(a/n): I intended neither angst nor smut but there you go. Merry Christmas.

I'm gonna leave you,
I don't wanna stay here.
I don't wanna spend
another day here.

It had been a gift from someone, but he'd forgotten who. A squat, nondescript white mug that had recently gotten a chip in the handle.

Piers glared hard at it, left hand curling into a fist where it rested against his leg. There was still steam drifting casually out of the mug, but he could imagine himself dragging this on until the black coffee inside had turned icy cold. It wasn't as if he had anywhere else to be, or anything else to do for the rest of the day but sit here and contemplate reaching for that mug.

Chris had left at five in the morning, giving him the same daily reminder to take it easy today and remember breakfast and call if you need anything - but of course Piers had ignored him.

It had become like a secret, childish game for Piers: refusing to comply with Chris' requests. The man was no longer his captain, after all, and he was under no obligation to obey him. However, the mild satisfaction usually only lasted long enough for a phantom pain where his right arm or his right eye used to be to remind him exactly why their relationship had changed.

Clenching his jaw, Piers lifted his hand and made a quick grab for the mug which missed by three inches. Resisting the urge to smack it off the table, he lurched out of the chair and into the living room.

"Good morning to all you early risers out there!"

The weather girl on channel seven was far too energetic for six thirty in the morning. Her smile was bright and the reddish curls in her ponytail bounced merrily every time she turned her could have easily just turned the television off (he never went out, so the forecast was pretty irrelevant) but silence in the large house was far worse than her overt cheerfulness.

"There's a high of twenty-two this afternoon, and a low of thirteen by tonight. Some more snow flurries should be blowing through by this evening, which will likely last until tomorrow morning, so make sure to stay indoors if you can!"

He walked past the television to the big window that overlooked Main Street and the plain, rural neighborhood outside. There was a layer of snow half a foot thick covering every sidewalk, rooftop, and vaguely horizontal surface in sight. Even the road was invisible, save for a few tire tracks, though by the end of the day it would probably be reduced to a mixture of grayish slush and black ice.

Winter used to be Piers' least favorite time of year. It was always a pain trekking through the snow on assignments, and the cold made his hands stiff and unsteady when he held a gun - but now, when there was hardly anything on his agenda that required getting out of bed, let alone going all the way out doors, he felt only a big, listless nothing for the frozen season.

He put his back to the frosted landscape and faced the TV, though he was no longer listening as the girl passed the broadcast back over to the regular anchor and promised to return later with the weeklong forecast. It seemed like ten years ago that he had seen his own face on a similar program, a proud and bustling small-town crowd welcoming home their decorated soldier. Pitying murmurs of polite gratitude, sighs and shaking heads. Empathizers who couldn't possibly understand.

Red blotted his vision and he turned abruptly away from the newscast. Sally, his therapist, often told him that he shouldn't try so hard to hold in his anger. He often told her that he wasn't angry.

Striding purposefully back to the kitchen, his chin defiantly raised, he determined that he would pick up that damned mug, dump the coffee in the sink, and down a few beers instead. Maybe he would even break into the bottle of whiskey that sat hidden in the back of the pantry. Fuck it if it was barely six-thirty - who was going to stop him? Certainly not Chris, who was busy molding young recruits at the Northern Wisconsin BSAA Training Academy. Sally would try, but he didn't give two shits about her opinion.

Fortunately for his sobriety, he never got past the doorway.

He misjudged his position as he entered the room and knocked into both the doorframe and then the counter when he tried to regain his balance, finally stumbling to a halt against the table. In a moment of blind fury he threw his fist into the finished wood, not hard enough to damage it, but enough to send a spike of pain through his knuckles that translated almost instantly into a harsh burst of searing pain where his right arm used to be.

He braced himself against the table, every muscle in his body tensed as he waited for the sensation to run its course. It was like sticking his arm into an electrical socket, if the socket was connected to a massive railway transformer. And if the railway transformer was from hell.

"Not real," he hissed through gritted teeth, vainly willing away the feel of his skin crackling with raw electricity, burning and bubbling like cooked meat. "It's not real."

He could feel the mutation. It ripped through layers of skin, singed, hardened, cracked, split open and spat out mixtures of blood and pus. It fought against him, challenging the control he had over his own body, devouring him on a molecular level and systematically, ruthlessly crumbling his foundations.

