harder.

When he’d first gotten to know Danny, he’d been the only one still worrying about whether or not the skinny redhead, who towered over the rest of the group, would make it home safe after one unwise decision or another.

“What, cause you wanna bring him home with you?” Scott laughed, and the others laughed, too, standing at the bar with beers in hand watching Danny Michaelson throw himself around in a mosh pit down by the stage. It didn’t matter that the bar was dark and the band was loud and there was a crowd down there - you could always see Danny’s hair, his height, above the rest.

Nate watched him push at another man, who shoved back and sent Danny reeling, a fierce smile like a snarl on his face, before he spun and shoved at someone else entirely. You could nearly see the sweat droplets flung from his hair, the way he shone. Danny was angry - and elated - in the dark.

Nate wondered, with a sudden rush of blood in his heart and head and other places entirely, what he looked like with that much sweat on him and much less clothing.

He hadn’t been with anyone since he’d gotten away from Bram, but he thought maybe he was ready to try.

“Wh-what? No! I just… you kn-know, it seems like he d-d-does a lot of drugs,” Nate said, shrugging, trying not to look too concerned, too worried, too interested. He tried taking a very calculated drink of his beer, and spilled some less than gracefully onto his shirt, but it was dark enough that the other men didn’t notice.

“Oh, yeah, he totally does.” That was Will, who just shook his head full of curly dark hair, chugged the rest of his beer, smacked the empty bottle down on the bar, and ordered another - all in one graceful motion.

The bartender was not as impressed as Will wanted him to be.

Nate frowned, glancing back at the mosh pit. A woman nearly a foot shorter than Danny had been pushed down, and Danny leaned over her, blocking the crowd from getting near her while he threw an arm out to help her back up

God, Nate thought, not for the first time, and not for the last. He’s beautiful. “Has anyone tried to st-stop him? From getting high all the time?”

“Stop Danny?” Scott rolled his eyes. “Fuck no. Look, he’s a grown-ass man, he’ll make his own dumbass choices. He’s a cool guy, but he’s a fucking roller coaster. Just… hang on and enjoy the ride, Nate.”

“I’m n-not… that’s not wh-what I m-m-m-”

“Settle down, numbnuts, I’m kidding. Anyway, keep it casual with Danny or don’t keep it at all.”

“Wh-why?”

“He’s angry as fuck, man. Probably going to burn out by his mid-twenties on that bitter shit.”

“And the drugs, Will.”

“Right. Scott’s right - can’t discount the drugs. But, you know what - fuck it, don’t we all burn out by thirty now?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, and laughed again. “Danny just gets to burn out with all that mysterious money. We should all be so lucky.”

Nate stands next to the little plastic mat with the thin blankets that left Danny shivering and sometimes so desperately cold he was willing to get in bed with Bram just to have a hint of warmth, and wonders what Scott and Will and the rest of them would think about how lucky Danny is now.

Is his ankle chain lucky? Are the open sores on his wrists from the handcuffs lucky? Is he lucky to have Bram slice into the backs of his hands, over and over again? Should he count himself lucky to be alive, or would Danny have been luckier if he were dead by now?

“He’s fine,” Bram says, waving his free hand carelessly, bringing Nate back from his thoughts. The pale blue eyes - a little cloudy-looking, and with those darker pieces of himself that constantly move under the surface - are locked on Danny, too. “He knew I put shit in his drink the second I gave it to him and he didn’t fight me on it… so maybe there’s something you didn’t know about our little Red, huh?”

“N-no, I saw h-him do stuff, at bars…” Nate hesitates, torn between twin urges to walk away and to stay here to stare at the absolute gorgeousness that was Danny’s face lit from the inside out. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Danny had been bitter and angry - and sort of fascinating for the way he so easily accessed the fury that Nate no longer could - but on drugs he was softer. Nate had sworn, back when he was hiding out and hoping Bram would give up looking for him one day, that he could see that the bitter part of Danny was a shell he wore over the real man underneath.

“You want him?” Bram asks, casually. Like offering to let Nate borrow a book.

“I’m s-s-sorry, do I what?”

Of course I fucking want him, but not like this.

“You’ve said no every other time I’ve tried to get you to take him. I only brought him here because of you, anyway... What about this time? Maybe because he won’t remember it this time? Should make it easier on you, right?”

