Still taking prompts? How about sugar daddy Ravi with Eddie?
(I was inspired by sugar daddy Buck)
My sweet patient darling, I will happily write you sugar daddy Ravi. I'll even throw in hinted Sal/Josh for free.
It doesn't even start as a sex or affection thing. Eddie freely admits that he's strapped for cash because he just had to pay out the ass for some mobility aids that his insurance hasn't reimbursed him for yet. He's gotten better about not being prideful and buttoned up when he's struggling, which is maybe the one good thing that came out of the situation with Hen. So he waves off going out and grabbing food and going to a barcade.
"Don't worry, I got you," Ravi says easily.
"I can't ask you to do that," Eddie says, shaking his head.
"You're not, I'm offering. And you should say yes so I don't have to listen to Buck try to come up with a bunch of reasons why his dating life sucks but he still won't call Tommy." Ravi nudges Eddie's shoe with his toe and grins. "You'd be doing me a favor, man."
Eddie gives in, and it turns out Ravi is a great Area 51 partner.
--
Then it's Ravi paying for movie tickets the second Eddie agrees to go, buying the snacks ahead of time so they don't have to wait in line.
Then Ravi mysteriously has a sweater that he can't return but it's soft and in Eddie's size.
"Dude, you trying to make me your sugar baby?" Eddie teases as he takes off his shirt to pull the sweater on.
"You know what the sugar part is, right?" Ravi asks, laughing.
Eddie tugs the sweater down and runs his hands over it. It's really fucking soft. "Yeah, you do realize I'm older than you, right? I know shit."
He looks in the mirror and then at Ravi, and Ravi tilts his head a little and smiles. "Looks good."
Then he leaves, and Eddie's fingers curl over the sleeves of the sweater as his face gets warm.
--
Eddie slides a beer across the table. "Okay, so...guys."
Josh blinks at the beer and then at Eddie. "Yeah, so I need something a lot stronger than that for this conversation to happen. Am I the only gay person you know?"
"No," Eddie says incredulously. "You're just the only one who isn't friends with Ravi."
"Oh, so this is about Ravi?" Josh says, leaning in with a smirk. "Get me a vodka soda with lime and we'll chat."
When Eddie's waiting for the drink, he realizes it's the first one he's had to buy in over a month.
"Oh, dammit," he sighs.
--
Eddie learned a whole lot from Josh in a very short period of time, both about himself and the queer community at large. Also about Josh. Josh is apparently dating some fire captain who treats him like a prince and takes him on vacations and surprises him with little things here and there, and Josh reciprocates but also plays up his appreciation with fluttered eyelashes and sexual favors that he was going to provide anyway because the guy--according to him--is so hot that Josh would fuck him even if he came with a million red flags. He just wouldn't also be falling in love with him. Probably.
Good for him.
So Eddie is a little buzzed and leaning against his fridge, letting the metal cool his forehead as he looks down at his text thread with Ravi. Ravi had asked if he wanted to go on a hike in a couple days.
Eddie texts back.
Buy me lunch after and we got a deal.
Ravi asks if he wants pizza or something healthier like poke or smoothie bowls or whatever.
Eddie bites his lip, caught between wanting to say he's fine with whatever, because that's the polite thing to do, and picking something.
Pizza 😘
He hears the telltale signs of Chris trying to sneakily watch some streamer, even though Eddie confiscates his headphones at night, and sighs.
"Excuse me, sir, my ears aren't that old yet!" he calls.
"Sorry, Dad!" Chris calls back.
Eddie pokes his head into the room and gets into a glaring contest with him until they cross their eyes at each other. "Go to bed, make me look like a responsible father," he begs.
"I'm not supposed to lie," Chris says primly, setting his phone on the nightstand.
Eddie jokingly circles his fists like an old school gentleman boxer but swoops in and kisses his son on the forehead instead, being extra loud about it because nothing is worse to a teenage boy than a forehead kiss from Dad, even when no one's around to tease him about it.
"Gross," Chris declares, but he grins. "Good night, Dad."