At least once a day, though usually several times more than that, Piers suffered from these kinds of attacks. Sally, academically, called it phantom limb pain, and told him that it was very common for soldiers who had gone through amputations. Loosing the arm in a traumatic event, well, that only doubled the intensity of the pains. It was incapacitating, it made it impossible to spend extended amounts of time in public without looking like he was insane, and it left him in a near constant state of exhaustion.

Every episode forced him into reliving the infection. It was more than just the fierce memory of pain and the vivid imagery which he would so rather have forgotten, but the feeling of desperation sending him into an irrational panic, and the acute awareness he had possessed when he was standing in front of the escape pods - knowing that his mind was flaking away like so many ashes under the heat of an insatiable fire.

By the time he came back to reality, Piers found himself slumped in a heap on the cold tile of the kitchen floor. There was a dull throbbing in his knees and a mild sting from four shallow cuts in the palm of his hand, but both were tolerable. "Wasn't real," he muttered again, for good measure, while he flexed shaky fingers and waited for his nerves to level out.

Finally his legs felt strong enough to support himself, and he got gingerly to his feet. The floor swam around dangerously, so he squeezed his eye shut to block out the dizziness threatening to send him back to the ground. He kept it closed as he stuck his hand out and moved slowly back into the living room, going off of touch to reach the sofa and sink down onto it.

He hardly slept nowadays aside from when bouts of fatigue overtook him, and he readily allowed them to. It was just becoming so tiresome having to try so hard. He couldn't even have a damned cup of coffee in the morning without it turning into this fucking ordeal.

At his last therapy session, Piers had - somewhat impolitely - expressed a growing concern he had that his condition would last forever.

Sally was an older woman, with a lot of experience counseling soldiers with psychological traumas of every shape and size the military could produce. She was not, however, associated with the BSAA, and as such she was not privy to any information concerning what had happened in the underwater oil rig two years ago.

She had told Piers the same thing she told her other patients. Over time, the episodes would become less frequent, the nightmares would loose their intensity, and the pain would begin to fade, as would the anger he so desperately kept hidden. As long as he was patient, she had said, he could rest in the assurance that it would definitely happen. That was just the normal progression of these things.

But Sally had no knowledge of the traces of C-virus that would forever remain in his bloodstream, or how the virus was going to affect his "normal progression." For all anyone knew, Piers could be stuck in this state of despondency and directionless animosity for the rest of his life. If he was really lucky, maybe it would even get worse.

Piers slung his arm across his face to block out the dim sunlight filtering through the clouds, and almost through a veil he heard the voice of channel seven's perky weather girl come back to haunt him as he drifted out of consciousness.

"It's looking grey out there now, folks. I'd say there's definitely a storm brewing on the horizon."

The light inside the house had changed drastically while he was sleeping. It had been hazy when he last looked out the window, but the snowstorm due that evening had sent ahead of it a dark cloud to cover all of the north woods. It couldn't have been later than two o'clock or so, but the entire house was wholly dark. It was kind of peaceful, if a little gloomy.

Something was bothering him though; something like a shrieking bird that had woken him up, or-or an annoying ringtone.

Without looking up, he reached for the phone he knew was sitting on the coffee table. His forehead wrinkled in confusion at his lack of success until he realized he was trying to grab it with his right hand. Flipping onto his back, he grabbed his cellphone with the hand that still existed.

1 new message!

From Sherry Birkin

Piers frowned blearily at the glowing screen, hesitating to even open the text. Sherry had been a devoted friend during the year that he was stuck under government observation, but he'd been avoiding her for a while. He felt sure she would know - even through a text - that he had dwindled into a hopeless, bitter walking sad sack, and the last thing he wanted was her pity.

No, scratch that. The last thing he wanted was to hear about her endless optimism for his future.

With a grunt he tossed the phone back towards the table, where it overshot by a solid foot and landed with a dull thunk against the floor. He knew he ought to pick it up, for decency's sake, but that just wasn't going to happen. Heaving himself off the couch, he turned towards the kitchen instead and (giving the doorway careful navigation) aimed himself in the direction of the pantry and the bottle of whiskey.

"Wait," he mumbled to himself, flicking on the light and spying the plain white mug that still sat in the center of the table. It thought it had gotten off easy, but it was about to be sorely mistaken. He was going to chug that crap coffee and wallow in the miserable, acrid taste. Piers stretched his hand out to the mug, watching intently as his fingers neared the handle, were just about to close around it - when suddenly they knocked against the rim and started it spinning unsteadily.

Piers cursed and made a second instinctive grab, but all he managed to do was knock the mug completely off the table where it fell to the floor and shattered.

