atehimrightup | (no subject)

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george

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Lee is very unused to getting cars to go places. He's always just driven himself if he could, or walked if he couldn't. Hitchhiked, sometimes.

But now he's in a place where he can summon a stranger to drive him somewhere by tapping the tiny computer in his hand. The technological advancement in this place stuns him every single day. He can't even imagine how George deals with it.

He looks over at George next to him in the backseat of their current ride, watching him as he watches a touristy horse drawn carriage go by them with a big dopey grin on his face and, well, George is probably doing just fine.

He keeps staring, letting his gaze drop to the thin silver chain around George's neck. His going out collar, they've called it. Tonight is its first night in play, and Lee is eager to see how it goes.

When they arrive at the restaurant, Lee thanks the driver and slides out of the car, holding the door open and reaching out to take George's hand. "Come along, darling."

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George thinks about it for a long moment, his fingers trailing against Lee's skin. His French had been painfully lacking when he first arrived in France but, by the time he'd left, it had been fluent. He smiles.

"I think I might have fallen in love with you, he murmurs, eyes on Lee's face. "And I thought I'd been in love before, but now I'm not so sure."

Lee stares at George while he speaks, blinking slowly and trailing his fingertips along George’s neck and chest. It’s beautiful, whatever he’s saying, and Lee feels his breath catch in his throat.

“Wow,” he breathes out, blinking slowly as if the words put him in a daze. He’s curious as to what George said, as he looked so serious when he said it, but Lee doesn’t feel the need to ask for a translation. It made him feel good, whatever it was.

“I was right,” he says in a low voice, smiling boyishly and leaning in for a kiss. “Thank you.”

He drops his head to press a soft, reverent kiss to the bite mark on George’s chest. “And for this, too.”

"You always act like that's something I'm steeling myself for," he says, leaning up to kiss Lee's chin. "It isn't, I promise you. Maybe at first, but now..." He shrugs. "It's good because it's you."

Lee closes his eyes, brow furrowing slightly as he feels so guilty that his stomach turns. George is being so good to him, so selfless, but Lee is keeping something so monumental from him. It’s something that would end this. George would run from him and it would be the right thing to do.

But Lee is keeping him here, because George is the best thing that’s ever happened to him and Lee is too selfish to let him go.

He takes a deep breath and finally slips out of George’s body, staying on top of him as he reaches up to stroke his fingertips reverently across George’s face.

“You are—“ Lee pauses, chuckling a little and looking at George as if he’s in disbelief. “There aren’t words for what you are.”

George smiles at that, his cheeks flushing pink with genuine pleasure at the implied compliment. He bends a knee on either side of Lee's hips, cradling himself against his body.

"I think you'll find that there are plenty of words for what I am," he says. "I've heard all of them."

“Well, you’re all those things for sure,” Lee teases, but it’s true. George is a brat and a slut and sometimes an asshole, but he’s so much more than that, too. He’s complicated and infuriating and so endlessly interesting.

“But that isn’t all you are,” Lee assures him, cradling the back of George’s head to draw him in for another soft, lingering kiss. “You have no idea what you do to me, baby. You—“

He pauses, blushing a little and nudging their noses together. “You make my life so much better than I thought it could be.”

People have said things like that to George before, maybe, but none of them have meant it, not really. With Lee, though, George can see the truth of it in Lee's extraordinary eyes.

"Let's go to bed," he says. "I want to be in bed with you."

“Yes,” Lee says quickly, kissing George and sitting up. There’s a mess of toys around them, and a sticky bowl and stickier boot to clean, but all that can wait.

“Do you need anything? Do you want to go take a shower?” Lee asks as he gets to his feet, turning to hold out a hand to help George up. It’s only then that it seems to occur to him that he still has all his clothes on, even those sticky boots.

“Fuck,” he says with laugh, bending over to untie his boots, feeling a shiver of pleasure as he looks at the slick mess George left all over one of them. “You haven’t even seen me naked today.”

"That's what I need," says George, starting to umbutton Lee's shirt once he straightens up. "You, naked and in my bed when I get out of the shower?"

Normally, he'd wait until he was sure they were done, but he feels sticky from the dessert, and it feels like he could do with a fresh start to the evening.

"And water. Please."

“I can do that,” Lee says easily, smiling as George unbuttons his shirt. He doesn’t even mind that George needs time alone. It was a very heavy evening and Lee could use a few moments on his own, too.

He steps out of his boots and goes to get a water bottle from the fridge, handing it over to George and taking his face in both hands, kissing him on the mouth and then on the forehead.

“Take all the time you need,” he tells him, nudging their noses together. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

George takes the water into the shower with him, drinking the whole thing in a few long pulls. He lets the warm water sluice over him, washes his hair and, when he gets out, brushes his teeth. Eventually, he pads out of the bathroom, a clean white towel wrapped around his waist and water still beading on his chest.