"'Night, kiddo," he says, closing the door behind him on the way out. He waits a few seconds to make sure the phone isn't coming back out before he starts getting ready for bed.
--
The hike is nice. Really, it's a walk uphill. But it's nice. Eddie finally asks Ravi about the paying for everything thing.
"I don't have any dependents except a cat, and I have a second source of income," Ravi reminds him. "So I've got the money, I don't mind using it on people."
"Is it people or just me, though?" Eddie asks, and Ravi suddenly finds the view extra interesting. "Is it a charity case situation or--"
"No," Ravi says quickly, shaking his head. "Hell no."
Eddie sits on a rock and pops open his water bottle, taking a long drink. "So you're into me?"
Ravi looks at the sky now and then at Eddie. He laughs like he's about to play it off, turn it into a joke, but Eddie knows he doesn't look like he's joking.
"I think I'm more, uh, complicated than I thought," Eddie says, feeling his face get hot. "About how I feel about people. It's one of those things where you assume everyone's like you or that something about you is a little broken or different. So I thought, 'Yeah, maybe some people are just fine without being with someone, but I should do it anyway because that's the thing you're supposed to do. Especially with a kid involved.'"
Ravi sits next to him slowly. "Okay," he says, clearly not sure where Eddie's going with this.
"I don't go and pick people up because I don't want to, and I don't really get when people are flirting with me most of the time because I don't really flirt on purpose," he says. "I have to, like, know someone. Care about them. Does that sound crazy?"
"No," Ravi says, smiling and shaking his head as he looks over at him. "No, it doesn't. I've got a couple friends like that. Or kind of like that, I guess. And it's okay, you don't have to be into me. That's not going to make me stop hanging out with you."
Eddie blinks, realizing he probably forgot a really crucial point. "No, I'm saying I am into you, I just didn't figure it out because I'm really bad at figuring it out."
Ravi's eyebrows raise. "Oh!"
"Holy shit, I suck at this," Eddie groans, wishing he'd kept his ballcap on so he could pull it over his eyes.
"Nah, you're just not used to it," Ravi says, and Eddie snorts softly. "Okay, yeah, you do. But it's okay. I kind of like that you do."
Eddie smiles and glances at him. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Ravi looks over at him, and he smiles. He's so pretty when he smiles. He's pretty all the time, but especially when he smiles.
So Eddie leans over and kisses him. It's not perfect, he almost unbalances himself on the rock, and Ravi's face is a little turned away from his. But then he saves Eddie by holding his jaw and kissing back, and it's kind of great.
"So I guess you will be my sugar daddy," Eddie teases, then regrets it. "It's not because of that. And you don't--"
"Dude, chill out," Ravi says, laughing and leaning in to press his forehead to Eddie's. "I'll pay for shit when I want to pay for shit because I want to, alright? And you don't owe me anything."
Eddie nods and hesitates before kissing him again. "Yeah, alright. But maybe let me do some shit for you once in a while."
Ravi grins, easy and lazy and pretty. "You can do whatever you want."
--
It's not transactional or anything, but Eddie does thank Ravi whenever his card comes out or his phone taps against something to pay, which isn't every time. It's just most of the time. And when it's just them, Eddie will put his knees on either side of Ravi's thighs and lean in close and thank him again before he kisses him.
It builds from there. Ravi tells Chimney they both need a week off, Eddie has Chris stay with Pepa, and he's suddenly being taken to New York just because he'd mentioned he never saw it outside of a layover once from overseas.
There, Eddie stretches out on a bed in a hotel and looks over his shoulder at Ravi, who's looking at him like he's an entire meal.
"Nice room," Eddie comments, stretching some more, letting his knees spread. He's still damp from showering after they arrived in the room, and there's a towel across his ass.
Ravi's hand slides up Eddie's inner thigh, pushing the towel up and up until the cool air of the room is hitting his ass. "I'm glad you like it."
Eddie slides back a little, pushing his ass into Ravi's hand. "Th-thank you."
"You notice how they thought you were going to be covering it?" Ravi asks, pulling the towel off and spreading his hands over Eddie's ass, spreading him open a little and making him gasp. "That happens a lot. You get the bill, you get asked for a card for the tab, the room."
