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While their relationship is still new and while it's only been a few weeks, Marcus thinks he can rather safely say he and Dan have already reached a point where plans tend to be assumed more often than not. It's not that he's not still trying to make dates with a particular purpose, because he very much is, liking how it feels to drive to Dan's and pick him up for dinner or for a movie or even just for a walk along the beach holding hands. But there are days, too, when Dan calls just as Marcus is thinking about him and they end up spending an afternoon together or going for coffee before Marcus has a shift at the Home.

He enjoys that time together just as much as he does the official dates.

This evening he's alone, Sabrina having gone to Charlie's, Trass having disappeared out into the trees. Some nights he doesn't come back at all, but Marcus is used to his comings and goings now, and it's hard to truly worry about a wolf of his size. It used to be that being alone in the house made him feel lonely, but no longer. His people will come back and if it really gets to him, there are others he can call.

Like Dan.

He's in the living room sketching when the call comes and Marcus grins before he answers his phone, already knowing who's going to be on the other end. Sure enough, within a few minutes he's tossing down the sketchbook on the coffee table, leaving it open without even looking at it, then grabbing the keys to his truck so he can pick Dan up at the last train stop.

By the time they're back at the house, Marcus is trying to convince Dan to give Space Hospital a try, laughingly attempting to explain some of the more ridiculous plot lines as he unlocks the front door to let them inside.

"It's really not that absurd," he says. "When you've seen demons and ghosts and goblins, is it that farfetched to think of aliens?"

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Dan leans against the other side of the door frame, smiling warmly. "Oh, I've seen things you wouldn't believe," he teases gently. "But glittering C-beams aside, and without getting into the truly disturbing real form of Rose the Hat, I'd have to admit that I am only on board if the aliens aren't the ones with the big heads and bug eyes." The allusion to Rose shouldn't be completely unknown, though he doesn't think he's probably spent at much time as would be necessary to know the horror of that single tooth.

He's not used to this, having someone-- and with Marcus, having someone turns into having someones plural, because Marcus has a kid and friends and he's pretty sure said kid has a couple of boyfriends and a pet goblin that's been taking bets on all of it. He used to clock into work, do a shift as Dan the hospice worker, and then clock out, to do a shift as Dan the person, and sometimes the second felt like just as much of a slog.

There's no slog here. He's already thinking about getting inside and getting his hands on Marcus.

"It's a soap opera," Marcus answers, grinning as he gets the door open and then steps inside, holding the door for Dan to follow him. "Most of the aliens look exactly like we do, only they're green or purple or they have antennae. They still have to be attractive or the romance aspect of the show might lose a few people."

Eventually, Marcus does want to hear more about this woman, this Rose the Hat, but given the rather light feeling of their conversation, he's not sure this is quite the time for it. They're both clearly feeling good and Marcus wants to keep that going through whatever else they end up doing this evening. He doesn't want to press Dan either. These details will come out when he's ready to talk about them.

"Interested in a cup of tea?" he asks as he sheds his boots by the door and walks deeper into the house, expecting Dan will follow. He'd lived here for a time, after all, and the place feels more comfortable with Dan in it. Like it's meant to be, with multiple people rather than just one solitary person roaming the halls.

"It's a very... humanoid... standard of beauty, I suppose," Dan says, "Not that I've had a lot of experience with anything else." He's amused at the thought, laughing softly as he trails after Marcus. It feels better to be here too, the memory of being held in that large, warm bed currently tucked away in either his brain or his heart as about as perfect a moment as he's known. When it comes to sleeping, anyway, he supposes.

"Interested in a lot of things," he says easily, not hiding the way his eyes sweep over Marcus before he grins and finds his way to the couch. "I suppose I should be respectable and take tea, though."

"It is," he agrees as he moves toward the kitchen. "But I imagine it's what sells. Or gets ratings, in their case."

