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John hit the dirt with a clatter of gear and rubble and a soft grunt of pain.
A solid leather boot sat against his sternum, laces immaculate and ladder straight up the length of tongue. John knew this because the boot was mere inches still from his face as he lay panting in the ruin of the collapsed cave system. Even when he bucked upwards, the toe dug downwards and forced the air from his chest and his spine into the grit.
The hefty rumble of earth moving began to slow, and when the last pebble rolled to a stop - only then did the boot lift and rejoin its sibling on the solid ground. John grunted and sucked in air.
Dust, the tinged smell of black powder, old stonework, and one pissed off Alpha - all these scents whisked around his nasal cavity.
This ‘stealth op’ had gone to shit fast.
In his defense, he hadn’t expected to run into KorTac’s The Ghost on this operation.
Hadn’t anticipated, but was familiar with, the intense swell of rage to hit him so hard upon locking eyes with the other Alpha operator. A snarl quick to his lips, eyes bulging with ten years worth of incandescent fury as soon as it registered who else was trying to collect intel and infiltrate the tiny no-name cell of terrorists.
A fight breaking out between them was normal in retrospect. They've gone toe-to-toe now at least seven times. Soap unable to contain his ire, The Ghost unable to refrain from snapping his teeth beneath that creepy fucking mask. It was exactly why intel had a very specific measure of difficulty set for their operations now: Would Ghost also show up? If so, Don’t. Send. Soap.
Case in point: They were now in the asshole of some mountain cave system, slowly being digested by the collapsed monstrosity with faulty comm units both crackling uselessly this far beneath the earth and soil.
And there was no peace, not even for a moment, not even when the dust settled from the explosion they’re scuffling had triggered by alerting the guards.
Even though both were sporting minor injuries, all it took for the fight to renew was a single scoff, a maybe mumbled ‘see what you did?’ before the Scot was giving a guttural scream and launching himself at the other.
Ghost swung hard, catching him midair and sending him back first into the craggy wall of the cave. A covered face snarling only millimeters away from Soap’s loud enough to travel through the cotton material. John growled low and heavy, bared his teeth, and thrashed - only for the bigger Alpha to shake him stupid and throw him to the ground like a rowdy pup.
A heavy manchurian accent, rasped and grating and so different but still so easily sending a crawling sensation through his limbs - “You’ve done enough!” it spat at him, where he was still sprawled against the cave floor.
Soap growled back “Oh yeah, blame me! Just like you always fuckin’ do!”, instead of lunging for him John kicked out with his foot. Childish, but enough to catch the big fucker in the shin and at least get a curse out of him before he stalked off.
It shouldn’t have frightened John, to be left there in the dark. Least of all by this man. But the second the other turned and started leaving him, he felt unmoored. Untethered. Like a firework shot off into the sky with no way of knowing if his fuse would stay lit.
He scrambled up and followed his nose through the darkness. His eyes poorly adjusted to the pitch black, but once the cloud settled his nose could lead him (hopefully) to safety.
(Let’s pretend like safety wasn’t in the same direction of his ex-companion-coworker-whatever-the-fuck-they-were—)
Rich Assam and Rose Petals. Elegant, thick, cloying. Currently tinged with anger, with annoyance, spite . But still, the same scent he shamefully tried to mimic in the twilight hours when his poor bones ached too fiercely to relieve with simple hand-to-hand means.
John followed until the space opened up. A natural ravine dug into the mountain, foggy moonlight spilling down and revealing a small bit of greenery. Soap squinted up at the moon, beaming back at him mockingly through a haze of clouds.
He saw Ghost sitting on a stone crop tucked away in a patch of oddly bright white flowers. Back to the cave, to John.
The off-handed dismissal renewed his ire like a red handkerchief, and like a bull he puffed through his nose and a cloud of steam drifted off into the night.
It took him four big strides to reach the other, his hand swinging out to clock him across the back of the skull, but once again the other caught him first. John grunted with pain, his wrist protesting the painful wrench as Ghost squeezed and swung him around, sending him crashing into the flowers which released a cloud of pollen that sparkled in the moonlight.
John gasped, back hitting the ground hard, and sucked in a lungful of pollen that left him gagging and sneezing. The other snorted, though a clearly unamused noise, before stepping back to sit on the rock again.
“Stay down already.” His deep gravel tumbled over John who began to snarl, but sneezed again as pollen coated his senses entirely, even stinging his eyes.
