He'd woken up before Olli, slightly disoriented, and a little panicked until he'd turned his head to feel Olli's scalp tickling his chin, and he smiled at the sensation. It was silly, he'd known Olli would be there when he woke up - he'd woken up with Olli a million times before. But that had been before this new understanding. Those mornings prior had been good, and not much had changed, not on the surface. Olli's head resting on his chest, his limbs skewed and stretching to touch Christian at any opportunity, he looked as he always did, angelic, innocent serene, and Christian blushed at the memory of how different he'd looked last night, holding Christian together and simultaneously dismantling him. Something fluttered wildly in him and he pulled Olli closer, needing to tether himself, before he floated away. He breathed deeply, absorbing the tangy scent of their shared sweat, the dull ache in his abs, and the subtle throbbing in his ass. That too was different, and good, Christian decided, very good. He felt tender and new, like pink skin healing over an old wound. But it had been Olli that had healed him and held him and freed him to trust.
"You're really something you know?" He whispered into a senseless ear, and he chuckled at Olli's sleepy snort. He shifted slightly, growing restless and hot in the tangled embrace, but Olli seemed to sense it and clutched tighter to Christian, sighing and smiling in his sleep. The oddly protective gesture served to soothe him a little, and he traced the wiry hairs on the arm across his waist and kissed Olli's forehead. It was still early, but Christian couldn't change his internal clock, and he was anxious to start the day. He knew Olli wouldn't wake up for a while - he never did after sex – and Christian wanted to put his impromptu proposal in motion, and start transferring Olli's things into the room immediately. His mind raced at the thought, absorbing for the first time the enormity of the request. But he didn't regret it, he wanted to sleep next to Olli every night, not just when they made love. He wanted the room to smell of him, and the sheets, maybe have some of that intoxicating scent linger on his own body. Honestly, he'd wanted it for a long time, and he had no excuse to wait anymore. Wriggling his way out of Olli's tentacle hold, he grabbed his aborted khakis from the floor. Olli shifted in protest behind him, but he made it to the door and out.
Olli's room was cramped, and Christian had known already that he didn't have a lot of possessions. He supposed Olli had been rootless and floating out at sea for so long before he came home, that he hadn't had the inclination to collect or save much. There were just a few pictures of him with Olivia when they were younger, a few here and there of Charlie and Lars and shots of Andi which, unaccountably, made Christian feel weirdly jealous, but it dissipated when he saw the photo of he and Olli in the ring after his big fight. How could he ever have doubted, he wondered, stepping closer to examine Olli in the photo. Olli's eyes, so beautiful and green, after he'd kissed him and the way the smile had spread slowly over his face; it made Christian feel more breathless than he had in he rounds with Axel, a kind of desperate breathlessness that scared and thrilled him. They'd build new memories, he decided, and he'd help Olli put real roots down. The back of his mind whispered something about marriage, but Christian shelved it for the moment, disturbed by the profound appeal of seeing Olli slowly go gray over time, of walking down an aisle with him toward forever.
Christian placed the framed picture back on the dresser and began to sing softly as he folded and organized Olli's clothes in distinct piles on the mattress. They never slept here because the mattress was a bit too small for two men of their size. And, truthfully, it made Christian a little wild to think he'd have to sleep in the same place as Timo. Olli had laughed at him, but conceded anyway, and they'd tacitly agreed to spend their nights together in Christian's room from then on.
When he reached the bottom drawer , his hand bumped against something hard. He pulled out a small red notebook and began to absently go through it. The first few pages held little sketches and doodles, and Christian smiled to see these little outpourings of Olli's imagination. He noted with interest that for the most part the drawings seemed to concentrate on the idea of a bar or club of his own. Christian sat down, fascinated at the detailed sketches and notes Olli had made. He'd had no idea that Olli had plans like this, and though he was clueless about architecture he knew enough about working in a bar to see that Olli's ideas were innovative and fresh and he felt a surge of pride at making the discovery. So it turned out that Olli did have dreams after all, and Christian vowed to throw his all into making it come true too.