Marcus grins at Dan's comment, glancing back over his shoulder at him as he puts on the kettle. The kitchen and living room are open to each other and he can see Dan easily as he settles on the couch, can see his sketchbook open on the coffee table just beyond him, but he doesn't think anything of it. The last thing he had been drawing was Trass and Salem, not exactly something to want to hide from anyone. He doesn't realize when he'd tossed it down earlier, it had fallen open to a sketch of Dan. A sketch of Dan sleeping in Marcus's bed, clearly drawn at some point during the freak snowstorm.

"We can have tea and still not be respectable," he teases, getting mugs out of the cupboard, getting down his collection of tea. He loves the way Dan looks at him. It warms him from the inside out, wakes up bits of his heart he'd thought had gone cold.

"Then I'm all for it," Dan says, smiling crookedly. He wants very much to be more than respectable tonight.

He's distracted, however, by the sketchbook on the table, and while he wouldn't open it up and page through it-- it's there already. Listening to Marcus rattle around in the kitchen, a familiar and happy sound, Dan leans in to look at what's on the page.

It's him.

Dan recognizes himself and the bed, and it's not difficult to guess that it had been drawn while they were snowed into the house. He wonders, then, if his own obliviousness had been difficult for Marcus; his cheeks heat up as he really combs back through the events of that first night. All he'd wanted was Marcus's touch, the warmth and safety and the bit of a thrill that Dan realizes now to be attraction.

He touches the paper gently, with one fingertip, and he can almost feel it again, that same mixture of feelings.

It's a few minutes before Marcus heads back into the living room, two steaming mugs of tea held in his hands and as he approaches Dan and the coffee table to set them down, he glances at the sketchbook and sees where it had fallen open earlier. It's not a drawing of Trass or Salem, but one of Dan, looking peaceful and young with his eyes closed and the lines smoothed from between his brows.

"Well," he says with a soft, self conscious laugh, then sets the mugs down. "I'm sorry. I hadn't intended on you seeing that."

Some people don't like to be drawn. Most don't like to be drawn without permission being given and Marcus thinks they're probably something especially violating about seeing a sketch of yourself while you were asleep. It's almost as bad as having taken a picture and he immediately shifts from feeling embarrassed to guilty.

"I wasn't sleeping well," he tries to explain. "I was worrying about Sabrina and drawing helps relax me. I didn't mean..." But no, that isn't right, because he had meant to draw Dan. He'd done it more than once, over multiple nights.

Dan looks up at him, and there's nothing in his expression that would suggest he's upset or unhappy about what he's seen, though he feels a twinge at how Marcus is taking this. "It's okay," he says, and then holds out his hand. "Don't-- just come here, okay? It doesn't bother me. Those nights, they meant a lot to me. I like seeing that they really meant something to do too."

He likes seeing how much he means to Marcus, likes to feel it coming off the page.

"If anything," he says, smiling, reeling Marcus in if he's able, "I think you made me a little too good-looking."

Marcus doesn't hesitate to take Dan's hand, sinking onto the couch beside him, but he's still a little cautious. Not because he thinks Dan would lie to him about this -- he feels like Dan wouldn't be very good at lying to him -- but because he's still new to all this. Even having had a relationship before, he knows this is different. He can't treat Dan the way he had Matthias and Dutch, simply because Dan is a different person.

"Not possible," he answers with a small smile, looking at the sketchbook for a moment before he reaches out to pick it up. Flipping back a few pages, past some sketches of the snow covered landscape around the house and one of the woods where his mother used to take him for walks sometimes, and finds another one of Dan. Not sleeping this time, instead sitting at the kitchen table, bent over a book on the table.

"This was the second or third day you were here," he says, handing the book to Dan.

Dan's not a great liar in general, but the thing about being with Marcus is that he can't think of a situation in which he'd need that skill-- at least for anything between them. With others, he's able to pick a bit here and there with the shining that to get a foot in the door.

He grins, biting down on his lip at the compliment, and when he takes the sketchbook, he leans into Marcus's side, a reassuring weight to make sure Marcus knows he's not going anywhere.