“Ass-hat..” he mumbled, shifting to his knees with a huff causing pollen to puff off his nose. It smelled bitter, peaty. He scrubbed at his face, and successfully smeared the pollen around.
He got no response, Ghost turned away from him.
For some reason, the otherwise innocent gesture, even a slightly ‘peaceful’ gesture where they were concerned, only made John feel…
He felt…angry yes, of course…but something else was bubbling up. Hysterical and unrelenting and seemingly coming from nowhere he could name, as his eyes stung and his chest seized -
“Don’t do that!” He screamed, caught off guard by his own voice as was Ghost who whipped around to look at him in surprise.
John sat there on his knees, shocked, to hear such a petulant tone forming from himself.
They stared at each other, Soap’s breathing becoming laboured. He couldn’t place it, why he was suddenly feeling so … much … but it was quickly overwhelming him. His mouth opened, and words began tumbling out before he could properly control them, to his utter humiliation:
“Stop turning away from me!” He whined, “Stop walking off!” He tried to bite his tongue, but everything felt staticky and like he was beginning to vibrate his meat off the bones.
Ghost turned towards him, head cocked, only his eyes visible enough to discern emotion from, though in this darkness John couldn’t read them.
“What?...the fuck is wrong with you now?”
John growled, overwhelmed with the feeling of indignation and anger, before he lunged and tackled Ghost into the same flowers, another plume of pollen being sent into the air. Ghost made a sound, but it was muffled through that fucking mask…John felt himself searing with outrage as he clawed at it.
“Get off!” Ghost yelled at him, scrambling with him in the dusty flowers. He growled and snapped his teeth, but the way the other was behaving made him hesitate - something was wrong with John…
With a triumphant scream, John snatched the mask away and revealed angry doe-brown eyes and a grease paint covered face.
More than that, he exposed the man to the pollen dusting around them.
The larger Alpha’s eyes widened, his hand coming up to pinch his nose shut, suddenly aware of the shiny pollen as it coated them both and how the Scot was gradually growing more lethargic and uncoordinated, his limbs flailing out in jerky motions as he became increasingly belligerent.
Ghost tried to snatch his mask back, to protect himself from the pollen and to keep some control here, but the idiot above him threw it and slammed Ghost back down the ground with more strength than grace; a proper Glasgow-Kiss that shocked Ghost into gasping in a lungful of pollen, it tasted weirdly floral and sweet.
They each snarled and grunted, turning into nothing more than gnashing creatures rolling through the flowers and kicking up plumes of the nacreiridescent substance, which stuck to their clothes like gossamer off butterfly wings - both of them taking deep heaving lungfuls of the pollen until their kicks and clawing hands grew weak and unsteady and they exhausted themselves quickly with thundering hearts.
Ghost felt nauseous from the clinging dust. Overwhelming feelings and sensations worked through him rapidly, like all of his emotions were kicking up in scale - his senses all vulnerable to over-exposure. Things he could normally keep tightly controlled now threatening to spill out unattended. Things he shouldn’t be picking up were coming through like a big screen was projecting straight into his mind.
Soap - John Johnny sat on his chest as the pair finally rolled to a stop in the lush foliage. The smaller Alpha was heaving for breath and puffing out little plumes of the pollen from his nose and lips, his eyes bloodshot and wild as they grew glassy from irritation and emotion alike.
Ghost was trying to bolster himself to buck the other off, but his nose chose then to pick up some of the hypersensitivity, and he was dominated by the sheer wall of scent John was giving off.
Simon had yearned to remember that scent.
Delicate white heather, peaty moss and earth, the sea-salt soaked cliffs off the coast - everything that raised John had imbedded itself into his very soul and his scent only reminded you of his birthplace, of the rolling open moor and the crashing sea and the beauty of a world still fighting to remain untamed.
John sneers down at him, perched atop his chest with his fists pushing down hard against Simon’s pecs - bloodied knuckles digging into the flesh and smarting against old bruises and scars. He was growling and gave a good blustering show of it - but Simon couldn’t smell the anger that would have accompanied such action.
All he smelt, was despair.
“You!” John screamed at him “You lyin’ bastard!” He lifted his hands and slammed them back down, Simon wincing from the pointed contact, “Lyin’! Treacherous! Leech!” John punctuated each word with another hit, until Simon caught his hands and held them above his sternum. Both of their arms were trembling and weak when pushing against the other.
