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He worries sometimes.
Not about anything in particular, and not in some tangible way, but it’s there. Always under the surface when he watches him out of the corner of his eye, and he wishes he could stop. The reality of it is that he needs to worry. Someone needs to worry.
His hands are too shaky and his limbs aren’t steady enough for him to do the things he does, so he’s always one step behind him. He trails behind close, keeping an eye out for any slight mishaps, ready to catch him if he needs.
It’s always been this way, for as long as he can remember, and he spends a lot more time wondering why than he’s comfortable admitting.
And so now, he’s looking back on his life—he doesn’t really know why, except that maybe this tumbler of whiskey has something to do with it—wondering what would have happened to him if he hadn’t been there.
He applies that to both of them, and realizes that this kind of thinking is way too depressing to be having while he’s drinking. This is how alcoholism starts.
So he pours just a little bit more into the tumbler and tries to think about something else.
The house is empty, just him, and for no more than a breath of a second, he thinks about jerking off. He doesn’t really want to, but an innate desire always wells up in inside him whenever he’s home alone. His childhood probably rewired his brain for it to happen this way.
Instead, he finds himself wandering around familiar territory both literally and figuratively. His house looks the same as it always has: toys kicked off into corners, pictures of smiles real and fake lining the walls, jackets thrown over the backs of couches and chairs. It’s all where it should be.
And yet.
Something is off, tonight. Something feels like it’s shifted, either creating a chasm or squeezing everything too tight, he can’t really tell. But it sits heavy on his chest, warm in his cheeks. He could blame the whiskey, but he’s nothing if not honest.
His phone rings, starling him out of whatever mindset he’s found himself in, and the face staring back at him makes his guts flutter for just a second.
“Hey, Link,” he says, and he has to clear his throat after, having not used his voice for a while.
“Uh, are you busy?” Link asks, and Rhett can hear the sounds of his car whirring to life, the radio being turned down quickly. He lets himself smile.
“Nah,” he tells him, shaking his head, pulling another sip of whiskey. “Just walking around my house.”
Link breathes out a laugh. “Why? You’re not nekkid, are you?”
“Maybe,” Rhett says, even though he isn’t. He feels bold. He feels silly.
Link hums, deep in his throat, like he’s thinking about something. Rhett hopes he’s thinking about him, and then immediately swallows that thought down with a wince. He should stop drinking. “Well, put some pants on at least. I’m coming over.”
The whiskey goes down in one last gulp, trailing off into a, “You got it, buddy. Door’s unlocked.”
“That’s not safe, man,” he gets told, and he grins. These aren’t their roles. He worries, not Link. He’s steady, strong and durable, where Link is unsure, trembling and small.
He’s the protector. Link tries, says things like ‘that’s not safe’ and puts his hand on the small of Rhett’s back when he’s climbing something, but it’s Rhett.
Rhett will take care of Link, so it’s written in the stars.
“I’ll be fine,” Rhett promises, remembering suddenly that there was a conversation he was a part of.
He hears the rustle of Link putting him on speaker phone, his jeans rough against the microphone. “I hope so,” Link says, and Rhett hears a laugh that doesn’t fully register.
“Hey,” he says, more seriously than he needs to be. “I’ll be fine, Link.”
He’ll always be fine. He promises everyone he’s supposed to be taking care of, but especially Link. Neither of them really knows how to just be one. It’s always been Rhett and Link, for as long as he can remember.
The better part of his life has been Rhett and Link.
“Why’re you being so weird tonight, bo?” And gosh, he hasn’t called him that in ages.
Something is off, tonight. Maybe there was a shift in the universe.
Maybe this isn’t his universe at all.
Or maybe things are shifting into place after all these years. He doesn’t know. But the term of endearment sits heavy in his ribs, nestles in deep, and he feels warm all over. He’s buzzing with it, the tips of his fingers tingling.
“I’m not being weird, bo,” he teases, because he’s supposed to. These are their roles. Get close, but not too close, boys.
“Door’s unlocked?” Link asks, and Rhett realizes he must be close by.
“Sure is,” Rhett confirms. “I’m hanging up now.” There’s no point staying on the phone since he’s going to be walking through the door any minute now.
“See ya in a minute.” And the line goes dead before he has a chance to say anything else.
When he walks in, the world stops turning.
