It started with Gwen. Merlin was distracted by the warmth of the prince’s room compared to the chilly halls, so he initially didn’t notice Gwen balancing on a chair near the doorway. He paused for a moment before the fire, then moved to drop Arthur’s folded laundry in the chest at the foot of his bed. When he finally turned around, Gwen was sliding the chair back into the table.

“Hello,” he said, looking at her askance.

“Hi.” She smiled, a cross between giddy and nervous, and started edging towards the door. “I’m just going to…” She motioned towards the door.

It opened before she got there. She bumped into Arthur, giggling slightly as she edged around him. “Pardon me, your majesty.” She dropped a quick curtsy and was gone, shutting the door behind her.

They both stared at the door.

“What was that about?”

Merlin shook his head. “I have no idea.” His feet carried him over to the table, to the spot where Gwen had been standing. “She was doing something with…” The words trailed off as he looked up.

“What?”

He was suddenly keenly aware of Arthur’s presence next to him. The prince looked at him, then looked up. A clump of mistletoe hung from a bright red ribbon above them, dangling off of one spoke of the chandelier.

A mischievous smile spread across Arthur’s face. “Well, it is tradition.”

Merlin barely had a second to react before Arthur’s hand was behind his head, pulling him closer. In the way of first kisses, theirs was a very strange kiss. Merlin stood frozen, his mind still not quite caught up with what was happening. Arthur pressed on valiantly. His tongue worked its way into Merlin’s mouth and that seemed to be the act that sparked life back into Merlin. He made a noise, a tiny squeak that was very, very unmanly, before melting into the kiss. Their second kiss, which followed close on the aftermath of the first, went much better, as did the third.

They were both breathless when Arthur pulled away. He stared at Merlin in incredulity, his mouth working but no words came out. The longer they stood there, the more Merlin wished he could create a pit, right then and there, that would swallow him up and hide his embarrassment.

“I thought you liked Gwen,” Arthur said, looking as surprised as Merlin felt.

“What?” It was Merlin’s turn to ask. Arthur still stood close to him, his mouth scant inches away. If he leaned forward, they could….

“You. Liking Gwen?”

Merlin shook his head. “No, I never did.”

A frown crossed Arthur’s face and he shifted on his feet. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

The realization that Arthur seemed to have actually enjoyed the kiss, and more specifically, enjoyed kissing him, was slowly sinking in, leaving Merlin feeling slightly giddy. “I did. Multiple times, in fact.”

“Well, you should have…” It was obvious that Arthur was stretching, trying to find some reason how his and Morgana’s ignorance was Merlin’s fault. “…been more specific.”

Merlin just smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind. And you, who do you like?”

The kiss was answer enough. Kissing Arthur was slowly becoming familiar, though he had a feeling he would always remember the tentative way Arthur’s tongue mingled with his, and the hesitancy as Arthur’s hand reached under Merlin’s shirt. He knew that Arthur was an old hand at seduction. The tales Arthur told to his friends were far too graphic, far too detailed to be fiction, yet the way Arthur held him showed none of that.

“I would think,” Arthur said between kisses, “that was quite obvious.” Their hips were pressed together, giving Merlin firm evidence of Arthur’s words.

“Then you should know that the feeling is quite mutual.” He never imagined he would have the chance to act on that attraction.

Arthur’s face was nearly split by his grin.

Boldly, Merlin reached down to unfasten Arthur’s belt. He watched the leather hit the floor, the buckle jingling slightly on the stones. The sound seemed to spark something in Arthur. It was as if that one act was the catalyst, sparking them both into action. Clothing fell around the room in a jumbled mess that Merlin knew he would have to clean later.

Arthur pressed him down onto the bed. The sheets beneath him smelled of Arthur, giving Merlin the impression that he was being enveloped by the prince’s presence. He didn’t mind. Arthur’s kisses had trailed away from Merlin’s mouth, wandering along his chin and neck, then down across his face. He could feel Arthur’s muscles, alternately tensing and releasing beneath his fingers. His hands explored Arthur’s shoulders and back, rubbing along Arthur’s biceps then moving up to tangle in his hair.