For a moment he just stared at the broken pieces of white ceramic - frozen as his brain struggled to label the incident as either an accident or his own incompetence. Old, grainy coffee spread slowly out across the tile from the remains of the mug, and for a ludicrous moment Piers saw his arm hacked off on the floor, bleeding itself empty.

His stomach lurched and he backed up hastily away from the mess. A second later he forced himself into frenzied motion, dropping to the floor and mindlessly beginning to gather the broken shards into a manageable pile. He nicked his finger once, ignored it, and rummaged through the cabinet under the sink for the stronger cleaning supplies.

It was twenty minutes later, while on his knees frantically scrubbing half a bottle of bleach into the floor, that Chris found him.

Piers hadn't heard the door opening, nor had he heard the call of "I'm home!" echoing from the front hall. He didn't hear Chris cautiously entering the room, asking him what had happened and was he okay? He did feel a hand on his shoulder, and he jerked to his feet, automatically grabbing the attached wrist and twisting it hard to fend off the unknown assailant.

They stood perfectly still for a short while; Piers practically shaking, wide eyed, as he took stock of the situation, and Chris waiting patiently with an expression scrunched in discomfort, though he hadn't tried at all to free himself from Piers' grasp. When Piers finally did let go - assured that Chris was not a cleverly disguised J'avo - Chris had the audacity to look guilty.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he mumbled, rubbing his wrist with one hand. "I should've realized that you were…I mean, I yelled but you must not have heard me come in-"

"Why are you back already?" Piers cut him off sharply. His voice came out unintentionally harsh, but he was too flustered to even consider taking it back.

Objectively, he could admit that it wasn't Chris' fault for catching him in the midst of a mental breakdown; and if the man hadn't arrived home when he did Piers probably would've found a wire brillo pad and torn up his hand in his blind determination to clean imagined blood and bits of flesh from every crack in the tile.

However, rational was not a word that Piers could describe himself with lately. More and more, he was being swallowed up by a voracious ire. He'd never been lying when he told Sally that he wasn't angry about losing his arm and eye - the anger came from somewhere else, somewhere he couldn't identify, and it was aimless and constantly roiling like a pit of snakes in his gut.

The brief pause before Chris answered told him that the other man had felt the bite in his words.

"I-there's a blizzard coming in pretty fast. All the roads are closing in and out of town, so they dismissed the instructors." Chris paused, sweeping an arm back towards the living room. He was wearing his regular black coat over his uniform, the collar turned up against what must have been a strong wind outside. "That girl's talking about it on the news. Were you watching, or did you just have it on for noise again?"

Living under the same roof, it was only natural for Chris to pick up on Piers' habits. That didn't stop it from being irritating. Piers considered telling him something along the lines of mind your own fucking business or piss off, but that would've been unnecessarily antagonistic. He settled for grumbling, "I was sleeping."

"Oh," Chris frowned. Piers raised his head to meet the other man's eyes, but he must've been scowling without realizing it because Chris quickly averted his gaze. "I picked up some dinner," he cleared his throat, raising a few plastic bags that Piers hadn't noticed were hanging on his elbow. "There's fried chicken and biscuits and, um, I got soup, too, because I didn't know what you'd be in the mood for…" his voice trailed off uncertainly at Piers' evident disinterest.

Piers had already returned his attention to the mess of bleach on the floor. He bent down and picked up a stark white rag once again, wringing it out in a bucket he'd been using and resuming his diligent work. "I'm not hungry," he grunted in monotone.

Chris moved to set his bags on the counter, and Piers tried hard to pretend that he wasn't highly attuned to the man's position in the room, even in spite of his obsessive cleaning. "Have you eaten anything all day? You know what the doctor said about you skipping meals."

"Doctor," Piers snorted.

The sound of a heavy sigh came from near the microwave, accompanied by the crinkle of plastic. "She does have an MD, Piers. That makes her a doctor."

"Piece of paper doesn't qualify her to butt into every aspect of my life. Her doctorate is in psychology, not medicine," Piers pressed the rag into the small space between the tiles, scraping stubbornly at the grout.

"You don't have to work in a hospital to know you need food regularly," Chris reasoned. There was a brief pause, and when he spoke again his voice was hesitant. "Will you have a bowl of soup? You can take a break from the cleaning."

Piers shook his head, glaring a hole into the floor. "I said I'm not hungry."

"Hungry or not, you've got to eat something." Piers heard the other man approaching by a few tentative footsteps. "Breathing in too much of those chemicals isn't good for you, either," Chris continued, his leather boots creaking as he knelt down. A pair of hands unexpectedly came up to still his movements, and Chris' voice was much closer than he was prepared for. "Why don't you let me-?"