"You know," he says thoughtfully, after a quiet few seconds, "this guy you've been drawing. I think you might have a crush on him." He leans up to kiss the corner of Marcus's mouth. "It really doesn't bother me. I like it. I'd be happy to pose for something a little more intimate, if you wanted."

He's not entirely able to be smooth with the suggestion, turning pink despite himself.

"I just might," Marcus agrees with a soft laugh and a little shiver of pleasure at realizing Dan's got it right on the nose. Nearly since the very first day they'd met, he's been nursing a crush, one he thought utterly pointless until the evening of the Pride celebration, and he supposes he's still adjusting to the discovery that it hasn't been pointless at all. That Dan is here, Dan wants to be with him, too, that Dan finds him just as attractive.

He feels a little silly for having made tea at all, especially when they've gotten themselves immediately distracted, but at the soft kiss and the comment, Marcus is turning on the couch to better face Dan, his smile growing. Even now, he doesn't want to get ahead of himself. He only knows Dan's words have caused a heart pounding kind of happiness and the pink of his cheeks drives home what he's saying.

"I'll have to put that in a different book," he says, his hand curling over Dan's knee. "One just for me."

Edited 2019-07-29 17:05 (UTC)

Dan hears himself groan before he realizes it's going to happen, and the tips of his ears get pink. "That is," he says, realizing he should share this thought, "maybe the sexiest thing I've heard in my life. You can have-- yeah." He runs his fingertips along Marcus's collarbone. "Just for you," he repeats softly.

He's been feeling like a horny teenager since the first kiss, and probably before that too-- or so he thinks, anyway, allowing that he hadn't been like this as an actual teenager whether it was because he wasn't safe to feel or whether girls weren't doing it for him. It's incredibly different now, and when he has an idea, he acts.

Carefully making sure tea and the sketchbook are safe where they're set aside, he rises and shifts just enough to move into Marcus's lap, a knee on each side of him. "I want," he starts, but instead of finishing the sentence, he takes Marcus's face in both hands and kisses him with intent, with need.

Anything Dan wants, Marcus realizes, he can have.

That doesn't just apply to this, to the kisses they're sharing, or the physical aspect of the relationship they're cultivating, but anything. He can feel it happening already, that dangerous thing he'd refused to allow himself for so long with Dutch and Matthias, and he regrets all over again the distance he had kept between himself and them. Matthias in particular. A man like him deserved better and Marcus couldn't give it to him, but he can learn from that. He won't make that same mistake twice. If one of them disappears from Darrow, he's not going to regret any of the things he didn't do.

His hands settle on Dan's thighs, then slide up toward his hips, leaning back on the couch and pressing deeply into the kiss. Dan's mouth tastes faintly of coffee and of something else, something distinctly Dan that Marcus has already come to find himself craving.

"Whatever you want," he mumbles after a moment of kissing. "Anything."

Already, Dan is more emotionally invested in his relationship with Marcus than any other romantic relationship he's had; if a casual girlfriend had said something like this to him, with Dan able to feel the truth in it, he would have ended it immediately.

Now he only wants to press deeper into what he's feeling, what Marcus offers. He doesn't need much of the shine to understand how singular this is for the other man, too.

Not that Marcus is making it easy to Dan to think abut what he wants. Hands on his thighs, on his hips, and Dan wants hands everywhere. He wants to make out here on the sofa, he wants to be taken to bed. "I'm pretty sure," he whispers back, "that I'm going to want it all. Whatever you want to give me. Call it a hunch."

His hands go down to the hem of his t-shirt. "I really want you to touch me."

Dan's words shiver down Marcus's spine, tingling through his body and triggering his nerves a little. It reminds him that this is all new for Dan and while he's the one who'd slid into Marcus's lap without the slightest hesitation, he's still going to be experiencing much of this for the first time. It's a thing that's both daunting and exhilarating.