Merlin’s hips were parted. He shifted, making room for Arthur between his thighs. Their hips met, erections grinding against each other as Arthur thrust against him. Arthur reached down with one hand to grip Merlin, the callouses on his hand feeling strange against Merlin’s erection. Merlin mirrored the action, feeling slightly inadequate as he did so. His fingers were thin and bony but Arthur didn’t seem to mind.

“Merlin.” Arthur whispered his name softly, bringing his attention back up to Arthur’s face which was suddenly much closer than Merlin remembered.

Their noses brushed. Arthur twisted his hand around Merlin, wringing a strangled gasp out of Merlin and causing him to buck up into Arthur’s grasp. The gasp was followed by a series of similar noises, swallowed moments later as Arthur’s mouth covered his once more. He came minutes later, spilling seed into the prince’s hand and feeling, belatedly, quite embarrassed at the impropriety of it. His embarrassment only lasted a moment until Arthur followed suit.

Arthur pulled back, giving Merlin a good view of his bare back as he leaned over Merlin and pulled an old shirt from the floor. He cleaned the spilled seed off of both of them, apparently oblivious to Merlin’s sudden hesitancy. The shirt was tossed back to the floor. Arthur flopped onto his back next to Merlin without a word.

Merlin debated what he should be doing. He wasn’t exactly used to being tumbled in the prince’s bed. Should he leave? There was clothing strewn about the room, and Gaius would, in theory, be expecting him back at some point that night. He started to rise, but an arm around his waist pulled him back to the bed and tight against Arthur’s side.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Arthur asked with a slight frown.

He considered the answer to that question carefully. “I don’t really know.”

“The correct answer,” Arthur said, with the air of someone imparting great wisdom, “is nowhere.”

“Ah.”

Merlin shifted. If he was going nowhere, he would at least rather be a bit comfortable. He threw an arm and a leg over Arthur, and let his head fall against Arthur’s shoulder. “Is this more like what you meant?”

“Yeah, exactly.” There was satisfaction in Arthur’s voice.

They stayed like that until sleep claimed them.

Morgana smiled as Gwen entered the room, a mischievous smile on the girl’s face. “So, it worked then?”

Gwen’s broad smile was answer enough.

“I’m just saying,” Harry said as he picked at the lock on the warehouse door, “there’s a slight chance she could…”

“Not gonna happen.” Perry was watching through one of the windows, occasionally checking the perimeter to make sure they weren’t seen.

“I’m not that bad looking.”

“No,” Perry agreed far too easily for Harry to feel good about it, “you’re not. You still don’t have a chance with her.”

Harry glared. Perry didn’t even have the decency to notice. “I used to be rather good with the ladies.”

“How long has it been?”

He frowned. “There was Harmony’s friend, back during the Harlan Dexter case.”

“That was six months ago, Harry.” Perry spoke slowly, his voice dripping with condescension.

Had it really been that long? Time flies when you’re solving crime. Or, when you’re helping Perry solve crime. Though really all he did was try and stay out of the way while Perry solved crimes. When had he turned into such a lackey?

“Okay, so it’s been a while. I still could-”

“Exactly how many times have I fucked you?”

Harry dropped one of his lockpicks. His face turned scarlet. Twelve, but he wasn’t counting. Or was it twenty? “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t mention that. I was drunk.”

“You get drunk a lot, for a straight guy.” Perry was smirking. His eyes roved once over Harry’s body, lingering far too long on Harry’s rear.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t take advantage of me when I’m drunk.”

“My cock didn’t jump down your throat.”

Perry had a point. Not one Harry would ever admit out loud, but there was a distinct possibility that he wasn’t entirely on the straight side anymore. He hadn’t actually been that drunk last time.

“But…”

“Harry, shut up and pick the lock.” He shut up. The lock clicked in a matter of seconds and he stood, opened the door.

“Good boy.” The detective ruffled Harry’s hair as he walked into the warehouse, kind of like how you’d pat a dog whenever it did something good.