"I don't want your help!" he snapped, jerking quickly out of Chris' reach. He tilted his chin up to glare at Chris directly, and a new wave of irritation hit him when he realized Chris still wasn't fucking looking at him. Suddenly he was suspicious of the oddly shamed way Chris was dodging his gaze. "Why the hell do you keep doing that?!" he demanded.

It was around this point that Piers realized something was missing. It was that faint, bothersome itch that had annoyed him so much for the first few months of his rehabilitation, but he'd grown quite accustomed to it until the point now, when he was loath to be bereft of it.

His eye patch. It must have fallen off unnoticed while he slept; Chris couldn't look him in the face without seeing the ugly, scarred empty pocket where his eye should have been.

Piers felt like someone had stuck a vacuum through his ribs and sucked his stomach out. He snapped his hand up to cover the sunken hole, now the one avoiding eye contact even as Chris realized his mistake and immediately struggled to apologize. Piers didn't give him the chance, walking straight past him into the living room to search for his eye patch.

He couldn't let Chris know how much that had hurt - how that had come to crumbling his protective outer wall. He had to get away just long enough for a callous to mask over his fresh wounds.

Only halfway into the room his vision blurred and he swayed to an unsteady halt. He was probably going to be sick. Chris had been right about the fumes from the bleach.

Probably he should've have expected Chris to follow him, but he was still somehow surprised when a pair of arms came up to support him and help him the rest of the way to the couch. He allowed it, solely because he had no spare strength to resist the other man.

For twelve months now, he'd been sharing Chris' stateside home while he gradually gave up on assimilating himself back into regular, non-military society. Most of his friends and what was left of his family had all ceased their attempts at reaching out to him after the first month or two. He wasn't the same man he'd been when he joined the BSAA, in a painfully literal sense, and he was dead set on shrinking into a lonely, shelled existence; one where he could be left alone with his psychosis.

It was only this bulky, hardheaded boulder of a man who refused to leave him be. Chris was like a kicked dog that just kept coming back for more. No amount of hostility, sarcasm, or brazen aggression seemed able to stop Chris from checking in on Piers every fucking morning, reminding him to eat his three square meals and get enough sleep.

Chris hadn't even been fazed when Piers got drunk one night, blamed him for everything, and punched him square in the jaw. But he'd left a cold compress and a bottle of Tylenol on Piers' bedside table the next morning. In actuality, Chris' constancy was probably the only thing that had kept Piers from deteriorating entirely, and certain 'objective' third parties seemed to think that his presence could be helpful, if only Piers would allow it. But he was so certain that Chris would leave eventually, just like everyone else, that he refused to let him get close.

With gentle care Chris helped Piers to settle on the couch, and winced when Piers smacked his hands away immediately afterward. But he said nothing, not a single complaint or reprimand, as he crossed to the other side of the room and turned off the television. The picture had been flickering unintelligibly between fuzz and an emergency broadcast.

The new silence was deafening, and only softened by the howl of wind outside. It was as if they were stuck in a snow globe, slowly being buried inside the house, the last two people and they could hardly have a remotely civil conversation.

"I'm not your responsibility," came the quiet, rough exhale after what might have been an eternity of standing ten feet away but miles apart. Piers slumped into the cushions, staring pointedly off to the side with his hand once again covering his old wound. "So I don't know why you stay here. You can't like it," he shook his head with a derisive scoff. Chris stood in front of the television watching him, his mouth pressed into a thin line and his eyebrows drawn together in apprehension.

The man moved finally, but it was just to remove his coat and toss it over the back of an armchair. "This is where I want to be."

Piers shook his head again, harder. "I don't believe that. At all. You can't tell me you're not miserable in this house, because you walk on eggshells and you can't-you can't even look at me. And I know you hate training recruits! It's dull, shitty work. So why do you do it? Is it because you feel guilty? Like you owe me something?"

Chris passed a hand over his face, and Piers could see clearly how thoroughly the past twelve months had worn him out. Beneath the beard he'd grown careless about shaving there were new lines etched between his eyebrows and across his forehead, and there was a downward curve to his shoulders from every burden he'd taken upon himself. "Do you think that's all you are to me? A debt."

"What else could I be?" Piers knew that he should have felt some accountability for Chris' declining state, but all he could find within himself was the monstrous wrath clawing its way up from the pit in his stomach and tainting his thoughts. "In Edonia you said-you said you'd never-" he cut himself off, frightened by the words that had come boiling over without his consent.

