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That night, Dylan is warm and tight and moves in just the right ways to make Cory, sprawled out on top of him, inhaling sharply at every turn, fall in love with him over and over again.
/
“It’s fucking freezing in this kitchen,” Dylan says the next morning, seated at the kitchen table and munching on more marshmallows than cereal.
“Maybe if you would walk around the house in more than your boxers,” Cory counters, leaving the rest of his statement unsaid as he shuffles around the kitchen, filling his own bowl of cereal.
“I’d what? Give you less of a hard-on? I’d still be fucking freezing.”
“We live in Vancouver,” Cory points out, circling round the table to sit next to Dylan, setting his bowl down, and leaning into the back of the chair, hands brushing Dylan’s shoulders.
“It’s late July, Cory. Vancouver has nothing to do with it. It feels like we’re having breakfast in fucking Poland. Thanks, air conditioning.”
“The air conditioning is on because it’s July. Don’t be such a baby,” and then he’s seated in the chair next to Dylan, face close. “Kiss me?”
Dylan obliges, left hand dropping from the table to run itself along Cory’s leg. The kiss is sweet to Cory because Dylan is naturally sweet, but today he tastes like milk and shooting star marshmallows, so Cory leans into more; wants it worse.
They break apart because Dylan starts smiling too much into the kiss and can’t hold it anymore. “Sure, sure, call me a baby when you’re the one desperate for my attention.”
Cory scoffs. “You are the baby, though. You taste like sugar and whatever else we’d eat when we were six years old.”
“You only say that because you’re practically old enough to be my dad,” Dylan responds, sticking his tongue out, knowing that it proves Cory’s point but not really caring.
“I don’t think your dad is only nine years older than you.” If Cory’s cereal had personality, it would be offended at how long it’s been ignored. Dylan keeps slurping at the milk in his bowl despite Cory constantly inching closer to him.
“Ten years.”
“Not fair. I turned 31 two months ago and you turn 22 in one. It’s practically nine.”
“Defending yourself about your age just makes you seem old,” Dylan taunts, putting down his bowl in order to free his hands as he leans into Cory’s side, simultaneously craning his neck into Cory’s. “But it’s charming.”
Cory knows he won’t win this battle, so he loops Dylan’s hand in his and they stare out the kitchen window at the sun’s ceaseless light.
/
“Hey,” Cory says, looking up from his seat on the couch as Dylan waltzes past, seemingly with the intent of leaving the house, later that evening. “Where you off too?”
“I’m going out, dad,” Dylan smiles back, winking at Cory in a way that brings a flush to his face.
“Out where?” He doesn’t mean to seem over-protective, just curious.
“Out with friends, nothing big,” is the simple response.
“Oh,” Cory’s face falls slightly. “Am I not invited?”
“You wouldn’t like it, I promise.”
“I mean, I guess you would know if I would or not,” Cory admits, though his smile doesn’t really return, even half-heartedly. “But I would try to. You know, for you.”
“We live together, Cory. We’re not married,” Dylan says, smiles, and outside there’s a car horn. “That’s my ride.”
He makes to leave, but Cory has more words in his head than his mouth can hold. “Hey, Dylan, wait. I mean, please, just a moment. If you can.”
Dylan does.
“What are we? I know we’re not married, obviously. But… but we do live together. Are we dating now? Is it something we’re going to, well, show the paparazzi?”
Dylan smiles one of his usual smiles. “We’re whatever you want us to be, Cory.”
“That’s not it, though,” he says. “I mean… if I did want to marry you. You know. Some day. Are we… at that point?”
Dylan doesn’t say anything but Cory can hear the way his breath catches in his throat and can’t tell if it’s a good or bad sign.
“I was thinking of adopting a dog,” Cory brings up, hoping to get a response out of Dylan. “Maybe a wolfhound. For you, you know?”
The sound that comes from Dylan’s throat is a massive gulp and then an “I really should go,” and the door slams closed in almost the same sound wave.
Cory sinks lower into the couch.
/
“You don’t seem very psyched,” someone says into the corner of Dylan’s ear, everyone crushed together in the line. “Isn’t this something you’ve been waiting for?”
“Yeah, of course,” Dylan says, shrugging.
“Problems at home? With Cory?”
Dylan turns his head away from the question, body language making the decision not to answer for him.
“Come on. It doesn’t matter right now. We’re gonna have a blast at the concert and then make extensive use of your fame and these backstage passes. Sound good?”
“Fantastic,” comes across just as Dylan meant it too—a bit dry.
He’s preoccupied with thoughts of Cory when a giant flash from his left snaps him back into focus. A group of high school age girls are leaping into the air, screaming something about One Direction while a camera continues to go off and off and off.