“I’m not your pet.” He kept his voice low, despite the urge to shout at Perry. He hated it when the guy got all condescending, which was, like, always.

“Keep telling yourself that.” Perry moved with a kind of effortless stealth that Harry could only envy. He was built for this kind of job, that’s what he did, but Harry, Harry was just tagging along because… because he had nothing better to do, really. It was either stay here, play detective with Perry, or go back home. He didn’t really want to go back home.

His mind wandered back to their earlier conversation, about the sultry chick that had stopped in this morning, begging them to help find her missing husband. Harry had taken on the case, despite Perry constantly telling him that the missing husband was probably out having an affair. Considering the way the wife looked, Harry didn’t think an affair was even an option. Why go out for a burger when you’ve got steak at home?

“Keep an eye out for that box,” Perry reminded him, jolting Harry’s thoughts back to the task at hand. “MJ65552.”

They’d received a tip last night about a case Perry was working on as a favor for the local police, something to do with smuggling jewelry. Or was it jewels? Anyways, they thought this warehouse had to do with the ring, but they needed something to link it, some proof before the police came busting in. Plan was, break in, find the jewels, and in about half an hour, some of the guys from the police department were gonna come down to investigate. Perry’d already called in the 911 about a possible break-in. The thought of waiting around until the cops came still filled Harry with dread, even though the cops were technically in on it.

A strange barrel caught Harry’s eye. It was red, the old, rusty kind of red he’d always associated with tractors that had seen more than their fair share of years on the farm. That was one of the quirks about growing up in Embry, Indiana, he knew tractors. But, back to the point at hand, this barrel was sitting against the wall, shoved into a back corner, out of the way so that it wouldn’t be noticed. It was also the only barrel Harry’d seen since they walked in here. The rest of the warehouse was crates and boxes, and here amidst all that was one lone, unmarked barrel. Odd.

He walked over, pulled the crowbar from where it hung on his belt loop. It took him a few minutes to pry the lid off, and he set that aside, trying to be as quiet as possible, before he looked inside.

“Holy Jesus!” Harry jumped back quickly.

There was a person inside. A dead person, covered up to his neck in oil. He couldn’t help but stare. It was sick, really sick, and when he looked closer, he thought he saw blood mixed in with the oil. Something about the man’s face seemed familiar. He took a step closer, almost gagging as the smell hit him, and knowing it would be worse if the guy weren’t so freshly dead. Couldn’t have been more than a day since he had been killed, not if he was in such good shape, and it was really sad how he knew that. One of the down-sides of working with Perry.

This guy was really familiar. Harry’s fingers brushed the folded photo in his pocket and he pulled it out, staring between the face in the photo and the face in the barrel.

“Perry…” He called out, not as quietly as he should, but he was kind of freaked out at the moment, too freaked out for rational sense to tell him to shut the fuck up and keep quiet. “Perry, I found her husband.”

He turned, rounded a corner in the long corridor of crates back to where he’d last seen Perry and stopped as he nearly walked into someone. Someone who was definitely not Perry.

“Um… hi… I seem to be lost and…”

Something heavy hit Harry on the back of the head, cutting off the rest of the sentence as he exclaimed in pain. He turned to stare at another guy, this one holding a wooden stick, kind of like what the police used. Actually, now that he thought about it, that was exactly what the police used. He put his hand over the bump forming on the back of his head.

“You know, if you’re trying to knock someone out, you’ve got to hit them harder than that, otherwise it’s just annoy-”

He should have kept his mouth shut.

When Harry awoke, he was not in the warehouse. He was also not, thankfully, in jail. Those two options eliminated, he took a moment to figure out exactly where he was. He looked up at a ceiling that was far more familiar than it should be. The sheets beneath him smelled like Perry.

Harry groaned. “Not again…”

Perry walked out of the attached bathroom with a smirk, wearing nothing but a loosely tied bathrobe and the towel he was using to dry his hair. “Sorry to disappoint you, princess, but you’re only in here because of that concussion.”