That was not a topic he was ready to discuss. Quickly, he switched tracks. "You have no duty to take care of me. I'm not under your command anymore, I was discharged, remember?"

Chris took a few steps closer, his expression strained. "You were honorably discharged."

"Bullshit!" Piers snapped, ignoring a twinge of pain deep in the right side of his skull. "That's just a nice way for them so say 'thanks for giving up so many years of your life, but you can't shoot a target anymore so find yourself a fucking day job.' Anyway, that's not-" He struggled for a moment to regain his composure, and sat up straight after realizing that he was leaning further forward every time he raised his voice. "I wouldn't change what I did, alright? But I can't stand sitting here everyday with you constantly trying to make up for something that I did."

The other man shook his head. "You wouldn't have had to do it if it hadn't been for me."

"Who you are you to say that? How would you have done anything differently?"

"I don't know!" Chris suddenly shouted, taking even himself by surprise. He'd barely raised his voice in over a year, and he quickly ducked his head in remorse. "But I was the one who led you into that rig, Piers! I led you into the fight with that B.O.W., and it was me you were trying to save! You were under my protection, and I let you down!"

Once the brief shock from the other man's outburst had passed, Piers discovered that his own anger had nearly doubled. "So I did it for you and that makes everything your fault - any and every bad thing that happened is all on you - is that what you want me to say? So what if I fucking did it for you?! I never asked for you to do anything for me! I never wanted anything from you!"

That was a lie. Piers remembered a night watch years ago, when they were stationed just outside of Edonia, waiting for the signal to break through the mercenary lines. Vividly he remembered reaching out in the dark, hesitation, nerves, the sharp sting of rejection. His hand began to tremble, and he pressed his nails against his forehead as a counter to the throbbing that was making it difficult to keep his thoughts straight and rooted in the present. "I never asked for your pity, Chris, and I sure as hell never asked for your guilt hanging over my head!"

"What would you have me do, then, Piers?" Chris had reigned in his voice, but there was still a rough undertone he couldn't entirely conceal. "Leave you to rot in a gutter somewhere? I won't abandon you like that, whether you like it or not."

"Of course, because what I want doesn't matter to you at all." Confusion flashed over the man's face, but he didn't get the chance to speak because Piers was on a roll. "You have a single fucking agenda and that's all that matters, right? You don't care what anyone else thinks, or how they feel, you're just gonna do whatever you think is best! Captain Chris fucking Redfield, the man with a plan. Tell me, Captain, how long do you think you can keep this up? My condition isn't improving, in case you missed the last ten months of therapy. Do you think you can stay here for the rest of your life trying to fix me?"

Piers was sure there had to be a chink in his armor somewhere, and he was going to find it. But Chris' response was immediate and concise.

"If that's what it takes."

Piers dropped his hand down to his side, clenching it into a fist. One of his heels began to tap anxiously against the floor. "So all I had to do was almost die to finally get your attention?" Piers gave a sharp nod of his head, and then launched out of his seat to pace around the table in agitation. "Because that makes perfect fucking sense," he ground the words out like they were vile to the taste. "And I'm the crazy one?"

Chris looked wary as Piers came to a halt in front of him, but he gave no sign that he would try to run away or defend himself. Piers wished for a bigger reaction from the man, to see what was really underneath the dispassionate façade Chris had been wearing all these months.

"When I told you how I felt outside Edonia, you said that you could never let a - what did you call it then, a 'personal tryst'? - get in the way of our objective. It was a nice way to let me down easy, I'll give you that." He waited a moment, to let the full effect of his words sink in on Chris, who was finally realizing what the conversation was about. "But now you're here with me every fucking day - do you think this is what I wanted? Do you think this is how you're paying me back?"

Chris was shaking his head, his mouth open as if he wanted to speak, but Piers continued on without a break. There was a painful knot in his throat and he yelled determinedly around it. "It's an insult! I wanted you to be with me because you wanted to - not because you were compelled by some fucking moral obligation!"

"YOU THINK I FEEL OBLIGATED TO STAY WITH YOU?" Piers flinched at the sudden roar, cutting off abruptly and taking a hasty few steps back as Chris advanced towards him. He'd been pushing and pushing at Chris, so he wasn't really sure what to except - for the man to hit him, maybe - but it certainly hadn't been for Chris to wrap both rough, calloused hands around his neck, tilting his head up just enough to level him with a forceful kiss.