Yes, because the problem is whether or not he remembers it, not that I did it. That makes perfect fucking sense.

Bram glances back at him, and their eyes briefly meet, and Nate sinks under the water, for just a second, before Bram looks away.

You goddamn monster. I love you.

“I don’t th-think Ecstasy m-m-makes you forget anything,” Nate says, hesitantly, his low voice soft enough to cover the hardness of his thoughts. His stomach twists again. There’s nothing he’d rather do less than victimize Danny yet again, in a whole new way, in an even worse way than the bleeding and the pain.

Danny seems finally to notice him, twisting around on the floor to look over, shooting Nate a loopy, addled, beautiful bright smile. His ankle chain rattles as he moves, the cuff too tightly to even shift around. “Pretty lights,” He breathes. “Nate, come lay down in the lights with me. C’mon. I want you to see the lights this way.”

“Go ahead,” Bram says, grinning. It’s a shark’s smile, full of sharp teeth - too many sharp teeth. “He wants you to see the lights this way, Nate.”

“Bram, I d-d-don’t want t-to-”

“Do I look like I give a fuck what you want? I said get down on the fucking floor with him.” Bram’s voice drops, and Nate has been with him long enough not to flinch at the change in tone, but he feels the cold wash over him regardless. Every defiance, every time Nate says ‘no’, every moment he claws back onto the hint of who he is - all of it is a moment he’s waiting for Bram to turn on him and force him to do it, anyway. “Or would you rather I got down on the floor with him?”

“Oh, no, I don’t want that,” Danny breathes, but he can’t seem to keep his eyes on them - they trail back to the Christmas lights, the evergreen smell in the room, the hint of sticky sap on the trunk where it’s riveted into the tree stand with the special plant food to make its slow death take even longer. “Nate, I want you to come lay down with me, not, not Abraham, please. Nate, can you, please?” He turns the wide, clouded blue eyes on Nate.

“Look, see?” Bram grins. “He wants you down there with him.”

“Why are y-y-you doing this?” Nate whispers, through lips that barely move. “You d-don’t want him to f-f-feel good, or be happy. Why w-w-would you g, give him something that makes him f-f-feel like this?”

“Mmmn, that’s true.” Bram cocks his head as Danny tries to wriggle himself totally out from under the tree, pushing himself up on one elbow. His eyes move back down to the braided rug, the mass of colors and textures, and he rolls onto his stomach, running his fingers over the bumps and ridges of cloth. “Maybe it’s not him I want to make miserable today.”

Nate frowns, eyes narrowing slightly, but he can’t stop watching Danny’s fingers, long and thin, the tracery of scars along the backs of his hands, the wounds reopened and cut a little deeper every time he screws up, defies an order, tries to be who he used to be. 

The bones of his wrists that stick out more than they used to, the little knob right there where wrist and hand meet that Nate just wants to hold, the underside with its thin hint of purplish-blue veins that he’d have given anything some days to lick-

He shakes it off, with effort, and swallows against the dryness of his mouth. “And you th-th-think giving me wh-what I want with him will m-m-make me miserable?”

“I know it will.” Bram shrugs, casual as can be. “You don’t want him like this. But I know you better than anyone else in the world will ever know you, Nate. I know you’ll say yes.”

“H-How do you kn-kn-know I’ll say yes?” Nate asks, and his voice is barely a whisper of sound, but Bram hears him anyway.

“Because if you won’t,” Bram says, taking a sip from his beer, “I will.”

“Y-Y-You already do.”

Bram’s smile could freeze Arizona. “Not like I will if you say no. I know you think I hurt him, but I want you to believe me, baby, I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the ways I can make him regret every fucking breath. So yes, or no?”

“Nate,” Danny says, in a low soft voice. “Nate, come over here. Feel this rug. Shit, I haven’t been high like this since…”

“Since before you came home to me, puppy,” Bram says sweetly, and Danny’s eyes jerk up to his, wide in a face that’s gotten thinner with never eating enough. They don’t quite manage to focus on him, but even like this this, Nate can see the naked fear that crosses his face.

“Before I came home,” Danny repeats quickly, but after a second he seems to forget he was looking at Bram at all. Nate watches his jaw slacken and all his thoughts slip right through his fingers as he drops his attentions back to the rug.