He flipped the pages and chuckled at Olli's notes on 'No Limits' and 'Schneider's', listing what worked, and what didn't; he'd definitely have to ask Olli to share this with Gregor, his brother was generally immune to criticism, but Olli just had a way with people that Christian both awed and envied. He turned a few more pages until he came to some text in blue ink toward the back of the book. When began reading, he immediately recognized that it was personal in nature, a diary of some kind. He shut the book promptly, laid it on top of a pile of clothes, and continued to organize Olli's things. Privacy was something he valued, having never quite gotten used to having it back after prison. It wasn't something he would violate easily, but with every additional pile laid on the bed, and every sighting of that little red book, Christian's mind itched to know more. Was he mentioned? What did Olli think about? What did he write?
Searching his memory Christian could never recall Olli scribbling in a journal, and Christian was a champion Olli watcher. He'd catalogued nearly everything Sabel related, behaviors, appearance, habits, but that this had escaped his detection was nothing short of maddening. He had resisted valiantly for an hour, but he was at his limit. He folded his legs underneath him and sat down in the middle of bed, in a sort of makeshift nest of Olli's things, and opened up again to the page with the blue writing.
The door opened slowly and for a moment Christian could almost forget, could almost disregard every damning word in the face of the Olli before him. Olli, dressed in a pair of his boxers, looking sated and sleepy, was something Christian didn't think he could have resisted if his life depended on him. But when he saw the clouded shock and dismay in Olli's eyes, it was a wordless confirmation of everything he'd learned. And anger didn't even begin to encompass what he was feeling.
Olli hardly flinched when Christian flung the book at him, and Christian wasn't sure if it was shock or shame that made Olli so stilted and still, his natural fluidity absent as he made his way over to the bed, arms outstretched and pleading to explain. It made Christian curious, but that curiosity paled in comparison to the volcanic anger that was about to erupt from him. He thought that it ought to be good, ought to be damned good to hear the fucked up explanation Olli would produce for this. So he let Olli edge closer, and tried to stem the bile of betrayal creeping up his gullet, spoiling for fight and ruthlessly keeping his anguish at bay.
"I know what you've read," Olli started, "and I know it looks bad-"
"Bad?" Christian shouted, "Lying to your boss or cheating on your boyfriend is bad. But if what I read here is true Olli, you're fucking playing with people's hearts. It's sick and it's cruel, and how do I know it isn't what you're doing with me?" His voice faltered on that last question, because it was what he feared most of all, what he didn't want to be true. But he couldn't exclude the possibility, not when the evidence was staring him in the face.
"No, no, Christian, that's just not the case it's different with us I swear." Olli had edged closer, desperately clutching at Christian's hands. Christian was shocked at how clammy Olli's hands were, and dismayed to discover that a very large part of him wanted nothing more than to warm them in his own, and pull Olli close and tell him he believed him. Instead he stumbled out of the bed, over to the diary nearly crushing it in his hands as he turned to a page and read aloud.
"Caught another straight boy checking me out at the gym, think he has a girlfriend, but I can make quick work of that."
He flipped forward a few pages and read again, glaring at Olli.
"Trying to decide between Ivan and the Greek waiter, I bet I could convince them to have a threesome, just need to make sure Ivan doesn't get too clingy. I think he almost told me he was in love with me, I might have to ditch him soon anyway. But I definitely want to get into that sweet ass. I haven't hooked up with a Greek yet."
Olli's face crumpled at the harshness of his own language, and he shut his eyes as Christian continued to read through the sordid details of his past, flipping through the pages where he'd rated over seventy lovers, sordidly, systematically, cruelly.
" Jonas told me he loved me, looks like I'll have to cut him loose I don't need to deal with that shit right now. If I'd known he'd be such a leech I wouldn't have bothered. I tried to tell him from the beginning what to expect, but he just didn't listen. At least I'm not going to fuck him over, not like Tom. At least he'll know what he had coming to him"
Christian turned to one of the final pages, his voice was quiet, a little scratchy and thick in his throat.