Piers' first instinct was to resist - obviously, this had to be an act Chris was forcing himself into to keep up with the rest of his falsehoods. He curled his hand into a fist around the front of Chris' BSAA shirt, but it was like shoving against a brick wall and Chris was determined. Teeth bit at Piers' lips, prying them open and demanding access. Piers could taste all kinds of pent up rage on the tongue thoroughly claiming his mouth, and he felt the need in a harsh groan that silently rumbled against his lips.

By the time the furious, possessive kiss had ended, and Chris pulled back only to drop his forehead onto Piers' shoulder, the younger man's convictions had been sufficiently shaken.

Hands twitched against his waist, though Piers couldn't remember when Chris had moved them there. He tried to form a question that would prompt Chris to explain his actions - but Piers was too distracted wondering where his own anger had gone. Chris had apparently chased it away with that single, desperate kiss.

After long pause, the man spoke on his own. "I thought you were dead, you know," he whispered, voice obscured from his bent position. "Sherry called me a year ago going on about you needing a place to stay after you were released from protective custody, and I told her I'd kill her if she thought it was some kind of funny joke."

Jake probably hadn't liked that, Piers thought, but he kept quiet. He'd always assumed Chris had been informed from the day the government search teams found him half-dead in a second escape pod. It had been frustrating that he wasn't allowed outside contact during his stay in the medical facilities, but at the time he'd been too busy struggling against the powerful hold the virus had taken in his body after such long exposure, that he hadn't even thought to check.

"You don't have any idea," Chris continued, his arms slipping the rest of the way around Piers' waist to hold him in a firm embrace. "You can't understand how it felt to get you back. All of the things I'd taken for granted and-and missed chances because I was afraid to take the risk and I-" Chris raised his head, meeting Piers' gaze with a ardor in his eyes. "Maybe you won't believe me, but it's not because of what you did that I'm here. It's just because of you." A sound escaped from Chris that was perhaps an attempt at a laugh, but it came out broken and hoarse.

"I won't leave your side, Piers. Never again."

Chris leaned in again, and Piers panicked. "St-wait!" He turned his head to the side, because Chris was still holding him too tightly to get away. "What are you trying to say?" he hissed in the direction of the window, as an undeterred Chris kissed at the side of his jaw instead.

His answer came in the form of hurried kisses that trailed down his neck, and they had Piers shivering even as heat began to spread out from his belly. Chris' breath was hot where it fell against his skin, and the rough exhales were punctuated by the press of Chris' tongue in the hollow at the base of his throat.

Chris backed him up to the sofa without breaking contact, pushing him down into a sitting position while he made a place for himself on the floor kneeling between Piers' legs. "Please," Chris slipped his hands just under the edge of Piers' gray t-shirt, waiting for permission to go further and forcibly keeping himself still. "Please, let me…?"

Part of him screamed false, that Chris was lying or just trying to placate him, or simply being an asshole - but another part of him wanted dreadfully to trust him. What would it cost? Piers wondered. At least for now he could allow himself to believe Chris' words, as well as the motivation behind them.

At any rate, he didn't have much to loose.

With a barely audible sigh he nodded, and Chris surged forward to claim his lips a second time. Both of his hands slid up Piers' ribcage and took his thin shirt up along with them. Cool air had his skin jumping, or perhaps it was the kisses that abruptly changed course as Chris ducked down and tongued a line of open mouthed kisses up the center of his chest. His back arched into the touch, and Chris, encouraged by his reaction, swiftly removed the shirt entirely.

Suddenly, the quick desperation with which he'd been moving came to a standstill. Chris pulled back to take in the sight before him, and Piers wished fleetingly for something to cover up the mangled knot of scars that covered the area around his right shoulder. But the feeling only lasted a moment, and then Chris leaned forward and took his time pressing very precise kisses up Piers' side, one over each marred bit of skin, and the gesture was so sweet that Piers ached.

Lifting his hand, he curled it around the back of Chris' head, blunt nails kneading through the short hairs at the nape of his neck, and Chris groaned deep in his throat before returning to Piers' mouth. "You're all I want," he breathed against Piers' lips, grabbing at his hips hard enough to bruise and practically growling when Piers began fighting him for control of the kiss. Piers only lost when one of Chris' hands got sidetracked, and roughly palmed his cock through his jeans.

It was definitely cheating, but Piers' complaint sounded much more like a moan as he pulled his head back to fall against the couch. He swore he could feel Chris smirking against his collarbone, but the thought slipped right out of his head a moment later. Chris pulled his hand back and deftly undid the button and zipper of Piers' jeans, reaching into the denim, under his boxers, and curling his fingers around Piers' erection directly.