“Yes or no, Nate, I haven’t got all night,” Bram says. The walls of the living room, the one large room in this tiny cabin, seem to be closing in. Smaller and smaller, the way all his choices and his understanding of himself gets closed in, chipped away.

“Y-Yes, you do. We have all the t-t-time in the world, out h-here.” Nate’s voice is calm, somehow, and he steps forward, moving away from Bram and the furniture and over to Danny where he lays stretched on the rug on his side, watching his own fingertips playing with a loose thread in the seam that holds two rolls of the rug together.

“Is that a yes, my love?” Bram’s voice is low, and pleased.

Nate takes all the guilt that threatens to squeeze the breath out of him, sets it aside in an empty gaping canyon of self-hatred that lives eternally in the back of his mind, and says simply, “It’s a yes.”

Danny rolls onto his back, looking up at Nate, wavy red hair falling into his eyes. It’s winter, and Danny’s hair is already getting long, past his ears and whispering along the back of his neck, twisting in soft curls across his forehead. Nate reaches out to push the hair away, and Danny hums softly. “Your fingers feel nice,” He whispers.

“G-Good,” Nate whispers back, aware of Bram’s eyes burning into him, trying to ignore it, to push it all away. Life with Bram has always been about trading away whatever he has left, to save himself in the end. And now to trade the dregs of the man that still remains, to try and save another.

By doing something he’s always wanted to do and doesn’t want to do at all.

“So, this is stupid, but I’ve been… you know, I know you’re older and you, like, know shit I don’t. But I’ve been… thinking about you, kind of a lot, I guess.” Danny looked away from him, nervously sipping his drink, and Nate reached out to take it from his hands, letting their fingertips graze each other just a little bit.

“Don’t d-d-drink so fast, you’ll g-get drunk and be harder to t-t-talk to,” Nate said, and pitched his voice into real flirtation, something he used to be fairly good at. He’d gotten rusty, trapped in that house.

“Aren’t drunk people supposed to be easier to talk to?” Danny countered, but he lets Nate take the drink and place it on the table, tilted his head to let a little hair fall into his eyes, gave Nate a toothy smile that he knew already he’d love to see more of.

“Not y-you. I like you b-b-better sober.” Nate hesitated, then leaned forward, a little more into Danny’s space. When Danny’s smile only widened, and they were nearly nose-to-nose in the little bar, neither of them wanted to pull away and break the moment.

“I think I want to see more of you,” Danny said, a whisper nearly drowned out by the music around them.

“I th-think I want to s-see more of y-y-you, too,” Nate replied, and thought - fuck Scott and Will’s advice, they didn’t know shit. Nate had gone years trapped in hell and he just wanted to be with someone again.

Besides which, Scott and Will didn’t seem to see that under all his anger, there was something that shone in Danny Michaelson.

You just had to find it and bring it out.

Nate strokes gentle fingers across his forehead, down the side of his face and his neck, over a hint of collarbone that peeks out from the neckline of his shirt. Danny shivers with a smile on his face, eyes fluttering closed and then open again. “I’m s-s-so sorry,” Nate murmurs to him, with real feeling. “I’m so s-s-sorry, Red.”

“Sssshhhhh,” Danny whispers, and his own hands slip down. Nate watches with that dryness in his mouth again as the redhead’s fingers curve around the hem of his T-shirt, grip on, and he arches his back so he can slide it right off his head, tossing it lazily to the side. The firelight catches the muscles of his arms as he moves, sets off the freckled skin. “Ssssshhh, you’re so good, Nate, you’re so nice.”

“I’m sorry,” Nate repeats, because he has to, and with Bram watching them both, he leans down to kiss the end of Danny’s nose, one of the scars along his cheekbone, up to his forehead. “I’m so sorry. J-j-just look at m-me now, okay?”

The blue eyes open, and for a moment, the two men only look at each other and smile - Danny’s hazy and drugged and beautiful, Nate’s guilty, tearful, and a little frightened.

Frightened for Danny, frightened of Bram, frightened of himself and how easily he will hand over any last remaining shred of principle or conviction if it will save Danny Michaelson even a moment of pain.

“What are you waiting for?” Bram asks, not quite snapping.