John slowly sagged, gripping hard onto Simon’s hands with bared claws that left bloody rivulets in his skin. He turned from growling to sobbing, the wretched gasping kind that one couldn’t control for the life of it, his entire body jerking and heaving each inhale and garbled exhale.
Simon held fast, tried to push John backwards - “Get...get off...” he wheezed out, tasting the pollen heavy on his tongue. He tried to push, but his heart wasn’t in it, and his body knew that. It knew he didn’t actually want to let go, and this damned pollen made it impossible to do so. It turned off his filter, his inhibition, and reminded him how desperately he wanted to drag the Scot into his chest until he had the other hanging off his ribcage like cobwebs.
John sobbed, big fat tears falling along his nose as he bowed his head - big bright blue eyes dilated and intense as he slammed hard against Simon’s hands and forced them down on either side of the Brit’s head, “YOU LEFT ME!” he screamed.
Simon gasped, head thunking back against the ground.
“You! Fucking! LEFT ME!” John screamed, his voice cracking and breaking with a distraughtness that came straight from his broken heart. Knowing that the pollen was making every word he said truthful, filled Simon with such intense shame.
He shrank beneath the other, head turning in a rare sign of submission from him. He let out a small sound, a contrite little chuff that John only gasped and choked at.
John smacked their joined hands to the ground, “You swore - you swore to me Simon, that you would come home! That you would come back to me!” He shook hard above Simon, his entire frame racked with harsh jerks and shudders, “You swore …” John sobbed, “You lied .”
Simon deflated, the very day John was throwing in his face coming up to greet his mind in harsh technicolor…
Johnny, ten years younger and a thousand times bolder. One of the newer recruits that the then Officer Cadet Riley had under his watch, one of the few that practically radiated shiny potential.
Simon had been eager to nurture that potential. To build a strong and reliable comrade out of the spunky young Alpha.
He had expected to build a bond strong than that.
Johnny had found out about his recent deployment orders. Wasn’t even back one day from visiting his family, and his little pup Cadet was hot on his feels asking a thousand questions, leaning against his rickety wooden desk with both thick arms crossed and a deep petulant scowl on his pretty face.
“Be careful, yeah? You know I don’t like when you get deployed without me.” He eventually settled on, letting the silence finally draw out of him.
Simon had paused his packing and looked up, reminded again why he trusted this man so much. Johnny wouldn’t tell him to stay, but would wish him well once on his way. The trust between them was intense, it was altering.
Simon smiled, trying for reassuring but coming up a bit more relaxed than Johnny apparently liked, “C’mon Johnny, Vernon’s cleared the whole thing as an in-and-out sweep. We should be back right in time for Tea.”
Johnny scoffed and rolled his eyes, “Old badger will find some way to delay ya, ya know that.” He pouted and looked towards the floor, before he glanced up through his lashes, “Should still save yer posh ass a cuppa though, huh?” His grin turned cheeky, “Save ya the good crumpets you pouncey Southern–oi!”
Johnny laughed bright and boisterous, a nice contrast to his early concern. Simon hauled him up and over his shoulder in one swift motion, but the littler Alpha was a real bastard when it came to grappling. He swung around and clung like a limpet, and the pair were off in one of their routine squabbles.
The two Alphas laughed and rough housed together, the bigger of the two easily gaining the upper hand physically, but the Scot liked to play dirty and threw his scent across the others space and skin - peat moss and sea salt blending into dark assam and the slightly wistful twist of rose hips mixing together as easily as it ever did. As easily as the first time they scented each other.
It never failed to make Simon slip up, make him pause just enough to breathe in the mixed scent and chuff something distinctly pleased - before John all but tackled him around the waist and pinned him to the floor of their shared bunkroom. The Scot crowed triumphantly, and Simon laughed.
“Fuck off, cheating rat–” Simon spat vitriol with as much enthusiasm as a wet dog, entirely useless, trying to take his bark seriously when his tail wagged hard enough to rattle the rafters.
Johnny only grinned down at him, and boldly scented the older Alpha openly. Simon’s breath hitched when John’s nose dragged down the column of his throat slowly and thoroughly before a scraggly beard brushed against his freshly shaven skin.
Johnny sat back and crossed his arms, smugly saying “Guess you’ll have to even the score when you get back, or I’ll finally take the lead…”
Simon scoffed and smacked at him, ran his wrist down the middle of the Scot’s sternum and growling low and pleased at the shudder he earned as he dragged his scent down across the other’s shirt. Both knowing the scent would linger for days.