It probably doesn’t, but Rhett has had thirty-some-odd years of it seeming like it does. Tonight feels like an exception, like the world does stop turning, just for the two of them. Link looks good.
He looks tired, though, dark circles under his eyes, and Rhett feels an impulse to pull him in close.
‘I feel like I’m your protector, Link.’ He’s said it a hundred times, and it’s on the tip of his tongue tonight.
“What’re you drinking?” The smirk on his face makes Rhett bold. He nods at the glass in Rhett’s hand, a good inch of amber sloshing around in there.
“Whiskey, baby,” he drawls, because he knows the blush on Link’s cheeks will outshine anything he’s seen in a long time. “Want some?”
He scrunches up his face, shakes his head. “No thanks,” he chuckles.
Rhett shrugs his shoulders. He’s hasn’t seen Link drink anything harder than a glass of wine since college, but the thought is nice. Sharing a couple fingers of whiskey with Link, warm and happy inside his home—it’s a good thought.
“How come you’re out and about?” he asks, and Link plops himself down onto one of the barstools. The kitchen is cold, and Rhett wishes he would have slipped a shirt on before Link showed up. If he does it now, it’ll look weird.
Then again, he catches the way Link’s eyes linger on his chest, and that changes his mind entirely. It makes him stretch languidly, feeling his sweatpants fall a little lower on his hips. Link’s eyelashes flutter a little when he looks back up, back into Rhett’s eyes.
He watches him over the rim of his glass while he sips, winking at him once.
“Missed you,” Link says. He shrugs, shakes his head with a depreciating laugh. “It’s only been a few days, but it feels weird not seeing you every day, man.”
Rhett leans against the counter, crosses his arms over his chest. “I missed you, too,” he decides to say. There are about a hundred other things he wants to say, but that’s the safest bet at this point.
The thing is, he doesn’t know when he fell in love with Link. He doesn’t remember there ever being a defining moment, a life-changing realization. But he did fall in love with Link, wholly and vividly.
Ever since he was young, Link’s been in his dreams in some way or another. He always tells Link about them, but what he leaves out is that in most of them, Link is the only color. Everything around him is black and white, or dark and macabre. Link is always the only brightness. He’s painted in pastels and neons, high-definition where everything else is grainy and dull.
So maybe he’s been in love with Link for a while, but he doesn’t remember the exact moment. He’s still waiting for some cliché movie moment. He’s holding out for some fireworks.
And tonight, the stars have aligned in such a way that he wants to kiss the breath out of Link. He wants to hold him down and make him squirm.
What he does in lieu of all of that is tosses the rest of the whiskey back, rinses the cup out in the sink, and asks, “How’s the family?”
“I didn’t drive here at midnight to talk about my family,” Link chuckles. “We can catch up later.”
“Okay,” Rhett hums. “What do you wanna talk about, then?”
It’s such a juvenile question, and it takes him back to when they were kids. Link has never been shy, but he’s not good at asking questions, and Rhett can remember so many different occasions where he’d stutter and blush his way through conversations he didn’t want to have. They’d sit cross-legged on their designated conversation rocks and work through whatever it was Link was struggling with.
The look on his face reminds him of those days.
He thinks maybe he’s always been a little bit in love, but that right now, he’s a lot more than a little bit in love.
He thinks maybe Link is in love with him, too.
He thinks maybe they’ve got the worst timing in the world.
But mostly, he’s got an idea.
“I have an idea,” he tells him, nodding for him to follow Rhett through the house.
There’s a breakfast nook connected to the dining room, a few fancy decorative pillows on a window seat, and a desk where the boys do their school work. It’s quiet and warm and comfortable, smells like cookies all the time for some reason.
“You’re joking,” Link laughs when Rhett gestures for him to sit on the window seat while Rhett sits cross-legged on the floor. “Is this the talking rock?”
“Yup,” Rhett tells him with a nod of his head. “You obviously came here for a reason, brother.”
Link concedes, crosses his legs and sits on the seat, opens his mouth to talk before shaking his head and closing it again. “Man, come on,” he says, and Rhett smiles at the blush on his cheeks.
He rubs his hands over his face, and Rhett stretches his legs out, rests his weight on his arms. He’s looking down at his sweatpants, making sure they aren’t riding too low, when he hears Link let out a groan.