His face burns, and he tucks his cheek against his shoulder. "'S because I'm older."
"Probably," Ravi agrees, kissing his lower back. "But you don't mind, right?"
Eddie shakes his head and chokes out, "N-no."
Ravi kisses his tailbone, and Eddie spreads his knees a little more. "No...."
He swallows, gulping in a lungful of air as he arches back against his mouth. "No, Daddy."
Ravi swears and licks him, pressing a sucking kiss against his rim, and Eddie grabs his own hair in his hands and pushes back against him.
When Ravi fucks him on the bed, they're facing the window, and Eddie realizes the room's got a great view. It's looking down 5th, and he can see the edge of the Empire State Building as Ravi drives into him. He grinds back against him and starts to straighten up. When Ravi pulls out, Eddie turns and pushes him onto his back, sinking back down on his cock with a groan.
"Let me do some of the work," he teases, rocking against his pelvis and gasping at the stretch. "You did all this for me, I think you earned it, Daddy."
Ravi covers his eyes with his arm and chokes out a laugh before he grabs Eddie's hips and licks his lips, watching Eddie start to ride him. "Go ahead, baby."
And it goes from being kind of a joke to really not being one as Eddie rides his cock until Ravi's gripping his hips and fucking into him in short, hard thrusts. He doesn't waste any time after he cums, sitting up and kissing Eddie as he jerks himself off over Ravi's stomach.
"Christ," Eddie pants against his shoulder.
"Don't tell anyone," Ravi says, cradling Eddie's face in his hands and kissing him. "But it's my birthday tomorrow, so that's why we're actually here."
Eddie grins and nuzzles their noses together. "Yeah, I know. I've got, like, five birthday cards in my bag for you. And I bought us tickets to go see a play on Friday, that's why I said we needed to move dinner."
"Can't believe you lied to me about a late telehealth appointment." Ravi kisses him and smiles. "Tickets to a play sounds expensive."
"Wasn't cheap," Eddie agrees.
Ravi kisses him again, grabbing his ass and biting his lip as he smiles. "Trying to out-daddy me?"
Eddie laughs and wraps his arms around his neck. "Shut up."
"Seriously, I need to know if you're coming for my--"
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I can't believe you got me into ravmundo of all things!! ......23 pretty please? 😇
"We can't do that here!"
(I CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT INTO RAVMUNDO BUT HERE WE ARE. THIS IS SO LONG AND MOSTLY PLOT, SORRY SORRY SORRY. I'll do a cut because it's lemgthy.)
Ravi doesn't know if he just gives off a vibe that lonely guys flock to or what, but he's sitting in another bar with another sad-eyed firefighter. Except this time it's Eddie, so at least he doesn't have to hear about all of the questionable shit Eddie has done like it's cool and fine.
Though, Eddie does do some really cool stuff.
He still brings up the zipline thing probably more than he should when he's with his other friends.
But Buck and Eddie seem to be taking some space from each other, Buck is figuring things out with Tommy, and Eddie had been moping around with sad eyes because his kid is at a birthday sleepover.
So Ravi asks him out.
Not like that.
Except Eddie loosens up fast, and Ravi doesn't find himself playing the part of sounding board. Instead, they're just...talking. Eddie has fundamentally incorrect opinions about how to rank the Alien movies--the first over the second one is actually crazy--and has been watching old wrestling stuff with his kid, so he talks at length about the Attitude Era, which Ravi barely remembers most of. But it's kind of just easy.
It happens again a couple weeks later, and they go to a different bar when they happen to have a band playing. So they spend the night wedged next to each other at the same high top and talking in each other's ears so they can hear over the music.
A couple days after that, Eddie has to patch up a guy who calls Ravi a slur and almost walks away from the guy. Hen takes over, and Eddie's mad for hours.
"So it's kinda wild that you're more pissed than I am," Ravi points out over a slice of pizza later. It's homemade, courtesy of Buck. "Like, both in how long you've been pissed and how pissed you are. I know you've got some anger stuff, but it's fine. People like that are miserable pieces of shit. Besides, he shot himself in the foot. Literally. He's clearly an idiot."