Chris did not play games. His grip was tight, and purposeful, and he immediately set up a pace that would have Piers finishing embarrassingly quick. Piers choked on a breath and a moan that fought to come out at the same time, his hand clenching into a fist around the fabric over Chris' shoulder. In his defense, he hadn't been with anyone in quite a long while.

He realized he must've voiced his thoughts out loud, because Chris grunted a husky laugh into his skin and muttered, "Me either." Chris continued his ruthless pace, although the breathless noises that he forced from Piers' throat seemed to be distracting him, if the increasingly sloppy kisses pressed against Piers' stomach were any indication. For his part, Piers hardly noticed the other man's dwindling finesse - he'd already begun loosing the ability to think in coherent lines.

He was only drawn out of his stupor when Chris suddenly tightened his fist at the base of his cock, bringing his pleasure to a tumultuous halt. Piers' entire body quaked from the unexpected loss of friction, and he dug his fingers into Chris' shoulder, hoping to transfer some of his frustration into the other man. He tried to demand an explanation, but "-the hell?" was all he managed to get out.

"You really have no patience," Chris grunted, but there was a dark glint in his eye as he caught Piers' gaze that sent coils of heat straight down south. Piers was beginning to sense a bit of pattern between pain and pleasured responses from Chris - and he trembled from the knowledge of it.

"B-bit of a masochist," he hissed in retort, leaning forward to drag Chris' bottom lip between his teeth. A guttural moan was his admission, and Chris pressed back with impossible fervor, ravaging Piers' mouth and stealing the very breath from his lungs. When Piers was forced to pull away for air, Chris shifted seamlessly to the side of his neck, biting and sucking at the soft skin just below his ear.

A moment later all touch left Piers completely, and Chris met his gaze with an expression he couldn't identify - "I'd have to be, loving you."

His breath caught in his throat as he stared down at the man kneeling between his thighs; the man who'd been his friend and his captain, who he'd risked his life for, who he often swore that he hated, and who was the only person in the world willing to put up with his shit on a daily basis. The man who refused to give up on him, even when Piers had given up on himself.

The man who was now ducking down and taking him into his mouth.

Piers lost it. All questions were dissipated on contact of a warm, flat press of Chris' tongue up the length of him. It remained a constant pressure as Chris took him in completely, sucking, moaning around him just to see Piers' muscles tense in reaction to the vibrations.

It all happened very quickly after that. Despite the mild bravado Chris had maintained, he quickly lost composure to the sound of Piers' unrestrained moaning, the wanton gasps and eventually the pleas that banished any notion of dragging this out. The brief efforts he'd made to tease the younger man rapidly devolved into a single-minded desperation to bring him to release. Somehow, the thought had become lodged in his brain that if he had a chance to convince Piers of his sincerity, this might be it.

Piers was comprehending nothing but intermittent waves of heat and scorching pleasure. He could do nothing but hold on as Chris brought him higher and closer to the peak, fumbling over weak attempts at the man's name while Chris consumed him.

When finally he came crashing down from the heights, it was with his mouth fallen open in a silent scream, his hand carving wild designs across Chris' back as he scrabbled for purchase, and his heart pounded against his ribcage like it might burst out of him. Chris kept his mouth on him the entire time; waiting until the last tremors had shaken Piers' frame and he'd gone completely limp, doubled forward over Chris, before he finally pulled off.

Piers was vaguely aware of Chris cleaning him off with his own t-shirt, and the man muttering fuck when Piers keened, shuddering, at the contact, but after that his consciousness rapidly slipped away.

He couldn't remember being carried - though he sure as hell didn't do any walking - when a short time later he opened his eyes to the view outside through Chris' bedroom window. It was mostly obscured by the man's broad shoulders, but Piers didn't really mind. It was quite a comfortable place to be.

Chris lay beside him in the bed, with one arm acting as a makeshift pillow under Piers' head, and the other resting naturally across his back. Piers had been fighting coherency, because with it was sure to come suspicion and distrust, but come it did, regardless of his efforts.

They had done something that couldn't be taken back, and it was sure to change their relationship in a major way. Piers wasn't sure what that change was, specifically, not yet. He also reminded himself that Chris had both asked for permission, and given to him completely without taking anything in return. Both of those things were significant, and he determined to hold onto them.

