Idk What I’m Doing But That Won’t Stop Me

I do love the one and a half ducks, but I wonder if it’s time I try something new. Maybe find a way to get the gif in my banner to work?

To the seldom few who follow here then:

(It definitely has an Everytime We Touch feel! This little ficlet doesn’t really match the vibe—it kinda got super sentimental—but oh well! lyrics I loved but couldn’t work in:

Your dark hair is killing me 

Your beautiful eyes are killing me 

and:

A whole life I have been sleeping without you

Until I finally found you)

One thing Chad’s learned about Robert over the course of their… whatever they’ve been doing… is that he’s just not a Pillow Talk kinda guy. The most romantic thing he ever says after sex is a soft, “Here, drink,” while holding a glass of water against Chad’s lips or a rumbled, “You were good,” pressed into Chad’s pec. 

Honestly, it offended Chad a little at first. Like, most people would be raving about him after a single night, but this bitch is lucky enough to have him regularly—and exclusively, at that!!—and can’t even bother giving him his flowers for a job well done?

But at this point, he thinks he understands. Just because Robert doesn’t say all that romantic shit doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it. It’s in the thorough aftercare and the callused fingers trailing soothingly over his skin and the silk pillowcase Chad knows damn well he didn’t buy for himself. 

He has his own way of being romantic, even if it’s more subtle than Chad’s used to. 

That’s why it shocks him so much when Robert settles down beside him after their second round of the night and sleepily murmurs, completely out of nowhere, “You’re like a star.” 

Chad blinks down at him, trying to figure out what the fuck he’s talking about. Robert’s head is resting against his collarbone, so all he has to go off of is the top of his messy brown hair. “What?” 

“A star.” Robert presses a kiss to Chad’s chest, directly over his heart, and Chad can’t tell if he did that on purpose or if Chad’s just being a stupid sap. “You know how sometimes when we’re having sex, you’ll just start heating up? And it gets to the point where I have to back off a little until you can cool down?” 

Chad feels his face heat with embarrassment, feeling way too called out. “Okay, first of all—”

“I like it,” Robert says bluntly. “Sometimes I don’t want to back off. I want to stay as close as possible, and I don’t care if it hurts. I have to tell myself that you'd be upset if you burned me during sex—that’s the only way I can make myself let go of you when you get like that.” 

Chad swallows. “Robert…” 

“It reminds me of when I was a kid,” Robert continues, “Looking at the night sky through my telescope.”

Chad’s staring holes into the top of Robert’s head now, practically holding his breath. He’s told Robert all about his childhood—about cooking with Maman and working on the car with Baba and making up dances with Farah—but Robert hardly ever talks about his own. What he does give away, in bits and pieces sprinkled in here and there, is frustratingly vague. 

“I used to tell Chase I wanted to discover a new star and go visit it. I always thought that touching a star would be like touching the surface of a lake—I wanted to put my hand on it and watch the ripples,” Robert says, nostalgia thick in his voice. “He’d scoff and tell me that there was no way I was gonna discover a star with that cheap-ass kiddie telescope, and that even if I did, that star would burn me up long before I could get close enough to touch.

“I didn’t care. I still wanted to try. Chase called me stupid; I called myself brave. But now, I think maybe I just wanted to hold something in my hands—even if it hurt, even if it burned me up—and know that it was just mine. There wasn’t much that was just mine, back then.”

Chad runs a hand lightly up and down Robert’s back, trying to comfort him without spooking him out of talking. Skittish fucker. Distantly, he wonders if Robert got into the liquor before Chad got here—he only ever gets this introspective when he’s had something to drink.

Robert abruptly pushes himself up, and Chad’s suddenly pinned in place by intense dark eyes. 

“And now I look at you,” Robert says lowly, “and I see the same thing I saw back then—this bright, shining light—and I want you, and I don’t care if it hurts, and I don’t care if you burn me up in the end.”

He leans in closer, until their lips are just a hair’s width apart, and speaks his next words directly into Chad’s mouth. “You're like my own personal star.” 

Chad gasps and surges up to kiss him, needing to be closer, needing to show Robert that he won’t burn him, that Robert can hold him without it hurting. Needing round fucking three, oh my god. 

Distantly, he hears a knock at Robert’s front door, but who the fuck cares about that right now? 

Unfortunately, Robert cares. He pulls away and checks his phone as Chad pants under him, and then he climbs off of him completely. 

“That’s the food,” he says nonchalantly, sliding out of bed like he hasn't just forever ruined Chad for anyone else. 

Jesus, this fucker can’t do anything by halves, can he?

The next time they fuck, Robert calls him my star, and Chad comes almost embarrassingly quickly. Afterward, Robert performs careful aftercare like he always does, and then he settles down against Chad, just as quiet as usual. 

Yes, that includes pedophiles. Yes, that includes rapists. Yes, that includes billionaires. Yes, that includes would leaders.

If you're willing to say "here's a group of people that it is morally okay to kill," you are arguing that killing certain people will fix everything. It doesn't work.

It didn't work when Hitler tried it. It didn't work when Mao tried it. It didn't work when Lenin and Stalin tried it. It didn't work when Pol Pot tried it. It didn't work when Idi Amin tried it.

Robert alone with his thoughts at night,

He always does his best to reduce damage while on missions. At the end of the day, he’s a combat type, and there’s only so much you can do with literal fire.

But it’s going as well as it can be, thanks to Robert. And Flambae always prides himself with having the best dispatcher around.

With himself? Meh.

He can walk off a heat stroke. And dehydration. And lung damage. And more, probably.

Still doesn’t change the sharp glare and scathing rant Robert has for him the minute he steps into SDN.

And he does pay attention. Or tries.

There’s some leftover vanilla cream smudged on Robert’s chin, most likely acquired after another vending machine raid.

He laughs, soft, easy, hand wiping off the fluffy cream.

He doesn’t even notice how affection drunk he looks, with faint sunlight glazing gently over those eyes, until orange melts down to autumn gold.

Robert very much does.

“Bob-Bob,” And his voice. How it can go from aggravating to tickled by fondness. “I’m fucking sorry, okay? It’s not even THAT serious,—“

“You hit your head on a billboard.”

“Just a little!”

“You had a concussion, Chadwick.”

“Ugh, don’t use full names! You only do that when I’m REALLY deep in shit.”

He laughs, and laughs, and Robert should continue to be pissed, but it’s hard.

When those eyes are on him, watching him like the world starts and ends with him, it’s hard. “I’m sorry, Bob-Bob.”

Robert clenches his jaw and glares away.

“Robert,” and the name. His name. Smooth and pulsing worship. “Don’t be mad. That’s my job.”

“Fine! Fine. No medical. My place. You’re getting checked out.”

It is IMPERATIVE that Flambae has no idea about it.

He’s really out here staring at Robert with the warmest eyes in the world, not because he wants Robert to stop being mad at him, but because when Robert exists, then he’s going to stare:

Ofc Robert is gonna scold him harder when they go to his place. And Robert is SO bothered because Chad’s eyes keep distracting him.

They look so content and the lines around Flambae’s temples grin.

The absolute WORST move? When Flambae keeps reaching down to kiss at his face. Lips laughing on freckles and amused and arms hugging Robert’s shoulders to him. “Come on, Bob-Bob—“

“Stop using the eyes on me.”