Work Text:
The man sitting on his steps looks dangerous.
He is smoking a cigarette, and Adam watches the smoke unfurl from his mouth in a whispering curve. His tongue curls on the exhale and he licks at his top lip before taking another harsh drag. Strangely, this man makes smoking look beautiful.
Adam pushes the thought away, burrows his neck further into the plush warmth of his scarf and stares straight ahead, taking quick steps as he ascends towards the front door.
“Hey, kid–”
Adam climbs past him, ignoring the unfamiliar man who keeps trying to get his attention.
A hand catches fast around his ankle and Adam yelps in surprise, arms flailing as he feels his balance give out. He pitches forward and catches his momentum, smacking his palm against the stone terrace and scraping the skin. Hot tears stick behind his eyelids, a mingling of embarrassment and pain.
“Fuck. Sorry,” the man mumbles around his smoke, “just trying to get your attention.”
He shifts his weight to crouch into a stand, reaching a hand to help Adam to his feet.
“You alright?”
“No,” Adam clips, allowing the man to help him up.
The man takes Adam’s injured hand in his, turning it over gently. He smiles, showing hints of teeth sharp as a shark’s.
“Want me to kiss it better?”
Adam’s nostrils flare and he yanks his hand away. “No,” he says more forcefully, “I don’t want that.”
“Hey, I said I was fucking sorry, kid,” the man says, his voice a hair’s breadth gentler now.
Adam looks up then, catches the eye of his would-be attacker through a thin plume of grey. He is looking at Adam like so many do, like a delicate bird, like something far more fragile than he actually is.
“I’m not a kid,” Adam says, “and I’m going inside now.”
The man places a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“Wait,” the man says, “I lost my keys. Let me in, yeah?”
Adam narrows his eyes. “You live here?”
“I’m Nigel. Just moved in.”
“Can you prove it?”
Nigel laughs. “What are you, the fucking apartment police?”
“Of course not,” Adam scoffs, “but I’ve never seen you here before. And you just hurt me. You don’t seem very trustworthy.”
Nigel smirks, pulling another drag from his cigarette. “I’m definitely not trustworthy.” A flare of ochre sparks as he taps the ash away. “But I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
Adam looks at Nigel carefully. He seems honest, even if he admits that he can’t be trusted. But his first impressions are usually right for a reason, and this man looked dangerous before anything else. Beautiful, but dangerous.
“You should really find your keys, Nigel.”
He fumbles his keys from his pocket, moving as quick and sharp as he can to the door.
He looks over his shoulder, once, surprised to see that Nigel hasn’t tried to follow him. Instead he looks genuinely remorseful, and a little lost. Adam shakes the thought quickly away, then he is inside. The door bangs sharply behind him.
Nigel sits back heavy, throwing his weight to the stone with a great huff of a sigh. He takes a final inhale and flicks the butt down to the street, watching the last of the smoke mix crisp with the cooling air.
Above him, a light flickers in a window, and a small curious face peers out to watch him, wary but intrigued.
Caught by an invisible pull, Nigel turns over his shoulder and sees the face, eyes widening in embarrassment before the curtains switch closed.
Smirking, he pulls another smoke from the pack in his front pocket, resting it between his lips as pale blue eyes echo their imprint on his mind.
He lights, inhales sharply and tries to burn the blue away.
“Fuck.”
Behind him, he hears the creak of the door. Nigel turns, surprised to see Blue-eyes peeking out.
“You’ll have to wait in the lobby until Mrs. Schaeffer comes home. She can let you in.”
He pushes the door open wider. “My name’s Adam.” He gives Nigel the tiniest of smiles. “If we’re going to be neighbours…”
God, his eyes are like pure starlight.
“Adam,” Nigel beams, “I could kiss you.”
-x-
One Month Later
“What the fuck d'you do that for, then?”
Blush paints across Adam’s pale cheeks as he pulls away from the kiss.
“Because I wanted to,” he says matter-of-factly, but he sucks a lip between his teeth worriedly.
“I thought you wanted to,” he adds, and sits back on his heels.
Nigel props himself up further on the couch.
“Well of course I fucking wanted to, but-”
He draws up a knee between them, clenching fingers that itch for a smoke around his calf.
“You’re not queer, darling.”
He chucks Adam under the chin lightly.
“But I appreciate the gesture.”
Adam frowns, a deep pinched line between his brows.