But the most pressing matter requiring attention was the one that was quite literally pressed against his thigh, and which quickly had a self conscious flush spreading over his ears.

He cleared his throat, unsure he'd be able to actually voice the words "Is that your dick I'm feeling there?" and cleared it louder a second time when Chris gave no initial response.

"What is it?" Chris sighed, his eyes cracking open and narrowing in confusion at Piers' expression.

Piers looked pointedly down, then back up to meet Chris' eyes, and finally cast his gaze off to the side in undignified shyness. "You're still…" he struggled for the right terminology, quickly gave up, and then spat out in a jumble "Do you need-uh. Sh-should I…?"

Mercifully, Chris realized what the problem was, and he shifted his hips enough that Piers no longer felt the pressure of his erection. He even had the good sense to be properly embarrassed. "Don't worry about it," he mumbled gruffly.

Piers nodded. He could do that. There were plenty of other pressing worries waiting in the back seat of his mind. "Chris," he hissed.

The older man opened his eyes again, squinting at Piers through the darkness. "What?"

"Did you mean it?"

"Did I mean what?"

"What you said," Piers elaborated poorly. He drummed the backs of his fingers anxiously against Chris' bare chest, gritting his teeth in annoyance. After all that, why was it so difficult to ask such a simple question? It was the only one that really mattered. "You said-" he inhaled sharply and blew the breath out through his nose in a huff, "-that you loved me."

Chris' expression, previously sleepy sarcastic, sobered immediately. "Of course," he answered, his eyebrows knit together earnestly as he raised his free hand, fingers gently tracing the line of Piers' jaw.

Piers searched Chris' eyes thoroughly, trying to decide right then if he was truly going to believe him or not. Against his better judgment - which was to say, in spite of his faulty frame of mind - Piers shifted forward to press a decided kiss onto Chris' lips. It was a testing of new waters, a confirmation, and maybe a little bit of a promise all in one. Languidly, Piers slipped his tongue into Chris' mouth, mapping him out and making sure there were no traces of deception hidden behind his molars, or on the back of his tongue.

Chris allowed Piers to do as he pleased, though Piers gradually became aware that the hand which had been resting open on his jaw had since clenched into a white knuckled fist against his shoulder. He pulled back, watching as Chris clamped his jaw together, his brow furrowing in concentration. "I don't mean to complain," Chris grated out wryly. "But that's…not really helping." He gave a pointed glance downward, and Piers blushed darkly.

"Are you sure you don't need to, uh, I mean, I could-?" Piers stumbled over the words, not entirely sure what he was suggesting, but Chris just smiled tightly and shook his head. Chris pulled Piers' hand up and pressed a quick kiss into his palm.

"Just sleep," he insisted, bringing Piers' hand to rest against his neck. "There will be plenty of time for that later. I think I'll call in sick tomorrow," he added as an afterthought, while Piers busily ignored the faint stirring in regions down south, which definitely should not have been stirring so soon, at the prospect of that later. Chris seemed to notice anyway, and Piers quickly deflected to escape the shameless grin that spread on the man's face.

"I knew you were lying!" he blurted.

Chris appeared honestly affronted. "About what?!"

"The BSAA would never have let you leave early just because of a blizzard. What did you do - ditch your recruits during recess?"

Suddenly laughing, Chris reached forward and pulled Piers closer so that he could kiss the frowning wrinkles between Piers' eyebrows and nestle his face in the younger man's hair. "I had no choice! They would probably have kept me there until the blizzard was passed, and who knows how long that could take? I would have missed you."

Piers ended up smothered in Chris' embrace, his nose pressed against Chris' clavicle and his forehead in the dip between his shoulder and neck. It was impossible, he realized, to feel anything but wholly treasured in these strong arms. Go figure, he thought, Chris really was effective at countering his demons. Sherry was never going to let him hear the end of it. Fucking girl.

"What do you say, pancakes for breakfast tomorrow?" Chris spoke into his ear, and Piers shivered at his closeness. Tomorrow, the day after, weeks and months down the road…suddenly the future looked far less dismal.

He closed his eye, taking a deep breath and feeling something warm settle in his chest as his senses were filled with Chris. His smell, the feel of his skin, the scrape of his beard against Piers' temple. This could work. It wouldn't be easy, but they could make it work. "Sure, pancakes," he muttered, hiding a smile in the man's chest. "But no coffee."

Oh Piers I just want to punch him in the face for all the feels he gives me. This story got completely out of hand, I swear it just started because I thought it might be silly if Piers was bumping into stuff because his depth perception would be off. Oh well.

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