Eddie freezes with the pizza halfway to his mouth. "Anger stuff?"
"Uh, yeah."
Things get kind of stilted the rest of the shift and then the next one. And Ravi is about to maybe apologize, at least for bringing it up the way he did, but then Eddie shows up at his place with a six pack.
"I started seeing a new shrink, and I think he's judging me," Eddie says as soon as the caps are off the bottles.
"He's probably not, but get a new shrink," Ravi says, shrugging. "You can do that. My best friend's on her third one in, like, a year? Her old one moved to Maine, so she's been trying to find someone who works with her just as well. It's hard. I got lucky, mine's cool."
"You're in therapy?" Eddie asks, looking surprised.
"I have a high stress job, I spent a lot of my childhood thinking I was going to die, and I've been dealing with intense grief for, like, two years straight." He smiles and sips some of the beer. "So yeah, I'm in therapy."
Eddie chews on his lip for a long moment. "Two years?"
"My grandfather died. He was my hero and probably one of the most important people in my life. Then Bobby," he says, shrugging.
"I'm sorry."
Ravi nods. "Yeah. Me, too."
When Eddie leaves, he hugs Ravi and thanks him for listening.
Ravi smiles as he hugs him back. "You, too."
So things are okay after that. When they go out with the shift, they tend to gravitate toward each other. Ravi invites him to play Frisbee golf, Eddie invites him to play basketball. He gets a text that Eddie has to cancel seeing the anniversary showing of Fright Night because his aunt can't watch Chris, and Ravi tells him to bring him along. The kid gives devastating burns about the effects and acting, and Ravi wants to watch every bad 80s movie with him that he can find.
Ravi only starts to panic about all of this when he realizes he's considering spending a ton of money to take Eddie and Chris to go to one of those concerts where they play the score with the movie, because the Indiana Jones one is coming back around. He closes the page and calls his friend Mark, who tells him that everyone's been convinced he and Eddie are secretly dating.
He can be normal about this.
He's the most normal person on the 118 A-shift, he can be so normal.
Which is to say that Ravi turns into an idiot. He turns into the guy who tries too hard to be normal, so he's acting like a dumbass.
He's at Eddie's place, because he needed help setting up a new laptop for Chris. He didn't want to track what Chris was doing, he just wanted to keep him from accessing some apps and sites.
"There goes my porn collection," Chris says, and Eddie's head whips around so fast Ravi swears he can hear the air move. "I'm joking, Dad."
Eddie starts muttering furiously in Spanish while Chris snickers at him and Ravi tries not to laugh.
"Don't pretend you didn't have a stash at that age," Ravi says in a low tone.
"Yeah, and then he showed up a few years later," Eddie hisses, nodding toward his son. "Lock it down, Rav."
Ravi hands over the newly parental controlled laptop, and Chris thanks him happily before taking it to go video chat with his cousins.
"Thank you," Eddie says, digging his fingertips into his eyes and rubbing. "His old one up and died on us, and he needs it for school."
"All good," Ravi says, smiling when Eddie shoots him a grateful look before flopping down on the couch next to him. His knees are as far apart as they can get, so one of them is pressing against the side of Ravi's thigh. "You okay? You seem kinda--I dunno."
"Just dealing with some stuff," Eddie says vaguely. "The new therapist is, uh, helping. Well, mostly with the PTSD stuff. But the other stuff, too. It's helping. I think. I don't know. How do you know when it's helping?"
"You look at who you were a year ago or a month ago, and if you think that guy needs help, then you're probably doing better than you were."
Eddie smiles and nudges his leg with his knee. "I blew up my life a year ago, so this is better."
"Good," Ravi says, and he really means it. "I'm glad hanging out with me is an improvement over...all that."
"Shut up," Eddie says, nudging him again. He turns his head so his cheek is pressing against the couch and he's looking at Ravi, who's looking at him. "I think hanging out with you is one of the best parts of coming back here."