"I think I hate Christian. Actually, scratch that. I know I do. He's a homophobic, small-minded, provincial jerk. It's almost like I haven't left Meppen at all. The only thing that kid has going for him are his hot girlfriend and his hot brother. He's such an asshole. I have no idea why Coco stays with him. Speaking of Coco, maybe she and I can have a little fun together. This little crush she's developed on me could definitely be to my benefit. It's been a while since I've been with a girl. I see the way she looks at me. I wonder if she's a good kisser? Christian wouldn't even know what hit him. The idiot. AND the asshole ate my fucking yogurt, again! I was really looking forward to that. On the upside, I have another date with Timo. Though that's not really an upside. I don't know, he's really nice, and I should want to get to know him better, but I just - I don't know. Maybe I'm incapable of feelings, of being able to be with someone that way. I should call it off before he expects too much. This is all getting so tired."
He dropped the book then, and let his hands hang limp at his sides, examining the patina of the wood on Olli's floor, his throat burning with anger and his mind reeling and trying to reconcile the man he'd changed his life for - the man who he'd let fuck him for God's sake - with the callous and cruel thing he found in the journal. They were silent like that for a while, letting the words reverberate in the space around them. When he looked back up, Olli's head was bowed, his hands twisted in his lap and his lip caught and near bleeding between his teeth.
"Olli, am I just another notch on your belt?" Christian asked, hugging himself and feeling cold and small in the room. When he was five, his mother had been late picking him up from school, and he'd wept himself sick, convinced that she wasn't ever coming back. That feeling was back again, but magnified. Because, if the diary was true, then the Olli he thought he knew wasn't coming back either. That Olli might never have existed, and that possibility made everything in him dull and lifeless.
"Are you just going to drop me when you get bored?" he continued. "I've never been the sophisticated cool guy. I always left that to Gregor. But I've always been honest with you and with everyone. Just have the decency to do the same with me." Olli lifted his head, his eyes green and swimming. Christian was momentarily stunned at guileless hurt he saw shining from them.
"I'm sorry," Olli answered, and Christian felt his world tilting on a dangerous axis, until Olli continued in that same haunted and broken voice. "I'm sorry you ever had to read that, but you have to believe me Christian, you're not just another notch on the belt, and I swear, I'm not the person who wrote that anymore. I'm different."
He stood, breathless with the sudden surge of hope in his chest, as Olli walked over to the journal and picked it up off the ground. "Let me read you the last thing I wrote in here." Christian was shocked, momentarily, to find his hand clasped tightly in Olli's, and he walked on numbed feet, as he followed Olli to the bed to sitting next to him and trying to stop his heart from leaping out of his mouth. Olli turned to a page in the back of the book, and started reading in his low mellow tenor.
"Christian passed his swimming exam! I'm so proud of him, I don't even know what to do with myself. He was so excited he hugged me, just completely out of the blue. And, God, it was perfect. Until Judith walked in and ruined it. I can't wait to tell Gast84. I knew that side of Christian existed, and I wish he'd show it to me more. I can't describe it, even though it was a few seconds, when he held me it felt so perfect and right. He smelled amazing, even under the chlorine and the shirt that I know he's been wearing for two days in a row. He felt amazing - he is amazing. He told me he was glad that I'd been supporting him, and I would do it forever, if he would just look at me like that again. He's so beautiful it makes my head hurt. I hung out with him and Judith all night celebrating, and part of me just wanted to kiss him and hold him and kick Judith the fuck out, but another part of me was ok just being with him, just talking and laughing. I must be sick. Oliver Sabel doesn't care about sex? Alert the authorities. But it's true, if given the choice, I wouldn't have sex with Christian as long as we could be together like we were last night.
I think I could live off of his smile. I love him. I love everything about him. I didn't know what that was, I didn't understand the whole "love thing." It's frightening. I'm totally his and there's no hope of us ever being together. Sometimes I wish I'd never gone to that cabin, but you haven't lived until you've shared secrets with Christian by the firelight. I'd hoped maybe it was just an intense crush, but it's the real thing.
