"Mh. You remember the goat rib, but you don't remember that?" Zack chided, his gaze trailing to where Fleet's soft, pearl-pink lips were pressed against the dark ink on his wrist, before flicking back up to meet the other man's half lidded, dark eyes. Fleet gave out information easily, even without being asked. Little details, like the foods he enjoyed eating as a kid, or how he cried because the lights were too bright in a scene of Music Camp. Sometimes significant things too, spliced in light-heartedly even if they weren't, that needed to be followed up on. Zack was more reserved.
"The corsage. You made out of cedar and pinecones.h" Zack wasn't sure if Fleet still had it tucked away somewhere. It was probably long dried up by this point. "I thought about chucking the damn thing into the lake when you gave it to me. Thought why the hell should I bring you anything? I ain't your boyfriend." Zack's thumb ran circles right below Fleet's ear, feeling the steady pulse against his thumb. "And you wore the thing the entire night when I gave it to you."
And Fleet had done so with a sense of confident, unabashed pride. No trying to hide it, no shame, but displaying the fact that he was there with Zack quietly and constantly. At the time, Zack had figured what was between him and Fleet was sex. Not like Fleet'd been the first young and pretty guy trying to get close to him, though this time there was no money anbody could be after. Even though Zack hadn't quite realized it at the time, and it'd taken until Fleet's first visit at the cabin for it to settle in, the corsage had been a way of asking for more. It'd been a start, too.
Thinking about it now felt so sentimental that Zack almost grimaced. Instead, however, he grabbed Fleet's hips. As muscular as Fleet had gotten, there was still softness giving easily below Zack's fingers pressing down, pushing Fleet down firmly on his lap, meeting it with a soft jerk of his own hips. "Did you make it just to have me give it to you?" Zack asked, fingers slipping down to Fleet's thighs and squeezing them, thumbs pressed into the dip where they met the younger man's hips. "When did it start for you, kid?"
"The corsaaaaaaage." Fleet repeated that in pleasure, eyes half-lidded as he leaned his head back and then forward again, chortling when Zack mentioned having considered flinging it into the lake, turning his head slightly against that thumb-touch below his ear. "I was amazed you took it in the first fucking place! And then actually brought it for me. I expected you to crunch it under your boot, in fact." Dragging his thumb along the strong line of Zack's collarbones, Fleet murmured, "I wore it all night. Because I wanted you to take me back to my place -- or your place, or anywhere -- and screw my brains out. So I figured that seeing that corsage on me, that you'd given me, would signal something in your latent desire to mate and there I'd be, the best candidate." Fleet smiled, pressing a light kiss to the freckled bridge of Zack's nose. "Your latent desire to find a mate. For good."
That was starting to get a little too close to soppy, Fleet could tell even though he'd followed Zack there, so he wasn't surprised that his husband's grip on him tightened and hauled him down, against the familiar stirring hardness in Zack's lap. Fleet gave a soft, encouraging grunt, rolling his hips a little as he considered Zack's question and enjoyed being groped, grabbed, with perfect confidence in his place in Zack's life and his affections.
"I thought it was an effective gauge, yeah," he said about the corsage. "If you destroyed it right in front of me, then I would've known to leave it alone. If you grumbled but then never gave it to me, then there was still a prospect for sex, at least. But you brought it and gave it to me properly." Fleet licked his teeth, gaze sweeping over Zack's handsome face, the angles and planes of it. "For me? It was when I found you and Nicki tussling and you got me to lick your wounds clean. That wasn't just a sex thing, not to me. I was doing that and I was thinking, I could get used to this. Being here for this guy when he's fighting, looking after him when he's done."