George leaves the room and Lee neatens up the worst of it, putting the things that need to be cleaned in the kitchen before draining his own bottle of water. He finishes undressing and gives himself a quick scrub down with a wet washcloth, then takes the last piece of cake and two more water bottles into the bedroom.

After carefully putting away the collar and leash, Lee dims the lights and pulls the covers back, crawling into bed and collapsing onto his back with a sigh. This bed feels more like his than his own, and he tries not to think about what that might mean.

He’s sprawled on his back with one arm up behind his head, lounging comfortably, when George comes back into the room. He’s all wet with a towel slung low around his waist, and Lee rolls his eyes.

“God, you’re just hideous,” he says with a scoff, grinning as he lets his gaze skim appreciatively over George’s body. “Truly an ogre.”

"You know, someone once called me "the finest bodied man in all of England"," says George, smugly, glancing in the mirror when combing wet hair back from his face. He looks at the reflection of Lee in the mirror, sprawled naked and lovely in rumpled sheets and something in his chest contracts. He'd been thinking about what he said to Lee for a while. It's not any easier now that he's said it, albeit in words Lee didn't understand.

"Making yourself comfortable?" He asks. The look on his face suggests that he wouldn't expect any less.

“I see you didn’t let it go to your head or anything,” Lee says with a roll of his eyes, laughing as he props his head up on his hand, stretching out along the bed. Lee knows that he’s attractive in his own way, but there’s no way that they’re in the same league. George is the type of beauty that people would fight wars for.

Hell, maybe they have.

“Mm, your sheets are softer than mine,” Lee says as he rolls over onto his stomach, burying his face in a pillow that smells like George.

"I don't know what you mean," says George, turning back from the mirror and dropping his towel, crawling up onto the bed with Lee and draping himself over his back, kissing the back of his neck.

"They should be. They were expensive."

Lee can’t help the shiver that goes through him as George climbs over him, though he does his best to pretend to be unaffected. He’s not sure how successful he is.

“You’re getting me all wet,” he murmurs as he turns his head to the side, nuzzling his cheek into the pillow. “Mm, a solid investment. Must be why I like to sleep over so much.”

"The only reason, I'm sure," says George, rolling his eyes fondly and nipping at Lee's skin before he slips to the side. "I like having you here." He slides his hand down, fondling Lee's bare arse. "As often as I can."

“It’s up there.” He sighs when George slides away, having enjoyed his weight, but it’s worth it to roll to face him. He can’t help the boyish smile that spreads across his face as George grabs at him, leaning into that touch and lifting his leg to drape it over George’s.

“I like being here,” he murmurs as he rolls his body to get closer, lifting one hand to brush George’s damp hair back from his forehead. “I’ve seen a lot of good sunrises in my nomad days and I gotta say, not one of ‘em comes close to waking up next to you.”

The way that George smiles at that is warm and genuine, a smile that not many before Darrow got to see on his face. He skims his fingers along Lee's bare thigh. "It stopped feeling right waking up without you here a while ago," he admits.

It feels like they’re dancing around something, tiptoeing cautiously right up to the edges, but Lee can’t bring himself to leap off of it. He leans in and gives George a kiss, curling an arm around him and holding the back of his neck for a long moment.

“I can bring some stuff over. Stay more often,” he offers in an almost timid voice. Lee’s things already litter George’s apartment. He’s unwilling to give up his own place entirely, if that’s what George is hinting at. If he’s hinting at anything at all.

But he needs his own place to go and hide sometimes. He needs a place to keep secrets, and it makes him feel like an asshole.

“If you want.”

George leans into the gentle touches, one hand skimming along the length of Lee's bare thigh where it's draped over his leg. He nods, lifting that hand to stroke his thumb along Lee's jaw.

"I'd like that, I think. If it would suit you."

“Yeah, it suits me,” Lee says softly, nuzzling into George’s hand. “I need time to myself sometimes but it’s not because I don’t wanna be around you.”

He smiles, wry and kind of sad. “I just get ornery sometimes.”

Lee is quiet for a long moment, holding George’s wristband and kissing his palm. “I was on my own for a long time. I got used to being alone all the time. Sometimes I still need that.”

"Your own space is important," says George, nodding. He'd always had rooms of his own at the palace, no matter how much time he'd spent in James' bed.

"You could have a key, though? So you could come and go as you please?"

Even though it’s what they’re talking about, the offer to give him a key still takes Lee by surprise. He almost says no, but not because he doesn’t want it. More like he feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

He feels like he shouldn’t be making himself so at home in George’s life. It’s going to make it so much harder to extricate himself when he inevitably has to.

But there’s no way to explain that, and when he looks at George’s hopeful face, he’s helpless. Lee’s pretty sure he’d do anything just to keep him smiling.

“Yeah, that sounds good. I’d like that,” Lee says with a nod, eyes shining as he puts his hand on George’s cheek.

"Alright. Good. There's a spare somewhere. I'll find it." He wraps his hand around the key on the chain around Lee's neck, stroking it with his thumb. "I don't think I'd ever owned a key to anywhere before I came here."