/
He gets the uncomfortable tingle that makes him shift in his seat sometime between Kiss You and Truly Madly Deeply, but the actual boner doesn’t come to fruition until Rock Me’s almost over. It’s awkward for him at first, because throughout most of the concert all he’s been doing is thinking of Cory. Cory naked in the bedroom; Cory on top of him, hearts almost visible in his eyes; Cory sagging into the couch; Cory pressed into his side, Cory’s touch. Watching Canucks games here in this damn stadium with Cory. It stresses him out.
Some people sitting near him and his friends recognize him, which just stresses him out more. Thankfully, most of the people at the concert are more excited to be in the presence of Niall or Zayn or—just—whoever, doesn’t matter, rather than him. He doesn’t want to be asked about Cory (which he knows he might be, considering the paparazzi have photographed the two of them together a few times. It’s making its way into the big magazines now—stupid headlines like Glee ’N’ Wolf or Teen Glee, so dumb).
He thinks focusing more on the concert will take his mind off of Cory (and hopefully reduce his boner) but when he starts paying attention again in the middle of a song he hasn’t been listening to, all he sees are the five guys grinding against each other. His pants throb slightly. Dylan groans.
/
“Yeah, we’re here to meet One Direction backstage,” Dylan says half-heartedly, holding up his pass as he stands in front of a lumbering security guard, friends gathered closely behind him.
The guard is silent for a moment, examining the pass, eyes shifting between it and Dylan. “Aren’t you on that—”
“Teen Wolf, yeah.”
“My daughter watches that. Your character’s name is Sterek or something right? That’s all I ever hear her talk about.”
Dylan sighs. “No, I’m Stiles. Sterek is the name people use to describe a relationship between my character and another on the show. Don’t worry about it, and don’t ask your daughter.”
“Fair enough. I’m sure you know the rules of meeting celebrities. Go on ahead.”
/
Someone’s asking Zayn about his smoking habits when Dylan decides he’s had enough and leaves the arena’s backstage to sit by himself with all the props. It takes a few moments for his head to clear, but when it does all he wants to do is talk to Cory.
A text seems reasonable at first, but Dylan doesn’t want to try and talk to Cory about the… question-thing that happened back at home over text. And he couldn’t just text him and pretend it didn’t happen. So he should call him, right? It made sense, but Dylan was also worried about getting caught up in an important phone call when his friends would probably be looking for him soon if they bothered to notice he had walked off.
A few seconds later, however, it is not his friends but Liam Payne who appears. Groaning inwardly, Dylan puts his phone away. Liam spots him and make his way over, half-smiling.
“Guess your friends don’t like me as much as some of our other fans.”
Dylan doesn’t say much, just nods a hello when Liam sits down next to him.
“You are Dylan O’Brien, aren’t you?”
“Sure. And you’re Liam Payne. Isn’t being a recognized celebrity fun?”
Liam frowns. “What’s got you all hot and bothered?”
A sigh manages to make its way out of Dylan’s mouth. “Nothing, don’t worry about it. That was a cool concert; I’m glad I could make it.”
Liam’s smile appears again. “You know what’d be even better? If you could make it to the after-party.”
Dylan’s about to refuse—less than a nanosecond away from doing it—when he feels his phone in his pocket and realizes that going to the after-party means putting off talking to Cory about the thing, maybe even until tomorrow. He just wants the time to think, that’s all. He promises that to himself.
“Yeah, that’d be cool.”
/
It takes less than a minute for the music to start as soon as the boys of One Direction and Dylan arrive at their designated after-party location, a crowd of insiders and VIP guests already there.
It takes less than two minutes for Dylan’s friends to ditch him for the party scene, and about the same amount of time for the One Direction boys, sans Liam, to move deeper into the throng of people as well.
It takes less than five minutes into the party for Liam to have Dylan up against a wall, hands exploring places on each other’s bodies, Dylan in a state of semi-shock and wondering how they got to this point.
Liam’s hand is on his crotch for less than a second before Dylan starts grinding into it, the heat of the party around him clouding his better judgment.
It takes less than ten minutes for Liam to whisper “Let’s go to your place” into Dylan’s ear, and even though the limo drives them almost thirty minutes down the freeway to where Dylan and Cory live, he doesn’t stop to think at all about what the consequences of showing up at his house with Liam will be.
/
Cory opens the door before Dylan can even bother with his keys, Liam behaving himself rather well as Dylan warned him that he had a roommate. The look Cory gives the two of them is one of utter confusion, but not paranoia. Dylan’s allowed to have friends, Cory wants him in no way to think that he might try and infringe upon his social life. So he lets them in, the three of them then standing in the middle of the living room.
“You’re that guy from One Direction,” Cory says, eyes darting between Liam and Dylan.
“And you’re Finn Hudson.”
“Cory,” he corrects.
“Liam.”