“You like women too,” he says.
“I like both,” Nigel replies, “I like anything warm and nice and kind…. especially you, Starlight,” his voice trails off and he turns his head against his knee.
“Why can’t I like both?” Adam reasons, and scoots closer to Nigel to hook a chin over his shoulder.
Nigel keeps his head turned away, though he feels warmth crawling and spilling up his spine at the nearness of this delicate creature that has somehow snared his every waking thought.
“Look, Starlight,” he murmurs quietly, “when people say ‘I could kiss you’, it’s an expression, not a request.”
Adam mouths a tiny kiss over Nigel’s collarbone.
“I know that.”
He keeps his lips pressed against the older man.
“I also know that you meant it.”
Nigel exhales heavy, his lungs too light without nicotine to weigh them down.
“I’m older than you, you know. I’ve seen shit you wouldn’t want to visit in your worst fucking nightmares.”
He lifts his head finally, shrugging his shoulder slightly to shake Adam free.
“You’re a fucking angel, Adam. You shouldn’t be kissing bad men like me.”
“But I want to kiss you,” Adam says plainly, and his eyes are honest, open, earnest. Nigel’s heart breaks and reforms around the innocent gaze.
“Your eyes are so fucking blue,” he murmurs, raising a hand to trace a thumb along the curve of a reddened cheek.
“You want to kiss me again,” Adam observes.
Nigel shakes his head to try and dislodge the cobwebs of want that plague him with guilt.
“Of course I fucking do. That doesn’t make it fucking right.”
Adam cocks his head. “But if you’re not a good man - like you said - then you don’t care what’s right.”
He darts in, liquid quick, to line his mouth up with Nigel’s.
“I still think you’re a good man,” he says against him, “and I would like to kiss you either way.”
Nigel moans helplessly and sinks the hand on Adam’s cheek into his hair. He tugs roughly as he crushes Adam’s mouth to his.
A pleased little sound echoes from Adam’s throat, and he wraps lithe arms around Nigel’s neck. They sink down into the couch cushions, Nigel fisting a handful of his hair and yanking back to suckle at his throat. The high whimper that follows comes, to Nigel’s shock, from his own mouth.
“Fucking Christ,” Nigel gasps, “this is such a bad fucking idea.”
Adam arches against him, stealing another kiss before tracing delicate fingers down Nigel’s chest, a contented sigh shared between them.
“I don’t see how it can be,” he almost purrs, “when it feels very good.”
“God,” Nigel breathes, “so fucking good.”
He kisses Adam again, drinking in the sweetness of starlight, and curses whoever dares try and come between them.
-x-
Three Months Later
Adam is curled on his side, soft whispers of breath puffing out with the lightest clouds of condensation.
Nigel resists the urge to stroke his sleeping face. Adam is a notoriously light sleeper, and Nigel wouldn’t for the world disturb the angelic pout that graces his features as he dreams.
He hopes Adam dreams of him.
He lays his head back against the grass, feeling it bunch and tickle at his face, brushing the barest hint of dew at his neck. They’ve been out so late naming constellations that morning is fast approaching, but the sky is still clinging to the last of its inky indigo. The last of the stars are winking out one by one, but Nigel doesn’t mind. Not now that he can say goodbye to each of them by name.
He rolls to one side to better gaze at his clever partner. He is so beautiful.
Nigel loves him madly.
His chest fills to a waterlogged heaviness with the need to speak it, to tell Adam how he consumes his every waking moment without even trying, but words are sometimes harder for him to wield than weapons. For Adam, he wants to say it exactly right, so his darling will know what he means without feeling lost. Nigel often wishes he were a better anchor.
He knows Adam doesn’t love him back, he knows he couldn’t possibly, with his nicotine-stained fingers and his filthy fucking mouth. What he does know is that Adam finds an elusive calmness when Nigel is near, that the fold of his arms about him or a hand set to his brow can steer him safe to shore from panic. He knows that Adam trusts him to make his macaroni and cheese, and in a way isn’t that better than love?
Adam frowns slightly and mutters a sleepy noise, a fussy sound that squeezes air from Nigel’s lungs. He feels a drop of wet slide down his cheek and wonders when he became so sentimental.