God, but he's glad Sabrina is out for the night. And that Salem had gone with her.

"Here," he murmurs, reaching to help Dan with his shirt, pushing up the soft material and sliding his hands over the warm skin covering Dan's ribs. He's thin, much like Marcus is, with wiry muscles, a dusting of hair, and another shiver races through Marcus. He doesn't want to think ahead too much, he just wants to be here in this moment and enjoy whatever Dan wants. "Take it off."

The cool air rushes along his skin as the fabric peels away, and Dan smiles at the feelings he can feel in both of them, sensation and thoughts racing on parallel tracks. He tosses his shirt away, and leans back down for a kiss, pulling Marcus's hands to his ribs.

"Touch me," he breathes against Marcus's mouth. "Feels like I've been waiting forever." It's less a comment on how they've been doing things, and more an expression of how much he wants more, how much he likes being able to ask so freely.

Dan resumes kissing him, slow and with a dirty edge to it, his tongue licking at the seam of Marcus's lips, and then back into his mouth.

It's not a request Dan's going to have to make more than once and Marcus's hands slide over Dan's ribs, then around over his shoulder blades and back down again. The muscles in his back are strong under Marcus's hands and he moans softly into the kiss as his fingers continue their slow exploration of Dan's body. They knead his lower back gently for a moment, then trail higher, back up Dan's ribs, up his chest as his palms flatten out against his skin. His thumbs curiously sweep over Dan's nipples, testing how he might feel about that.

This isn't where things are going to end tonight. There's already a desperate edge to their kissing that's impossible to ignore, but Marcus is determined to take his time and enjoy this.

For maybe the first time in his life, he's the more experienced person in the situation. He wants nothing more than to make every second of this enjoyable for Dan. He wants to give him everything.

Heat burns through him everywhere Marcus touches him, all of his nerves waking up, singing with the touch. Everything around them is quiet, and Dan exists in the world that is their bodies and the sound of their breathing, of mouths wet against each other, again and again. Marcus thumbs his nipples, and he's genuinely surprised to feel his dick twitch in his jeans, where it's already getting hard. He thinks about Marcus's mouth there, and makes a needy sound in the back of his throat.

He's spent so long carefully building walls and defenses against the outside world, and now they're all on fire, burning up faster than he could have imagined-- and all he feels is glad.

Dan's not even sure what to ask for next, so he continues to put himself in Marcus's hands, moaning into his mouth and wriggling his hips.

It's too much for Marcus to focus on at once, the sounds Dan is making and the way his hips are moving and the feel of his warm skin and shifting muscles under his hands. Before this evening, he's been trying to control himself with Dan, not for lack of want, but to respect any hesitations he might have, and in this moment he knows he's been, as always, a damn fool. There is no hesitation in Dan's movements or his kisses and so Marcus slips his hands low across Dan's back again, then around the curve of his incredible ass, pulling their bodies flush together.

Marcus is already hard, he suspects it happened right around the time Dan climbed into his lap, and he presses his hips up a little seeking a bit of friction.

It takes some doing, but Marcus manages to pull back from Dan's mouth, though he doesn't go far. He presses warm kisses to the edge of Dan's jaw, then the column of his throat, his stubble rough against Marcus's lips. Then he's kissing down toward the beautiful line of Dan's collarbone, the gentle hollow the bones make where they meet the muscles of his shoulder.

"I could do this forever," he mumbles against Dan's skin.

Dan's already feeling so good, and when he registers the double whammy of Marcus's hands on his ass, Marcus's hands on his ass pulling him closer, he makes the sort of whining sound he'd have never believed himself capable of before this. He can feel the outline of Marcus's erection and it's got him hard too, grinding shamelessly because it's just so fucking good.

With that hot, sweet mouth wandering down his neck, over his bare skin, Dan just abandons himself to anything and everything, gasps and tiny groan as Marcus lights him up everywhere.