The scene from the warehouse flitted through his head. “Oh. Right.” He slowly sat up, wincing as the movement caused his head to pound like there was a flamenco group dancing inside of it. Harry discarded the idea of actually trying to get out of bed and leaned against the headboard. “I found the-”

“Missing husband?” Perry cut him off as he rummaged through his dresser for a pair of underwear. “Yeah, I know. Turns out there was a pair of dirty cops actually running the jewelry ring, so when my friends circulated the plan among their boys, those two rushed over to get rid of the evidence, us included. The husband was apparently the one who had found out about the warehouse and tipped the cops off. Apparently he’d noticed a discrepancy in the inventory logs.”

“Huh.” It was becoming a rather common occurrence for any case Harry took to overlap with one of Perry’s current cases.

Perry disappeared into the bathroom. “So, they knock you out, I save the day, real cops arrive, and you owe me ten bucks since I had to bribe the doorman to help me get you up here.”

That didn’t seem entirely fair but he knew better than to argue.

“And I’m in your bed because?”

“Would you rather be on the couch?”

“No, not really.”

Perry returned, sans towel. He dropped the bathrobe over the back of a chair, turned the light off, and slid under the covers next to Harry.

Harry glanced down at himself. At some point, Perry had changed him out of the clothes he’d been wearing earlier and into a pair of sweat pants. “You know, I could-”

“Go to sleep, Harry.”

He groaned as he shifted back to lying on the bed. His head was going to be a bitch for the next few days. The bed was warm, comfortable. This was not the first time he’d slept in it, though it was the first time he’d been sober while doing so. But then, maybe having a concussion didn’t fully qualify him as sober. He could feel Perry’s proximity as a physical force, a weight he wasn’t entirely used to having next to him.

This was also the first time he’d been in Perry’s bed without certain activities occurring.

“You aren’t going to-”

“Harry.” The word was accompanied by a long-suffering sigh. “You know that saying about rape and the willing?”

He thought about it for a second, not entirely sure he was comfortable with the analogy. “Yeah.”

“That applies to you.”

“Oh.” He didn’t really have much of an argument for that. At least, not one that Perry wouldn’t just laugh at. His pounding headache reminded him of something. “If I have a concussion, shouldn’t I be-”

“Awake? Like we are now? Yeah. I’m supposed to wake your sorry ass up every hour, make sure you’re not dead. So, since we only have forty five minutes now until the alarm is set to go off, I suggest you shut up and get some sleep.”

“Right.” He was touched that Perry would go through that much trouble for him. “Perry? Thanks.”

“You can thank me by going to sleep. And, once I’ve actually had a decent amount of sleep, your ass is mine.” Perry spoke the threat offhandedly, like it was more of a reminder than a real threat. Which really, given that he was in Perry’s bed and not thinking one-hundred percent rationally, was a pretty accurate assumption.

There went his chances with the missing guy’s widow.

Seiichi isn’t one for maudlin thoughts, not normally, but his memories, at least the ones his mind favors on nights like this, are not his happiest. Even the best of them, the ones where he pictures Tomoki alive and smiling, brimming with the vibrancy of life that would soon leave him, even those are tinged, tainted with regret and the bitterness of loss.

He closes his eyes, leaning back in his chair, and lets the warm summer breeze play across his face. There’s a glass of red wine ignored in one hand. The lights are off. Soft jazz croons from his sound system, barely audible. The wind rustles the curtains as it blows in through the open balcony, and the sound reminds him of laundry and one particular summer day.

In the short while that he’d lived with Tomoki, before Tomoki had passed on, he’d developed a fondness for the simple act of doing chores. There had been a washer but no dryer in the house they’d lived in, and thus they’d made good use of the clothes line strung between two T-shaped posts in the backyard. Seiichi would carry the basket out, smiling softly while he ignored Tomoki’s protests that he was well enough to carry the basket at least. He had been overprotective, he knew, but with reason.