Ravi feels like his stomach is in his chest and his heart is in his throat. It's a mess. His brain is just gone. As his mom would say, he's left his brain at home.
It's the only explanation for why he'd lean over and kiss Eddie. It hits him fast that he's just done something really stupid and goes to jump to his feet, but a hand encircles his forearm, and he looks back at Eddie just as another hand comes up to cradle his jaw.
Eddie's kissing him.
They're sober and it's still daylight outside and Eddie's kissing him. He breaks the kiss, and Eddie's eyes are slow to open, and then he's leaning in again and pressing Ravi back against the arm of the couch.
He's got a knee against Eddie's hip, and Eddie's got an arm around him and keeps kissing him like he wants to be kissing him and has wanted to be kissing him. He's getting hard. They both are. Ravi feels like a teenager again making out on his lab partner's couch, his head swimming as he just tries to keep up.
A car alarm goes off outside, and they spring apart.
"I should go," Ravi says, and Eddie nods from where he's sitting on the couch. Ravi pokes his head into the other room and tells Chris goodbye. And then he leaves.
They have work a couple days later, and it's profoundly awkward. Except he doesn't think anyone else notices. It's only awkward for Ravi by the standard of how he and Eddie normally interact with each other. There's no glances shared over the heads of their coworkers, Eddie doesn't put a hand on Ravi's wrist or back or arm to get his attention, Ravi doesn't stand right up against him while he shows him a video on his phone.
Instead, there's awkwardness. Or tension. Ravi can't tell which one it is until he ducks into the laundry room, since no one else has any reason to be in there. A minute later, the door opens, and Eddie's there with his back against the door. And then Eddie's crossing the space between them and pressing Ravi against the dryer that never fully dries anything.
They're kissing again, and Ravi wants to strip them both out of their clothes and hold onto Eddie while he rides him. Or is ridden by him. He's not picky, especially not with an ass like Eddie's. They're at work, though, so the best he can hope for is making out.
Except Eddie is grinding against him and kissing along his jaw, and Ravi's not usually this sensitive, but this has been a powder keg with a match hovering over it for a while.
"Want you," Eddie says against his skin, his hand gripping Ravi's ass and pulling their hips flush together.
"W-we can't do that here," Ravi protests, even as he arches against Eddie and curls his fingers in the hair at the crown of his head.
Eddie raises his head from Ravi's neck, his eyes sparkling and his lips curving into a smile. "What about my place?"
"We're here for, like, nine and a half more hours," Ravi points out with a laugh, biting his lip when Eddie keeps grinding slowly against him. "You really want to do this first thing in the morning?"
"Mm, I like morning sex," Eddie says, pressing a gentle kiss to Ravi's mouth. "You can see everything. I wanna see you."
Ravi laughs again, because this is insane. "Are you serious?"
"Don't I feel serious?" he teases with a pointed grind.
He presses a firm hand to Eddie's chest as he bites back a moan. "Okay, yeah, but that's not helping right now."
Eddie backs off, hands raised, and he's still smiling. "Okay, fair enough."
Ravi huffs out a laugh, slumping against the dryer. "This is a really bad idea."
"I'm full of bad ideas."
"So I've heard." Ravi hooks a thumb in his waistband and tries to will his dick to calm down, realizes he's going to need to take a cold shower like a teenager. "There are way less stupid ways to dip your toes in the dude pond, you know."
Eddie raises his eyebrows. "People don't actually say that, do they? But also, I know, alright? I just--I really like you, and I keep thinking about you and about kissing you and then I thought about some other stuff and had to lock myself in my bathroom while I dealt with that. Am I being crazy? Like, there's something here, right?"
Ravi weighs his options, figures it's time for him to finally do an ethically questionable thing. Yeah, he'd defied the US military, but that was for the team. This is for him.
The 118 A-shift really is the worst influence.
"Yeah," he says, trailing his fingers over the buttons of Eddie's shirt. "Yeah, there's something here."
He pulls Eddie into another kiss before gently pushing him away and leaving the laundry room.
