schneezusweiss said: How Cullen asked Dorian out for the first time - most likely nervously tbh but also very sweetly
Sorry, I know you sent me this a few weeks ago I’ve just been sort of backed up and really easily distracted. I went a bit modern AU (although still with magic) on this one, hope that’s okay!
It shouldn’t be this hard.
It really shouldn’t and Cullen knows it as he paces the length of their apartment, his boots wearing a path through the carpet but his stupid heart won’t stop racing, pounding high and quick in his chest.
This is stupid, he thinks. What are you so fucking worried about, Rutherford? This is Dorian. Your best friend. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
They’d been friends since middle school, ever since Dorian had walked into homeroom after winter break and Gregory and Otto had decided the new kid dressed in all black and wearing eyeliner was an easy target. Cullen still didn’t know quite what had possessed him but he’d launched, fists clenched at the older boys, just barely managing to dodge the flames the new boy sent flying.
So perhaps his act of poorly-thought-out chivalry hadn’t been necessary but he and Dorian had been fast friends ever since, the boy even moving into Cullen’s house when his father had kicked him out in the 10th grade.
Now they were juniors in college with their own apartment and suddenly, everything was hard. The easy silences between them awkward, full of small, furtive looks that Cullen couldn’t explain any more than he could understand the skipping of his heart whenever he looked at his roommate. Until recently.
Something had changed. Something important and it touched everything.
He loved Dorian and tonight was the night that he had to tell him.
What’s the worst thing that could happen?
“He could laugh at me!” Cullen answers indignantly to the empty room, its silence mocking him.
He wouldn’t, surely? Dorian didn’t have a cruel bone in his body but… maybe the idea was just so stupid, so idiotic that he just wouldn’t be able to resist.
He heard the click of keys in the door, the slow and steady creak as it swung open. Dorian stepped through, his arms loaded with grocery bags, the cheeky grin that never failed to make Cullen giddy plastered across his face.
Cullen nods dumbly, nearly tripping over his own feet as he walked across the living room. He takes a few bags from Dorian and follows him into the kitchen.
“I lo…” he flushes beet-red and nearly drops the bags in his hands, somehow mastering himself enough to lift them onto the counters. “I mean… Dorian…”
He sighs. Everything had gone wrong, of course it had.
Dorian’s staring at him, head cocked, a curious smile on his face. “What, Cullen?”
He’s silent. No, he’d fucked it all up. He couldn’t, he’d ruined everything.
“Cullen. You wanted to say something. Just say it.”
He huffs, taking a shaky breath back in, fingers rubbing at the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up and onto his head.
“Dorian… Will you…” Cullen closes his eyes, steadying himself for the imminent rejection.
There’s a soft touch against his cheek and when he opens his eyes Dorian kisses him, just a delicate brush of soft lips against his own.
“You idiot. I thought you’d never ask,” Dorian whispers.
“So… yes?” He asks, hardly daring to hope even as he kisses Dorian back, hands trailing up his back and into his hair. It’s soft, fumbling, grasping, too chaste for the occasion but it’s everything and perfect and all theirs.
Dorian noses his cheek before kissing him again, harder this time - deeper - a desperate tangling of lips and tongues and teeth before he pulls away breathless and flushed.
“Yes. Always. And I love you too.”
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