Tomoki would hand him a piece of laundry and Seiichi would hang it, pulling wooden pins from further along the line. Shirts and clothing first, then a load of towels and sheets, until all three lines were full. Tomoki was still too short to reach the line on his own, though there was a small step ladder, now tucked away in a corner of the porch, for when he needed to reach the laundry on his own. Seiichi would gladly have done it on his own, along with the rest of the chores, but Tomoki insisted on helping. It made Tomoki feel alive, knowing there were still things he could do. When they finally emptied the basket, Tomoki would take the basket back to the porch before Seiichi could get it, smiling at the look Seiichi would shoot him, a look that mixed exasperation and fondness.

It was a bright and sunny day out and they had nothing planned for the day, which lead to the two of them stretched out just inside the house, the doors out onto the porch wide open. They lay snuggled close. Tomoki’s head was pillowed on Seiichi’s chest. Minutes passed with only the sound of the wind chimes near the doorway and the distant traffic from the street to disturb them.

“Seiichi?” Tomoki’s voice was soft and low.

“Hmm?”

“What will you do… when I’m gone?”

Seiichi opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. The wooden boards held no answer for him, but he kept his gaze fixed there while he thought. There were a number of ways he could answer that. He could ignore the question, let the quiet and sun lull Tomoki into sleep. He could distract Tomoki, leading his mind away from the question with soft kisses and touches until their hands found their way into clothing and Tomoki forgot all about his heightened mortality. A flippant answer was completely out of the question.

He shifted his arm slightly until his palm pressed against the small of Tomoki’s back, holding him close with very light pressure.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. It wasn’t a subject that he liked to give much thought.

“Will you go back to Blue Boy?”

He could. Reiji would welcome him back, but he didn’t know if he’d be capable of the same level of charm.

“I might.”

“I think you should,” Tomoki said, his voice quiet but there was determination thick in his tone. He pushed himself up, hands flat on Seiichi’s chest, until he was looking down at Seiichi.

Pain was evident in Tomoki’s face. The pain was constant now, though he tried to hide it. He’d need another dose of his pills soon. The doctors said that Tomoki didn’t have much time left.

“Seiichi.” Tomoki’s eyes held his. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He carded his fingers through Tomoki’s hair, brushing lightly across Tomoki’s head before settling on his neck. Tomoki leaned down. They kissed, chaste at first, then turning deeper. If the kiss tasted of salt, they both ignored it.

When they settled again, their clothes were askew and Tomoki was draped across him like a living blanket.

“Seiichi?”

He pressed a kiss into Tomoki’s hair, pausing for a moment there to savor the smell of him. “Hmm.”

“Promise me you’ll find someone. I don’t want you to be alone.”

The honk of a car horn pulled Seiichi from his memories. He opened his eyes to find the room darker than he last remembered. Standing, he moved to close and lock the glass doors to the balcony, drawing the curtains shut over them. He flicked on a light as he entered the kitchen. The wine went down the sink, the glass into the dishwasher. The clock on the microwave flashed the time in blue light. It was still early in the evening. He could head down to the bar, maybe meet up with some friends.

Seiichi wasn’t the type to hold on to lost love forever. Even Jin had moved on, though he still denied the attraction between him and Katsuki. Those two would be fine, given time, and so would he. He knew that he’d find someone again, someday. But, for now, the memory of Tomoki was still to dear to him, the loss too fresh.

With a flick of his hand, he plunged the apartment into darkness and walked out the door.

Iruka hung the last of the ornaments on the tree and stepped back to examine his handiwork. He didn’t move as far as he’d planned, a thick, solid weight at his back stopping him. Arms wrapped around his weight. The familiar scent that enveloped him kept him from reaching for a kunai.

“Welcome home,” he said as he leaned back into Kakashi’s arms.

Kakashi’s clothes were slightly damp, still smelling faintly of the woods and snow. A cold nose pressed against the skin behind his ear, followed a moment later by slightly less cold lips. “I missed you.”

He half turned until they were face-to-face, noses brushing. “I missed you too,” Iruka murmured. His eyes wandered, taking in his lover’s unmasked face, thankfully devoid of cuts or scrapes. This time, it seemed, Kakashi had returned unscathed.

Their lips gravitated together, pulled in by the mere presence of the other rather than any true conscious thought. Seconds passed as tongues mingled then parted.

“Merry Christmas.”