My God, I can't even blame this on alcohol, I didn't drink that much tonight. I just love him. I am totally and completely in love for the first time in my life. I'm in trouble, this is totally hopeless. But I've fallen so far and so fast for him, I can't stop, I don't want to stop. I just wish he wanted to catch me.
The starch slowly seeped out of Christian, replaced with relief and a strange electric jolt of protectiveness. He found that he was moving closer with every word, until his leg was flush with Olli's, and he was close enough to feel the heat of his body. When Olli was done reading the final few lines Christian moved to rest his head on Olli's shoulder, and knocked the book out of Olli's hand, replacing it with his own.
"You like throwing things around, huh?" Olli said it lightly, but Christian was an anatomy student, and he saw the tension in the chords of Olli's neck tighter than cable wire. He kissed them, trying to soothe the taut muscle into rest.
"No, sometimes I'm just careless." He answered. "I shouldn't have read it in the first place Olli, that was dumb."
"Right," Olli said, tapping lightly on his chest, "And barring that, you could have at least finished reading it. I know I wasn't always the nicest guy back then." Olli said soberly, his eyes fluttering shut at the softness of Christian's eager mouth and the hands skimming gently along his back, "But you make me want to be a better person Christian, and it scares me, sometimes, how much I love you."
Christian kissed him properly, then, hauling Olli closer to press their lips together and sink one hand in eerily soft hair, and the other over Olli's chest to feel his heart beating fast and steady almost in time with his own. He stripped Olli of his boxers before pushing him down to the bed and knocking over the remaining piles of clothing. His laughter was soft when Olli protested the rough treatment of his clothes. It was replaced with a low heated grunt when Olli bit his neck at just the right spot to make him shudder and press Olli into the mattress even harder.
"Ow, you little carnivore." Christian muttered, but it soon turned to whimpers when Olli's hot tongue snaked out to soothe the mark on his neck, and those hands began to deftly undo the fly of his cargo pants.
"Mmm," Olli sighed. "That'll teach you to snoop around in people's things."
"Yes," Christian breathed harshly through his nose as Olli grasped him firmly in his warm strong hands. Christian collapsed then, squeezing a grunt from Olli as his cock slid in and out of Olli's wonderful fist. He buried his nose into Olli's nape and breathed, dazed at the scent that was always waiting for him at the crook of his neck, and overwhelmed by his need for Olli, which never seemed to wane.
"Why do you always smell so good?" Christian whined, running his tongue over Olli's fresh stubble and sucking a bruise into the pale warm skin of his throat. As though that could solve the mystery, as though divining the chemical composition of Olli's sweat and skin could somehow make it all make sense. Olli knew better, and answered by arching up and wrapping his hand around them both, gasping at the slick velvet feeling of their shafts rubbing together.
Christian groaned, trapped by his desire to not move a muscle and lose the exquisite feeling of Olli's sex against his, and his desire to taste more of Olli's delicious skin. He chose the latter, flicking his tongue out and branding the skin with teeth marks in all the places he knew Olli liked best as he worked his way down his pale shivering torso. When he finally took Olli into his mouth, he had to squeeze his hand like a vice around his own erection, because the inhuman wail of pleasure he was rewarded with nearly killed him.
Olli had always said Christian was a natural at this, which had confused Christian, because with Olli hot slick and throbbing on his tongue, how could he not want to swallow him whole? How could he resist pressing his tongue into he warm slit and rolling his essence around in his mouth? There were very few situations that Christian could imagine being better than this. Olli ruthlessly fucking his mouth, Olli pulling on his hair, Olli burning so incandescent with pleasure he couldn't tear his eyes away from it.
"Christian, so- so- close, baby." He half –whispered, half - grunted it, and clutched even harder at Christian's hair, and the hurt of it was enough to take the edge off of Christian's arousal, though perversely it made him even more eager and he felt the same uncontrollable greed from last night seep into him. He wanted more of Olli, and he wasn't frightened anymore that this was the way it would be, for a very long time, possibly forever. His only option, was to take it. Because it was what they both wanted, they had both fallen hard, but they had fallen together.
