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It would have been poetic to say that it was the light of a bright new day full of hope that woke Chris up, but it also would be a lie.
What woke Chris up was daylight, yes, filtering through the curtain, yes, straight into his eyes.
With a groan, he moved closer to the warm body next to him, trying to get a few more minutes of sleep when his brain registered what was happening. If daylight was bright enough to wake him up, it couldn’t be early in the morning.
He sat straight on the bed, looking at his partner, who hadn’t even stirred.
“Shit! Kevin! We overslept!”
“Go back to sleep, Chris.” Kevin didn’t even move from his comfortable position. He didn’t even open his eyes.
“Kevin… It’s…” Chris picked up his watch from the night table to check the time, and his worry increased. “It’s almost noon! Don’t you have something to do today?”
“You. Remember?” Kevin sighed, but still refused to move. “We both have two weeks free. Two weeks. Is it so wrong that I want to spend the first day of those weeks in bed?”
“Well, no…” Chris smiled, thinking of all the things they had done –and could still do- in bed, before frowning again. “But… what if your wife comes in and finds me in your bed?”
“Kristen is in location. She’ll be there the whole month.” Kevin’s voice sounded resigned, but the stubborn Backstreet Boy still didn’t open his eyes. “And even if for some strange reason she came back early, I’m pretty sure she won’t walk in on us.”
“Really? How can you be so sure?” Chris snorted. His most permanent fear going into a relationship with Kevin hadn’t been that one day Kevin would wake up and decide he was, after all, straight, but that Kristen would find out. He wasn’t cut out for the ‘other woman’ role, even when, in truth, Kristen was the ‘other woman’.
“Because Kristen doesn’t have the keys to your house.” Kevin was laughing at him, and Chris blinked.
Of course, now that he was finally more than half awake, he realized that they weren’t in the Richardson’s house, but in his brand new house. The one he had just bought and invited Kevin over to ‘properly christen.’
Relaxing a little, he lay down again, letting Kevin hug him close and tried to sleep again.
* * *
A couple of hours later, Chris realized that no, he wasn’t going to go back to sleep no matter how hard he tried. So he turned around to meet Kevin’s face. Kevin’s eyes were still closed, but Chris could tell that his lover was awake.
“So… why me?” Chris asked. As every time he let himself remember Kevin’s wife, perfect, blonde, tall, and talented wife, doubts were seeded in his heart.
“Why you what?” Kevin’s voice was a little slower than usual, and Chris felt a pang of guilt. Maybe his lover had been asleep after all.
“You. Me, here. Why?” Chris elaborated, foregoing the gestures since he knew Kevin was not going to open his eyes.
“You bought a new house, and there’s no where else we need to be for two weeks,” Kevin answered, not missing a beat. In fact, he sounded like he always did on interviews. “Also, I happen to be in love with your sex skills.”
“Kevin…” Chris was not going to let himself derailed by praises of his sexual abilities.
“Chris.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Kevin finally opened his eyes, just a bit, and Chris realized that Kevin had probably been awake as long as Chris himself had. “Chris, we’ve been together for about… what? Four years? What brings the question out _now_?”
“Well, I…” Chris let out a long breath as he tried to sit down. Kevin’s arms held him in place, so he contended himself on placing his head on Kevin’s shoulder. There was something good to be said about having a tall lover. “I have thought about it for some time. So… Why me?”
“It was a matter of timing,” Kevin said, very seriously, closing his eyes again. “I was there, having my first and only sexual identity crisis at twenty seven, and you were the first one to come through the dressing room door.”
“The first one, huh?” Chris frowned, although the truth was that he was biting his lip not to laugh. “So it was a lucky thing that it wasn’t, say, Justin? Or Lance?”
Kevin shrugged, finally opening his eyes. “Lance would have killed me if I even suggested that he wasn’t straight back then.”
“Lance would send snipers against us both if he knew about this. Brian too.”
Kevin chuckled, kissing Chris. For a moment, the conversation was completely forgotten as Chris thoroughly explored his lover’s mouth. Some days Chris was convinced that he would die completely happy if Kevin only used his mouth to kiss him, and nothing else.
“It was really just because I was there?” Chris asked again, once his brain cells were solid enough again. “Not that I’m complaining now, but…”
Kevin smiled, and started trailing small kisses on Chris’s neck, making Chris shiver.
“You’re not going to let it go, are you?” he asked as he bit Chris’s earlobe. It was obvious right then that sleep was not going to be on the menu again.
“No…” Chris trailed off, trying to stay focused. “But don’t stop trying to distract me.”
“You never asked me why I was having a sexual identity crisis at twenty seven,” Kevin said, maneuvering to be on top of Chris. It was a good thing that both were still naked, in Chris’s opinion, as it meant that there would be no annoying pauses to take their clothes off.
“I always assumed it was a side effect of being next to AJ “I’m a walking sex bomb” McLean and Howie “I just stepped out from a porno film” Dorough,” Chris joked, even when his voice hitched a bit when Kevin took the chance to start, very slowly, licking a path from Chris’s neck to Chris’s right nipple.
“No… I have always been more or less immune to my bandmates’ charms.” Kevin was now suckingbitingohmygodstoptalkinganddothatagain Chris’s nipples, so Chris had to muster all his will power to stay focused on the conversation. “It was all your fault, really.”
“Mh… My _fault_?” Chris tried to sit down again, but Kevin’s weight stopped him from doing so. “How could it be my fault? We barely talked to each other before…”
Whatever else Chris was trying to say was interrupted when Kevin kissed him again. It was a good method to end phrases, and Chris was planning on using it on Kevin every time they weren’t in public.
“We saw your videos and your concerts… when our lawsuit came, remember?” Kevin said quickly. The short time when both groups had more or less hated each other wasn’t something they liked to discuss. “’Crazy for you’ caused me many, many sleepless nights.”
“We didn’t do a video of…” Chris trailed off as he remembered the choreography for Crazy for you. “Oooh!”
“’Oh’ is right.” Kevin smiled at him. “I spent a lot of time asking myself why seeing you shake your ass got me…”
“Horny?”
“That too.”
Chris smiled mischievously, bucking his hips against Kevin’s groin. Kevin groaned, and soon all thought of a serious talk were forgotten by both men.
* * *
“Chris?” Hours later, Kevin’s voice woke him up. Kevin’s voice and his grumbling stomach. He looked up at the watch still on the night table and smiled. It was almost midnight. They had spent all day in bed.
“Yeah?”
“Are you happy with this?” Kevin didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t need to. Chris knew what he meant.
Was he happy? Not really. He hated the fact that he loved Kevin and Kevin loved him, but also loved Kristen. He hated knowing that if he asked, Kevin would probably divorce his wife. He hated that he would never ask, because he knew that Kevin, as much as he loved him, also wanted the family life. No, he wasn’t happy.
But he couldn’t tell Kevin that. Not only because he loved Kevin, and he wanted to believe that Kevin was happy, but because he didn’t want to rock the boat.
Maybe he wasn’t happy, but he was happy enough.
“Yeah.” He said, kissing Kevin softly on the lips. “I am.”