“I fucking love you, Starlight,” he says, for himself. Just to know that he can say the words. It’s a quiet admission, but it warms his bones to know that an old dog like him can still feel these things and find joy in them. One day he’ll say the words, or words like them that Adam will understand. Not tonight, under departing stars, when everything is already so perfect. Nigel has many vices, but gluttony is not one.
Adam’s hand curls into a little fist then loosens, and he shifts under the thick blanket Nigel has tucked him under. He murmurs a contented sound and digs his bony shoulders further into the cocoon. Nigel reaches over and lightly folds the blanket around the creases of his body, sheltering him as much as he can.
Another drop slides from his neck and under his shirt, then another at his palm, and Nigel realizes his sentimentality isn’t entirely to blame. Rain begins to patter soft into the grass, leaving darker damp spots in the blanket. Adam scrunches his nose up and blinks, making a displeased grumble and trying to burrow further under.
“Starlight,” Nigel says, a warm palm pressed to his back, “Adam, darling, it’s fucking raining.” He gives him the tiniest of shakes. “It’s time to go home.”
Adam curls tighter into himself and whimpers. Nigel sighs heavily and bends to his knees, scooping his love into his arms and pulling him protectively against his chest. Used to such luxuries, Adam loops ready arms around him and nuzzles his neck, lips vibrating softly at his throat with a hum.
“You’re so kind to me, Nigel,” he murmurs, voice raspy and sweet with sleep.
“Couldn’t be anything fucking but, darling,” Nigel replies, a tender kiss brushed to Adam’s dampening hair.
He holds him tight and starts the short trek home, walking briskly but careful not to jostle too much. Adam weighs next to nothing, but the comfort of his body pressed flush to his sends a happy thrill that sinks low in Nigel’s belly.
He’ll tell him, eventually. For now, this is enough.
-x-
Six Months Later
The door to the craft shop slams open, rattling on its hinges and sending the chiming bell attached at the top into a pinging frenzy.
The shopkeeper gives a puzzled but friendly smile to the source of the clatter, a tall gentleman with shaggy hair and a vague scowl. Under his breath the man grumbles about how much fucking paint he’s going to have all over him after this is done. He then proceeds to declare to the vicinity (thankfully deserted) what they can do with their fucking yarn and their popsicle sticks and where they can shove them.
Perhaps not a gentleman then.
A little tremulous, he calls out to the man looking angrily between the aisles and muttering more bewildered curses.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Nigel turns to him, swears again – although this time at least sounding more relieved than agitated – and slaps down a poorly scrawled list of items on the counter.
“Do you have this fucking shit or not?”
When Nigel sees the clerk quake in his boots, he takes a deep breath in through his nose and exhales as calmly as he can, almost by rote, as though this were a relaxation technique he’d learned secondhand.
“Sorry,” he says, not meaning it.
He looks down at the shopkeeper’s nametag. “Kevin,” he declares pleasantly, “Kevin, my fine friend, for the love of fuck could you help a man out and locate these fucking items for me?”
Kevin quickly scans the list and nods. “Yes,” he chokes out, then with a little more authority, “Yes, sir, we have all of this.”
He circles around from behind the little counter, wheezing out a bit of a cough when Nigel slaps him on the back cheerily.
“Good man Kevin. Good fucking man.”
Brightened a little by the shift in the man’s demeanour, Kevin looks over his shoulder as he grabs a large mason jar from a top shelf.
“Science project with the kids?”
The man’s eyes narrow angrily and Kevin almost drops the jar. Clearly the wrong thing to say.
“No, Kevin, not a fucking kid.”
He pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt and sticks one between his teeth.
“It’s for my fucking Valentine.” He palms a match and strikes it against the counter, cupping his hand as flame licks at his face.
“Uh, sir, there’s no—”
“Could you believe that, Kevin? Me. I have a fucking Valentine.”
He grins and lights the end of his cigarette, shakes the match out, moving to toss it to the floor before he catches himself and shoves the dead match into his pocket.
“Sorry Kevin,” he mutters on the inhale, “littering’s a terrible fucking habit.”
Then he exhales the smoke directly into Kevin’s face. Kevin blinks and coughs, peers at Nigel through reddened eyes.
“Let’s get the rest of this list, shall we sir?”
He turns his head as Nigel breathes another plume his way.
“Fucking brilliant, Kevin.”
He darts quickly down another aisle, away from the tobacco fumes and tattoos. He wonders who on earth this man’s Valentine could be, prays for pity on the poor soul.
