#empaethe;

1. It’s always this. He’s talking to him, and Ryker isobviously a little it out of it, and the second Aaron mentions /rehab/ Rykergrabs him by the hips and pulls him in for a ridiculously deep kiss. Ryker,himself, is subjected to the deepest layer of pepperminty hell in the process.Not one to be dissuaded, he just keeps at it until Aaron’s mumbled lectureswitches into irate, muffled rebukes, and then into a much softer silence. Hiseyes are closed. Aaron does seem like the type to close his eyes while he’sbeing kissed.

“You’re pushing your luck, Gabriel,” he says as soon asRyker pulls back to breathe. Aaron’s face is totally red, but there’s a sparkin his eyes.

“Yeah, but luck pushed me first.” Savage. Wolfish grinintact, he dips his head to place a pathetic and bitey excuse for a kiss onAaron’s lower lip.

Aaron sighs, rolls his head back, seems about ready tolaunch into another lecture. This time about upright behavior in the face ofadversity.

Ryker pulls him back in for another kiss.

2. Ryker has a bloody, split lip and a sizeable gash on hiselbow—for once, Aaron’s actually treating him in tense, worried silence. Ryker’sseemed to get the message that Aaron isn’t ready to lecture him about his badchoices. (Yet.)

“I don’t know if this is because you were stumbling aroundhigh off your ass or because you got into a fight.” Now, that’s not supposed tobe humorous at all, but the tired relief adds that tone Ryker’s heard before—ishe actually joking, or is he exhausted out of his mind? Both? Evidently both,because when Ryker rolls his eyes and grabs him by the back of his neck to draghim down into a truly awful kiss Aaron doesn’t fight it past a mumbled I hateyou.

Tired enough to lick Ryker’s blood off his lips instead ofcleaning it off with a tissue, and that’s when Ryker thinks oh, shit.

3. It’s the strangest sort of routine. He’ll show upcompletely blitzed, sometimes halfway dead, usually pretty high and eyesred-rimmed from lack of sleep. And drugs. Always with the drugs.

Aaron kisses him, sometimes. It’s never big.

Just pushing him down onto the cot, running his hands underthe tap to clean them and filling a cup of water for Ryker for when he’s sober-nothigh-got his head on straight, shutting off the lights so his hangover won’tsting like a hive of pissed-off bees, leans over him—checks to see if he’sasleep yet.

Leans down and kisses his forehead, and when Ryker isn’tunconscious he can swear that there’s a smile there.

4. When Ryker started adding hands to these awkward littlearrangements, Aaron can’t remember. He can’t really reciprocate, either, notknowing how—friendly? Welcome?—his wandering hands would be, and that leavesthem to flounder uselessly in the air behind Ryker’s back. To Ryker’s credit heis trying to be gentlemanly. All for the better-- if he’d tried to go lowerthan Aaron’s hips he would probably lose his tongue. As is, it’s still prettysatisfying when Ryker presses his thumbs into Aaron’s bony hips and pushes himup against the file cabinets, sacrifices the mobility of one hand to hold one ofAaron’s.

“You’re lucky there aren’t any security cameras in here.”

“Oh, there aren’t? Does that mean I can--?”

“No, Ryker!”

5. Two Styrofoam cups of ramen, one cot, and it’s theclosest they’ve ever gotten to a dinner date. The flickering of the shitty fluorescentlights is a poor imitation of a candle, and Aaron’s the type of person to onlyuse half a flavor packet-- If you want to die from sodium overdose, fine byme as he passed the remnants to Ryker, who just grinned and dumped it wholeheartedlyin: You’ll give me mouth-to-mouth, right?-- so there’s no conceivable wayto even pretend that it’s high-class.

This time, Ryker’s the one to initiate—as usual, really, butnow it’s not to shut Aaron up.

It’s just because he wants to, which is equally as strangeas it is flattering. Since he isn’t being rudely interrupted Aaron feels noqualms with reciprocating, looping an arm around Ryker’s back to pull himcloser and into a better position. He has to tilt his head up—Ryker has tocrane his neck. They both have to lean at an awkward angle sure to cause some achesif they keep it up. Aaron sets his ramen down on the outside of them to scootcloser.