“Yeah yeah, I’ll put you in your place when I get back…” he dragged a hand up John’s neck and palmed the back of his buzzed head before he yanked the other down, and quietly murmured into his ear, “Might just settle things for good, once and for all…”
And Johnny shivered, eyes blowing out wide and pretty, scent pouring out of him in distinctly pleased and expectant tones. Eager and receptive, the back and forth game they’ve been playing for their whole shared enlistment finally begins to come to its head, up-turned noses be damned.
“Make it a promise, yeah?” Johnny whispers, and Simon grins, sharp canines already glistening when he bares them and playful nips the Scot’s chin.
“Promise, yeah. When I come back from this stupid tour trip, we’ll settle this…”
He'd promised.
Simon came back to himself, both alarmed and fascinated to note they were right back where they ended ten years ago, with the Scot pinning him down and him helpless to stop it.
The reminder of that broken promise ripped a hole out of Simon’s throat, and what crawled out was a shuttering and pitiful whine of defeat. He slumped in place, arms going totally lax and head lolling to the side in shame.
The silenced was too much for either of them, too little stimulus for their overworking brains. Simon knew he was the one who would need to break it, need to put to rest a ten year long hurt.
He spoke to John’s left wrist, too ashamed with himself to steady his voice or face the man front on.
“I…I tried…” he admits, John’s sobbing quiets down as he eagerly listens to Simon’ truth, “I tried to…to come back…to you..” Simon shudders, recalling the horrors he had to endure… “no matter what they did to me, what He did to me…I kept thinking, ‘Johnny is waiting for me, gotta get back to him’...” Simon is horrified with himself when he feels tears well up and roll down his cheeks, but he cannot fight the sorrow that he’s experienced.
“I walked barefoot across Mexico for you…. I dug myself out of Vernon’s grave for you…” Simon squeezes his eyes shut and takes deep ragged breaths, “My entire family was murdered…and I only found out after trying to find you. I could have…I could have saved them….but I was trying to get back to you …” Simon gasps on a choked sob, “I never forgave myself… and I would never forgive myself I brought that same nightmare to your door. You have a family Johnny, your Mum and Sisters, Your Da and cousins…I wasn’t going to risk them being next.” He sags with the relief of finally admitting why he’d gone and destroyed what they had.
But Johnny isn’t done with him yet.
The hands pinning his down pull back suddenly, and Simon readies himself for some kind of blow. Be it physical, or the soul-crushing kind, instead shaking fingers drag down his jaw and too-warm palms fit into his hollow cheeks.
He blinks open his eyes, and lets his head be turned to look at the other.
Johnny’s face is contorted with sorrow, lips pulled back in a silent snarl and brows drawn tight. He looks like a wolf properly baring their teeth, but his scent is only that of the twangy remorseful kind.
“Then you shoulda taken me with you!”
Simon would never forget what kissing Johnny felt like. It’s impossible to forget, like a puzzle piece never forgets where it belongs in the bigger picture. Johnny’s lips haven’t changed much in ten years, maybe gotten a little chapped and his facial hair certainly decided to make an appearance, but he kisses Simon the same way he kissed him for the very first time - utterly sincere and aware of everything that could go wrong…
But persevering despite it all.
Simon makes a soft sound before his hands come up and clasp at Johnny’s head, palms snug over the shaved sides of his terrible haircut. Fingers digging into his nape to pull him impossibly closer.
If the pollen made their anger and sorrow explosive, it made their love nuclear.
Johnny kisses him like he’s trying to personally rewrite his DNA. And Simon kissed him back like he’s personally unspooling the strands and leading the way.
They both gasp, can both taste the pollen sitting sticky and tacky on their lips and gums. Simon groans when Johnny licks at his teeth, chasing the flavor and chasing after Simon’s shaky breaths.
He isn't entirely sure how it happens, how they’ve gone from a ten year long festering wound, to rolling around in the flowers for an entirely different purpose.
Simon settles his body overtop Johnny’s just as perfectly as it always fit. Like the smaller man was made to arch and bow to fit against Simon’s frame. Like wooden slats perfectly aligned. Simon pulls away to suck in air, feeling his entire body pulsing with heat and need and all the years of yearning he’s only indulged after his roughest dreams.
