The sunlight spills in through the window, the curtains flowing gently in the breeze. The warm beams fall across the bed, Raylan stretches himself. He's face down, arms beneath the soft squishy pillow, cheek buried in the cool expensive linen, eyes still closed because this is bliss. He's on holiday. True this isn't quite how he pictured it, but still, it's perfect, and he doesn't want to move, or open his eyes just yet.
A hand moves, slowly down his spine, a finger dips lower, index he thinks, ghosting the very fine hairs down his back. Raylan's smile widens, his eyes remain closed, but he pushes his hips up, arching his back like a cat.
For a fraction of a second, the finger makes contact with the sun-warmed skin of his back. Raylan can feel it there. Like a little brand. If he thought about it, he could sense the unique ridges of that finger print, it's etched on his soul.
He nudges his cheek into the pillow a little more firmly. Outside the day is beginning and he lies there in the sun, just absorbing the barely there touches on his back, and combines them with the sounds outside. He wants to imprint this on his memory forever, because Raylan screws up relationships and he wants this one to be eternal.
So he maps the hand's movement with his senses as it skips and ghosts over his naked back. The tender touch, on his shoulder, the two fingers that glide softly down his spine again, the slightest pressure, two lips, against his almost completely healed wound. Knife, came close to ending his life, under his ribs, close by his spine.
Two hands that fought to save him. He doesn't think he's ever meant that much to someone before.
Raylan turns his face into the pillow, breathes in the scent of soft fresh linen, and then faces the owner of the hand, those hands... He opens an eye, slowly, peering beneath his lashes. The hand settles in the small of his back, and Raylan pushes up again into the touch, reveling in it.
"Hey." His lover's voice is a little croaky, Raylan spent a delicious few hours the previous night driving his lover out of their collective minds, it's a good thing their tiny little 'honeymoon' cottage is set well away from the others, and the walls are very thick. Their neighbours might have had cause for complaint.
"hey yourself." Raylan finds that his own voice is definitely croaky, he turns, reaching out, his arm slides around a narrow waist, two arms reach out and gently pull him in, he's being cradled against a firmly muscled chest, and he rests his forehead against a broad and powerful shoulder. He feels cherished, which brings a big girly lump to his throat, perhaps he's not as over being stabbed as he thought he was, but it's a nice feeling. A new feeling.
One hand caresses the place, and Raylan burrows in. He loves this, never suspected this about himself. Never realized that there was a different kind of blond until now.
Now he can't let go, he keeps talking to a minimum, doesn't want to make a mess, screw this up. The hands, the arms, the chest, the gentle kisses that he can't ask for but can't get enough of.
His different kind of blond.
Tim Gutterson closes his arms more firmly around his lover, and plants a gentle kiss against the top of the dark head burrowed against his shoulder. He's always known this about himself, but a lifetime's wariness and a suspicious military kept it under wraps.
His hand gently smoothes the puckered, mostly healed wound, he came so close to losing him forever. He drops another gentle kiss, and his lover responds. Tim can feel the flick of soft lashes against his shoulder, lips pressing themselves over the scar there. His own mostly healed wound.
The paramedics, and his boss and co-workers all think that Tim saved Raylan's life that night. Hell, even the citation and the medal sitting in the bottom drawer of his desk says that, but Tim still thinks it was the other way round. Raylan's need awoke something in Tim, and a desire to take a chance for the first time in his life.
It's love. Real, true love.
But a different kind.