Danny tenses, then reaches out to grab Nate by the back of the neck and pull him down for a kiss. His mouth is soft, and warm - the rest of Danny always seems so cold now - and Nate lets himself be lost in the moment, tries to shift away how much he hates himself for what he’s about to do.

But it’s better, if it’s him and not Bram.

At least once.

At least for tonight.

When they break apart, foreheads still touching, Danny’s cloudy eyes try to focus on his clear green ones. “‘Kay,” Danny murmurs, their lips still nearly brushing. “Can do it. Can look-... your eyes are bleeding, Nate.”

“What?” His voice is hushed, a whisper, and he brushes the backs of his knuckles on his good hand down Danny’s neck, over breastbone, down his stomach, watching Danny arch into the touch, feeling him shift and move as Nate’s hand curves around one hip over the thin cotton pants that are the only pants he’s ever allowed to wear, no matter the weather.

“Like green sky…” Danny smiles at him, a flash of white teeth, nuzzling at his face, his hands moving up to Nate’s neck, over his shoulders, feeling at the fabric of his shirt, lost in the softness, the warmth of the heavy knit fabric. “You’re stained glass,” Danny whispers, words slightly slurred. “You’re a fucking saint sparking fucking starlight…” Nate shifts, or Danny does - he likes to hope it was Danny, for his own sake, for his own sanity. It moves their hips together, just a little, where Nate lays next to him on the floor.

“Fuck,” Danny nearly groans. “Ah…” He grabs Nate by the arms and pulls the older man on top of him, and for a half-second Nate wants to forget that anything is wrong with this, that it’s anything but his first Christmas with the younger guy who seemed like everything Bram wasn’t, everything Nate wanted.

For a while, it’s only this - a kiss, or a series of them, but they run together and Nate isn’t sure he’d count it as more than one. Hands, and Danny’s ribs stand out too much in his thin frame and Nate’s fingertips trail over each shade and hint of light. Danny whispering to him, nonsense things, and the lights of the Christmas tree still shine in his eyes and bounce off his hair.

Nate buries his bad hand in that hair, feels the softness that’s started to go brittle after nearly a full year of never eating enough.

Bram laughs - the awful off-key barking hyena laughter - and Danny freezes underneath Nate, breathing harder, clutching tightly onto him like Nate could possibly protect him from the consequences of Bram’s horrible good humor.

“J-Just look at me, Red,” Nate whispers urgently against his ear, licking at the earlobe, feeling Danny shiver again and hold him with shaking hands. “Just look right at me.” His good hand slides back down to grip Danny’s hip, to steady him against the sense of Bram’s eyes, and his heart is pounding.

He can feel Danny’s heartbeat, too, and some part of him wants to smile, because he’d always sort of wanted to lay somewhere with Danny Michaelson, feeling his heartbeat right through his skin.

Not like this, though.

Not like this.

I should have known Bram would never, ever let me go. But it never occurred to me that if he found me with someone, he’d take them, too.

Nate drops his mouth to Danny’s neck now, kissing gently along the scarring starting there from the barbed wire that Bram sometimes wraps around his throat, making him practice breathing until he bleeds. When he nips at the scarred skin, Danny lets out the first real, true noise. 

When he closes his mouth on it, the noise gets louder.

“Well this is getting interesting.” Nate would gladly stab Bram like he once stabbed his sister, leave him dying on the kitchen floor, and he and Danny would flee through the woods and find civilization, go back home-

But he can’t hurt Bram. And even if this is the only night he can protect, he can’t let Bram have Danny to destroy if he’s given even the barest hint of a choice.

Danny had tensed again at Bram’s voice, and Nate catches his eyes as he nearly turns to look at the monster sitting on the couch wearing skin like a man. “No, no, just look right at me,” He says, a little urgently, turning Danny’s face back to his. “It’s going to be oh-okay. It’s okay. I d-d-don’t want to, I promise, I just… I have to-”

“Of course you want to,” Bram interrupts, shifting where he sits, slowly leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, beer still in hand. Outside, snow falls in a perfect picturesque white. “And if you don’t… I will.”