They shake hands, Cory’s grip surprisingly feeble for his size because he focuses more on how nervous Dylan looks than the handshake.
“Liam’s going to stay the night, is that okay? I was gonna show him some of the stuff from the set.”
Cory blinks a couple of times. “Yeah. Uh, yeah. That’s fine. You know where the guest room is, he can crash there.”
There’s a silence between the three of them while Cory decides if he wants to say anything else.
“Have fun. I’ll be—you know where I’ll be, Dylan.”
To Liam it sounds like an invitation to “come and get me if you need me,” but Dylan knows it’s more of an expectation that he’d still be sleeping next to him that night, regardless of what happened before he went out.
/
It’s not until one in the morning, after an hour of foreplay, as Liam is tearing open a condom wrapper and readying it over his cock, that Dylan gets terrors of anyone except Cory being inside of him. He reaches up to pull Liam down to him and breathily whispers in his ear. “No, wait. I’ve got to top.”
Liam just shrugs and hands the condom over.
/
The noise of bedsprings and moans stops well before four in the morning, but it takes until then for Cory to fall asleep, bed sheets disgustingly empty without Dylan in them. For the past three hours, all he’s been able to think about is how apparently “We’re whatever you want us to be” works both ways.
/
It’s like the Cold War Redux at breakfast the next morning. Cory spends most of the time flipping his gaze between Dylan and Liam while making robotic efforts to eat his cereal, but even the fresh milk tastes sour in his mouth. He runs about a thousand scenarios through his head, including the possibility that Dylan might have forgotten that, of course, he can sing and has been on tour too, just in case Dylan’s brain wasn’t capable of separating Cory Monteith from Finn Hudson.
But he knows that’s not the case—he knows, and knows because it’s the reason that hurts the most, that Dylan brought Liam home last night because Cory had scared him with his stupid talk of adopting a dog and wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone. Of course Dylan doesn’t want that. He’s too young to want it yet.
They were talking about age just yesterday. He’s barely liquor legal in America; Cory hasn’t had that problem in over a decade. Of course Dylan would want to have someone more his age (not that Cory actually knows how old Liam Payne is, but he has to wager that he might still be a teenager). But Dylan was still here, at least. He hadn’t run off into the streets, demanding that someone take him away from the guy at whom he keeps making snide remarks about being his dad. That counted for something, but maybe not much.
“I didn’t know you two knew each other so well,” Liam says suddenly, as if words would break the tension at the table instead of compounding it.
“Funny, I could say the same about you two.”
Dylan subtly gives Cory an exasperated look that makes him want to take back every word he’s ever spoken, but Liam doesn’t even seemed fazed by the comment. “Don’t read American or Canadian tabloids much. Not really my thing.”
Cory only bites back the bitter “Reading isn’t your thing?” comment he was forming in his head because Dylan hasn’t let his eyes leave Cory’s face since they sat down at breakfast. Telepathic signals weren’t exactly being sent, but Cory appreciates Dylan’s dedication to trying for them.
He stirs the milk-cereal combination in his bowl a few more times before looking out the window. “The limo outside has been parked there for over an hour, Liam. Don’t you think you should, uh, let them know what your plans are?”
“Oh, they know what we’re up to,” Liam says, and if Dylan has any sense of perception whatsoever he notices Cory wince when Liam says “we.”
“Oh. Cool,” Cory manages to say, visibly struggling to even pretend to smile. “What, uh, what are you doing then?” He doesn’t know if he really wanted to ask that, but it was going to make him throw up if he didn’t.
“Liam promised he would show me around the tour bus and stuff, maybe see the other guys,” Dylan explains before Liam can even open his mouth, knowing that Cory trusts his word more than he’d ever trust Liam’s.
And Cory does, but not without the internal terror that seeps into his bloodstream and races around his entire body in a microsecond before ending up in his heart. “Are all of them gonna fuck you too?”
Liam seems to choke slightly on his breakfast. Dylan’s expression doesn’t change, nor do his eyes leave Cory’s face, but Cory immediately closes his mouth and shuffles in his seat for a moment before standing up and leaving the room, the sound of a door closing awkwardly somewhere in the background.
“He doesn’t know you topped, does he?” Liam says with a small laugh, but Dylan doesn’t find it funny at all.
/
Cory doesn’t leave the room until over an hour after he hears the limo drive away.
The three bowls have all been cleared away, and on the kitchen table there’s a note. It just says (“I’ll be home tonight. Promise. –D”) but it still hurts Cory to even look at it.
He trusts Dylan. He’s always trusted Dylan. If Dylan promises to be home tonight then Cory should expect him home tonight, no questions asked. But he can’t look at the note without shaking underneath.
Because what if this time it’s not true?
