Shan at Warblerland

Even Ground

So I tried Derian. Sorry if it doesn’t make much sense.

Tanned skin that gleamed golden in the sun. His own fingers looked pale in contrast as they ran over that skin, each dip and rise outlined by the light in a misted sheen.

Derek seemed to smile from where he lay on the deck chair, and while the tone seemed almost mocking, the eyes said otherwise. “Can’t keep your hands off me, can you?”

“I’m bored,” Julian murmured absently with a sigh, his fingers still tracing an invisible lazy line up Derek’s strong arm. He was wearing sunglasses, but they were low on the bridge of his sophisticated nose and Derek could see the light of the sun on the pool reflected Julian’s eyes from where he lay. “Are you done with that reading assignment yet?”

Derek’s eyes traversed over the actor whose fingers tentatively moved over his body. Julian wasn’t looking at him, and Derek stared at him wondering how they got to this point.

Was it because they were more comfortable with each other than with anyone else? Even in the cold light of Logan’s presence, the two of them were closer together because they had no one else to rely on.

Secrets they could never tell anyone else, they had both said to each other in confidence, to the point that some things they kept dark from the world were things they could tease each other for and know that there was warmth there. They’d grown together, watching the world blur past them in their own brand of haze. But they knew when they could simply look beside them and find the other there.

Sometimes that was enough.

Julian’s fingertips ran lazily down, and he looked up when he felt Derek’s fingers catch his for the first time. He looked up, but the most driven member of Stuart House merely kept lying back, reading his book through a pair of dark glasses. “Hm…?”

“Just a few more pages…”

Julian sighed, kept their fingers linked, and stretched. Derek was wearing dark glasses for a reason—so Julian didn’t have to see him study him instead of the book. Unlike Julian who shamelessly expressed his appreciation of a beautiful form with questing fingertips and a curl of the lips, Derek staked him like prey, studying the artistry of each eyelash that glinted in the Hamptons sun.

Oh what the hell. He tossed the book and the linked fingers became linked hands, and he pulled Julian into his lap. “You’re too spoiled,” he said in rebuke, but it was not unkind, studying him with a frown.

“Mm…” Julian smirked as he eased himself against him. “And you just can’t keep your hands off me,” he added, echoing Derek’s words.

Derek shrugged in that sensible way of his. “You’re all I’ve got.” All the girls come and go. He never could stick to one for a long time. But he could turn around and Julian was there.

Julian never closed the door to him. Always him. Only him. Even when Julian was at his worst days—only Derek could pierce the barricades and come in.

The actor smirked to himself. “…so what now?”

Derek smirked. “Logan might come in any minute now.” Their mutual charge. The friend you had to look after from time to time. They weren’t wingmen so much as they were safety valves for the volatile one.

“True…” Julian sighed. He felt Derek’s strong hands, rough from all the sports, touch his face. He looked up and found warm lips pressing into his own—he returned the kiss and found himself fighting for dominance the way he always had to when Derek had to take control. Deep, strong—Derek’s strength was overpowering and secure. Only he could cool Julian’s fire, that threatened to take over them both.

But it was a kiss between equals.

Then Derek grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him off the deck chair, striding indoors with all his usual no-nonsense sensibility. “I figure we’ve got half an hour before I have to do Physics and Lo comes back.”

Julian rolled his eyes but smirked, letting him get led on. “You’re so boring.”

“You can tell me that when you stop trying to seduce me.”

“I can stop when you tell me you don’t want me to anymore.”

Neither ever actually managed to.