Johnny is flushed, hair a mess of curly brown locks - blue eyes fully blown out and reflecting the moon as it appears unhindered overhead. He pants softly, trusting and pliant and settling beneath Simon with only-slightly rusty ease. He sucks in a breath, before his lips quirk into a wide and teeth bared grin, “You, Simon Riley, fuckin’ owe me one.”
Simon sighed and dipped his head down, scenting John through the haze and hypersensitivity of the pollen. He huffed breath against John’s throat, and mimicked his quiet moan. Simon nipped at the skin and flattened his tongue against the mark to soothe it.
“I missed you..” he murmurs, and Johnny hums at him before scratching at his scalp and pushing him to properly press his tongue to the Scot’s pulse.
“I needed you..” Johnny says, his voice rumbling against Simon’s aching teeth, “I tried to find you for years…and when I did, you were so different…I just wanted my Si back.”
Simon burrows his hands beneath John’s waist and clings to him in a tight embrace, “I couldn’t risk you…I would kill myself before gettin’ you hurt…”
John shook his head and squeezed his arms around the other just as tightly, “That’s not how it works you daft git…not for us. You die, I die. You live, I live. You breathe in, I breathe out. That's what we are.”
It starts with Simon pressingly pawing and dragging at John’s shirt, doing anything he could to tear through the kit and gear until he could bury his nose into the man’s skin. Mouth parted and greedily inhaled his scent, the sweat and blood and earthly mix of Him.
It becomes Johnny stripped down to his just his fatigues tangled at his ankle, his chest and thighs bare and rising-falling in rhythm as Simon laves his tongue and teeth every inch of skin he can get at, even forcing the other to twist and roll so he can properly learn what each of his muscle zones uniquely taste like.
The intense heat gathering between them is almost unbearable, it feels like a rut but one that’s had its knob knocked well past ten. Like if Simon doesn’t coat every inch of Johnny’s skin with his own sweat, his own microscopic cells, then he may just combust and die.
Johnny is less fastidious about undressing Simon, he claws and bites and gripes until he is beaming at a beautiful pale and naked Simon.
“Have got to get you out of that fuckin’ cave you live in..” Johnny mutters as he licks and sucks colorful marks into Simon’s neck, “Could blind someone…oi!” He yips and laughs, Simon’s teeth leaving a little indent in his ear.
“Shuddup and tell me you have something I can slick you with,” Simon chuffs at him and soothes the little nip with his lips gumming over the cartilage, forcing a whine out of Johnny who squirms and settles onto his back after whimpering softly.
“Don’t uh…don’t think you'll need anything..” Johnny admits and turns his head in embarrassment as Simon’s fingers knead at his sternum, scratch through the hair on his belly, before sliding down a teasing trail of heat along his bobbing cock. Simon squeezes at his partially swollen knot and Johnny keens beautifully for him.
“Fuck…” Simon shudders and slides his fingers down the mess of wetness that Johnny is producing, “You go and get some upgrades?” He grins and smacks his fingertips together just to watch the slick string out, and hear Johnny’s breathy little whine.
“I just…just need you..” Johnny sighs and parts his legs, his breath hitching and chest stilling when Simon slides a finger into him slowly. He slumps back and whimpers when Simon curses again and immediately adds another finger with ease.
It take barely anything for Simon to stretch and relax Johnny, his lips near dripping with drool at how well and how perfectly his sweet little Alpha opens for him.
“Gonna make this stick..” he mutters darkly and snuffles on his knees, “Make a proper bitch of you…”
Johnny keens and lets his body flop sideways as Simon position’s him to rest on his hip with his leg hiked up around Simon’s hip. The position is deeply intimate, with Johnny tucked protectively into Simon’s chest, between his collar and jaw where he can mouth and lick at his scent gland and throat all to his liking as Simon slips his fingers free and instead feeds his throbbing cock into the softly flexing muscle.
They both groan in sync, their hearts matching tempo as they push them closer together, only the thin and vulnerable walls of their chests keeping them from weaving together.
Simon clings to him, hands never pulling away from his skin but trying to map out every curve and dip between skin and muscle. He rolls his hips, dragging out the process far more than either has the patience for, but Simon has ten years to make up for. If he can start by slowly tugging his cock free of John’s tight hole, then stuffing it back in with a wet squelch - he’ll happily begin his amends.