In the morning, after he's stopped at home and showered and changed, he knocks on Eddie's door, and Eddie pulls him inside with a hand on the back of his neck. They kiss on the way to his bedroom, and Ravi lets Eddie push him down the bed. When they get each other naked, Eddie spends a long time looking at him and running his hands all over, and Ravi smiles when Eddie catches his eye and flushes pink.
"I've never done this before," Eddie admits, and it's charming as hell.
"Yeah, I kind of figured," Ravi says, laughing. "It's fine. Just--here."
He rolls Eddie onto his back and presses their bodies together, and Ravi slides his fingers between Eddie's, lightly pinning him to the bed as he grinds against him. Eddie pants against his mouth and jaw and tells him he feels good, and he's so pretty when he cums that Ravi wishes he had a picture of it.
It doesn't take much for Ravi to get off from there--he feels like he's been on the edge of it for about three months now. Eddie gropes around, grabs a shirt, and wipes them down. Then he pulls Ravi into his arms and wraps a leg around him.
"Why?" Ravi asks. "What got you to--why?"
"My kid teased me about having a crush on you, and my shrink asked if I had 'romantic inclinations' toward you. I dunno. I just like you," he says, and Ravi raises his head to kiss him. "I don't do casual real well, believe it or not. Or at all, actually."
Ravi smiles, brushing their noses together. "I can work with not casual."
Eddie smiles, kisses Ravi quick and sweet. "Let me take you dancing, then."
"You can dance?"
"Oh, I can dance," Eddie confirms, and Ravi settles his head on his chest while Eddie tells him about being a junior ballroom champion.
Maybe a little indulgent but runway model Ravi and designer eddie? Or something?
1. Eddie didn't intend to become a fashion designer, but when he was dancing, he started helping his partner's mom make their costumes. Then he started helping her to design them, and there's something about it that just makes sense to him. He won't really do it outside her house for a long time, but he starts making clothes for some of the girls at school and then himself and then one of his buddies asks where he got his suit for the school dance and Eddie somehow becomes the fashion designer at his high school. There's a wait-list to get a prom dress made by him, he works on some of the stage productions for college application purposes. For fashion school. His parents are baffled by it, but he has scholarships and Pepa lets him stay with her while he's at school in LA.
2. He's seven years into a career that is doing well but not great, he gets eyes on his pieces and people wear them. And then he gets lucky and a celebrity wears one of his pieces to the right event and looks great with the styling, and Eddie is suddenly the It Boy again for the first time since high school. He focuses a lot on natural fibers, cultural influence from his family and Los Angeles, a masculine edge to everything, even his gowns. Eddie Diaz doesn't do soft or pretty, but he's not the edgiest guy trying to be the next Gareth Pugh. It's not quite utilitarian (except his growing ready to wear line), it's not military, it's a little androgynous. Sometimes he throws in ultra traditional or classic pieces as a way to show the real contrast between what everyone else does and what he does. He can design a basic but nice suit or gown, but where's the fun in that? He tries not to be pretentious about it, though.
3. He's auditioning models and has a good selection, and then Ravi Panikkar walks for him and he couldn't give less of a shit about anyone else if he tried. He's never had a muse before--inspiration, always, never a muse. He wants to put Ravi in clean lines and let his face be the star. He wants to dress him in elaborate pieces that he's never really gravitated toward just because he wants to highlight and elevate every part of him. He'll pull some Showgirls shit to get him if another designer tries to poach him from under Eddie's nose. He hires Buck back, of course, Buck is one of his go-to models. He's got a cool pilot boyfriend now, though, and he's talking about going into design himself because he's actually made some cool day-to-day clothes for himself. So Eddie isn't at all shy about showing off Ravi in the two designs he pumps out last minute. They're showstoppers, they get his name in headlines when people talk about that year's Spring/Summer show. Eddie's modest about them, because he can't really come out and say: "I met a guy so beautiful that I needed to make something worthy of him." That's pretentious and weird as fuck.