After a single beat, he feels the weight of Link crashing into him, feels his hands cupping the back of his head, preventing it from crashing into the tiles below him. The first press of lips to his own is violent.
It tastes red, angry and passionate, and he swallows all of it down. He licks into Link’s mouth, wraps his fingers around Link’s wrist to hold him in place. This is exactly what he’s been waiting for.
It’s completely different than what he thought it would be. It’s hungry and mad and rough, teeth and tongue and he can feel Link’s fingers tugging at his hair.
They’re in a heap, legs tangled together, Rhett’s back pressed cruelly into the cold floor, and Link is pressing desperate kisses to his mouth, grunting out little sounds that Rhett counters with his own.
“Fuck you,” Link laughs, and Rhett laughs with him. Their teeth clack together and it’s awkward and perfect, and Rhett couldn’t have asked for better.
It’s perfect. He sees fireworks.
“I had no intentions of this happening tonight,” Link tells him later, when they’re sprawled out on Rhett’s huge bed. He’s licking a line from the center of Rhett’s chest to the jut of his hips, tongue working sloppy and hot.
“I did,” Rhett concedes, smiling goofily down at Link. He tangles his fingers in his hair, works through all the product to get to his scalp. Link slaps at him, and he laughs too loudly.
The heat of his tongue disappears once he gets too low down. “Alright,” Link says, and he sounds like he’s preparing himself for something. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I have a suggestion,” Rhett mutters.
“Your dick is huge,” Link tells him, eyebrows raised.
“Good thing your mouth is huge,” Rhett counters. “You don’t have to.”
Link rolls his eyes at him. “I am very aware of my right to say no.”
And then, “Has your dick always been this big?”
It makes him laugh, and he doesn’t know how to respond outside of a shrug. “Are you going to actually do something? Not that I don’t like the compliments.”
“I’m scared that if I keep saying nice things about it, it’ll get bigger,” Link admits.
The first tentative touch sends a jolt through him. His hips jerk up, and a moan tumbles out of him. It’s a little embarrassing, if he lets himself think about it, how worked up he already is, just from some heated kissing and a little heavy petting. He’s not embarrassed, though.
Link’s fingers wrap around him, right at the base, and Rhett sucks in a breath when he leans down to press his mouth to the head. He’s leaking onto his stomach, and Link licks at that first, tongue pointed and tentative.
“Don’t, uh—don’t hold me down, okay? You can put your hands on me, but don’t hold my head down,” Link says, and then all Rhett feels is wet and hot, the soft inside of his cheek against the head of his cock.
He fumbles a bit, not sure where to put his hand or how to move his head, but the pressure and the slick inside of his mouth is absolutely perfect. He winds up just keeping his hand at the base, mouth working down the rest of him, alternating between pressing kisses down the shaft and sucking down as much as he can.
“Fuck,” he breathes, because he can’t help it.
This is it, he thinks, the moment he’s been waiting for. The fireworks, the crash and pop, the colors flying through the sky, it’s all coming in the form of Link pressed so close to him. Link’s mouth wrapped tight around his cock. Link’s fingers trailing gently down to cup his balls. Link, Link, Link.
He may not have gotten fireworks when he first realized he loved Link, but they’re here now, going off in his bedroom. He feels them sizzle through him, start in the base of his spine and work all the way through his chest, up his throat, and they fall out of him with a, “Fuck, I love you.”
Link’s movements stutter, and for a second he thinks he’s ruined it. The whiskey settled low in his belly churns, but Link moans thickly around him, pulls off with watery eyes and says, “Me, too.”
He goes back to work, just like that, except Rhett looks down to see the smile in his eyes. It fades when he goes too far down and chokes a bit, but Rhett just chuckles and wipes at the drool on his chin when he pulls off to breathe.
“Can I fuck you?” he asks, and Rhett grabs him, pulls him close.
He holds him against his chest just for a moment, just to feel him breathing and living and right there. This feeling nestled in his chest, the way it furls in close when Link wriggles against him, is the most incredible thing he’s ever felt. He will never need anything else out of this life, as long as he has Link right next to him.
He agrees to the request, tells him to take it slow, to make him feel good, and Link promises vehemently, sealing it with a kiss that leave Rhett breathless.