“I know that, B-Bram,” Nate says, in a voice that’s not quite pleading. “I kn-know. Just-”

“Sssshhhh.” Danny cranes his neck, moving his head up from the floor enough to kiss Nate’s cheek, scarred, rough-skinned hands pulling Nate back in for another kiss. “S’okay if it’s you,” Danny says, softly, and he smiles softly, and nearly everything about Danny is soft, and sweet, and beautiful.

And fogged and drugged, high and off-limits in Nate’s mind - but the choice he’s been given is to cross his own lines or watch Danny be torn apart again.

Tonight, just this one night, he has the chance to trade away one more piece of the principled, moral man he used to think he was. He gives away his certainty that he’d never do anything like this - that he would never, ever be this person - because if he doesn’t, Bram will do something far worse.

“Always if it’s you,” Danny continues, and now it’s his lips against Nate’s neck, tongue lapping at the slowly fading pink marks from Ashley’s knives, her little game of seeing how long it took him to scream. “I want you, too.” Danny’s hands are on his shirt and Nate lets him pull it up, pull it over his head, muss up his black hair.

He shouldn’t do this.

He has to do this.

He wants to do this.

But… not like this.

“Saint Nate,” Danny says, tone playful, consonants soft and slurred together, as his hands move over Nate’s chest and torso, play along his sides, slide down under the waistband of his pants until Nate nearly gasps. “Ha,” Danny grins at him. “Look at you, Saint Nate. Saint… Saint Nathaniel. Patron saint of, of puppies, and… fuck, what’d he put in my drink? Shit, you feel so good-”

Nate groans, and gives up, and his good hand slips into Danny’s pants, too, searches and finds, begins to move. When Danny’s hips jerk up hard, Nate pauses, but one scarred hand grabs at his wrist and presses his palm down right where it is.

“Don’t stop,” Danny murmurs, and uses his hand to show Nate what he wants him to do.

“Fuck, R-Red,” Nate groans into his neck, into his warm skin, as Danny moves against him. “I’m so sorry.”

This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.

“Say, what’s in this driiiiink,” Danny sings, and his voice is cracked and hideously off-key. Danny has an awful singing voice, and still Nate finds himself smiling. “Baby, it’s cold outsiiiiiide…”

“Sssshhhh.” Nate shifts back, resting his weight on his legs, a knee on either side of Danny’s hips. Still on his back on the floor, Danny’s eyes drift through the room, landing but never staying, and finally… finally they make it back to Nate.

When they land on him, they stay.

“Stop holding out on him, baby,” Bram says. His voice is impatient, not quite snapping, but Nate knows it for what it is - not annoyance but hunger. Bram wants him to be miserable, to hate himself, for spend the next few days castigating himself for being a fucking criminal, a piece of shit, the worst thing in the world. “He’s asking for it.”

“Please,” Danny says softly, and Nate’s hatred of himself shatters - for the moment only for now - under the affection there. Written on Danny’s face is all the sweetness Nate once thought you had to find in him, right there to be had, right on the surface.

“H-How can you w-w-want me like this?” Nate asks, and he doesn’t mean the drugs (although he means that, too). No, he wants to know how Danny can want him when they are trapped somewhere in the woods together but Danny is tortured and cut to shreds and beaten and destroyed piece by piece, while Nate eats at the table and doesn’t have to ask and sleeps in a bed without having to earn it.

He wants to know how Danny can want him, after everything that’s happened because Nathaniel Vandrum had a fucking crush on him.

“I wanted you before,” Danny whispers, fumbling at the button of Nate’s jeans, having trouble getting his hands to close well enough. “Why would I stop now? C’mere, Saint Nate. S’okay if it’s you, I want it to be you. C’mere.”

The lights from the Christmas tree light Danny’s skin with little hints of blue, and red, and green, and yellow. The lights glint in his hair and on the line of his freckled shoulder. They dance over some of the freckles on his face, and Nate can’t quite stop himself from kissing his favorite little cluster of them, right along the scar on Danny’s left cheek.

I could never deserve this.

I never wanted it like this.

I want you so badly it hurts.

I’ll hate myself tomorrow, if you’ll let me - but I don’t think you will.

“Merry Christmas,” Danny says, with an odd, lopsided, goofy little smile.

Nate shakes off the icy blue eyes that watch them from the couch, and lowers his head to kiss Danny again. “Merry Ch-Christmas.”