4. He asks Ravi to come in for some print campaigns, sketches while he's on set and has Ravi come back for another shoot a few weeks later when he drops a mini collection. It's all meant to be worn by exactly one person, so when Eddie gifts him one of everything from the collection and Ravi tries to turn some of it down, Eddie insists that it's truly for him. He's trying so hard to be normal, but he knows his game drops to nothing on the rare occasion when he likes someone for real. He becomes the dumbest motherfucker alive, he's got the sense God gave a sea slug when Ravi is in the vicinity. But he tries to play it cool and thinks he's doing okay until his Communications Director Josh looks at him like Eddie's just started waving an axe at people after he's there for one of the shoots. "Oh my god," Josh says, shocked. "That was painful. That was--are you on quaaludes right now?" "What are you talking about?" Eddie asks. "Eddie, I just watched you sit in a corner and tell your new favorite model that him choosing to tip his chin up for a photo was 'brilliant.' I'm embarrassed for you, what the fuck?" Eddie lies about needing to go review some sketches, and he ignores the increasingly juvenile articles Josh texts him about what to do when you have a crush on a boy.
5. Ravi comes in for a fitting before an event that he's borrowing a piece for. It's late and Eddie's been wandering around his studio aimlessly trying to focus on designing these stamps that he's going to carve to make the patterns with, but really he's just been waiting for Ravi to arrive. When he does, it's been raining outside, and Eddie sticks him in front of the space heater he uses sometimes and pulls a clean towel out of his gym bag to wrap around him. Ravi asks what he's working on, and Eddie explains what he's trying to do, and they end up talking about woodblock printing for way longer than Eddie would've thought they could. But when he sketches out different things and shows them to Ravi, he lets him veto or approve. It's really late when they finally remember why Ravi even came over, and Ravi yawns a few times when they finally start the fitting. He's getting sleepy, and Eddie wants to wrap him in the softest stuff he's got on hand. He'd order skeins and skeins of Vicuña wool to make something even softer. He's carefully fitting Ravi, and Ravi looks at himself in the mirror to check it. "It's perfect," Ravi says, and Eddie agrees. "Designer egos, man," Ravi teases. "It's perfect on you," Eddie corrects. It's an older piece, but Ravi had requested it. "I saw it on the runway at my first Fashion Week," Ravi says, turning this way and that. "And I just got obsessed. That's why I wanted to walk for you so bad. I didn't think you'd even pick me." "Have more faith in yourself, Rav," Eddie teases gently, helping him out of the coat/cape. He's unclasping the shirt before he realizes Ravi can probably do that himself and steps away.
6. They're at a different party at the same time, and Ravi is wearing one of his suits, the shirt is one of the block print patterned ones. "I don't remember giving this one to you," Eddie says. "Yeah, dude, I bought it," Ravi says, laughing at Eddie's almost offended expression. "I should Venmo you, that's--" "It's fine," Ravi insists. "How about you buy me a drink?" "Open bar," Eddie points out. "Buy me dinner, then," Ravi says, sipping his champagne. Eddie nods, and Ravi smiles, and then Eddie offers, "You know, I could cook for you instead." Ravi finishes his champagne and steps closer. "How about you make me breakfast tomorrow?" he asks, and Eddie nods and they get the fuck out of there.
7. Ravi wakes up to Eddie drawing on his tablet instead of making breakfast, and he puts his cheek on Eddie's stomach and looks. It's a sketch for something black and intense with a shock of gold through it, but the figure it's on looks like Ravi. "You're designing something for me?" Eddie hesitates before admitting, "I've designed a lot of stuff for you. I think you might be my muse, man." Ravi kisses his stomach and smiles. "Like what?" And Eddie shows him all the sketches and notes, feeling like a creep until Ravi sets the tablet aside, climbs in his lap, and kisses him. Ravi, thankfully, thinks it's cool and really sweet and flattering even if it is a little weird.
8. Their first public appearance is months later. They're at a film festival, and they're wearing contrasting designs by Eddie. They arrive separately because Ravi came from a shoot and basically got dressed in the car on the way, so when they meet up on the carpet, the press think it's a fun little coincidence that they're wearing what they're wearing. When Eddie leans in and kisses Ravi's cheek, they're glad their eyes are closed because the flash bulbs that go off are blinding.