“And make sure it’s good fucking paint!”
Poor soul, indeed.
The poor soul in question comes home to a suspiciously silent apartment, free from the sounds of action films blaring in the background. He can’t even make out the scent of Nigel’s cigarettes, and realises in the same second that he’s become oddly used to it.
Adam slings his messenger bag off his shoulder and sets it on the entryway table.
“Nigel?”
“Welcome home, darling!” a gravelly voice calls from the bedroom.
He follows the source of the sound to find Nigel, sitting on their bed with a boyish grin on his face and… an empty jar in his hands?
He holds it out toward him, pleased as punch.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Starlight.”
The panic of forgetting an until-now rather arbitrary holiday slides right off him as he stares at the jar in utter confusion.
“It’s a—”
“It’s a galaxy!” Nigel says excitedly.
Adam huffs out a little laugh.
“Nigel, this is not a galaxy.”
He examines the jar closer. It’s filled with small yellowish-grey dots, but is otherwise pretty unremarkable. Nigel is clearly buzzed about it, but he can’t quite piece together why. He looks up at him and Nigel just keeps smiling.
“Isn’t it?” he asks.
Nigel shuts the door behind them, tweaks at the bedroom curtain just a little to displace any fragments of light still cutting through.
“Watch,” he instructs, and flips the light switch off.
The jar illuminates.
Beneath the glass, the pale little dots become points of glowing light that shine like tiny stars. In the dark it really does look like a small swirling universe.
It’s very beautiful.
“See,” Nigel says earnestly, “I made you a galaxy, darling.”
Adam knows intrinsically that this still isn’t a galaxy, that it’s just a mason jar filled with dabs of glow-in-the-dark paint, and there’s no method to the constellations that spread out along its insides. But he also knows that Nigel worked really hard on this, clearly wanted to please him, because he—
Adam looks up at Nigel as his chain of thoughts form link after impossible link.
Because he loves him.
In the dark, he sees it painted on Nigel’s face.
Literally. Nigel’s face is glowing with flecks of neon freckles. A few spots are heavier around his cheek and over his collar, from when he shook the paintbrush angrily in frustration when he couldn’t get the angle quite right.
Adam knows.
His chest fills and fills at the image of this man, this strange combustible man who exploded into his life without warning, calmly sitting at a desk and painstakingly creating a galaxy for him.
Nigel loves him.
He can’t breathe.
“Do you like it, darling?”
Adam nods mutely, his face hot and his lungs tight. Tears sting and prick at his eyes and he tries to shake them back, but a few spring free. He makes a little gasping sound as the air tries to claw into his throat.
“Adam, are you alright?”
Nigel is only two feet away but in this moment it feels like miles. Adam could reach out and touch him, but his hands are frozen at his sides. There is so much space between them he physically aches.
“Nigel,” he chokes out, “I need you to hold me now.”
Knowing, always instinctively knowing, Nigel has his arms around him in a tight bear hug, surrounding him with pressure and comfort.
Like he always does.
Adam feels the tightness in him snap and deflate like a balloon and he gulps air in great swallows.
“What did I do wrong?” Nigel begs, “tell me, darling, so I know for next time.”
Adam shakes his head, burying it into the reassuring mass of his chest. The space between them melts until there is nothing but warmth and comfort and Nigel.
“Nothing,” Adam replies as the last of the pressure inside leaves him, “nothing wrong, it’s just…”
He looks up then, at the face shining with concern, an impossible galaxy of its own.
“You love me, Nigel.”
Neither question, nor demand. An observation, awed and true.
Nigel doesn’t bat an eye.
“Well of course I fucking do, darling.”
He presses a kiss to his forehead, pulls his mouth down to his temple, his delicate cheekbone, the very corner of his mouth.
“Made you a galaxy, didn’t I?”
Adam turns his head fully into the question of Nigel’s kiss, answers it with his own, warm and soft.
“Yeah,” he breathes against Nigel’s cheek, his words hot and happy, “you fucking did.”
Nigel’s brows shoot up at the gracious bestowment of a rare expletive from his beloved and he growls.
“God, you know I love it when you fucking swear,” he grins.
Adam nods and bites – bites – at Nigel’s pulse.
“Mmhmm,” he mumbles, then laughs with gleeful surprise as Nigel grabs him around the waist, hoisting him high. Adam wraps his legs around Nigel’s waist, an automatic reflex at this point, and dives into another kiss.