But Johnny grows frantic quickly, whimpering and gasping so sweetly against Simon’s chest - it’d be more devastating to deny him anything now.
“Please…please Simon– I need you..” he sobs out and forces the other off, his cock slipping out with a wet and embarrassing plop. Johnny rolls to his belly and hitches his hips up high, a perfectly executed presentation that he dips into with a loud and soulful wail as his hole winks and drips thick slick.
Simon feels not entirely human at that moment. More like some feral untamed thing that only thinks of it’s next meal and the next warm hole to fuck into with abandon. But this is his Johnny, so he refrains from outright ravaging him in favor of rising up with one foot planted to the ground, the other knee pressed to the grit without care. He carefully nudges his cockhead into the slick mess, and they both shudder and cry out when he slides back into his place inside Johnny.
He drapes across the smaller’s back, chest perfectly snug against his arching back. Simon noses at his neck, his nape, the soft sweat slick curls of his hair tickling at Simon’s nose. He groans and rolls his hips leisurely, before he puts a hand to Johnny’s shoulder blades and urges him to lay his chest to the ground.
There is nothing gently in the way he takes Johnny then. Hips swinging, the loud and wet smack of their skin echoing in the ravine. John's gasps and hiccuping pants loud and intoxicating, Simon unable to keep quiet with his own grunts and snarls of pleasure.
Johnny throws one arm backward, grabbing at his hip and throwing his own hips backwards to meet him thrust for thrust, he wails and chokes on his voice as he bears down and tries his damndest to take Simon’s knot.
But both are Alphas, a fact they always knew and willingly ignored, and Johnny’s body wasn’t fond of questioning its make. Simon huffed and ran a hand over his own shaved head before he forcefully sat back and dragged John into his lap, knees digging into the ground as Simon ground them together.
“Open, open for me..” he grits out, then starts nipping and sucking on Johnny’s scent gland, an explosion of flora and earth and stone surrounding them and Johnny near screams out his pleas.
“Simon!” he cries, “Please please.. I waited for you…please..” he reaches back and digs his claws into Simon’s nape, tugging hard and forcing the man’s teeth to press hard against his skin, “Please love…please…”
Simon chuffs, and presses a wet smacking kiss to John’s jaw before nodding and rubbing their temples together, “I got you..I got you…shh..” He flattens his tongue over John’s scent gland, before he shifts and plunges his dripping canines into the swollen engorged flesh.
John’s entire body locks up, the already intense sensations tripled by the pollen they’re coated head to toe in. He gapes silently, head thrown back and wide eyes reflecting perfect white circles as the moon sits fat and heavy above them. All at once his body goes slack and sinks, his sopping wet hole fluttering open and swallowing down Simon’s knot with ease as his own cock jerks, Simon’s quick hand coming around to squeeze and massage his knot in a firm grip as he cums in thick creamy spurts.
Simon closes his mouth around the bite, teeth deep in the other’s trapezius muscle and gland, the pure flavor of his mate flooding into his mouth and forcing his eyes to roll back as his body bucks upward, cock fitting snug and tight in John as his knot pops and he releases a veritable torrent of pent up spend.
They both make gasping sounds, neither quite managing anything louder than a whimper as they empty themselves. Both slump downwards, Simon quickly catches them and lands on his side with an oomph , cradling Johnny to his body tenderly.
Johnny is purring in his arms, back vibrating against Simon’s chest as the blissed out Alpha quickly falls into a deep and heady headspace. He grasps at Simon’s forearms and kneads at them, hips making short little awkward gyrations as he rides out his slowly fading orgasm, his cock still oozing out cum as his knot pulses.
Simon huffs and pants, popping his mouth off of John’s neck and dragging his teeth free of the wound. He chuffs and licks at it, clearing away the blood and leaking fluid and coaxing it to heal. His mark will be a stark scar against Johnny’s tanned skin, he wonders if it will stay pink or fade to a pretty white.
He sighs and nuzzles his head against Johnny’s, taking deep and satisfied inhales of his mate’s scent.
Hmm, they’ve gone and done it now. Not like it wouldn’t have happened one way or another, society’s opinions on same gender partners be damned. Hell, Simon had been willing to take a demotion back then if it meant he could court Johnny the way he wanted.
So they’ve both skipped a few steps, and avoided other’s altogether, but the end result is as it always would be:
Even when their branches split far from each other, even when they were at each other’s throats, they would still find a way back to each other. Some way, somehow.