"I'd let you do it forever," Dan breathes, "except I--" He licks his lips. "I'm going to need you to fuck me at some point. Other things too, but I just--"

I want to be yours.

Somehow, even in this moment, with Dan half naked and in his lap, Marcus isn't expecting those words, and a throaty groan spills out of him. He very much wants that, wants to take Dan into his bed again, with very different intentions this time. He feels shaky with adrenaline, excited and nervous, and so terribly aroused like he's not sure he's felt in a very long time. This is what Dan does to him.

"We should move," he murmurs. "I'm not expecting Sabrina back any time soon, but I don't want to have to worry about being caught out here." He doesn't want anything to disrupt this time between them, he wants to be entirely focused on Dan.

With another playful squeeze of Dan's ass, Marcus arches his hips again and grins suggestively. "Shall we?"

Even though Dan can confirm in so many ways how much Marcus wants him, he doesn't think he'll get tired of finding it out in some new way, and that groan would have him weak in the knees if he were standing. He's never been one to say things like this, either, but there's something enormously freeing in it too.

Dan grins down at Marcus, pushing into his hands, his hips. "Yeah. Take me to bed?"

It's been such a long time coming. He climbs off Marcus's lap, making no effort to hide how hard he is, and holds out a hand.

The request settles in Marcus's chest, warm and arousing, and he takes the hand Dan is offering him and gets to his feet. The bedroom is just down the hall and by now Dan knows the way, so Marcus steps into his space again, pressing their bodies close together, taking another long, deep kiss. At the same time, he nudges Dan backward toward the hall, maneuvering them around the furniture in their way, taking care not to walk into anything and ruin the moment.

The bedroom is better like this, still lit with the late evening sun setting over the trees behind the house, the yard beyond the windows lush and green before the forest begins. Marcus prefers this to the view they had before, the only view Dan has seen out the large windows until now and although he knows neither of them are going to be looking at the view for the next little while, it's nice to know what will be there when they wake up tomorrow morning.

Closing the door behind them, Marcus pauses to begin unbuttoning his shirt, his fingers shaking only a little and he laughs as he misses a button. "Help?" he asks, grinning at Dan again. He feels like he's never going to stop smiling.

Dan does know the way, he realizes with a little grin, tucking his own hands into Marcus's back pockets. He's able to avoid the furniture with preternatural ease, of course, and he only pulls his mouth away from Marcus's in order to properly take in the room this way. Had he known?

He dislikes it when the shine plays to hindsight, but he loves the room this way too, sparing a glance to the greenery in all its hues under the sinking sun.

could be home

He turns to see one of the very best problems he's ever had the pleasure of solving; his fingers are a bit more stable, so that it doesn't take long at all to get those buttons undone.

Marcus is shrugging his shirt off moments later, then pulling up the tank top he had been wearing under it so he can drop it on the floor and return to Dan with everything. With his hands, with another kiss, with his entire body, and he shivers at the press of chest to chest, Dan's skin warm against his.

Had he wanted this from the day they'd met? He can't be entirely sure, but he knows he's wanted this for almost the entire time they've known each other. The months without hadn't been difficult, Marcus had truly been happy with the friendship, but this is so much better. This is everything.

Kissing Dan, licking at the seam of his lips, tasting him, Marcus guides him back toward the bed. He wants to undress Dan, touch him, see him, and the bed is by far the best place for it, spacious and comfortable, and no longer quite so empty.

This should maybe be a part, Dan's aware, that gives him some sort of huh, I'm really doing this with another man-- but all he can really think about is how much he likes Marcus's wiry frame and lean muscle, his arms. He groans outright as he feels the warm press of skin on skin.

He's easily moved back toward the bed, grinning like an idiot into the kiss, opening his mouth for Marcus, meeting his tongue eagerly. When the backs of his thighs hit the edge of the bed, he lets himself fall backward, pulls Marcus forward, on top of him. He wants to feel the weight of him there, above him-- and, he realizes with a hot throb of his cock, between his thighs.