“I—” he says between breathless attacks at his mouth, but Nigel cuts him off as he tosses him to the bed.
“Fucking love you,” he says, kissing his way up Adam’s body, baring as much skin as he can along the way. “You saved my fucking life, Starlight.”
“I don’t see how I did that,” Adam replies as he offers himself up eagerly for more affection, hands scrabbling to unbutton Nigel’s shirt.
“Changed everything,” Nigel murmurs, licking the shell of Adam’s ear, tracing a wet line down his throat with little sucks and bites, “my darling,” –kiss–, “my universe,” –kiss–, “my sweet Valentine.”
Adam tenses up under him. “Valentine! Oh no, Nigel, I didn’t – why didn’t you remind me to—”
He shoves weakly at Nigel’s shoulders, but Nigel just chuckles and pins him down, gently grabbing at his wrists and holding them over his head.
“Shush,” he says, raising one hand to stroke teasingly down his side, “you can fret later, darling. Now I’m going to fuck you – nicely – until you scream, and you can be my flowers and my box of chocolates all at once.”
He kisses him, once, just lightly, lets the worry in his eyes recede and fade away.
“Does that sound good?”
Adam nods, rolls his hips up and bites his lip in that way Nigel likes.
“Very good,” he purrs, curling one leg back around Nigel’s thigh. He looks up at him through heavy lidded eyes, aroused and loved and happier than he thinks he could possibly measure.
He doesn’t say I love you back, not that night, and not because he doesn’t feel it or mean it. He holds it because tonight is Nigel’s to give, for Adam to take and accept and cling close to. And he knows that he hears it on the soft exhale when Nigel’s fingers slip inside him, on the edge of the moan when he rubs that spot that makes bright colours dance under his eyelids.
Adam knows that Nigel hears it when he spreads himself wide on the mattress and begs for Nigel to fuck him (even when this time Nigel corrects him gently and tells him that tonight they’ll be making love thank you very fucking much ), and he knows he sees it in Adam’s eyes in the moment they are joined, when Nigel fills every part of him like he’s the puzzle piece he’s been searching wildly for and suddenly found.
And he definitely hears it when Adam comes apart under his hand, crying Nigel’s name, shaking and gasping and near-weeping with relief and joy, limbs wrapped around him sweat-soaked and trembling.
They smile, and kiss, and nuzzle, and Adam says all the words of love he knows without speaking. Nigel listens and strokes his back, one splayed hand twisting lazy curls in his hair.
Together, in love, under the light of a homemade galaxy.
-x-
Epilogue - The Next Morning
“It’s almost morning, Starlight,” Nigel whispers in his ear, “do you know what that means?”
“Mmm, coffee?” Adam says.
Nigel barks a gruff laugh. “Yeah, fucking coffee. And-”
“And morning sex,” Adam offers, his voice brightening.
Nigel feels the small kisses dotting against his neck and jaw as soft as kitten paws.
“You’re a fucking minx,” he says approvingly. Adam opens arms wide and entreating and Nigel dives, a mess of growls and kisses and stubble.
Adam giggles under the onslaught and then gently places his hands on Nigel’s chest, pushing up so he can force Nigel to look at him.
He smiles, small and shy and cups Nigel’s face in both hands.
“I love you, too,” he says plainly, like an unshakeable fact - because it is.
Nigel is forced to steady himself on a shaking elbow as his breath leaves him entirely.
“You fucking - you - Adam -”
He wonders if a hole has suddenly opened in the ceiling, but they both know it isn’t rain streaking sudden wetness down his cheeks. Adam’s eyes widen in alarm, and Nigel shushes him in an instant, spreading calm like a blanket.
“No no darling, you didn’t do anything fucking wrong.”
He takes Adam’s hand and holds it to his face so he can feel for himself.
“Good tears, Starlight. Good fucking tears.”
“Oh,” Adam says in wonder, fingers tracing Nigel’s damp cheekbones.
Their mouths meet in a soft adoring kiss, joining sweet and joyful. Nigel breaks it with a smile and buries his face into Adam’s neck, loving him with such a force that he trembles with it.
“I love you so fucking much,” he gasps against him, and Adam pulls lithe limbs tight around him, hands tracing comfort over and over.
“I know,” Adam replies, “you said so under the stars.”