Sting is winning his match against Rogue when the worry starts to hit him.
He keeps his hold on the game controller for a few minutes longer, but he can feel his attention sliding away, his thoughts skidding out on the slick mental rut of rising panic, and by the time his skin goes cold with over-anxious panic any attempt at focusing on the game is useless. He tosses the controller aside without bothering to pause the game, ignoring Rogue's yelp of protest in favor of twisting in to face the other so he can fix all his attention on the familiar cast of Rogue's features.
"What did you do that for?" Rogue demands, hitting the button to cancel the game and return them to the main menu. "Just because I was winning doesn't mean you have to get sulky."
"You weren't winning," Sting says, not to pick a fight, just to defend his honor.
"I was." Rogue sets his controller aside, tilts his head to shoot Sting a glare past the shadow of his hair.
Sting waves a hand, brushing away the other's protests. "Only because I wasn't paying attention, I was distracted."
"I've been winning this entire game," Rogue snaps, and that's ridiculous, that is patently false. Sting is reaching out to grab his shoulder and shake him back to the light of reason when there's another wave of cold, insecurity too strong for him to brush away, and instead of a grab his fingertips land with feather-light tentativeness on the edge of Rogue's collar.
Rogue goes still immediately, the frown of irritation fading from his face as his eyes refocus until he's actually looking at Sting's expression. "What is it?" That's soft, gentle, careful the way Sting usually only ever hears him talk to Frosch. He almost never uses that tone with Sting, the delicate phrasing as if he thinks Sting might break if jostled too hard.
Of course, right now Sting feels like he might. The unusual care in Rogue's voice is a comfort, warms the edges of his abnormal chill so he can force himself to take a breath, to form the words he wants into the right shape on his tongue.
"Are you sure you want to be with me?"
The question drags high, sharp and desperate in Sting's throat, but there's nothing be can do to counteract that. It's all he can do to hold Rogue's steady gaze while he speaks; he barely sees the other's eyes start to go wide with shock before his determination cracks and his own gaze drops to the floor. He nearly pulls his hand away, is just starting to retreat from the warmth of Rogue's skin when fingers close on his wrist and stall the movement of his hand.
"Sting." That's a serious voice, the slow, careful shape of words that says Rogue is really thinking through what he's saying. "Look at me."
It's harder than it should be. It's only in moments like this that Sting cringes away from Rogue's gaze, that the scarlet of the other's eyes feel like it has a tangible presence he has to push past in order to lift his gaze. He has to steel himself, take a pair of deep breaths and tighten his fingers into a fist before he can manage to tilt his chin up and lock his eyes with Rogue's.
"I want to be with you." There's no 'of course,' no dismissive 'obviously' in either words or tone. Some of the knot unwinds from Sting's throat, some of the tension sets his shoulders free of their panicked hunch. "Right now. Always."
The words are a comfort. Sting can feel them trickling into his thoughts, warming the weird fright in the corners of his mind, soothing away the what ifs of a life without Rogue. But his tongue is still moving, childlike anxiety forcing itself into coherency, and what he says is "How do you know?" with the plaintive wail of desperation under the word.
Rogue's smile is the special one, the warm curve he never gives to anyone but Sting. It softens the intensity of his gaze, warms the crimson of his eyes into the flickering heat of a fire so Sting is breathing in relief even before Rogue says, "I know."
There's no meaning to the phrase, really; in anyone else's mouth that wouldn't be enough. But Sting knows Rogue, and Rogue knows him, and if Rogue says he knows something than Sting will take it as absolute fact.
"Oh." Sting's chest lets the last of his panic go, lets his blood start to warm itself as he takes a slow breath. "Okay."
Rogue nods silent agreement, lets his fingers at Sting's wrist slide up to catch his curled-in fingers instead. Sting is almost expecting the touch at his forehead, the delicate tracery of Rogue's fingertips over the line of the scar running clean across his skin. He shuts his eyes under the touch, breathes out slow so he can savour the ease of the breath.
"You weren't winning," he says at last, just to make sure Rogue knows.
The fingers at his brow go still. "I was too."
"Were not." Sting opens one eye so he can see Rogue's chin come down as his eyes go dark with irritation. "I had you under my thumb the whole time."
Rogue growls. That gives Sting enough warning that he's braced for the impact of an entire dragonslayer hitting his chest, even if that forewarning doesn't stop them both from toppling to the ground. For a minute Rogue is hissing frustration at him while Sting nobly defends his ground as simply a speaker of truth. But then Rogue gets too close, or Sting leans up too high and their mouths brush together, and in a very few minutes neither of them remembers anything about the game at all. Even afterwards, though, Sting keeps the comfort of that reassurance in the back of his head. He loses the words, the details of accuracy to the haze of memory, but the important part sticks in the warmth in his blood, the security of Rogue's affection for him clear and bright as the morning sky.