Shaking free of Olli's grasp Christian let his dick slide out slowly, fully aware of how he looked, his hair tousled his lips swollen and wet with Olli's pre-cum. He smiled, a debauched slow grin at Olli's irritated and aroused growl. "You left the lube in my room, didn't you?" he asked, pushing Olli's legs back, running his hands along the solid wiry strength of his thighs. Olli nodded, confused and panting as he reached for his dick, sparing a glare for Christian's audacity at leaving him like this. Christian grinned even wider and lazily pushed the determined hand aside before swooping down and burying his tongue in Olli's winking hole.
He had been inside Olli, countless times, but not like this, and the intimacy of it - Olli's own unique musk and his heat, and the fluttering of his muscles around Christian's tongue- made his heart pound. It didn't help that Olli's limbs flailed every time Christian pushed his tongue inside, or that when Christian nipped lightly on the outside of his puckered entrance, Olli arched off the mattress nearly knocking them both off the tiny bed, his voice strained and gasping with half formed words and pleas. Christian knew he'd be doing this again, but he couldn't go on much longer, because if he didn't get inside Olli, right now, right this moment, he knew he would quite probably die.
When Olli flipped them over with a roar Christian was relieved that he'd get what he needed, but also panicked because they didn't have a condom, and Olli was always lecturing him about being safe. But Olli wasn't lecturing now, his mouth was hanging open in a soundless moan and he was slowly lowering himself onto Christian until they were fully joined. And Christian had to hold him still, because he was staggering from how hot and smooth Olli was inside, how good and right it felt, not just like this, but always. When he felt his balls press against the soft skin of Olli's ass, the last gasp of rational thought disappeared from his brain, replaced by a devastating frisson of arousal at the feel of being buried so deeply inside of the man he loved.
Olli's cock, unapologetically hard and bouncing in time to Christian's erratic thrusts, was tempting. Knowing that neither of them would last long, Christian spit in his hand and began palming Olli's erection, pressing the hot length of it against his belly and collecting some of the fluid in his hand to taste, as they followed a timeless rhythm together. Olli threw his head back at the feeling, and Christian, awed by the dissolution of his own name in Olli's mouth slid his hands all over Olli's sex-flushed skin and pulled him down roughly, trying to thrust deeper into the tight puckered hole.
Olli, so open for him, his hot desperate breathing filling Christian's ears, his hips working in tight perfect circles – Christian didn't want it to end, but he was coming. He was coming apart, coming inside Olli, his eyes shut tight as his hands gripped Olli mercilessly and strange desperate noises flowed out of him. He opened his eyes in time to see Olli whimpering and trembling as though his orgasm were a biological attack leaving him bereft of grace and speech.
He smiled as Olli slowed his movements, still moaning and sighing softly as his ass fluttered around Christian, trying to hold the softening cock inside of him. Christian thrust up a few more times, entranced at how slick and warm Olli was, more than a little turned on by the idea of filling Olli with his seed, but too tired to properly do anything about it besides kiss his neck and cheek in appreciation.
"Maybe you should read my diary more often." Olli mumbled as he slowly clambered off Christian.
"Mmm. All part of the master plan." Christian answered, noncommittally. He was too busy tasting Olli's lips again and trying to arrange them comfortably on the bed. Olli chuckled softly and wrapped himself around Christian, already more than half asleep.
"Olli, we can't sleep too long we still have to move your stuff." The only answer he received was a muffled snore, and after an exploratory poke in the ribs, Christian decided to just let him sleep. When Olli's breathing had gone quiet and even, he tightened his hold around Olli and whispered. "Of course I wanted to catch you. I always did."
Olli had written that he hadn't known what love was, but Christian thought he understood, now. It was a continuous frightening tumble into the unknown, with no parachute but your other half to keep you afloat. His hand slid over Olli's heart and he smiled. They would land safely together, intact. He kissed Olli's ear and settled into sleep.