/
Dylan spends the whole limo drive on the verge of throwing up out the window. When Liam scoots closer, grabs his hand, and leans his body into Dylan’s, he very nearly tries to stick his fingers in his mouth to activate his gag reflex. But then he remembers that it’s been a while since he’s really had a gag reflex to activate, which sends him into a darker mood than before.
“What’re you thinking about?” Liam asks, squeezing Dylan’s hand in a way that is so unlike the way Cory squeezes his hand that Dylan shudders at the wrongness of it all. “You weren’t this quiet last night.”
“Cory,” is pretty much all Liam’s going to get from Dylan.
Liam nods as if he understands the entire situation. “Yeah, your roommate was kind of a dick at breakfast. No harm done though.”
Dylan tenses up, tears his hand away from Liam’s before he digs his nails into the other boy. “That’s not what I was thinking about.”
“What, then?” Liam asks, genuinely confused in the way that only an outsider could be.
“Cory and I are together, Liam.”
Liam seems puzzled; let’s the words sink in for a few moments. “Uh, yeah. I know that you two live together. I don’t think it’s that weird, I mean I practically live with the other guys in the band.”
“Are you fucking any of them?” Dylan asks, turning to face Liam for the first time since they got in the car.
“Of course not. The other guys aren’t like us.”
Dylan sighs. “There is no us, Liam. I’m with Cory in the way you seem to think I want to be with you.”
Liam purses his lips together. “Right. Why did we… last night, then—I don’t get it. Why did we have sex if you’re dating Cory?”
“Because I was afraid of commitment—I was afraid I wasn’t mature enough to commit myself to him. Because he wants to commit himself to me and I didn’t know that I was ready for that,” Dylan’s breathing grows slightly erratic for a moment, fighting for breath over tears. “But now, after last night, the only thing I’m afraid of is that it’s never going to feel the same way with anyone but Cory. God, that’s going to scare me for the rest of my life. I think I’ve finally realized that I’m terrified to lose him, just like he must be terrified that he’s lost me. To you. God, I can’t be here.”
“You can’t just jump out of the car, Dylan,” Liam says as the scenery in the background rolls on by.
“I know. I don’t have a way home. Look, let’s do this tour, okay? But then I want to go back home. No messing around and stuff.”
“Sure,” Liam says, glint in one eye.
/
Dylan starts walking home, not caring how long it may take, the moment Liam asks if he wants a blowjob in the tour bus as a memento.
/
Cory snaps the phone up and accepts the call in less than a second, having left it resting next to him on the couch just in case. “Dylan, I need to apologize.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Dylan shoots back, almost laughing into the phone when he hears Cory’s voice. “That one’s all on me.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Cory,” Dylan interrupts. “If you apologize I’m just going to feel even worse. I need to be picked up. Do you think you can be here?”
“I can be anywhere,” comes out of Cory’s mouth so quickly that he swells up with emotion, breathing out a cloud of anxiety. “Especially if you’re there. Where are you?”
“I’m at the Cineplex near the arena. It’s taken me like ten minutes just to make my way here so walking the rest of the way home would mean breaking my promise that I’d be home tonight.”
Cory’s breath catches in his throat slightly, the way Dylan’s had the night before. “Yeah. I’ll be there soon, okay? What—uh, what went wrong with the tour?”
“Liam’s not you, for starters,” is all Dylan has to say before Cory mutters a fast goodbye and tries to leap out of the house to his car in order to make it to the Cineplex as fast as humanly possible.
/
“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot,” is the first thing Cory says when Dylan gets into the car. “With the marriage-future-let’s adopt a dog thing. It just came out. I wasn’t thinking.”
“We should get a dog, though,” Dylan says, shrugging. He buckles his seat belt and moves his left hand to the middle of the front seat, where Cory can hold it in his right.
Cory’s silent for a moment before he takes Dylan’s hand in his. “Do you really want to?”
Dylan looks at Cory as the car begins to move. “I feel like you’re asking me a different question than ‘do you really want to adopt a dog.’”
Dylan takes note of Cory’s Adam’s apple as he swallows a lump in his throat. “Do you really want to be with me? Am I better than the experiences you could have without me, while you’re still, you know, in your twenties?” There’s a pause. “Is it the right thing for you to do?”
Dylan smiles. Cory sees it out of the corner of his eye and squeezes his hand, Dylan taking a moment to revel in how right that hand squeeze felt.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dylan says after a moment. “I’d rather spend every morning for the rest of my life eating cereal, in my boxers, with you, in our cold-as-fucking-Poland kitchen, than wonder if I’m making a mistake. I know I can’t be. You love me far too much for this to be a mistake. I love you far too much for this to be a mistake.”
Cory feels flush in the face.
/
That night, Cory is hot and passionate and moves in just the right ways to make Dylan, spread underneath him, inhaling sharply at every turn, fall in love with him as many times as he could ever wish to.