His fingers are deft, thin and sweet, pressing into him. Rhett can see how nervous Link is, and he laughs, tells him, “Why are you the nervous one?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Link admits, red-faced and disheveled, and Rhett feels like a teenage girl.
“You’ll be great,” Rhett promises. “See how I’m opening up for you already?”
And it’s true, two fingers are snug but nice, stretching him wide, and he’s breathing heavily. He rolls his hips down, wincing at how foreign it feels to have something inside him. It’s not unpleasant. It can’t be unpleasant, not when Link is the one doing this with him.
He’s so slick, feels a little gross, and Link adds even more lube so he can slip a third finger inside. He wants to protest it, but he knows it’s important. The third finger is hard, harder than he thought, and his erection softens.
“You’re so tight,” Link says, and Rhett can’t help but laugh as soon as the words are out of his mouth.
“This isn’t porn, man!” he laughs, loud and rough, and Link smacks him on the chest, presses a little too hard with his fingers in revenge. Somehow, he hits a spot that sends flames licking through him, and he gasps loudly, laughs fading out as he keeps a steady pressure on that same spot. “Gosh, Link.”
“Are you going to stop being a jerk now?”
He can’t make any promises, so he doesn’t say anything, just moans thickly when his fingers crook up hard, hitting that spot again and again.
Fireworks.
By the time Link is pressing into him, cock hard and slick, Rhett is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, body trembling under Link’s. He isn’t hard, but he feels incredible. He feels like this is the most important moment of his life.
Nothing will compete with this. Thirty-two years of knowing this man, going through everything together, sharing memories and moments and a whole lifetime together, and this feels like the most important thing they could be doing.
He trusts Link with everything he’s got. There isn’t a single part of himself that he wouldn’t give Link.
He was put on this earth for Link. This is the universe they get to live in, and he couldn’t be happier.
And right now, stuffed full of his best friend’s cock, he sees new colors when he closes his eyes. They dance in dots across his eyelids, flashes of colors he doesn’t think even have names. It feels good, beyond good, heavy and thick and weird, and so many other words that his throat is too tight to get out, but he tells Link it feels good. He tells him he loves it. He tells him he loves him.
He wants to tell him about the colors, the fireworks, the heat working its way through his body, but he can’t get the words out. Instead, he just pulls Link down to him, presses their mouths together and hopes he can let him know this way.
Link pulls away, says something that Rhett can’t hear over the ringing in his ears. He’s never felt anything like this. Not in his physical body or in his emotional being, can’t remember ever feeling this full, this loved, this content.
He’s hard again, so hard, and so close, wants to feel Link’s hand on him again.
“Can you—“ he breathes, moans when the angle is good again. “Fuck, please.”
“You want—Oh,” Link gasps, but he—beautiful, wonderful, incredible Link—wraps his hand around Rhett’s cock again, passes his thumb over the wet head.
He jerks, his whole body arching up and a sob cracks through him, hips working desperately into the circle of Link’s fist while Link thrusts slowly into him.
When his orgasm hits, it wracks through him, leaves his eyes watering, his mouth wide open around a sound that never makes it out of his chest. Gosh, he’s never come like this. Never in his life has something felt this intense. It starts in his toes, trembles through him in waves, and Link jerks him through it.
There’s a flutter in his chest when Link leans down and presses a gentle kiss to Rhett’s forehead, soft and sweet, and he feels like he might cry.
He half expects there to be an orchestral rise and fall when Link comes, but all that happens is he gasps, this beautiful, breathy sound that makes Rhett’s cock twitch where it’s lying on his thigh. His thrusts staccato, rhythm failing, and he collapses onto Rhett’s chest.
“Oh, gosh,” Link laughs, and Rhett gets it.
They giggle together, Link’s head resting on Rhett’s chest. He dances his fingers down Link’s back, down his sides, down, down, down, until he gets to the curve of his ass.
He makes a mental note to remember this feeling forever. Not that he thinks he’s going to forget it for even a second, but just in case.
He worries.
It’s a reflex to worry at this point in his life.
He worries because Link is the most important person in his life, and the idea of being made to live this life without him by his side, makes his chest ache.
But as intensely as he worries, as violently as he worries, it’s worth it all. It’s worth every second of worrying, when he feels Link’s lips pressed right over his heart, and it skips a beat, replaced with the crash and pop of fireworks.